"James van Pelt - Nor a Lender Be" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

"Nor a Lender Be" by James Van PeltJune 27 @ 9:00
pm EST
Far Future Fiction
Nancy Kress and Sean McMullen.
Find out more.




Nor a Lender BeJames Van Pelt
"Nor a Lender Be" first appeared in the February 1999 issue.


On a park bench near the swings, the old man in an overcoat eyes the
children.
HeтАЩs positioned himself carefully away from the parents who are talking
amiably
on a set of benches on the other side of the playground equipment. Near him,
a
pair of boys dressed in matching blue jumpers take turns going down the
slide.
The old man studies them for a while. TheyтАЩre maybe five and four, he
decides,
very sweet; they smile often; the same shade of blonde hair curls out from
beneath their caps.
On the teeter-totters, a handful of older kids, around nine or ten years old,
rise then fall in rhythm. They laugh in unison at some joke. Beyond them on
the
grass, a couple of teens throw a football back and forth. The old man sighs
and
looks at his hands. Liver spots mar the knuckles and make indecipherable
patterns on their backs. He imagines things crawling under his skin, moving
beneath the loose parchment of his flesh. He resists the urge to scratch his
fingers. When he raises his left hand from his leg, it trembles slightly.
Underneath the slide, a little girl sits against a support pole, drawing
patterns in the gravel. SheтАЩs maybe eight, the old man guesses. Her blonde
hair
matches the boys going up the ladder. Her lips are thin and serious. She
concentrates on what sheтАЩs drawing, erasing a part of it and starting again.
When she finally looks up, as if sensing she is being watched, her eyes are
dark
brown.
"Hi," she says, not lifting her finger from the spot on her drawing.
The old man glances at the parents on the other side. TheyтАЩre facing each
other,
chatting. Nobody seems to notice him or the child. He gestures to herтАУa come
closer wave.
"Hey," he says. "Hey, little girl. Do you want to know a secret?"
She looks at her work for a moment, makes a final line in the gravel, then
gets