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21 " Or maybe that wasn't the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn't matter. What's important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren't a problem yet, or they'd already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning. I could understand how a drowning man might suddenly feel a deep thirst being quenched. Or how a slave might become a friend to his master. "
― Denis Johnson , Jesus’ Son
22 " He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other. "
23 " A bus came. I climbed aboard and sat on the plastic seat while the things of our city turned in the windows like the images in a slot machine. "
24 " And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons. "
25 " We parked under a strange sky with a faint image of a quarter-moon superimposed on it. There was a little woods beside us. This day had been dry out and hot, the buck pines and what-all simmering patientyl, but as we sat there smoking cigarettes it started to get very cold. "The summer's over," I said. "
26 " People entering the bars on First Avenue gave up their bodies. Then only the demons inhabiting us could be seen. Souls who had wronged each other were brought together here. The rapist met his victim, the jilted child discovered its mother. But nothing could be healed, the mirror was a knife dividing everything from itself, tears of false fellowship dripped on the bar. And what are you going to do to me now? With what, exactly, would you expect to frighten me? "
27 " The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity and sentimental divorce "Nurse," I sobbed. She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of a cocktail glass, no measuring. " You have a lovely pitching arm." You had to go down on them like a hummingbird over a blossom. I saw her much later, not too many years ago, and when I smiled she seemed to believe I was making advances. But it was only that I remembered. I'll never forgot you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother. "
28 " I’d thought something was required of me, but I hadn’t wanted to find out what it was. "
29 " I know they argue about whether or not it’s right, whether or not the baby is alive at this point or that point in its growth inside the womb. This wasn’t about that. It wasn’t what the lawyers did. It wasn’t what the doctors did, it wasn’t what the woman did. It was what the mother and father did together. "
30 " I knew that, but he didn’t, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real. "
31 " Glaciers had crushed this region in the time before history. There’d been a drought for years, and a bronze fog of dust stood over the plains. The soybean crop was dead again, and the failed, wilted cornstalks were laid out on the ground like rows of underthings. Most of the farmers didn’t even plant anymore. All the false visions had been erased. It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time. "
32 " He was in his fifties. He'd wasted his entire life. Such people were very dear to those of us who'd wasted only a few years. "
33 " Talk into here. Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine. "
34 " It was one of the moments you stay in, to hell with all the troubles of before and after. The sky is blue and the dead are coming back. Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fair bares its breasts. "
35 " When we stopped in front of it and turned off the engine, we heard music coming from inside—jazz. It sounded sophisticated and lonely. We "
36 " First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside. "
37 " She was a woman, a traitor, and a killer. Males and females wanted her. But I was the only one who ever could have loved her. "
38 " The man hanging out of the wrecked car was still alive as I passed, and I stopped, grown a little more used to the idea now of how really badly broken he was, and made sure there was nothing I could do. He was snoring loudly and rudely. His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn’t be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn’t, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real. "
39 " It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time. "
40 " It’s a beautiful day” – by which we meant that the weather was good. But we never say, “The weather’s good,” “The weather’s pleasant.” We say, “It’s a beautiful day,” “What a beautiful day. "