"D. W. StJohn - Sisters of Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (St. John D. W)

"He reads minds." He looks up to see her jaw drop. "That reason enough?"

She shuts the door, comes back to her perch on the couch. Slender legs splayed, elbows on knees, she
leans forward, eager, "So, tell me."

And he does.

God help him, he does.
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***

The smell of straw, of alfalfa, of molasses cob, of lanolin, of wool and dung hang heavy on the air of the
shed.

Karl pushes the piston on the tube clamped between the ewe's jaws, forcing the bolus down past where
she can spit it up. Its fear comes through his hands. The ewe is afraid, but in a dull, uninterested way.
Released, she runs bawling from the shed out onto wet grass as if it's all a game. Worming time. How he
hates it. Just one of life's little pains in the ass. Nothing any stupider than a lamb. Birth them, vet them,
feed them, and will they take a pill without fighting for their life? They won't. Got to be done, though. He's
heard lambs cough, seen them eat and eat, gaining nothing, livers swimming with ray-like flukes. Bad here
by the coast. Snails are the vector. Long wet winters and misty summers make it a constant fight.

Bink, a beagle no bigger than his shoe, rolls happily in dung at his feet. His only company, Bink may be a
freakтАФthey have that much in commonтАФbut he knows how to have a good time. Found him barely
weaned, running down the centerline as if he knew where he was going and was in one damned big hurry
to get there. Sweeping alongside in his '53 Ford pickup, Karl scooped him up. On his lap, fleas
porpoising through short fur, what he read in Bink was longing for someone to love, a need so strong he
suspected that somehow he was reading himself reflected back.

Now, when he can help it, animals are all he touches. Bink is simple. A hunger for cats and jackrabbits
to chase. A consuming love for him and for hocks of the lambs Karl slaughters. No undercurrents of dark
guile, no greed, no envy, no resentment, no regretsтАФjust love. He'll never find that in a woman, never.
He knowsтАФhe's tried.

Suddenly Bink springs to short legs, black eyes alert. A low rumble rising from his throat, he tears out of
the shed, kicking up straw as he goes. Karl steps up on a bale to look out under the roof, shapeless felt
hat pressed up against dusty tin. Churning its way up gravel to the house below is an aquamarine
Ranchero. Karl breathes, relaxingтАФonly Mel.

Relieved, he groans, slapping his drooping hat against a thigh to dust it of cobwebs. No hurry. Digging a
pencil stub from the pocket of a worn Pendleton, he makes a note on a post which lambs he's yet to
dose. He wipes his hands on clean straw as Mel winds up the drive, Karl scans the sea a mile away
down slope.

Though he grew up here, for him Cape Mendocino never palls. Sea, sky, land and trees clap violently
together here as they do nowhere else on earth. Here they gnaw at each other, breaking off pieces and