Son of the Hero

Начало книги

I wasn't sure that I had enough cash to pay for the cab ride. I'd never expected to need a taxi. My folks had planned to meet me at the airport, the way they normally did when I came home from college. This time, I was coming home for my last spring vacation. In another six weeks I would have my B.S. in computer science. I was also coming home to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. Dad had promised something unusual for my "coming of age"-not my eighteenth birthday when I could vote and all, but number twenty-one. Dad wouldn't say what he had in mind, just that he wasn't being old-fashioned about twenty-one being "of age." I was a little edgy about the surprise. The one he'd hit me with when I turned eighteen was unusual enough. He dumped me in the Colorado Rockies with a light backpack and a few essentials and told me that I had three days to cover fifty miles of rough mountainous forest. He would meet me on the other side. But then, Dad was always a little strange. For years I worried that he was completely loony. Some of his habits were hard to accept as rational. And Mom wasn't a whole lot better. But it was a fun kind of crazy, and I guess I had a better childhood than most kids I knew. Even being dumped out in the wilderness wasn't that rough. Dad and I had done a lot of camping, and I knew how to take care of myself. Dad called it a test. I passed without much trouble, even enjoyed it.

Читать дальше →