"Pat Murphy - Rachel In Love" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Pat)

really. She fingers the cap and wonders why she thought she loved Jake.

The rain lets up. The clouds rise like fairy castles in the distance and the rising sun tints them pink and
gold and gives them flaming red banners. Rachel remembers when she was young and Aaron read her
the story of Pinocchio, the little puppet who wanted to be a real boy. At the end of his adventures,
Pinocchio, who has been brave and kind, gets his wish. He becomes a real boy.

Rachel had cried at the end of the story and when Aaron asked why, she had rubbed her eyes on the
backs of her hairy hands. --I want to be a real girl, she signed to him. A real girl.
"You are a real girl," Aaron had told her, but somehow she had never believed him.

The sun rises higher and illuminates the broken rock turrets of the desert. There is a magic in this barren
land of unassuming grandeur. Some cultures send their young people to the desert to seek visions and
guidance, searching for true thinking spawned by the openness of the place, the loneliness, the beauty of
emptiness.

Rachel drowses in the warm sun and dreams a vision that has the clarity of truth. In the dream, her father
comes to her. "Rachel," he says to her, "it doesn't matter what anyone thinks of you. You're my
daughter."

--I want to be a real girl, she signs.

"You are real," her father says. "And you don't need some twobit drunken janitor to prove it to you." She
knows she is dreaming, but she also knows that her father speaks the truth. She is warm and happy and
she doesn't need Jake at all. The sunlight warms her and a lizard watches her from a rock, scurrying for
cover when she moves. She picks up a bit of loose rock that lies on the floor of the cave. Idly, she
scratches on the dark red sandstone wall of the cave. A lopsided heart shape. Within it, awkwardly
printed: Rachel and Johnson. Between them, a plus sign. She goes over the letters again and again,
leaving scores of fine lines on the smooth rock surface. Then, late in the morning, soothed by the warmth
of the day, she sleeps.

Shortly after dark, an elderly rancher in a pickup truck spots two apes in a remote corner of his ranch.
They run away and lose him in the rocks, but not until he has a good look at them. He calls the police, the
newspaper, and the Primate Center.

The reporter arrives first thing the next morning, interviews the rancher, and follows the men from the
Primate Center as they search for evidence of the chimps. They find monkey shit near the cave,
confirming that the runaways were indeed nearby. The news reporter, an eager and curious young man,
squirms on his belly into the cave and finds the names scratched on the cave wall. He peers at it. He
might have dismissed them as the idle scratchings of kids, except that the names match the names of the
missing chimps. "Hey," he called to his photographer. "Take a look at this."

The next morning's newspaper displays Rachel's crudely scratched letters. In a brief interview, the
rancher mentioned that the chimps were carrying bags. "Looked like supplies," he said. "They looked like
they were in for a long haul."

On the third day, Rachel's water runs out. She heads toward a small town, marked on the map. They
reach it in the early morning--thirst forces them to travel by day. Beside an isolated ranch house, she finds
a faucet. She is filling her bottle when Johnson grunts in alarm.