Move Under Ground, Nick Mamatas [reading rainbow books .txt] 📗

“Mah!” I called out. “Can I get another beer out here? And a little tuna fish sandwich, with mayonnaise?” It was Indian Summer in Northport, too hot to move. I was sweating so heavily that I was stuck to the couch. The tv buzzed at me, _I Love Lucy. _ The grape-stomping episode in Italy. My own trip there was pretty neat, for a book tour, but I think I liked the black-and-white backdrop Lucille Ball danced around in front of better. Funny stuff. I swallowed the last gulp of beer and sucked fumes from my bottle, and called for Memere again, but she didn’t answer. Probably napping upstairs. Or maybe she left to run some errands in town while I was dozing.

The main door was open so the latest troupe of Dharma Bums (this group actually had the T-shirts printed up with puffy letters and everything) ogled me for a bit through the screen door, which didn’t keep the bugs out either. I threw the bottle at them, and it bounced off the distended belly of the screen, but they didn’t leave. “I’ll call the motherfucking cops if you don’t go home right now, you fucking faggots!” That got ‘em running, but they hooted and high-fived each other as they picked their way down the drive. _Jack talked to me! _ they’d say later on back at Stony Brook, and freshmen girls would unzip their pants like it was a magic word, open sez me!

I worked on my baseball scores for a bit too, in my notebook. Pictorial Review Jackson was getting on in years, and feeling every pitch in his shoulder and elbow. They cracked when he opened up a can of peanuts, his knuckles were thick and arthritic too. But I knew he had one more good season in him, and he smoked batter after batter in the Summer League. Jackson was going to go out on top. My pen ran out of ink, and when I shook it, it exploded just to show me that it had enough ink left to ruin two pages and dye my hand red. I couldn’t very well wipe my hand on Memere’s couch, so I carefully tore a piece of paper out of the back of the composition book (I hated to do it, as it usually makes the page on the opposite end of the spine fall out too, but what could I do), blotted as much ink as I could, then finally ripped myself up off the cushions and went to the bathroom to scrub my hands. I came back, found a bottle of Jim Beam (the beer was all gone from the Frigidaire), changed the channel on the television set (I was right, Memere was gone. I hoped she was out getting a roasting chicken for dinner) and settled back down. It was getting dark so early these days, but it was too hot to enjoy. The news came on. More war stuff. Disgusting un-American hippies chanting with just enough power to keep us from really pushing into North Vietnam and handing those slants the thrashing they deserved. They were cruel little yellow things, they looked like bugs, even their women, crawling over the brush with near-featureless faces. And like roaches, they just kept coming out of the woodwork. Allen was on television too, embarrassing himself and me both. Faggot commie; I bet they wouldn’t be so quick to stick him in front of the cameras if they knew how young his tastes ran.

There were so many different stories on the news that night, but in the end they were all the same. If the Negroes were rioting, it was because of the war when you got right down to it. They want all their rights now, just like white people, because we’re fighting for freedom. Bodies were coming home, the chinks acting up, the Russian bear posing and growling. One of The Beatles farted again, that was news too.

Memere came home, but with hamsteaks and not chicken. I ate well though, and had a piece of bread after wiping my plate clean with it. I was going to go down to the bar and see what was up, but Memere asked me not to, so we had ice cream and watched the late movie together. Then she went to bed, and I flipped through the channels for a bit, then fell asleep on the couch.

In the morning I received a letter from Neal. He was fine, he said. He did that bus-driving thing and was going to be in another book, but still hadn’t quite figured out the ending of his own _opus. _ He had trouble with endings, he explained in twenty-five single-spaced pages, and I wrote “No kidding!” in the margins of page twenty-four. He didn’t even end the letter really, his typewriter ribbon just gave out. Neal didn’t seem to remember a thing; he just kept doing the same old stuff over and over. Make and impregnate a girl. Steal a car. Taunt the cops and then whine when he got busted or otherwise in trouble. Neal was a goldfish, forgetting his whole world every seven seconds and surprised to see his little plastic castle in the middle of the bowl. “All mine, all mine!” he says in the glub-glub voice of fishies, then he forgets he has a place to live again.

