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Текст 1
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This was in Crow, Oregon, a high desert town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. In Crow we have fifteen hundred people, a Dairy Queen, a BP gas station, a Food4Less, a meatpacking plant, a bright green football field irrigated by canal water, and your standard assortment of taverns and churches. Nothing distinguishes us from Bend or Redmond or La Pine or any of the other nowhere towns off Route 97, except for this: we are home to the Second Battalion, Thirty‑ fourth Marines.
The Marines live on a fifty‑ acre base in the hills just outside of town, a collection of one‑ story cinder‑ block buildings interrupted by cheatgrass and sagebrush. Throughout my childhood I could hear, if I cupped a hand to my ear, the lowing of bulls, the bleating of sheep, and the report of assault rifles shouting from the hilltops.
Our fathers – Gordon’s and mine – were like the other fathers in Crow. All of them, just about, had enlisted as part‑ time soldiers, as reservists, for drill pay: several thousand a year for a private and several thousand more for a sergeant. Beer pay, they called it, and for two weeks every year plus one weekend a month, they trained.
Our fathers would vanish into the pine‑ studded hills, returning to us Sunday night with their faces reddened from weather, their biceps trembling from fatigue, and their hands smelling of rifle grease. Then a few days would pass, and they would go back to the way they were, to the men we knew: Coors‑ drinking, baseball‑ throwing, crotch‑ scratching, Aqua Velva – smelling fathers.
No longer. In January the battalion was activated, and in March they shipped off for Iraq. Our fathers – our coaches, our teachers, our barbers, our cooks, our gas station attendants and UPS deliverymen and deputies and firemen and mechanics – our fathers, so many of them, climbed onto the olive green school buses and pressed their palms to the windows and gave us the bravest, most hopeful smiles you can imagine and vanished. Just like that.
Текст 2
Once upon a time, there were two identical twin sisters, Alison and Courtney. They were alike in every way: Both had long, blond hair; huge, clear, round blue eyes; heart‑ shaped faces; and winning smiles that melted hearts. When they were six, they rode matching purple bikes up and down their family’s driveway in Stamford, Connecticut, singing “Frè re Jacques” in a round. When they were seven, they climbed up the big‑ kid sliding board together and held hands the whole way. Even though their parents gave each of them her own bedroom with her own canopied princess bed, they were often found sleeping on the same twin mattress, their bodies entwined. Everyone said they shared that indescribable twin connection. They made promises to be best friends forever.
But promises are broken every day.
In second grade, things started to change. They were little things at first–a dirty look, a slight shove, an indignant sigh. Then Courtney showed up in Ali’s Saturday art class insisting she was Ali. Courtney sat at Ali’s desk in school on a day her sister was sick. Courtney introduced herself as Ali to the UPS man, the new neighbors with the puppy, and the old lady at the pharmacy counter. Maybe she pretended she was her sister because Ali had a little extra sparkle, a certain something that got her noticed. Maybe Courtney was jealous. Or maybe Courtney was forced. Ali made me do it, Courtney told her parents when she was caught. She said if I didn’t pretend to be her for the day, something awful would happen to me and you and all of us. But when their mom and dad asked Ali if this was true, her eyes grew wide. I would never say something like that, she answered innocently. I love my sister, and I love you guys.
Suddenly, Courtney and Ali were getting into screaming matches on the playground. Then Courtney shut Ali into a bathroom stall at lunchtime and didn’t let her out. Teachers called the girls’ parents, their voices full of concern. Neighbors pulled their children close when they passed Courtney, worried she might hurt them, too.