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

the sack and his feet to the floor. He went to the crib, where the medicine smell was
strongest.
The kid was safety-pinned under the blankets, its breathing a little rough and
croupy. He undid one of the pins, eased the toddler out of the crib. It began to
move.
тАЬSh-sh-sh,тАЭ he said, holding it close and swinging it slightly back and forth.
He noticed the kid was in some kind of cut-down larger garment rather than Dr.
DentonтАЩs or a nightshirt. The child subsided.
He pulled a blanket out of the sack, wrapped the kid in it, put both back in the
bag, lifted it gently by the center top. He went to the windowsill, laid the bag down,
eased himself over. He had to search around for the first rung, turned, put one leg
down, then the other. He reached back inside, lifted the child by the sack onto the
concrete sill. He felt inside his pocket, took out the envelope, put it on the inside of
the sill.
Then with both hands, he lifted the sack.

****

ONE: тАЬTHE LITTLE EAGLETтАЭ

He had been born just after Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto. He was
the most famous child in the world for a year or two, until Shirley Temple came
along. He was the son of a famous man and a celebrated mother. SomebodyтАЩd tried
to kidnap him when he was twenty months old, but theyтАЩd caught the guy on the way
to his car, and Charles Jr. was back in his crib by 10:00 p.m. and didnтАЩt remember a
thing about it.
But it convinced his father (a very private man) and his mother (from a
distin-guished family) that they would be hounded all their lives by newspapermen,
gossip columnists, and radio reporters if they stayed where they were.
They moved out of the house in New Jersey and moved out to Roswell, New
Mexico, so his father could be near his friend Dr. Robert H. Goddard, who fooled
around with rockets.
тАЬThe Little Eaglet,тАЭ as the press had dubbed him, grew up watching
six-foot-long pieces of metal rise, wobble, and explode themselves all over the
remote scrub country of the Eden Valley that тАЬUncleтАЭ Robert used as a range.
It was a great place to be a kid. His mother and father were often away on
flights, surveying airline routes, or his father was off consulting with Boeing or
Curtiss, or thereтАЩd be pictures of him in a zeppelin somewhere. His mother, when
she was around, wrote books and was always off in her study, or having another of
his brothers and sisters.
He had the run of the place. The first time heтАЩd walked over on his own to the
worksheds, Uncle Robert had stooped down to his level and said, тАЬDo anything you
want here, kid, but donтАЩt ever play with matches.тАЭ
They let him have pieces of metal, old tubing, burnt-out frozen-up fuel pumps,
and that neat stuff that looks like tortoiseshell. They had to run him out of the place
when they closed up at night.
He went unwillingly to school in 1936, each day an agony of letters and
num-bers. Of course he had to poke a few three-foot jerks in the snoot because they
made fun of his curly golden hair.
He learned a phrase early and used it often: тАЬSoтАЩs your old man.тАЭ