"Rajnar Vajra - His Hands Pass Like Clouds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vajra Rajnar)

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His Hands Pass Like Clouds
by Rajnar Vajra
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Copyright (c)2000 by Rajnar Vajra
First published in Analog, October 2000

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Science Fiction


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I'll start by telling you about Uncle Joe, the Cloudman.
As far back as I can remember, he was a neighborhood fixture,
relentlessly painting his sky-landscapes down at Beck's Beach, only two and a
half blocks from the old yellow house I grew up in. Common sense insists that
Joe must have sneaked off occasionally to buy a new canvas or sleep or use a
bathroom or cash a check; but for the life of me, I can't visualize our beach
without the Cloudman. It's easier to picture it without the _ocean_.
Everyone in our small community pitched in, making sure Joe had plenty
to eat and drink (he wouldn't touch meat or milk) and he never seemed sick or
even uncomfortable. His chief problem in life seemed to be weather that was
either too bad or too good.
Starting when I was six years old, if the summer mornings looked
encouraging, Ma would send me trotting down to the seashore with a huge canvas
tote slung over my shoulder, straps clutched in my good hand. That is, I'd
start out trotting. My burden would soon wear me down until I finally needed
to sit on the sidewalk and rest every few yards.
Just _thinking_ about that tote makes my shoulder ache, even after all
these years! My brother, who went to a summer school for "gifted" children and
was allergic to carrying stuff, once called it "Atlas's Sack" (I don't mind
holding the world, folks, but someone get this damn _sack_ off me!). It
typically contained four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (Joe could eat and
paint at the same time), two bananas, carrot sticks, a big thermos of overly
diluted Juicy Juice, paper cups, a Tupperware jar of filtered water for the
Cloudman's atomizer, and four oranges -- one was for me.
If all that wasn't enough weight for a handicapped youngster, the
inevitable bottle of sunscreen lurked beneath the sandwiches, cocooned in Ma's
ultimate barrier: Reynold's Wrap.
"Good morning, young Gregory," Joe would always announce when I got