"Elizabeth Hand - Winter's Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

тАЬI have Passamaquoddy blood,тАЭ Winter says. тАЬIf I moved somewhere
else, IтАЩd melt.тАЭ

He didnтАЩt look like a Native American, though, and my mother said if
he did have Indian blood it had probably been diluted by now. Winter was
really tall and skinny, not sick skinny but bony and muscular, stooped from
having to duck through the door of the school bus all those years. He
al-ways wore a gimme cap that said WINTER TREE SERVICE, and I can
remem-ber how shocked I was once when I saw him at Town Meeting
without his hat, and he had almost no hair. HeтАЩd hunt and butcher his own
deer, but he wouldnтАЩt eat itтАФhe said heтАЩd grown up dirt-poor in a cabin that
didnтАЩt even have a wooden floor, just pounded earth, and his family would
eat anything they could hunt, including snake and skunk and snapping turtle.
So heтАЩd give all his venison away, and when people hired him to butcher
their live-stock and gave him meat, heтАЩd give that away, too.

That was how my mother met him, that first winter fifteen years ago
when she was living here alone, pregnant with me. There was a big storm
going on, and she looked out the window and saw this tall guy stomping
through the snow carrying a big paper bag.

тАЬYou a vegetarian?тАЭ he said, when she opened the door. тАЬEveryone
says thereтАЩs a lady from away living here whoтАЩs going to have a baby and
sheтАЩs a vegetarian. But you donтАЩt look like one to me.тАЭ

My mother said no, she wasnтАЩt a vegetarian, she was a registered
certified massage therapist.

тАЬWhatever the hell that is,тАЭ said Winter. тАЬYou going to let me in?
Jesus Q. Murphy, is that your woodstove?тАЭ

See, my mother had gotten pregnant by a sperm donor. She had it all
planned out, how she was going to move way up north and have a baby and
raise itтАФhim, meтАФby herself and live off the land and be a massage
thera-pist and hang crystals in the windows and there would be this good
energy and everything was going to be perfect. And it would have been, if
she had moved to, like, Huntington Beach or even Boston, someplace like
that, where it would be warmer and there would be good skate parks,
instead of a place where you have to drive two hours to a skate park and it
snows from November till the end of May. And in the spring you canтАЩt even
skate on the roads here because theyтАЩre all dirt roads and so full of
potholes you could live in one. But the snowboarding is good, especially
since Winter let us put a jump right behind his place.

But this part is all before any snowboarding, because it was all before
me, though not much before. My mother was living in this tiny two-room
camp with no indoor plumbing and no running water, with an ancient
woodstove, what they call a parlor stove, which looked nice but didnтАЩt put
out any heat and caused a chimney fire. Which was how Winter heard about