"Kathleen Ann Goonan - What Science Fiction is All About, or The Amazing Dancing Chairs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

We got to the cornfield. Christopher pointed to a pile of corn stalks that had been torn out of the ground.
тАЬCoyotes. They love this Ambrosia. They drag it off and eat the ears.тАЭ He and Lefton have tried lying in
wait for the coyotes, but they are no match for the crafty coyotes, who adore this evil product of clever
human-controlled evolution.

Sometimes the dogтАЩs barks are laced with beautiful coyote song, late at night: canine opera. The howls
are eerie and chilling. The barks are prosaic, like chopped, repeating words. Do they think they are
saying something, I wonder? I know that my own dogs thought so, but probably LeftonтАЩs dogs have
never learned to think in words, having heard none except тАЬHey! Knock it off!тАЭ Maybe thatтАЩs what they
are saying to each other in their world of bark-mirrors.

So as I watered my apple trees and tried not to contemplate a roomful of wild and recalcitrant dancing
chairs carrying out science-fictional themes in a taunting way, with the attitude of hey, you invented us,
deal with it and myself as the lion tamer, I was wrenched from that vision by one of LeftonтАЩs bullets.

I was angry. Christopher said that Lefton had a little beer camp farther up the hollow, near the creek just
beneath the hill our house is on. Christopher had come across it while tending his cows: a small mountain
of empty Bud cans, a plastic Adirondack chair, a cooler for a table. Lefton likes the simple life. I figured,
after the shot whistled by, that he was down at his beer camp, enjoying the hot summer evening with his
guns and his beer. Other people watch the evening news. Lefton drinks beer and shoots guns.

I threw my hose on the ground, took cover, and yelled. I wished that I really was living in The Future,
and could command my fleet of battle-chairs (now hardened soldiers, having grown up and been drafted
to fight in an unpopular war, and wearing Army boots instead of patent-leather shoes) down the steep
wooded hill to LeftonтАЩs. I was not sure how they would get through ChristopherтАЩs barbed-wire fence.
Perhaps they would find the place where his cows had broken it, and fly through. They would gallop
down to LeftonтАЩs beer camp and trample it, make the pile of beer cans fly, knock him in the forehead
with their own (the backs of the chairs would, of course, be analogous to foreheads). Panicked, he
would fire at a few, but it would be no good, they would heal almost instantly, and he would be crushed
by my junkyard chairs. Maybe I would make them howl like coyotes as they attacked.

But who knows? He was drunk. Maybe he already thought this was happening. ThatтАЩs why he was
shooting in my direction. Maybe he knew more than I did about the true reality of my chairs. Maybe he
wanted to stop evolution.

The second bullet had me on the phone calling the Sheriff. тАЬI almost got hit by a bullet,тАЭ I told him. тАЬI
think I know who fired it.тАЭ I told him that even though it was an accident, I did not like it and I thought it
was against the law.

I heard later that the Sheriff came and gave Lefton a warning. So far, that seems to have worked. At
least he is saving a lot of money on ammunition.
I heard a story about Lefton once. Christopher told me.

Lefton heard a knock on his door at about two in the morning. He opened the door and an old high
school classmate was standing there holding up a crucifix. He was covered in blood and his clothes were
in rags.

тАЬWhat are you doing here?тАЭ Lefton asked.