Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas (guided reading books .txt) 📕

“He’s going to betray you, you know,” Bill told me, his voice an aria wrapped in a bull’s angry snort. I looked up at him. I never liked Bill, really. He was a fag, and a rich boy, he never had to fight for anything. When the rest of us Beats were exploring the country, he ran off to Mexico, to Asia, to anywhere where a boy would bend over for an American dollar and a smile. He was a junky, his soul had been eaten away years before R’lyeh rose in the roiling Pacific. But I respected him, because he was a survivor, a roach like the mugwumps. When Neal and I were dust, William S. Burroughs would still be kicking around (hell, the bastard would still be writing for publication; I already shot my load with that) so I didn’t punch him in the face right then and there. Anybody else I would have, even Neal; if he came to me and said “I’m going to betray you, you know. Tie you to an obsidian slab and draw your heart out through your nostril, just to make Cthulhu chuckle,” he would have gotten a faceful of knuckles. Not Bill though. I didn’t like him. But I respected him.

“It’s pulp fiction. Neal’s not on our side, he’s on his side. Against the Dreamer, but not against the starry wisdom Azathoth teased him with.”

“How do you know?”

He snorted again (it was dusty without a house to protect us from the wind kicking through the ruined wheat). “I read magazines. You two were best friends once, but now, years later, you’re just going through the motions. Two dreamers chasing dreams. He’s married—when he’s not balling girls two at a time while we stand guard, he’s playing house with some heifer and teaching his rugrats how to pray, hands all steepled together at the side of the bed.” (Bill almost got a punch there too, but I was too drained to move.) “And you … Christ, Jack. You know your problems. This spiral path only has one ending. Of course he has to betray you, and by doing so, betray us all. It’s The Shadow. Neal’s the butler, and the butler did it. That’s the goddamn ending to the novel he’s writing about this! Pure pulp fiction.”

He plopped down and tucked his legs under his ass like a kid. “Eh, fuck it, Jack. Neal would be crossing you over a pussy if he wasn’t going to cross you over the whole goddamn ball of mud. Fuckin’ world half deserves it anyway, as far as I can tell.”

“Yeah, so why you’d come save us back in Kansas, hmm?” He wasn’t looking at me, so I could lick beer off the plank in front of me (the smell had been driving me up the wall) and listen to him answer at the same time. I didn’t want to look at Bill. He looked so old, like a snake skin left behind.

“I told you already,” he croaked, “there’s only one ending to this. You and Neal ain’t the only ones with a taste of enlightenment. A dragon came to me, after decades of chasing it, and told me what needed doing. You know, I’m going to move to Kansas one day.”

“Wow.”

“I’m not looking forward to it either.”

For a long time we did nothing but listen to Neal snore. “So … “

Bill finally turned to me, his eyes a squint. “How are your sales?”

And I laughed. I roared like the damn King of England after the court jester shits himself. “Damn! Royalties! Is that all you can think of?” He wasn’t joking, but I loved the man’s punchline. I laughed more and more, just jiggling on the porch; it crippled me.

“Real good. Haven’t had to write another word, really.”

“Yeah. The ban’s off my book now. It’s doing well. Thanks for the title by the way.” Then we heard Neal stir and stopped talking about books. Neither of us were in the mood for any of Neal’s theories of literature now and I wasn’t interested in hearing about how this would make yet another thrilling chapter. He spilled off the couch and hopped up onto the porch (ignoring the skeletal doorway that still stood) and stretched his arms out, a farm boy taking in the view of the north forty.

“Woo! I tell ya boys, this is what happens when we stick our heads up above ground. We got to be gophers from now on. Or mole people! Just like in those old serials. We’ll come up at night, for provisions and women in pillbox hats and bullet bras. They’ll hold their little hands to their cheeks and screech when they see us, but gemstone tiaras and princess gowns will make ‘em ours again, right, my mole brothers?” Then he laughed at his joke, alone.

“Let’s find a new car,” Bill said and we were off. The neighborhood was deserted. Doors flapped open and shut in the wind, little stores all ready for customers with the blinds pulled up and display cases shiny, but not a man was about. No squirrels either, and the sky (only blue streaked with the sharpest of purple clouds and the occasional stream of a moon rocket heading off the marble) was free of birds and bugs. And damnit if every car we came across wasn’t a burnt-out husk.

“This is getting repetitive,” Neal said, as we stumbled across the second used car lot with nothing but smoldering hunks on display or in the windows. “Aren’t there any good ghosts in this country? Or is every inch of the way going to be madmen and spirits from the fifth dimension?”

