"Howard Waldrop - Us" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

us
HOWARD WALDROP
HereтАЩs an ironic, wise, funny, and (as is usual for this author) meticulously
researched look at three different lives that might have arisen from one particular
fork in the Road of Time, if things had worked out just a bit differently. . .and the
impact that each of those lives might have had on the world around it.
Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short-story
writers in the business, and his famous story тАЬThe Ugly ChickensтАЭ won both the
Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has been gathered in
the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Mon-sters of the Recent Past, and
Night of the Cooters, with more collections in the works. Waldrop is also the
author of the novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 in collaboration with Jake
Saunders, and of two solo novels, Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs. He is at
work on a new novel, tentatively entitled The Moon World. His most recent book is
a new col-lection, Going Home Again. His stories have appeared in our First,
Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Twelfth, and Fifteenth Annual Collections. While he
has neither telephone nor computer, he has a Web site at http://www.sff.net/
people/waldrop. A longtime Texan, Waldrop now lives in the tiny town of
Arlington, Washington, outside Seattle, as close to a trout stream as he can
possibly get without actually living in it.

****

PROLOGUE

The ladder, though ingeniously made, was flimsy and the rungs were too far apart.
He had pushed the dowels into the holes in each of the three sections. It had been
made to fit inside the car, parked a mile away off the road to Hopewell. The night
was cold and it had not been easy to put the sections of the ladder together with the
leather gloves he wore.
Construction stuff lay all around. The house wasnтАЩt landscaped yet, borders
and walks were laid out but not yet rocked in. The house was big, two stories and a
gable-windowed third narrow one set in the steeply pitched roof. The outside
stucco.
He put the ladder against the upstairs window, the one with the shutter that,
though new, was already warped and wouldnтАЩt close completely
He picked up the gunnysack, cheeked in his pocket for the envelope, and
started up. There were two lights on downstairs, the sitting room and the kitchen.
The ladder swayed and groaned. He had to lift one leg at a time, more crawl
up than climb, then pull the other one after it up to the same rung. When both feet
were on one, he could feel the vibration of the strain.
He reached the next from the top, pulled the shutter the rest of the way open
without a sound. He raised the window, the sack flopping over his face as he used
one hand to steady himself and the other to lift.
His eyes adjusted to the dim light inside. There was a stack of trunks and
suitcases under the window, the sill of which was concrete rather than wood. A crib
across the way. Beside the window a fireplace and mantel, some bird toys along the
top. A scooter on the floor. Just past the fireplace a big parabolic electric heater and
a chair. The room was almost hot.
He smelled Mentholatum or Vicks salve. He eased himself over the sill, swung