"Kathleen Ann Goonan - Solitaire (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

One day, about midday on a summer's morning, when most of the kids were
building a tree fort, SB's mom threw him out of the house, so he jumped on his
Huffy and sped away.

He rode down the smooth mica-sparkled sidewalk for two blocks, swerving onto
the street down driveways to avoid curbs, and cut a sharp left a few blocks
past the ballfield. His street had houses on one side, and across from his
house was the ballfield, with damp concrete steps leading down to it through
the woods, and then past the ballfield, facing the houses for a mile or so,
were just woods and fields, mysterious and free.

This was a dirt road where he was forbidden to go by his mother, but the only
reason he was out on his bike, a deck of Bee cards bouncing around in the
basket in front of the handlebars, was that his mom had yelled at him and told
him to go outside and get some fresh air. Besides, she had messed up a
particularly promising game and acted more than a little nuts. Somehow this
sequence of events combined in his mind to mean that no matter what he did it
would be all right just as long as he stayed outside.
He had been down this road a little ways once and turned back, because the sky
had been gray and the wind had been chill and the branches black and this had
all scared him somewhat. The other boys said that the Bogeyman of Mill Creek
lived down there.

But on the other hand he had once walked right up the cracked and slanted walk
of the old lady that everyone called a witch, through her many twining cats,
while she called, "Come on up here, little boy, I know your mother," through
the screen door in her old voice which did in fact sound haunted and
witchlike. He was positive Ricky and Denny had watched like chickens from
behind the fence, and she gave him milk and cookies and he had not died. His
mother had not called her a witch, he recalled, as he savored the plain
vanilla cookies, but an old crackpot. And a sweetie.

So though he had turned back from the prospect of the bogeyman once, he had
braved Mystery and found it delightful. The memory kept him bouncing farther
down the road than he had ever been before, standing up on his pedals when
approaching particularly big ruts. Mill Creek came in and joined the side of
the road, wide and green with big overhanging white scaly sycamores. Lots of
blue flowers were scattered through the verge of woods along the creek, and to
his left was a cornfield with corn taller than he was. Even if he didn't find
the bogeyman--he realized that he had begun to actively look for him--he liked
it here. He decided to come back often. Maybe he'd find a good place to swim.
He found himself liking his mother more for kicking him out.

He backpedaled fast, braking, when he came upon a clearing.

The cornfield angled sharp left, and the creek bent in a gentler curve along
one side of it, so that the deep blue sky was freed of trees and wide. SB
caught his breath.