"Kit Reed - On The Penal Colony" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

I AM WRITING in my own blood, by What light sifts through the bars in the
subterranean part of Old Arkham Village that you never see. This is our home
nights until dawn, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when even public parks in the
State of Massachusetts close.

And if we look all right to you in the daytime, bowing and smiling, answering
your questions in 18th-century quaint -- well. You don't see the hidden
monitors, trusties ready to rat if the smile slips even a half inch. Sonic
barriers at the perimeters and electrified razor wire in the woods. The anklets
and the belt.

I'll come to the belt.

Meanwhile, my credentials. To prove that this is no political tract and
definitely not a gag. It isn't even a cry for help.

It's a record of how things are. What it's like in this tarted-up, chintzy,
early American penal colony, me to you. I, Arch Plummet, am a lifer here in Old
Arkham Village; for years I have been your friendly village blacksmith,
answering your stupid questions as I hammer horseshoes and craft cheesy rings
for your kids out of genuine, authentic replicas of 18th-century square-headed
nails. You've seen me pull glowing metal out of the forge and bong horseshoes
into shape to the voice of Jason Robards reading, "Under the spreading chestnut
tree..." The Village Blacksmith, piped in here on a loop, and you've seen me
hammer them on to the Percherons' hooves and finish them off with the hasp while
on the same loop some old mid-American broad named Jo Stafford belts out "The
Blacksmith Blues." Well I could tell you a thing or two about blacksmith blues.

Right, I am the village smithy. For my crimes. If you knew how many times I've
heard that track or what would happen to me if I trashed the speakers or tried
to walk away from the racket, you'd understand. Burn scars on my ankles where
the anklets zapped me; mossy cracks in my skull from the beatings in solitary
and beginning marks around my waist from the belt. I am a lifer.

A life sentence to Old Arkham Village, when all I did was steal a loaf of bread.

Okay, okay, it was a Lexus, but I didn't know about the toddler in the back
until we reached Cuernavaca, by which time the only logical thing to do was send
the ransom note. I never laid a finger on him! I bought him the Pancho Villa
scrape and matching Mexican hat and put him on the bus home before I even mailed
the note. And here I am with the hard-timers. Quiven the decoy duck carver
(murder One), and Roland the town printer (arson). Gemma the gingerbread maker
(crime of passion, don't ask; her husband was shtupping her mom), sweet Gemma,
whom I happen to be in love with -- and Laramie the cobbler (armed robbery,
which I happen to know was a frame).
"It is well known that society's dregs are recidivists beyond all hope of
rehabilitation." The warden fills the 18th-century meetinghouse, roaring like a
frustrated warthog, and thirty visiting penologists flinch. "If we are going to
warehouse them, let's do it creatively. There is no enterprise without its