"Connie Willis - The Last of the Winnebagos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

nice little meadow with a low stone wall around it. A family of prairie dogs
had taken up residence in the middle of it.
I went back to the gate and looked down at the Winnebago. The family
circled the Winnebago, the man bending down to look underneath the
body. One of the kids was hanging off the ladder at the back of the RV.
The ferret was nosing around the front wheel Jake Ambler had so carefully
scrubbed down, looking like it was about ready to lift its leg, if ferrets do
that. The kid yanked on its leash and then picked it up in his arms. The
mother said something to him. Her nose was sunburned.
Katie's nose had been sunburned. She had had that white cream on it,
that skiers used to use. She was wearing a parka and jeans and bulky
pink-and-white moon-boots that she couldn't run in, but she still made it
to Aberfan before I did. I pushed past her and knelt over him.
"I hit him," she said bewilderedly. "I hit a dog."
"Get back in the jeep, damn it!" I shouted at her. I stripped off my
sweater and tried to wrap him in it. "We've got to get him to the vet."
"Is he dead?" Katie said, her face as pale as the cream on her nose.
"No!" I had shouted. "No, he isn't dead."
The mother turned and looked up toward the zoo, her hand shading her
face. She caught sight of the camera, dropped her hand, and smiled, a
toothy, impossible smile. People in the public eye are the worst, but even
people having a snapshot taken close down somehow, and it isn't just the
phony smile. It's as if that old superstition is true, and cameras do really
steal the soul.
I pretended to take her picture and then lowered the camera. The zoo
director had put up a row of tombstone-shaped signs in front of the gate,
one for each endangered species. They were covered with plastic, which
hadn't helped much. I wiped the streaky dust off the one in front of me.
"Canis latrans," it said, with two green stars after it. "Coyote. North
American wild dog. Due to large-scale poisoning by ranchers, who saw it
as a threat to cattle and sheep, the coyote is nearly extinct in the wild."
Underneath there was a photograph of a ragged coyote sitting on its
haunches and an explanation or the stars. BlueтАФendangered species.
YellowтАФendangered habitat. RedтАФextinct in the wild.
After Misha died, I had come out here to photograph the dingo and the
coyotes and the wolves, but they were already in the process of moving the
zoo, so I couldn't get any pictures, and it probably wouldn't have done any
good. The coyote in the picture had faded to a greenish-yellow and its
yellow eyes were almost white, but it stared out of the picture looking as
hearty and unconcerned as Jake Ambler, wearing its camera face.
The mother had gone back to the bug and was herding the kids inside.
Mr. Ambler walked the father back to the car, shaking his shining bald
head, and the man talked some more, leaning on the open door, and then
got in and drove off. I walked back down.
If he was bothered by the fact that they had only stayed ten minutes and
that, as far as I had been able to see, no money had changed hands, it
didn't show in his face. He led me around to the side of the RV and
pointed to a chipped and faded collection of decals along the painted bar
of the W. "These here are the states we've been in." He pointed to the one
nearest the front. "Every state in the Union, plus Canada and Mexico. Last