"Steve Rasnic Tem - Tricks And Treats" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tem Steve Rasnic)

backwards like that all the way up Halloween Street.

J.P. was so ignorant.

SACK LUNCH

He was just a little boy but he carried the biggest treat sack any of the kids
had ever seen. It grew out of his hands like a big dark hole and it reached to
the ground and even dragged behind him for several feet.

Some of the big boys thought it was silly -- he looked crazy dragging that big
sack around, almost tripping over it every second and stepping on it all the
time. But what if he got more candy because he was such a little boy carrying
such a great big sack? Adults were funny that way --they might think it was
cute.

So they stopped him, and they took the big sack away from him, and just for a
moment they considered dropping it and running away because the sack was so
light, and felt so strange in their hands -- like an oily cloud as it rose and
drifted and hummed as the October wind wrapped it around them.

But they just had to look inside.

Later, when the little boy picked the big sack up out of the street it felt just
a little heavier, and there were harsh whispers inside, briefly.

SWEET & SOUR

The boy loved the taste of sweet and sour. Sweet, then sour. Sour, then sweet.
Ice cream, then pickles. Lemons, then peaches.

"That's the way of things," his daddy used to tell him. "You wouldn't know the
good without the bad to compare it to." His daddy used to say that over and over
to him, like some kind of preacher with his sermon. But his daddy just had no
idea. Why was one thing good and the other thing bad? Sweet and sour. It was
just another flavor, another kind of taste.

Grapefruit and strawberries. Kisses and slaps. Silk and razor blades. Living and
dying.

The boy was too old to be out trick or treating. He knew that but he liked the
candy too much. He had a sweet tooth. He had a sour tooth.

That night on Halloween Street he was having the best time. Hardly anyone seemed
to be home in those houses but he didn't care. There were lots of little kids
running up and down that street with their silly store-bought costumes and their
grocery sacks full of treats.

He helped one little kid pick up all his spilled candy. He took another kid's
mask off and threw it in the creek. He cut a little girl's arm with the penknife