"Bradley Denton - Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denton Bradley)

Bradley Denton

Buddy Holly is Alive and Well
on Ganymede
For Barbara Jean...

...these words of love



"The Midwest has a lot to answer for."

тАФHOWARD WALDROP,following the August 1990 Wisconsin helicopter crash that took the life
of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan




prologue
In life, their names were linked for only a few cold, miserable weeks.

In death, their names became a Trinity, as if carved into the same tablet of sacred stone.

Ritchie Valens. The Big Bopper.

Buddy Holly.

Years later, we would look back with longing and say that the music had died.

We should have known better.




part 1 - the annunciation
1
OLIVER
I was conceived in cold circumstances in the front seat of a 1955 four-door Chevrolet in the early
morning hours of Tuesday, February 3, 1959, near Des Moines, Iowa. I read about this in Volume I of
Mother's diary when I was nine years old. I was terrified that she would catch me, but I needn't have
worried. She was writing Volume IV at the time, and she never looked back at finished work.

The same passage in Volume I notes that the song playing on the car radio during the crucial moment
was Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat." Mother wrote:I know, now and forever, that it is "our" song. I am
home in bed now, and had an argument with Mama because C. brought me back so late on a
snowy night, "and a school night at that!" I cannot sleep because I hear that song over and over
in my head, as if I had a radio behind my eyes. I hope to God I am not pregnant but I don't think I
am because you cannot get pregnant the first time, at least that's what they say, and it all dripped
out on the seat anyhow, and if you read this you can go to Hell, Mama, because you have no
business snooping in my diary in the first place.