I went to Gunther’s for a few drinks and brought my mail with me because I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and keeping busy with a pencil and paper was a good way to get some space in this town, and a free beer or two from an admirer who just wants a peek at my pages. I got about a quarter of a buzz on, borrowed some change and went to the post office for stamps, but it was too close to the end of the day and they were out. I was outraged; how does a post office, even a Podunk little colonial set-up like my local, run out of stamps. It was ridiculous, but the hangdog man behind the counter could only say to come back tomorrow or to write my Congressman. Damn right I’ll write my Congressman, and I’ll have my stamps and hangdog’s job too.

I spotted some more fans milling about near the lawn, so doubled back and hid out at Jim’s. Jim was a wonderful artist, he did tons of seascapes and looked like a pirate with his beard and broad shoulders. He had a chipped tooth too, and a scraggly beard, and plenty of gin. We split a tab of LSD and talked for most of the night about painting and jazz and _The New York Times. _I read the book section, but Jim couldn’t stomach the op-ed pages. “Propaganda,” he said, rolling his r’s like the second-banana heavy in a spy movie. “Sinisterrrr prrrop-a- GAHN-duh!”

“I bet they drop the big one,” Jim said.

“Never happen. One, there’s no need for it. All we need is for everyone to show a little unity, to show some goddamn respect for this country, and we can get out of there by Christmas.”

He laughed at me, cruelly. “Jack, those are _your _ people, those kids out there on the street.”

“Those little faggots have nothing to do with me. Anyone with a beret and a scarf can be a so-called bohemian these days. If they find something in my writing they can hang their commie theories on, that’s not my fault.”

“Sometimes it’s like you’re from a foreign country, Jack. A foreign time.”

“All of life is a foreign country,” I said.

I went home and ate leftover pasta in the light of the open refrigerator, right out of the bowl, with my fingers. The next morning I woke up with heartburn and just wanted to stay in bed but Memere was changing for laundry day so I had to get up. I caught the news at noon. “The war rages on … ,” the newscaster, some local square from the Hartford station across the sound said, but the film didn’t show any raging at all, but just GIs smoking and draping themselves over Jeeps like they were cherubs snuggling up in fluffy clouds while Venus was born in the foam below. Their drug-dead stares said it all.

There was a knock at the door but I didn’t answer it. Then he tried calling out to me, a yipping society poodle. “Jack! Jack! I drove out all the way from Oregon to meet you! Are you home, Jack? Are you in there? I’m going to leave something on your stoop, if that’s all right. It’s some poems, and a short story. Maybe if you have the chance you can read them and write to me, okay Jack?” Ol’ whoever-he-was rustled around in the bushes for a second, trying to peek in through the window, but he just yelped as he met the local shrubbery’s thorns and ran off.

Some guru was on the television now, all smiles and a beard like gnarled roots. A sitar started up, high and teasing like the wave of a sly gypsy girl. It reminded me of something but I couldn’t recall it. I was agitated enough to go back up to my room and dig though some of my Buddhist books. It was a koan, and a pretty good one. The answer wasn’t satisfying, but it was important, consolatory. I was mad for a little consolation. I read it aloud. “There were two wandering friends in China once,” I said, addressing the rest of my bookshelf. “One of them was an excellent harpist, the other a great listener. When the first friend played songs about mountains shrouded in regal clouds, the second would say ‘Wonderful! There is a mountain before us, we can climb to its peak.’

“When the first friend played about a fresh stream, the second would bow down low and exclaim, ‘Ah, a stream! We can quench our thirsts with clear water!’

“But the second man, the listener, fell sick and died. The harpist cut his strings and swore never to play again. Cutting the string is the sign of the most intimate of friendships.”

I had forgotten about that last bit. The phone rang and I ran downstairs to get it. It was my editor, calling about some paperback rights. We jawed for a bit, too, about city gossip; everyone was rushing around collecting money to take out full-page ads against some latest outrage, or in favor of it, whistling and erupting like roman candles burning bright exploding spiders in the sky, all to say “Look at me! Here I am, little world below!” _Pshew pshew, _ burning up in the sky for you. All of it was just useless words. I was pretending to care, writing dialogue for Jack Duloz and mouthing it into a phone.