"Pat Murphy - Bones" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

blood in his veins, and he would save Ireland. Then he took me by the hand and let
me to a spot where the grass was soft. There he lay with me, taking his pleasure as a
man does with a woman. In the morning, I woke with the sun in my eyes, beside the
boulder they call the Giant's Skull." She leaned back in her chair. "Nine months later,
you were born. You were the biggest baby the midwife had ever laid her eyes upon.
And you've kept growing ever since. You take after your father, sure enough."
Charlie nodded, gazing into the fire. "Have you ever seen my father again?"
"That I have not," she murmured. "But I know you for his son."
"Then I must save Ireland? When must I do this?"
"That I don't know. When the time comes, surely it will be clear to you."
Charlie frowned at the fire, his expression fierce. "I will do what I must do," he
said. "If only I can figure out what that is."

Charlie wasn't his mother's son, though he sat at her knee and fetched her
whiskey. He was a child of the woods and the wild fieldsтАФgrowing up outdoors as
much as in. Summer and winter alike, he ran barefoot, coming home to his mother's
house with dusty feet and brambles in his hair.
He was a strange ladтАФwith a peculiar, dreamy air about him that made some think
he was dim-witted. But he wasn't stupidтАФhe just paid attention to other lessons.
Reading and writing seemed unimportant when he could look out the window and
see the flowers growing in the fields, hear the birds singing. He understood the
mathematics of bird nests, the poetry of cloud formations, the penmanship of snail
tracks left on the cold stones of the churchyard wall.
He had a way about him. Animals liked him: the wildest horse would consent to
be shod when Charlie held its head. Cows bore their calves more easily if he were
standing by. Over the years, the widow Bryne's farm prospered: her fields were
fertile and her hens laid more eggs than any in the village. Her cows gave the richest
milk and bore their calves with never a bit of trouble.
 Charlie lived with his mother, helping to tend her prospering farm. When he was
just sixteen, he was taller than the tallest man in the county. At twenty, he measured
eight-foot-tall, and he was still growing. And always he wondered when he would be
called upon to save Ireland.
One sunny day, he was drowsing in the Giant's Boneyard, his back against the
boulder known as the Giant's Skull. Leaning against the sunwarmed surface, he
listened to the wind in the grass and the high thin peeping of the little birds that
searched for seeds in the meadow. A lark flew from the grass and came to perch on
the boulder. When Charlie held out his hand, the bird flew to him. With one finger,
he gently rubbed the bird's head. When Charlie stopped his petting, the lark tilted
back its head, sang a liquid trill, then pushed off his finger and took flight.
Charlie watched the bird fly, then plucked a blade of grass from a clump beside
him and chewed on the sweet stem. The earth beneath him was warm; the sun shone
on his face. He belonged in this meadow the way the boulders belonged. It seemed
to him sometimes that he should stay here always, letting the grass grow over him, its
roots tickling the surface of his skin as it tickled the granite boulders.
The wind carried the sound of voices. Some neighboring farmers had stopped
their work in a nearby field to have a bit of lunch. Their deep voices blended with the
distant songbirds and the humming of bees in the wildflowers. Charlie let the sounds
wash over him.
"Patrick's gone to England," said one man. Charlie recognized the voice of Mick,
an elderly farmer. Patrick was his oldest son. "He said he'll come home rich or not at