"Robert F. Young - Operation Peanut Butter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

operation
peanut
butter
by . . . Robert F. Young
He had never expected to see anyone quite so wonderful as
Mr. Wings, or anyone quite so beautiful as Sally Sunbeam....

Fantasy is a much abused word, and there are times when you suspect that the word has come
to have a catch-all quality, embracing as it now does everything from the occult to vampires and
witches. Here, then, by way of contrast, is a gentler variant, an echo of perhaps more innocent
times.

THE drought came early that year and crouched grimly above the valley. It hunched its hazy
shoulders against the sky and frightened away the thunderheads that tried to build up over the
surrounding hills. It blew its hot breath over the fields and the forests, and leaves of the trees turned
yellow and the grass became a sickly brown. Crops withered and began to die, and the valley people
had pain in their eyes when they looked out over their barren land.
It was a summer the valley people remembered for the rest of their days. Geoffrey remembered it
too, but for a different reason. He remembered it not as the summer, the Great Drought, but summer of
Mr. Wings. But most of all, he remembered it as the summer of Sally Sunbeam
He had just turned seven when school let out that year. He was a small boy with light brown hair it
was a waste of time to put a comb to, and big brown eyes that, seemed intent on absorbing the whole
world. Like most small boysтАФand many large onesтАФhe liked to go fishing.
He liked to get up early mornings and pack a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, then take his
home-made hickory pole and his can of bait, and meander into the woods that fringed his father's farm.
There was a talkative brook, not far away, that wound beneath a canopy of willows, and there was a
particular willow beneath which he always sat, and fished and watched the ripples. When noon came he
would open his little green lunch box and eat his peanut butter sandwiches, and then lie back and look at
the jigsaw pieces of the sky that showed through the leafy patterns of the willows, and try to put the
pieces together.
Once in a while, he caught a fish; but never a big enough one to take home and have for supper, just
big enough to look at and wonder about and then throw back in the water. But catching fish was only
part of the funтАФthe smallest part.
The woods, to Geoffrey, were a magic place where almost anything could happen. It wouldn't have
surprised him one bit if Hansel and Gretel had sneaked up behind him and said "Boo!" in his ear or if
Rose Red had popped her pretty face out of the underbrush on the opposite bank and said "Hello." In
fact, he momentarily expected something of the sort to happen.
But just the same, though, he never expected the thing to happen that did happen. He never expected
to see anyone quite so wonderful as Mr. Wings, or anyone quite so beautiful as Sally Sunbeam . . .
"Mr. Wings" and "Sally Sunbeam" were his own names for them, of course. He never thought to ask
them their real names, and apparently they never thought to tell him. "Mr. Wings" and "Sally Sunbeam"
fitted so well anyway, there wouldn't have been any point in asking.
 At first he thought Mr. Wings was a bird. It was noon, and he'd just taken the first bite of one of his
peanut butter sandwiches, when suddenly there was a silvery blur of wings over the brook, accompanied
by a soft humming sound, and a moment later he felt the pressure of tiny feet on his shoulder. When he
turned his head, there was Mr. Wings.
Mr. Wings could have been a bird. He wasn't any bigger than one, and in many ways he looked like
one. His gray eyes, for instance, were so wide apart they were partly on the sides of his head, and his
hair was more like feathers than hair; and not only that, fine down the color of moonlight grew all over his
body. His chest was bird-like too, coming to a point in front instead of being flat like a human's, and his