Call Me the Breeze Read Online Free Page B

There were quotes in there from
The I-Ching
. Robert Heinlein. Hermann Hesse’s
Steppenwolf
.
    I didn’t know that one.
Library
    Una Halpin the librarian got it for me. ‘I didn’t know you read so much,’ she said. No, I said, I didn’t — only lately. ‘It’s a fabulous read,’ she told me then. ‘I read it all the time.’
    I couldn’t believe my ears.
What next
? I thought.
Una Halpin starts the revolution with Charlie and Family? In that little crocheted dress she’d be a very likely candidate all right
.
    But I thanked her anyway and went off to read my book. It was all about this guy, deep and complicated with so many layers to his personality that you got dizzy even reading about them. I’d sit up all night just reading it and smoking roll-ups, every so often lifting my head and turning to her to say: ‘
Your face in the light when it shines
…’ and then smoothing back her hair, long and blonde and fine and just streaming out there to touch them stars.
    I leaned forward to kiss her ear. And it was then I sang it softly: ‘
Oh but California/California I’m coming home
’ — the Joni Mitchell song, of course. I could see her eyes shining and it did my heart good.
    ‘Big Sur,’ I murmured to myself as I closed old Hermann and fell on the bed. ‘Big Sur, you’re looking good.’
    One night I heard her say: ‘Let’s just go, let’s just take off and —’
    ‘Where we gonna go?’ I asked her and lit another smoke.
    ‘Joey,’ she said. ‘Don’t even ask such questions.’
    We were rolling across the Midwest when I heard myself speaking the words.
    ‘I feel I can tell you anything,’ I said.
    To which she replied: ‘You can.’
    ‘When we get there, what will it be like?’ I asked her.
    ‘It’s like heaven, Iowa,’ she said. ‘I spent all my childhood summers there. And that’s how I’ve always thought of it. With the golden corn swaying and the big blue sky seeming to stretch for ever — it’s the way a child might imagine it to be. Paradise, you know?’
    I could sense my eyes glittering. Glittering like that stretch of water I saw whenever I melted into Mona. Except that this was even more beautiful.
    ‘How a child might imagine it,’ I heard her saying again, as she slipped a cassette tape into the dash and the fluid country shuffle of J. J. Cale went sweeping out into the weighted air as we cruised on down the interstate.
    ‘You like that one?’ she asked me.
    ‘“Call Me the Breeze”,’ I said, drumming my fingers in time on the hood.
    ‘OK, I will, then! I’ll call you that!’ she replied, as J. J. Cale sang out and on we sped towards the heart of the sun.
Dublin Community Radio
    Things were going from strength to strength for The Mohawks — the name they eventually settled on after hours of arguing. I had to work so I couldn’t go to the studio but when I switched on the radio in Austie’s there’s Boo Boo going full throttle. ‘Records?’ he said. ‘We don’t make records, Dave. Psycho fucktunes is what we make. We piss on vinyl.’
    ‘OK,’ said Dave G., ‘so what do you do apart from urinating on plastic? The music you make, could you describe it for us?’
    ‘Sure I’ll describe it for you suckers!’ said Boo. ‘The Mohawks from Scotsfield — you wanna know what music they make, what kinda sounds those mothers lay down? Well, I’ll tell you what we are and what kinda sounds! We’re the screaming psychobilly cowboys, a garage band with music to melt your brain!’
    ‘And what might punters expect to hear if they go along to see you guys?’
    ‘Expect the terror of low-flying Stukas! Hank Williams on amyl nitrate!’
    ‘So there they are, folks! The Mohawks — a loud, dirty combo with lots of sheer, aggressive bad-ass attitude! And they definitely are not punk!’
    ‘Punk’s for queens!’ sniffed Boo Boo as, with scabrous, paint-stripping guitars, the band launched into a driving, raw version of ‘76’, one they’d written in the