Читать книгу Move Under Ground - Nick Mamatas - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

NEAL. NEAL is . . . Neal is the smile on Buddha’s lips. Neal is not free. Neal is freedom. Running around and writing and loving and drinking and even sleeping. He’s a man who can sleep the hell out of a day if he chooses to. I’d watch him wile away an hour on a couch and I’d be the one who felt well-rested afterwards. Neal is truly free; it doesn’t matter if he’s doing time or doing shots, breaking rocks or making time. A childhood spent suckling the poison teat of the state in juvenile halls and reform schools did everything but reform him. The roar of a motorbike, that’s Neal. The steam over soup on a cold winter’s day, that’s Neal. The ball-choked squeal of a maniac undergoing the shock treatment, and the wise old glare afterwards, that’s Neal too. And walking away from it all afterwards, that’s Neal too; every girl, every drug, every desert wind or smelly city block, the senses lie when they promise either agony or ecstasy, and Neal knows that too and in his starry wisdom he can just walk away from it all.

It had been years since we criss-crossed the country, blessing it like an old woman making the sign three times on Sunday. I was just the midwife for this whole beatnik thing. Neal was both Madonna and Child. If there was anyone who could shake America by the shoulders, and wake it up to the threat it faced, it’d be Neal. He was a bodhisattva himself, I was sure of it then, the one man left who had something to teach me. Neal, sweet Neal who spent two years in prison for marihuana, Neal who had wife now and kids so I heard last night at the bar (or I heard something like that), the last thing you’d expect would be the first thing he’d do. Riding the rumble of the absurdity contraption, the good ol’ U S of A, Neal was the one who could do that. All I had to do was find him.