– Apparently Seryoga left the car the day before yesterday, his birthday was celebrated. I'll pick you up later.

– What time is there to go to the department store?"

"Late afternoon, I guess. Usually people gather at this time.

"We won't have dinner, I don't feel like eating," Lena said to Sergey.

– Well, it's probably time to get ready.

– Okay, I'll clean my shoes, they're dirty somewhere, I can't understand, – said Lena.

They went outside and slowly walked towards the city's department store.

– Look, I think this is your car and Seryoga is driving.

"Yes, it looks like it, but he's already drivingaway from the intersection, and he probably can't see us." Probably decided to go for a ride while I can't see, but nothing, then it's due, it won't turn out, " Dima laughed widely and loudly, but no one paid attention to them. Although there were a lot of people nearby, pedestrians.

"They're afraid of your tall stature and athletic build, and they're afraid to look you in the eye, so they don't look at you," the wife said, which pleased her husband.

We've been walking for a long time, we should have reached it already.

– Yes, we'll get there, – said Dima, looking into the distance.

There was a department store building in sight, and people were pulling up from all directions.

– There's your car standing next to another one, Sergey, your friend seems to have crashed your car.

"Oh, shit. Let's go faster.

As they got closer to the accident, they heard a traffic police officer report into the walkie-talkie:

– At the scene of the accident, documents were found in the name of Dmitry and Elena Kropotkin, whose carbelongs to Dmitry Kropotkin. According to preliminary data, they were traveling from the birthday of his friend Sergey, who was driving, and he confirmed their identity. According to preliminary data, all were under the influence of alcohol. I finished my report. Lieutenant Zavyalov.

– Vasya, are we going swimming today? I made a rubber boat yesterday with my father. The two chambers of the combine turned out to be very large. It will be difficult to reach the shore, but we can roll it in a circle and tie it together there on the shore, " said Lyosha to a friend who was walking in front, raking the grass on the sides, but at the same time very loudly and sonorously that he was asked by the grandmothers from the next shaft to speak down.

"That's great," Vasily said, turning his head back and wiping the sweat from his brow, which was running in a stream.

There was no water carrier today, although yesterday, when it was quite cool in the field, O.N. had already brought two cans of cold water to the field on horseback in the morning, which was not even half drunk before lunch, although there were more than fifty people in the field, counting the adults who were making a stack from the already dried-up hay plot. The tractor fed with the help of arrows, which lifted high several pounds of grass that had already dried to the color of white clay. Only the women worked upstairs, waving their hands from time to time and turning to each other, occasionally saying something. From a distance, it looked like a silent movie.

The sun was slowly moving towards the west, but the heat from which it came did not abate at all. Five boys and ten girls worked in the fields all day in the blazing sun. They were all over the age of ten and under the age of fifteen.

Afterthe holidays, parents spent some of their children's salaries, which they earned during the summer holidays, on general purchases, rarely gave money to anyone at once, but more often this money was spent at the school bazaar, which was held in a neighboring village on the penultimate Saturday in August.

After work, already at six o'clock in the evening, the guys moved towards the village. As they approached their yards, they accelerated and ran faster, almost headlong.

After drinking some water from the well, some compote from the pot, they ran out to the back yard, where there was a pond nearby, which was half overgrown with reeds. In some places it was so deep that none of the boys could dive to the bottom to touch with their hands or feet.

Vasily and Alexey were the last to reach the pond bank, or rather, they rolled two large wheels from the combine, which Alexey's father had pumped up very tightly since the previous evening. All they had to do now was tie them together with a rope that was very thick.

After a lot of effort, the guys still managed to link the two cameras together. Throwing them into the water, they almost knocked down another boy, SlavikA. He was in the fifth grade and was the only boy from his village, so he didn't have a friend and went almost everywhere by himself, and no one ever bothered him much. He almost always wore the same expression on his face, despite his rather young age.

The water was a little cold, because it hadn't had time to warm up after last night's chill, but the boys didn'tmind. They spent more than an hour swimming, shouting, laughing, and swimming in the shallow water at the end of the pond. They ran in and out of the reeds, shouting and hooting like Indians with spears, which they replaced with green cobs of reeds.