"Mary Rickert - Don't ask" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rickert Mary)

We live tidy lives; ice-free sidewalks, square green lawns, even our
garages, so clean you could eat in them (and some of us do, using them as
summer porches). We are not eager to do something so sloppy, but for our
sons we make the sacrifice.
 We cut and cut looking for the pelt.

тАЬThe wolf rests within,тАЭ she said before she wiggled her red
nail-polished fingers at us and nodded for Hymral to take her to the airport.

We have grown sensitive now to the sound of screams. Our boys run
through the town, playing the way boys do, shouting and whatnot, but every
once in a while they make a different sort of sound, blood-curdling, we
always thought that was an expression, but when a man screams while
being cut, his blood is dotted with bubbles as though it is going sour.

Once it was begun, it was impossible to stop.

тАЬWolf! Hair!тАЭ someone shouted holding up a thatch, which caused a
tremendous amount of excitement until we realized it was scalp.

All we needed was the hair of the wolf trapped within the famous lost
boy to redeem ourselves. There was no redemption.

Our boys slam the doors and kick the cats. We scold them. We love
them. They look at us as though they suspect the very worst. They ask us
about the famous lost boy and we say, тАЬDonтАЩt ask,тАЭ but they do, they ask
again and again and again, they ask so much and so often that each of us,
separately, reach a breaking point and turn on them, spitting the words out,
the dangerous words, тАЬWhat happened to you, while you were lost?тАЭ

They tell us. They tell us everything about the years upon months
upon days upon hours upon minutes upon seconds. We sweat and cry.
They gnash their teeth, pull their hair, scratch themselves incessantly. We
try to hold them but they pull away. The sun sets and rises. We sleep to the
drone of this terrible story and wake to another horrible chapter. We
apologize for our need for sleep, but the recitation continues, uninterrupted,
as if we are not the reason for it. We become disoriented, we have waking
dreams, and in sleep we have death. Our boys change before us, from the
lost sons we kissed on freckled noses to sharp-toothed beasts. We shake
our heads. We readjust.

And we know now that what we said for all those years was not just a
promise, but a curse; we will always be searching for the boys that were
taken from us. We will never find them, for they are lost, no grave to mark
their passing and passage by which they can return, like dreams or the
memory of sunshine in the dark. We fill their bowls with water, and they
come in slobbering, tongues hanging out, collapsing on the floor or couch,
shedding hair and skin and we would do anything for them, but still, some
days, when the sun is bright or clear, you can find us staring out at the
distant horizon. We have discovered that if we look long enough and hard