Move Under Ground | Page 5

rim of the highway was a ribbon of gleaming
off-the-lot paintjobs, even on the oldest cars. Men and a few women, all
in their Sunday best including too-hot-for-summertime stoles and those
insipid little flowered hats, tromped down into the brush after me, all
silent but for crackling branches. Not a "Ho there," or a "Do ya see 'im,
Mildred? Do you see the man they say runs the orgies?" and not even
an "Ow, I fell into a ditch." Just eerie inexorable marching. I feinted
right then veered left, poked under a shield of roots from a tree blown
half out of the ground, then cut right again.
And they tumbled after me, a little army of Boris Karloffs and Elsa
Lanchesters run through the projector at double speed, herky-jerky,
often falling and sliding down a streak of mud, or just wildly but
silently smacking branches out of the way on their way down. One man,
all white shirt belly and lippy grin was right on top of me, and with a
wild but damn quiet leap jumped off the rock he was perched on and
sailed over my head. He landed hard enough that my ankles felt it, but
without a grunt or so much as a look back at me, he smashed his way
deeper into the forest, heading down to the bluffs.
I decided on a little experiment. I stood still, but kept the straps of my
little rucksack wrapped around my fist and wrist in case I needed a
weapon, and let them come at me. A woman was first--she was huffing
like a smoker but was calm-eyed even as she ran up to my chest and
smacked into me. She slid off me sweatily with just a half step and kept
right on running. She didn't even raise a hand to adjust her little hat, so
it fell off and I reached down to snatch it up just to have another little
twig of a girl plant a dainty foot on my kidneys and then hop off of me.
I grunted hard, but nobody heard or noticed. Then I stood up, wound up
my arm and slammed the next fellow I saw right in the side of the face
with my sack. I heard the tinny-tin ting of my canteen bounce off his
chinny chin chin but even this joe didn't turn to face me. He just kept

on, his split lip making his smile a lopsided leer, like one of Neal's after
a three-day nod. I shouldered my sack, cracked my toes (the poor little
piggies were swimming in bloody sweat now), and started easing my
way down into the dark of the woods beyond the headlights and ran
straight into Dreamland.
It was still woods at first, but woods of a different sort. Cacti were
everywhere, scratching me with steel syringes as I passed; then snaking
ivy slid over my poor tired boots. I yelped loud and danced away from
them, and the rose-red buds opened and hissed at me. The well-dressed
gentry nearest my little Mr. Bojangles routine had taken to galloping
along on their haunches and knuckles, but a few further away from me
were still holding their heads high, like it was time to tell a hotel
bellboy what for. They glowed like swamp gas and I could see their
faces clearly after I blinked away my sweaty tears. They were hungry.
Every one of the souls around me had that hungry fear painted cross
their faces. The fear of a whore who just lost a tooth and a little bit
more of her looks to a pimp slap. Hungry like little Charles Ma filling
his opium pipe while sitting crossbones-style up on a palette on the
Oakland piers. Not hungry for anything, the way Neal was when I'd
met him, when we spoke about writing or when I watched him amble
off towards some college girl with knitted stockings and a tucked-up
copy of The Militant under the crook of her arm, but hungry for nothing.
Nothingness. Not even the peaceful touch of Buddha's palm, or the
deepest sleep I had on Marie's shoulder just a night ago, but a great big
horrible nothing, the nothing that can't stand to be defined by the some
things floating around on in it. Then the forest around me, queer as it
was already, pulsed and twisted into something else entirely.
The tree in front of me was jelly. I guess jelly, or ectoplasm or liquid
aether, a huge pillar of it I'd say, if pillars were made up of slabs of
living lard. It wobbled and touched my mind, poking through history
and poetry to scoop out the thought-form of lost Terry, the little
Mexican girl I made for a few weeks.