"Drawing Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brite Poppy Z)
By Poppy Z Brite
Prologue
Missing Mile, North Carolina, in the summer of 1972 was scarcely more than a wide spot in the road. The main street was shaded by a few great spreading pecans and oaks, flanked by a few even larger, more sprawling Southern homes too far off any beaten path to have fallen to the scourge of the Civil War. The ravages and triumphs of the past decade seemed to have touched the town not at all, not at first glance. You might think that here was a place adrift in a gentler time, a place where Peace reigned naturally, and did not have to be blazoned on banners or worn around the neck.
You might think that, if you were just driving through. Stay long enough, and you would begin to see signs. Literal ones like the posters in the window of the record store that would later become the Whirling Disc, but was now still known as the Spin'n'Spur. Despite the name and the plywood cowboy boot above the door, those who wanted songs about God, guns, and glory went to Ronnie's Record Barn down the highway in Corinth. The Spin'n'Spur had been taken over, and the posters in the window swarmed with psychedelic patterns and colors, shouted crazy, angry words.
And the graffiti: STOP WAR with a lurid red fist thrusting halfway up the side of a building, HE IS RISEN with a sketchy, sulkily sensual face beneath that might have been Jesus Christ or Jim Morrison. Literal signs.
Or figurative ones, like the shattered boy who now sat with the old men outside the Farmers Hardware Store on clear days. In another life his name had been Johnny Wiegers, and he had been an open-faced, sweet-natured kid; most of the old-timers remembered buying him a candy bar or a soda at some point over the years, or later, cadging him a couple of beers. Now his mother wheeled him down Firehouse Street every day and propped him up so he could hear their talk and watch the endless rounds of checkers they played with a battered board and a set of purple and orange Nehi caps. So far none of them had had the heart to ask her not to do it anymore.
Johnny Wiegers sat quietly. He had to. He had stepped on a Vietcong land mine, and breathed fire, which took out his tongue and his vocal cords. His face was gone to unrecognizable meat, save for one eye glittering mindlessly in all that ruin, like the eye of a bird or a reptile. Both arms and his right leg were gone; the left leg ended just above the knee, and Miz Wiegers would insist on rolling his trouser cuff up over it to air out the fresh scar. The old-timers hunched over their checkers game, talking less than usual, glancing every now and then at the raw, pitiful stump or the gently heaving torso, never at the mangled face. All of them hoped Johnny Wiegers would die soon.
Literal signs of the times, and figurative ones. The decade of love was gone, its gods dead or disillusioned, its fury beginning to mutate into a kind of self-absorbed unease. The only constant was the war.
If Trevor McGee knew any of this, it was only in the fuzziest of ways, sensing it through osmosis rather than any conscious effort. He had just turned five. He had seen Vietnam broadcasts on the news, though his family did not now have a TV. He knew that his parents believed the war was wrong, but they spoke of it as something that could not be changed, like a rainy day when you wanted to play outside or an elbow already skinned.
Momma told stories of peace marches she'd gone to before the boys were born. She listened to records that reminded her of those days, made her happy. When Daddy listened to his records now, they seemed to make him sad. Trevor liked all the music, especially the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker, who Daddy always called Bird. And the song Janis Joplin sang with his daddy's name in it. "Me and Bobby McGee."
Trev wished he could remember all the words, and sing the song himself. Then he could pretend it was just him and his daddy driving along this road, without Momma or Didi, just the two of them. Then he could ride up front with Daddy, not stuck in the back with Didi like a baby.
He made himself stop thinking that. Where would Momma and Didi be, if not here? Back in Texas, or the place they had left two days ago, New Orleans? If he wasn't careful he would make himself cry. He didn't want his mother or his little brother to be in New Orleans. That city had given him a bad feeling. The streets and the buildings were dark and old, the kind of place where ghosts could live. Daddy said there were real witches there, and maybe zombies.
And Daddy had gotten drunk. Momma had sent him out alone to do it, said it might be good for him. But Daddy had come back with blood on his T-shirt and a sick smell about him. And while Trev huddled in the hotel bed with his arms around his brother and his face buried in Didi's soft hair, Daddy had put his head in Momma's lap and cried.
Not just a few tears either, the way he'd done when their old dog Flakey died back in Austin. Big gulping, trembling sobs that turned his face bright red and made snot run out of his nose onto Momma's leg. That was the way Didi cried when he was hurt or scared really bad. But Didi was only three. Daddy was thirty-five.
No, Trev didn't want to go back to New Orleans, and he didn't want Momma or Didi to be there either. He wanted them all with him, going wherever they were going right now. When they passed the sign that said MISSING MILE TOWN LIMITS, Trevor read it out loud. He'd learned to read last year and was teaching Didi now.
