"Springer-ChasingButterfly" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Jan)

of July, and all the glory was yet to come, the automobiles and paved roads,
radio and television, the great airships, trips into space. But now they can
bounce signals off artificial stars-- at least they look like wandering stars
overhead at night, because she saw one once, Bill showed her, and that was what
it was like, a spark of light moving through the sky. And now they can send
brightwing pictures from the far side of the world straight to her house. She
wants to be linked to the stars and the sky, part of whatever is big and far
away. At once she writes out a check, seals and stamps its envelope and puts it
in the napkin holder with the other.

Billy will be coming soon to drop off his grandchildren. She will have to look
at the Fingerhut catalog later. For now, she slides it under the corduroy seat
cushion of a kitchen chair, where nobody is likely to notice it.

She hears the station wagon drive in. The dog jumps up. "Now, you don't have to
bark," she tells him. "These people are family."

He barks a little anyhow, but not the way he did at the tract pushers yesterday.
Bill walks past him with a sour look, but the children become loud and happy.

"What's his name?"

"Grammaw, can we walk him?"

She makes them wait till Bill is gone, then gives them the letters to mail. They
go off with the dog on a leash, as she is not sure he will come when they call
him if he gets distracted in the woods, and he might not know his way home yet.
Next time they can let him run. Nona doesn't like to keep a dog in a pen or on a
leash or a chain. Things were meant to be free.

"Hey, Gram." It is the oldest one, the teenager, who has stayed behind to
separate himself from the little kids. "Did you hear the one about the dyslexic
atheist? He didn't believe in Dog."

"That's not nice," she tells him. In fact she does not understand his joke, but
she would not have laughed anyway. Seems like she's on a different wavelength
than most people these days. Hardly anything anybody can say makes her laugh
aloud anymore.

She puts the teenager to work packing away porcelain owls. He is still grumpily
at it when the other children get back, their bluejay voices flying in the
windows long before they come m the door.

"Grammaw, this dog is stupid!"

"Grammaw, you know what your new dog did? He tried to fight Bubha!"

She hardly listens to the details of the encounter with a neighbor's Doberman
pinscher, of how the children had to drag the sheltie away so he would not get
himself hurt.