"Robert Charles Wilson - Julian- A Christmas Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

"Yes, sir."

"Let me keep you company, then."
"Please do." I could hardly say otherwise, no matter how I longed to be alone with my thoughts.

Our horses moved slowlyтАФthe snow made for awkward footingтАФand Ben Kreel was silent for a
long while. Then he said, "You needn't conceal your fears, Adam. I know what's troubling you."

For a moment I had the terrible idea that Ben Kreel had been behind me in the hallway at the Estate,
and that he had seen Sam Godwin wrapped in his Old Testament paraphernalia. Wouldn't that create a
scandal! (And then I thought that it was exactly such a scandal Sam must have feared all his life: it was
worse even than being Church of Signs, for in some states a Jew can be fined or even imprisoned for
practicing his faith. I didn't know where Athabaska stood on the issue, but I feared the worst.) But Ben
Kreel was talking about conscription, not about Sam.

"I've already discussed this with some of the boys in town," he said. "You're not alone, Adam, if
you're wondering what it all means, this military movement, and what might happen as a result of it. And I
admit, you're something of a special case. I've been keeping an eye on you. From a distance, as it were.
Here, stop a moment."

We had come to a rise in the road, on a bluff above the River Pine, looking south toward Williams
Ford from a little height.

"Gaze at that," Ben Kreel said contemplatively. He stretched his arm out in an arc, as if to include not
just the cluster of buildings that was the town but the empty fields as well, and the murky flow of the river,
and the wheels of the mills, and even the shacks of the indentured laborers down in the low country. The
valley seemed at once a living thing, inhaling the crisp atmosphere of the season and breathing out its
steams, and a portrait, static in the still blue winter air. As deeply rooted as an oak, as fragile as a ball of
Nativity glass.

"Gaze at that," Ben Kreel repeated. "Look at Williams Ford, laid out pretty there. What is it, Adam?
More than a place, I think. It's a way of life. It's the sum of all our labors. It's what our fathers have given
us and it's what we give our sons. It's where we bury our mothers and where our daughters will be
buried."

Here was more Philosophy, then, and after the turmoil of the morning I wasn't sure I wanted any. But
Ben Kreel's voice ran on like the soothing syrup my mother used to administer whenever Flaxie or I
came down with a cough.

"Every boy in Williams FordтАФevery boy old enough to submit himself for national serviceтАФis just
now discovering how reluctant he is to leave the place he knows best. Even you, I suspect."

"I'm no more or less willing than anyone else."

"I'm not questioning your courage or your loyalty. It's just that I know you've had a little taste of what
life might be like elsewhereтАФgiven how closely you associated yourself with Julian Comstock. Now, I'm
sure Julian's a fine young man and an excellent Christian. He could hardly be otherwise, could he, as the
nephew of the man who holds this nation in his palm. But his experience has been very different from
yours. He's accustomed to citiesтАФto movies like the one we saw at the Hall last night (and I glimpsed