"Kate Wilhelm - The Girl Who Fell into the Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

had never been back. He had not even seen the piano then. After
the legal work was completed, he and his father had walked in the
ruins of the commune that had been built and then abandoned on
the property.
His head was starting to ache from the heat and the glare of the
sun. He had left early enough, he had thought, to avoid having the
lowering sun in his face, but there it was, almost like a physical
presence pushing against the visor, burning his chest, his arms. He
made his turn north before it slipped below the visor, but it was
almost worse having it on the side of his face.
He missed the dirt road. When he finally was certain he had
missed it, and maneuvered the truck in a U-turn, headed back very
slowly, he remembered his fatherтАЩs curses from the distant past,
when he too had missed it. тАЬMade it hard to find on purpose,тАЭ he
had muttered. John crept along, found the turn and followed the
dirt road to the house. It was going on six.
 He felt disoriented then because it looked exactly the same as
twenty-five years before. The poplars shading the house looked
unchanged, neither taller nor older; the house itself was just like
the memory of it: tan with green trim, well-maintained. The
surrounding hills were covered with drought-stricken grass, as they
had been then. Maybe the grass came up brown and never changed,
he thought, almost wildly. He saw the Datsun in the driveway,
back by the rear of the house, and felt disappointment. He had
hoped to have one evening alone before negotiating for the stupid
piano, had planned on entering the house, inspecting it, snooping
around for papers, letters, anything to shed some light on the
mystery in which his father had had some unfathomable part.
Resignedly he left the truck, ran his hand through his hair, gritty
with road dirt, and went up to the front porch. He did not knock.
There were voices clearly audible on the porch. An old woman was
talking.
тАЬтАж didnтАЩt dare laugh or even smile, nothing. I did like the singing
though. Mamie Eglin could sing like someone on radio or television
today. Pretty! MaтАЩs favorite was тАШThe Old Rugged Cross.тАЩ Makes me
soup up every time I hear it even now.тАЭ
They were not in the living room. He could see the empty room
through the screen door. The kitchen, he decided, and backed away
from the front door. He walked around the house slowly, not in a
hurry to break up the conversation. No breeze blew, yet the grass
moved slightly, stirred by pressure perhaps, the lifting and falling
of the blanket of heat that pushed hard against the land. He stood
at the corner of the house and let his gaze follow the shadows of the
invisible something that played over the responsive grass.
He no longer listened to the words of the old woman; her voice
was a droning in the background of his thoughts. How had
Castleman stood it? So alone, so far from anyone else, just him and
the grass and heat in summer, blizzards in the winter. Why had he
stayed? What had he done with his time day after day after day,
year after year? A hawk rode an air current into his field of vision