"Tim LaHaye - Left Behind Kids 01 - Vanishings" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

park, and she didn't know why they were supposed to be inferior, other than that they were a different
color. Her father had said they were lazy, criminal, stupid. And yet that was how Vicki saw her father
himself. At least until two years before.

When she was twelve, something had hap-pened to her parents. Before that they had seemed the same
as most of their neighbors. Every Friday night there was a community dance where drunk and jealous
husbands fought over their wives and girlfriends. It was not unusual for the dances to be broken up by the
police, with one or more of the fight-ers being hauled off to jail for the night. Often, her mother bailed out
Vicki's dad, and then they would fight over that for the rest of the weekend.

Vicki's father had trouble keeping a job, and her mother's waitressing didn't pay enough to cover their
bills. Vicki's dad had been a mechanic, a construction worker, a short-order cook, and a cashier at a
conve-nience store. Being arrested or late or absent from work one too many times always cost him his
job, and then they would live on welfare for a few months until he could find something else.

Vicki had wished her parents would stay away from the community dance every Fri-day night, but they
seemed to look forward to it as the highlight of their week. She had to admit she used to love hanging
around with her older brother Eddie and little sister Jeanni and their friends during those dances. They
were always off sneaking around and getting into mischief while their parents danced, sang, drank, and
fought. It was while running with those kids that Vicki learned to smoke and drink. When Eddie
graduated from high school, he moved out on his own to Michigan.

There were a few trailer park families who never came to the dances. They, Vicki's father said, were the
"religious types. The goody--goodies. The churchgoers."

Vicki's mother often reminded him, "Don't forget, Tom, that was the way I was raised. And it's not all
bad. We could do with some church around here."

"I rescued you from all that superstitious mumbo jumbo," he had said.

That became Vicki's view of church. She believed there was a God out there some-where, and her
mother told her he had cre-ated the world and created her and loved her. She couldn't make that make
sense. If God created this lousy world and her lousy life, how could he love her?

One Friday night when Vicki was in sev-enth grade, the family heard the loud music signaling the weekly
dance and began moseying to the parking lot to hear the band. Vicki's plan was to ditch Jeanni as soon
as the party started and run off somewhere with her friends to sneak some cigarettes and maybe some
beer.

But before she could do that, the music stopped and everyone looked toward the small stage in surprise.
"Uh, 'scuse me," the lead singer said. "One of our neighbors here has asked if he can introduce a guest
who'd like to speak to us for a few minutes."

Sometimes local politicians said a few words at the dances, or the police reminded people to behave, or
the landlord reminded everyone that "this is a privilege and can be ended if there are more fights."

But the neighbor with a guest speaker had never been seen at one of these dances. He was one of those
church people Vicki's dad made fun of. And his guest was a preacher. As soon as he began to speak,
people groaned and began shouting to "get on with the music."