"Great," said Daddy. "Fucking great. We did better than miss the highway by a mile-we found the goddamn mile." Trevor wanted to laugh, but Daddy didn't sound as if he were joking. Momma didn't say anything at all, though Trev knew she had lived around here when she was a little girl his age. He wondered if she was glad to be back. He thought North Carolina was pretty, all the giant trees and green hills and long, curvy roads like black ribbons unwinding beneath the wheels of their Rambler.
Momma had told him about a place she remembered, though, something called the Devil's Tramping Ground. Trevor hoped they wouldn't see it. It was a round track in a field where no grass or flowers grew, where animals wouldn't go. If you put trash or sticks in the circle at night, they would be gone hi the morning, as if a cloven hoof had kicked them out of its way and they had landed all the way down in hell. Momma said it was supposed to be the place where the Devil walked round and round all night, plotting his evil for the next day.
("That's right, teach them the fucking Christian dichotomy, poison their brains," Daddy had said, and Momma had flipped him The Bird. For a long time Trevor had thought The Bird was something like the peace sign-it meant you liked Charlie Parker, maybe-and he had gone around happily flipping people off until Momma explained it to him.)
But Trevor couldn't blame even the Devil for wanting to live around here. He thought it was the prettiest place he had ever seen.
Now they were driving through the town. The buildings looked old, but not scary like the ones in New Orleans. Most of these were built of wood, which gave them a soft-edged, friendly look. He saw an old-fashioned gas pump and a fence made out of wagon wheels. On the other side of the street, Momma spied a group of teenagers in beads and ripped denim. One of them, a boy, flipped back long luxuriant hair. The kids paused on the sidewalk for a moment before entering the record store, and Momma pointed them out to Daddy. "There must be some kind of a scene here. This might be a good place to stop."
"Bobby, no!" Momma reached over, put a hand on his shoulder. Her silver rings caught the sunlight. "You know the car can't do it. Let's not get stranded on the highway somewhere. I don't want to hitch with the kids."
"No? You'd rather be stranded here?" Now Daddy looked away from the road to glare at Momma through the black sunglasses that hid his pale blue eyes, so like Trevor's eyes. Didi had eyes like Momma's, huge and nearly black. "What would we do here, Rosena? Huh? What would I do?"
"The same thing you do anywhere. You'd draw." Momma wasn't looking at Daddy; her hand still rested on his shoulder, but her head was turned toward the window, looking out at Missing Mile. "We'd find a place to rent and I'd get a job somewhere. And you'd stay at home with the kids, and there'd be nowhere to get drunk, and you'd start doing comics again."
At one time Trev would have chimed in his support for Momma, perhaps even tried to enlist Didi's help. He wanted to stay here. Just looking at the place made him feel relaxed inside, not cramped up and hurting the way New Orleans and sometimes Texas had made him feel. He could tell it made Momma happy too, at least as happy as she ever felt anymore.
But he knew better than to interrupt his parents while they were "discussing." Instead he stared out the window and hoped as hard as he could that they would stop. If only Momma needed cigarettes, or Didi had to go pee, or something. His brother was toying with the frayed cuff of his shorts, dreaming, not even seeing the town. Trev poked his arm. "Didi," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth, "you need to pee again?"
"Uh-uh," said Didi solemnly, too loudly. "I peed last time."
Daddy slammed his hands against the wheel. "Goddammit, Trevor, don't encourage his weak bladder! You know what it means if I have to stop the car every hour? It means I have to start it again too. And you know what starting the car does? It uses extra gas. And that gas costs money. So you take your pick, Trev-do you want to stop and take a piss, or do you want to eat tonight?"
"Eat tonight," Trevor said. He felt tears trying to start in his eyes. But he knew that if he cried, Daddy would keep picking on him. He hadn't always been like that, but he was now. If Trev stood up to Daddy and answered back- even if the answer was giving in-Daddy might be ashamed and leave him alone.
"Okay, then, leave Didi alone." Daddy made the car go faster. Trevor could tell Daddy hated the little town as much as he and Momma liked it. Didi, as usual, was lost in space.
Daddy wouldn't stop on purpose now, not for any reason. Trevor knew the car was going to break down soon; at least, Momma said so. If that was true, he wished it would go ahead and break down here. He thought a place like this might be good for Daddy if he would only give it a chance.
"GodDAMM" Daddy was wrestling with the shift stick, slamming it with the heel of his hand. Something in the guts of the car banged and shuddered horribly; then greasy black smoke came streaming around the edges of the hood. The car coasted to a stop on the grassy shoulder of the road.
