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

suitable for a major angel or at the very least, a galactic emperor -- deep,
powerful, and so resonant that if you closed your eyes and listened to Joe,
you couldn't tell if he was standing directly in front of you or behind. And
his inflection could be _commanding_. Oh yes! No kid ever ignored or disobeyed
the Cloudman when he was issuing direct orders.
And if someone _really_ screwed up, they'd have to stand beside the
bizarre old geezer and hold his free hand for awhile as if crossing a
dangerous street. Most of us found this experience to be downright sickening.
Not because Joe smelled bad as you might expect from someone so old and who
never seemed to take a shower or brush his teeth (the Cloudman always smelled
faintly of fresh gingerbread). But the man had ghastly hands; they felt like
skin stuffed with unshelled walnuts.
It was different for me. When _I_ screwed up, Joe always insisted on
holding my _left_ hand (my friends had dubbed it "The Claw" because it used to
be all crunched up). I'd stand to his right and he'd simply transfer his brush
to his left hand and keep painting. He worked slower that way and I could
never figure out why he never held my good hand or made me face the opposite
way.
The first time I misbehaved, I found the handholding excruciatingly
creepy although I was numb to the texture of his grip. But then, after a few
minutes, my bad hand began to feel as if warm water was flowing through it. In
those early days, it seldom felt anything, let alone _warm_. And when Joe
finally let go, I could actually wiggle my useless fingers a sixteenth of an
inch.
After that, of course, I was the perfect Problem Child at least once a




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day. And The Claw kept improving...
****
I seldom thought about Uncle Joe after I went to New York City in 1990 to
study at Pratt. That same fall, my parents moved to Connecticut ostensibly to
be closer to my brother, Tim, and his newly pregnant wife, Dana, but really to
lie in wait for their grandchild. So when I went home for breaks, it was to an
unfamiliar home.
Joe seemed distant and irrelevant when I finally got my first real job
with a big ad agency in Manhattan. In the ten years it took me to work my way
up to Graphics and Art Director, I only remembered the Cloudman when I was
telling someone how I first got interested in art or on the rare days my hand
had a partial relapse.
But you can't truly forget anyone who _shaped_ you.
****
January 3, 2008 was the day of the car crash. I won't sicken you (or myself)
by recounting the grosser details, but I was taking a cab to my office and my
driver tried to beat out one red light too many. The driver wound up virtually
decapitated and I wound up pinned in a crushed taxi for two eternal hours.
According to my doctors, I should have died. Instead, I landed in Mount
Sinai with damages: legs whose bones had become 3D jigsaw puzzles, four badly