"Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowe Christopher)

and rode him, the man's movements becoming slightly less
fluid as he was mounted and steered. The Detective filmed
Soma's statement.
"I came to sketch the children in the surf," said Soma. He
opened his daypack for the soapbubble lens, laid out the
charcoal and pencils, the sketchbook of boughten paper
bound between the rusting metal plates he'd scavenged along
the middenmouth of the Cumberland River.
"Show us, show us," sang the Detective.
Soma flipped through the sketches. In black and gray, he'd
drawn the floating lures that crowded the shallows this time
of year. Tiny, naked babies most of them, but also some little
girls in one-piece bathing suits and even one fat prepubescent
boy clinging desperately to a deflating beach ball and turning
horrified, pleading eyes on the viewer.


4
 The Voluntary State
by Christopher Rowe


"Tssk, tssk," sang the Detective, percussive. "Draw
filaments on those babies, Soma Painter. Show the lines at
their heels."
Soma was tempted to show the Detective the artistic
licenses tattooed around his wrists in delicate salmon inks, to
remind the intelligence which authorities had purview over
which aspects of civic life, but bit his tongue, fearful of a For-
the-Safety-of-the-Public proscription. As if there were a living
soul in all of Tennessee who didn't know that the children who
splashed in the surf were nothing but extremities, nothing but
lures growing from the snouts of alligators crouching on the
sandy bottoms.
The Detective summarized. "You were here at your work,
you parked legally, you paid the appropriate fee to the meter,
you saw nothing, you informed the authorities in a timely
fashion. Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer's-Alley, the
Tennessee Highway Patrol applauds your citizenship."
The policemen had spread around the parking lot, casting
cluenets and staring back through time. But they all heard
their cue, stopped what they were doing, and broke into a
raucous cheer for Soma. He accepted their adulation
graciously.
Then the Detective popped the soapbubble camera and
plucked the film from the air before it could fall. It rolled up
the film, chewed it up thoughtfully, then dismounted the
policeman, who shuddered and fell against Soma. So Soma
did not at first hear what the others had begun to chant,
didn't decipher it until he saw what they were encircling.