Good ghosts. That reminded me, there were good ghosts. Spirits summoned by bebop and cooked up in sweet whiskey. Called by blood, but not blood tainted by human fear and madness, but the good blood that spilled from food and fed the earth. The world was still drenched in the spirit of the Lord, and his little children, the wayward ones who never left their childish things behind, they were the ones set to inherit the earth, if only we could end the reign of the cult. So I summoned one, the good old-fashioned way. I walked to the other side of the street, where the traffic would have headed east had there been any, and stuck out my thumb.

Bill and Neal stayed on the other side of the highway and just looked at me. A pair of yokels taking in the real live genuine article. King of the Beats. Looking to hitch. On the road again.

And the car pulled up, an old model Cadillac—prewar it looked like, all curves but for the creased hood up front. It looked familiar, and then it pulled up. It was a Sedan by Tiffany’s—glass spun and blown, translucent but without motor or works, and I was in the passenger seat already. A younger me, baby eyelids fluttering in sleep. Jack Kerouac, minus a decade and change, and a thousand gallons of cheap alcohol, the years peeled off my skin as if by a potato peeler. And Neal was driving with an easy smile and only a wrist on the wheel. He was young too, nose not so red yet, hair full and black, not pasted down over his receding hairline. Our paunches were missing.

“So, you two fine upstanding American citizens need a lift anywhere in particular?” ghostly Neal asked me. Bill and the real Neal cut across the street quick like bunnies to take in the car. The one we had already driven in, the one with the cracked leather dash from the New Orleans heat and the Colorado altitude (but this dash was smooth as mirrors).

“We actually need the car,” Bill said, and he grabbed for the door handle but his hand passed right through it. “Neal!” Neal said, sliding his butt up onto the hood. “Care to know who wins the third race in St. Louis twelve years after your trip? Write it down, make sure you’re here on the day, and you can double your life-savings. It’s all scientific, like the theory of relativity. You’ve been driving so fast you caught up with yourself.”

Ghostly Neal laughed. “And all you want is a car, eh?” He nudged my doppelganger, who awoke with a slow-motion start. “Sounds like a good deal to me. Can’t beat the scientific method, and I’m sure Sal and I can ride the rails, and dream some dreams of our own.”

My Neal smiled and just told him, “Childhood’s End, guaranteed.” Neal in the car ducked down and found a pencil and scrap of paper, wrote down the name and tucked the scrap in his shoe. He just stood up and walked through the car. Young Jack opened the door and stumbled out, yawning fiercely and with a fist in his eye to drive away the sleep. “Whuzzat?” I said, brilliantly.

The car was solid, and ours, and drove like we were three inches over the road, which we probably were. I waved to my ghost, but he was too busy rubbing his face to wave back. Young Neal whooped and waved, and we all (even surly Bill in the now solid backseat, his other hand over his nauseated stomach) waved back. Bill turned, “Nice trick, getting your own car from yourself.”

“Yeah, and it probably never needs gas! Hey Neal, how did you know what horse was going to win? Or was it just grift?”

“Nope, honest injun, Childhood’s End is going to win. Neal ain’t though. That was yesterday’s race, and we were too busy moving into William’s abode yesterday to get down to the track. And the phone was disconnected, so I couldn’t place any bets from the house.” He looked into the rearview mirror and addressed the backseat. “For a bunch of Richie Riches, your family sure knows how to be inconveniently delinquent with the phone company. Don’t you know that International Telephone and Telegraph takes no prisoners? Ma Bell!” he shouted and stepped on the gas hard, taking the wind out of us passengers. We ate Missouri for breakfast in the American dream car.

“Yeah, but how did you know?” I asked Neal again later when we were idling and Bill was off pissing in the trees off the side of the highway. “Enlightenment for worldly trivia is a blasphemous thing.”

Neal just kicked off his old stitched rag of a shoe, leaned down and pulled a wrinkled scrap of paper from the toe. He smoothed it between his fingers and held it out for me to read. Under the smear of lead, I could just barely make it out: Childhood’s End. “That’s why I always wanted to drive, brother. I didn’t want to get here too late. But I guess I did.” Then Neal dropped the paper and let the wind take it as he walked off into the trees and started to piss as well. I leaned back on the wheel well and put my palms back against the purring hood of the car. Even running at an idle in the afternoon heat of Missouri, the steel of my past was cool to the touch.