Trevor felt like crying again. What if Daddy knew he had been wishing for the car to break down right that very second? What would Daddy do? Trevor looked down at his lap, noticed how tightly his fists were clenched against the knees of his jeans. Cautiously he opened one hand, then the other. His fingernails had made stinging red halfmoons in the soft flesh of his palms.
Daddy kicked the Rambler's door open and flung himself out. They had already passed through downtown, and now the road was flanked by farmland, green and wet-smelling. Trevor saw a few patches of writhing vine dotted with tiny purple flowers that smelled like grape soda. They had been seeing this plant for miles. Momma called it kudzu, and said it only flowered once every seven years. Daddy snorted and said it was a goddamn crop-killing pest that wouldn't even die if you burned it with gasoline.
Daddy walked away from the car toward a cluster of trees not far from the road. He stopped and stood with his back to the Rambler, his hands clenched at his sides. Even from a distance Trevor could tell Daddy was shaking. Momma said Daddy was a bundle of nerves, wouldn't even fix him coffee anymore because it just made him nervous. But sometimes Daddy was worse than nervous. When he got like this, Trevor could feel a blind red rage pulsing from him, hotter than the car's engine, a rage that did not know words like wife and sons.
It was because Daddy couldn't draw anymore. But why was that? How could a thing you'd had all your life, the thing you loved to do most, suddenly just be gone?
Momma's door swung open. When Trevor glanced up, her long blue-jeaned legs were already out of the car, and she was looking at him over the back of the seat. "Please watch Didi for a few minutes," she said. "Do some reading with him if you're up to it." The door slammed and she was striding across the green verge toward the taut trembling figure of Daddy.
Trevor watched them come together, watched Momma's arms go around Daddy from behind. He knew her gentle, cool hands would be stroking Daddy's chest, she would be whispering meaningless soothing words in her soft Southern voice, the way she did for Trevor or Didi when they woke from nightmares. His mind framed a still shot of his parents standing together under the trees, a picture he would remember for a long time: his father, Robert Fredric McGee, a smallish, sharp-featured man with black wraparound sunglasses and a wispy shock of ginger hair that stood straight up on top, the lines of his body tight as a violin string; his mother, Rosena Parks McGee, a slender woman dressed as becomingly as the fashions of the day would allow in faded, embroidered jeans and a loose green Indian shirt with tiny mirrors at the collar and sleeves, her long wavy hair twisted into a braid that hung halfway down her back, a thick cable shot through with wheat and corn silk and autumn gold.
Trevor's hair was the same color as his father's. Didi's was still the palest silk-spun blond, the color of the lightest hairs on Momma's head, but Momma said Trey's hair had been that color too and Didi's would likely darken to ginger by the time he was Trevor's age.
Trevor wondered if Momma was out there soothing Daddy, convincing him that it didn't matter if the car was broken, that this would be a good place to stay. He hoped so. Then he picked up the closest reading material at hand, a Robert Crumb comic, and slid across the seat to his brother. Didi didn't understand all the things that happened in these stories-neither did Trevor, for that matter -but both boys loved the drawings and thought the girls with giant butts were funny.
Back in Texas, Daddy used to joke that Momma had a classic Crumb butt, and Momma would smack him with a sofa pillow. There had been a big, comfortable green sofa in that house. Sometimes Trevor and Didi would join in the pillow fights too. If Momma and Daddy were really stoned, they'd wind up giggling so hard that they'd lose their breath, and Trevor and Didi could win.
Daddy didn't make jokes about Momma's butt anymore. Daddy didn't even read his Robert Crumb comics anymore; he'd given them all to Trevor. And Trev couldn't remember the last tune they had all had a pillow fight.
He rolled the window down to let in the green-smelling air. Though it was still faintly rank with the odor of the frying engine, it was fresher than the inside of the car, which smelled of smoke and sour milk and Didi's last accident. Then he started reading the comic aloud, pointing to each word as he spoke it, making Didi follow along after him. His brother kept trying to see what Momma and Daddy were doing. Trevor saw out of the corner of his eye that Daddy had pulled away from Momma and was taking long strides down the highway, away from the car, away from the town. Momma was hurrying after him, not quite running. Trevor pulled Didi against him and forced himself not to look, to concentrate on the words and pictures and the stories they formed.
After a few panels it was easy: the comic was all about Mr. Natural, his favorite Crumb character. The sight of the clever old hippie-sage comforted him, made him forget Daddy's anger and Momma's pain, made him forget he was reading the words for Didi. The story took him away.
Besides, he knew they would come back. They always did. Your parents couldn't just walk away and leave you in the back seat, not when it would be dark soon, not when you were in a strange place and there was nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep and you were only five years old.
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