"Michael Thomas - The Time Thief" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Michael)

"Guess not," Mark said.

The man nodded, more to himself than to the boys. "Then this is the fight one,"
he said. "It's 1932." He tipped his hat and said, "Much obliged. You boys have
yourself a good day." He started back up the hill, hesitated, turned and tossed
a quarter to each boy.

"Geez, thanks, mister," Joey called after him.

Mark fingered his quarter and watched the stranger disappear over the rise of
the hill as if the smoke and flames and massive walls of the plant were a dragon
that had swallowed the man whole.

Then the man reappeared and beckoned them with a crook of his finger.

"Let's run," Pete Mellon said.

"Run," Paul said.

"I ain't going up there," Joey said.

Drawn for some reason he could not understand, Mark climbed the hill and stared
down with the stranger at the plant. It stretched like its own dark city all the
way to the Rouge River where freighters docked and skeletal gantries unloaded
the ore. Lines of smokestacks carved a fence pattern across the sky, the
buildings housing the assembly lines crowded each other like the caves of some
race of toiling dwarves, and over all the smoke from the blast furnaces wrapped
the plant in a shroud.

The stranger pointed and said, "Is that Miller Road down there?"

"Yep," Mark said.

The stranger nodded. "By the way, do you know .... "The man hesitated, then
shook his head. "Never mind. It's better if I find him myself."

Mark waited, but the man only went on staring at the craggy summits of the blast
furnaces. At last, Mark turned and raced down the hill. It was a warm day for
March, but Mark shivered. With a start, he realized he was frightened, not
knowing why, only knowing the stranger's appearance was an omen, as unlucky as
walking under a ladder.

THE BOYS DEBATED what to do with their quarters, the Mellons wanting to see
Scarface and Joey and Mark holding out for parfaits at Henderson's Drug Store.
At last the parfaits won and the boys sat at the counter, eating with
long-handled spoons, speculating about the stranger.

"Maybe he's a communist," Pete Mellon said.