"Nancy Kress - The Sleepless - Sleeping Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

thought it was a game: tug-of-war. But Richard wasn't playing. He tossed Precious awayтАФthe bite marks are clear o
little armтАФand Precious fell down the hill and landed wrong. She hit her head, or twisted her neck, or something. La
the coroner would say it was a freak accident. Except for her arm, she isn't bruised at all, or wet from the stream. Sh
there in her new dirt-resistant pink overalls like she's asleep.
Daddy shatters the quiet with a howl like hell breaking open. I run to Precious and pick her up. I hardly even he
rifle going off not ten yards from me. The other shotsтАФfour more, and then a last, senseless one for LeishaтАФI don't h
all. Not an echo, not a whimper. Nothing.

I don't know what makes people stay glued together inside, or not. Maybe it's like Tony Indivino said: Behavior
chaotic, mostly sensitive to small differences in initial conditions. I don't know.
Anything.
Daddy doesn't stay glued together. He starts drinking right after the funeral, and he doesn't ever stop. He doesn
mean or weepy. He doesn't explain why he could ride out Mama's death but not Pre-cious's. Maybe he doesn't know
just sits at the kitchen table, night after night, and quietly empties one bottle after another. During the day, he waits for
Pretty soon, I think, he won't bother
to wait.
Donna doesn't stick around to find out. She cries all the time for a few months. She wants to talk on and on
Precious, and I can't listen. I can't. Eventually she finds someone who will, a government counselor in Kellsville, wh
finds her a job waiting on customers in a fancy restaurant. Customers like her. Bit by bit Donna stops crying. She m
some friends, then a boyfriend. I don't see her much. And when I do, it's hard to look straight into each other's eyes.
And me. I don't know if I stayed glued together or not. I'm too mad to know.

"You're Dave's girl," Denny says, just like he hasn't taken me back and forth from Kellsville in his truck for years
one of those men terrified of female scenes. "What can I do for you, uh . . ."
"Carol. You can let me stay here and keep house for you."
He looks like I could be rabid. "Well, uh, Carol, I don't know about that, I thought you were keeping house fo
father, he sure needs you since, uhтАФ"
"He doesn't need anybody," I said. "And you do." I looked around me. Denny's wife left him, finally, last month. D
had one girl too many. Since she moved, Denny hasn't washed a dish or a sheet or a tabletop. His girlfriends, who he m
meets at the Road Nest Bar, aren't the type given to housekeeping. The two cats stopped using their litter box. Denny
all the windows open to control the smell, which it doesn't, even though it's pouring outside and rain is blowing in sidewa
what's left of his cat-piss-soaked couch. Everybody's got a limit how much reeking mess they can tolerate. Denny's m
pretty high, but I'm still betting he's got one.
"I'm a good housekeeper," I say. "And I can cook. Daddy says he'd take it as a favor if you let me live here. He kn
need to get away from the memories in our house."
Denny nods slowly. It makes him feel better to think that he's helping Daddy. But he still has doubts.
"The thing is, Carol, you know how folks are. They talk. And you ain't a kid no more. I don't want nobody to thinkтАФ
"The only one that matters is Daddy, and he knows better. Besides, if you go on having lady-friend company, the
will tell them I sleep in the spare room and that you treat me like a daughter for my daddy's sake."
Again Denny nods. He likes the idea of having lady-friend company and a clean house, too. "But I can't, uh, pa
nothing, Carol, things are tight right now. Maybe later whenтАФ"
"I don't want any money, Denny. All I want is for you to teach me how to use the Subnet. On your terminal, same a
taught Daddy. For two hours a day, at least in the beginning."
He doesn't like that. Too much time. But just then one of the cats squats and shits on the table, into a plate of r
congealed the rice grains are hard as kitty-litter pellets.
"Okay," Denny says.
 All winter I work like hell. I throw out Denny's couch and everything else I can't boil. I scrub and pound and make
couch out of boards and blankets. I cook and launder and shop with Denny's dole credits. Twice a week I walk o
Daddy's to do the same for him. And half the night I practice what Denny teaches me, until I'm tired enough to sleep. A
days my eyes ache from the constant reading, and not only on the Subnet, either. I spend hours in the science sections