Скачать книгу

of food and a huge foam cup of sweet tea. “Sit and eat. You look like shit,” he said.

      Nell choked in laughter with the same despairing tone her voice had held all day. She knew she sounded broken. Shattered. And that wasn’t fair to the people around her. They were fighting for Joe. If they found him, injured, in the most dangerous place possible, they would risk life and limb to save him. She owed it to them to be there for them tonight.

      She took a deep, steadying breath and drank a long draft of tea. It fell down her esophagus, cold and sweet. Hunger stirred, and her mouth watered at the scent of KFC. She took another breath, feeling it fill her lungs. The way she filled her lungs before a challenging run on a class IV and V river. Tears wanted to fall and she forced them down. Not tonight. Not in front of these people, her friends.

      Claire brought her a folding chair from storage in the RV undercarriage, and Mike placed it upwind of the fire. Turtle Tom put a log beside her and sat close, silent, eating. Harvey and RiverAnn sat across the fire, touching often. Stewart and Hamp, his Furman U. hat glowing in the firelight, sat near the keg. Natch.

      Someone brought out a guitar and several people started setting up tents. As on many such SARs, they were going to spend the night on the river.

      A woman Nell didn’t know brought her a sliver of coated, waterproofed neoprene. “It’s from your strainer,” she said, putting the two inch by quarter inch strip into Nell’s palm. Nell recognized the scrap from her dry suit and closed her fingers on it. She thanked the woman, blinking away tears. The guitarist started playing an old Doobie Brothers song. The smell of beer wafted on the air. In the background, the auxiliary-support women cleaned up the KFC boxes and closed the van, the doors loud in the night. The engine started and the van pulled out, lights bouncing into the trees, crawling the treacherous hill up out of the river gorge.

      Dark night fell and bright stars filled the sky between trees overhead. Two owls hooted back and forth. Sporadic conversation around the fire hit on politics and religion without creating a ruckus, then moved on to a fantasy series someone was reading. Eventually the talk turned to the searchers’ day, of what went wrong, of who had to swim because they couldn’t do an Eskimo roll, of the big water and the difficulty in taking the gnarly drops, of who built an altar of stones in Joe’s honor, of who had a new boat and how it reacted to the water. Of…of everything. The voices ran together in a smoky haze. Nell smelled marijuana, cigarettes, beer and chicken, and heard laughter and the occasional song and the rarer sound of two lovers in the night.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAgEASABIAAD/4R3YRXhpZgAATU0AKgAAAAgABwESAAMAAAABAAEAAAEaAAUA AAABAAAAYgEbAAUAAAABAAAAagEoAAMAAAABAAIAAAExAAIAAAAcAAAAcgEyAAIAAAAUAAAAjodp AAQAAAABAAAApAAAANAACvyAAAAnEAAK/IAAACcQQWRvYmUgUGhvdG9zaG9wIENTMiBXaW5kb3dz ADIwMDg6MTI6MzEgMDE6NTA6MzUAAAAAA6ABAAMAAAABAAEAAKACAAQAAAABAAACWKADAAQAAAAB AAADIAAAAAAAAAAGAQMAAwAAAAEABgAAARoABQAAAAEAAAEeARsABQAAAAEAAAEmASgAAwAAAAEA AgAAAgEABAAAAAEAAAEuAgIABAAAAAEAAByiAAAAAAAAAEgAAAABAAAASAAAAAH/2P/gABBKRklG AAECAABIAEgAAP/tAAxBZG9iZV9DTQAB/+4ADkFkb2JlAGSAAAAAAf/bAIQADAgICAkIDAkJDBEL CgsRFQ8MDA8VGBMTFRMTGBEMDAwMDAwRDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAENCwsN Dg0QDg4QFA4ODhQUDg4ODhQRDAwMDAwREQwMDAwMDBEMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwM DAwM/8AAEQgAoAB4AwEiAAIRAQMRAf/dAAQACP/EAT8AAAEFAQEBAQEBAAAAAAAAAAMAAQIEBQYH CAkKCwEAAQUBAQEBAQEAAAAAAAAAAQACAwQFBgcICQoLEAABBAEDAgQCBQcGCAUDDDMBAAIRAwQh EjEFQVFhEyJxgTIGFJGhsUIjJBVSwWIzNHKC0UMHJZJT8OHxY3M1FqKygyZEk1RkRcKjdDYX0lXi ZfKzhMPTdePzRieUpIW0lcTU5PSltcXV5fVWZnaGlqa2xtbm9jdHV2d3h5ent8fX5/cRAAICAQIE BAMEBQYHBwYFNQEAAhEDITESBEFRYXEiEwUygZEUobFCI8FS0fAzJGLhcoKSQ1MVY3M08SUGFqKy gwcmNcLSRJNUoxdkRVU2dGXi8rOEw9N14/NGlKSFtJXE1OT0pbXF1eX1VmZ2hpamtsbW5vYnN0dX Z3eHl6e3x//aAAwDAQACEQMRAD8A81SJAEnQJLW6Ayqtud1Oxgtf06kWUVuEt9V5La7HN/O9Lap4 x4jW39m7Uy5PbgZ1xVQEf3pTlwQj/jyQVdB6zdW21uI5tbvoutcyrd/UF763OULOjdVqyK8a3FsZ dedtIdAa9x/NZdPou/7cQYzep5nu35mZeTz7nOMFx27v5KtXYnX+m47H3VX0Y1FrLWNef0YtB/Ru 2bvpI1EixGVDr/KLGZ5IyEZZMInL5cZEoy1+Wj7v6z1f6qHG0Hsex7q3gtewlrmnkEHa5v8AnKVl NtQYbWFnqsFlc/nMdIbY3+S7atrqXTBn/WGr0PZjdUYzLL+zK3N3Zbyf5GyxLqGRT1rAyMjHYK39 Ls/QsAgnBfFden/APZvd/XROOuLXYnh/rcPzf81aOav2jw6TETl/1Jy+jHH/AAs36tyK8TJsx7Mp lZdRU5rLLJAAc/6DNTudu/kq5/za69MfYn6fyq//AEoiZ/6p0fpeANLMh/2+8f1z6WMP+2la+sPR 7cnrWXe27FaHubDbciut4hjG+6t53N4R9sUdCSOGwDXzji/dksPMz4gOLHjhL3eGU4ynccM4Yo/5 TH8/FOf9xyrukdTotNNuO5trajeWS1x9Jp2vs9jnfRVRbf1fpswer5DA+s204l1jX1OFjNwa2xnv Z7Xbfz0LJxcfqeK7qnTWBltY3Z+C38yfpZWM387Gf/hGf4BAw0sb6+k7+lfHmSMnDOjCoVliOGHF l4uHijxT4eP9CXE5z8XIrx6sp9ZbRkFzabJEOLNLO+72oS1c3/xNdI/43J/6pZMpshRHlE/40eJm wzM4yJoVPJDTtiySxx/6K6SaUpQZF0k0pJKf/9DzRXek9SGBe/1a/XxMhhpyqZguYe7D/pGfmqlC 0emYeNfg9UtuZvsxsdtlDpI2uLtu72kbv7anhfEK31P2NXmOD2z7gJhIxiQN/XOMI/4spMn9KwbX b8DqeOaTw3Kc6i5v8myWbH/163Il78PD6Ld04ZTMvKvvruPobnMY1gj3X2NZu/sLIcND5Loaek9O f1rpeK6maMnCbdezc/3WFlj9+7dvb7mfRYnw9V8IAJqPX/Kelr56xiJy5JzjDizACOPiP3b9b65e hAzq9bPq2MUEfbZfi

Скачать книгу