"Bruce Holland Rogers - Hard Autumn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Hard Autumn
by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1990 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Kate only half listens to the television news as she smokes and gazes at the dots painted on the wall by
a previous tenant. She connects the dots in her mind, forming constellations. Dennis, meanwhile, reads his
tattered copy of Being and Nothingness.
"I wonder what he means by that?" Kate says.
Dennis looks up. "What who means?"
"What the weatherman means. I think he just said it's going to be a hard autumn. What does that
mean?"
"A cold autumn," Dennis says, returning to his book.
"But if he meant that, wouldn't he say it was going to be an early winter?"
Dennis shrugs.
***


The next day, as Kate leaves for work, she opens the door, takes one step outside, and stops.
Overnight, the leaves have changed. The day before, all the trees were green, but the street is now an
explosion of yellow, red, and orange.
Kate wakes Dennis.
"Look at the trees," she says as she hands him his glasses.
Dennis rubs his beard. He scratches. He looks outside.
Kate says, "Is this what they mean by a hard autumn?"
Dennis says, "I don't know," and he goes back to bed.
***


Overnight the wind blows all the leaves from the trees. Kate says, "This must be what they mean by a
hard autumn."
***


The next night, the wind blows every last shingle from the roof, and from every other roof in town. She
shows Dennis a crack in the paint-dot wall. He is unimpressed.
***


The night after that, the rest of the roof blows off, and when Dennis wakes up he sees sunlight through
cracks in the bedroom ceiling. He tries to read Being and Nothingness in bed, but pages keep falling out
of the book. All day long, Kate notices that things feel, well, a little shaky. Hubcaps fall off of cars.
Bricks and siding fall from the walls of buildings, and then the exterior walls fall away altogether. When
she comes home from work, Kate discovers that the dots on the living room wall have fallen to the floor.
 In bed, Kate and Dennis are cold as the wind curls easily through the house. "Dennis," Kate says, "I