[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.'Deef  ''You know the price of selling out the future, Sully-John? You can never really leave thepast.You can never get over.My thesis is that you're really not in New York at all.You're inthe Delta, leaning back against a tree, stoned and rubbing bug-dope on the back of your neck.Packer's still the man because it's still 1969.Everything you think of as 'your later life' is abig fucking pot-bubble.And it's better that way.Vietnam is better.That's why we stay there.''You think?''Absolutely.'A dark-haired, brown-eyed woman in a blue dress peeked around the corner and said, 'Sothere you are.'Dieffenbaker stood up as she came toward them, walking slow and pretty on her highheels.Sully stood up, too.'Mary, this is John Sullivan.He served with me and Pags.Sully, this is my good friendMary Theresa Charlton.''Pleased to meet you,' Sully said, and put out his hand.Her grip was firm and sure, long, cool fingers in his own, but she was looking atDieffenbaker.'Mrs Pagano wants to see you, hon.Please?''You bet,' Dieffenbaker said.He started toward the Front of the building, then turned backto Sully.'Hang in a little bit,' he said.'We'll go for a drink.I promise not to preach.' But hiseyes shifted from Sully's when he said this, as if they knew it was a promise he couldn't keep.'Thanks, Loot, but I really ought to get back.I want to beat the rush-hour traffic.'But he hadn't beaten the traffic after all and now a piano was Falling toward him, gleaming inthe sun and humming to itself as it came.Sully Fell flat on his stomach and rolled under acar.The piano came down less than five feet away, detonating and throwing up rows of keyslike teeth.Sully slid back out from beneath the car, burning his back on the hot tailpipe, and struggledto his feet.He looked north along the turnpike, eyes wide and unbelieving.A vast rummagesale was falling out of the sky: tape recorders and rugs and a riding lawnmower with thegrass-caked blade whirling in its housing and a black lawn-jockey and an aquarium with thefish still swimming in it.He saw an old man with a lot of theatrical gray hair running up thebreakdown lane and then a flight of steps fell on him, tearing off his left arm and sending himto his knees.There were clocks and desks and coffee tables and a plummeting elevator withits cable uncoiling into the air behind it like a greasy severed umbilicus.A squall of ledgersfell in the parking lot of a nearby industrial complex; their clapping covers sounded likeapplause.A fur coat fell on a running woman, trapping her, and then a sofa landed on her,crushing her.The air filled with a storm of light as large panes of greenhouse glass droppedout of the blue.A statue of a Civil War soldier smashed through a panel truck.An ironingboard hit the railing of the overpass up ahead and then fell into the stalled traffic below like aspinning propeller.A stuffed lion dropped into the back of a pickup truck.Everywhere wererunning, screaming people.Everywhere were cars with dented roofs and smashed windows;Sully saw a Mercedes with the unnaturally pink legs of a department-store mannequinsticking up from the sunroof.The air shook with whines and whistles.Another shadow fell on him and even as he ducked and raised his hand he knew it was toolate, if it was an iron or a toaster or something like that it would fracture his skull.If it wassomething bigger he'd be nothing but a grease-spot on the highway.The falling object struck his hand without hurting it in the slightest, bounced, and landed athis feet.He looked down at it first with surprise, then with dawning wonder.'Holy shit,' hesaid.Sully bent over and picked up the baseball glove which had fallen from the sky,recognizing it at once even after all these years: the deep scratch down the last finger and thecomically tangled knots in the rawhide laces of the webbing were as good as fingerprints.Helooked on the side, where Bobby had printed his name.It was still there, but the letters lookedfresher than they should have, and the leather here looked frayed and faded and whipsawed,as if other names had been inked in the same spot and then erased.Closer to his face, the smell of the glove was both intoxicating and irresistible.Sullyslipped it onto his hand, and when he did something crackled beneath his little finger  apiece of paper shoved in there.He paid no attention.Instead he put the glove over his face,closed his eyes, and inhaled.Leather and neat's-foot oil and sweat and grass.All the summersthat were.The summer of 1960, for instance, when he had come back from his week at campto find everything changed  Bobby sullen, Carol distant and palely thoughtful (at least forawhile), and the cool old guy who'd lived on the third floor of Bobby's building  Ted gone.Everything had changed.but it was still summer, he had still been eleven, andeverything had still seemed.'Eternal,' he murmured into the glove, and inhaled deeply of its aroma again as, nearby, aglass case filled with butterflies shattered on the roof of a bread-van and a stop-sign stuck,quivering, into the breakdown lane like a thrown spear.Sully remembered his Bo-lo Bouncerand his black Keds and the taste of Fez straight out of the gun, how the pieces of candy wouldhit the roof of your mouth and then ricochet onto your tongue; he remembered he way histcatcher's mask felt when it sat on his face just right and the hisha-hisha-hisha of the lawn-sprinklers on Broad Street and how mad Mrs Conlan got if you walked too close to herprecious flowers and Mrs Godlow at the Asher Empire wanting to see your birth certificate ifshe thought you were too big to be still under twelve and the poster of Brigitte Bardot(if she's trash I'd love to be the trashman)in her towel and playing guns and playing pass and playing Careers and making arm-fartsin the back of Mrs Sweetser's fourth-grade classroom and'Hey, American.' Only she said it Amellican and Sully knew who he was going to see evenbefore he raised his head from Bobby's Ah/in Dark-model glove.It was old mamasan,standing there between the crotchrocket, which had been crushed by a freezer (wrapped meatwas spilling out of its shattered door in frosty blocks), and a Subaru with a lawn-flamingopunched through its roof.Old mamasan in her green pants and orange smock and redsneakers, old mamasan lit up like a bar-sign in hell.'Hey American, you come me, I keep safe.' And she held out her arms.Sully walked toward her through the noisy hail of falling televisions and backyard poolsand cartons of cigarettes and high-heeled shoes and a great big pole hairdryer and a paytelephone that hit and vomited a jackpot of quarters.He walked toward her with a feeling ofrelief, that feeling you get only when you are coming home.'I keep safe.' Holding out her arms now.'Poor boy, I keep safe.' Sully stepped into the deadcircle of her embrace as people screamed and ran and all things American fell out of the sky,blitzing I-95 north of Bridgeport with their falling glitter.She put her arms around him.'I keep safe,' she said, and Sully was in his car.Traffic was stopped all around him, fourlanes of it.The radio was on, tuned to WKND [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]