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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
When I'm rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus' Son . . .
A salesman who shared his liquor and steered2 while sleeping . . .A Cherokee filled with bourbon ... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes3, captained by a college student . . .
And a family from Marshalltown who headonned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Missouri . . .
. . . I rose up sopping4 wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than conscious, thanks to the first three of the people I've already named---the salesman and the Indian and the student---all of whom had given me drugs. At the head of the entrance ramp5 I waited without hope of a ride. What was the point, even, of rolling up my sleeping bag when I was too wet to be let into anybody's car? I draped it around me like a cape6. The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts. My thoughts zoomed7 pitifully. The traveling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings8 of my veins9 feel scraped out. My jaw10 ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we'd have an accident in the storm.
I didn't care. They said they'd take me all the way.
The man and the wife put the little girl up front with them and left the baby in back with me and my dripping bedroll. "I'm not taking you anywhere very fast," the man said. "I've got my wife and babies here, that's why."
You are the ones, I thought. And I piled my sleeping bag against the left-hand door and slept across it, not caring whether I lived or died. The baby slept free on the seat beside me. He was about nine months old.
. . . But before any of this, that afternoon, the salesman and I had swept down into Kansas City in his luxury car. We'd developed a dangerous cynical11 camaraderie12 beginning in Texas, where he'd taken me on. We ate up his bottle of amphetamines, and every so often we pulled off the Interstate and bought another pint13 of Canadian Club and a sack of ice. His car had cylindrical14 glass holders15 attached to either door and a white, leathery interior. He said he'd take me home to stay overnight with his family, but first he wanted to stop and see a woman he knew.
Under Midwestern clouds like great grey brains we left the superhighway with a drifting sensation and entered Kansas City's rush hour with a sensation of running aground. As soon as we slowed down, all the magic of traveling together burned away. He went on and on about his girlfriend. "I like this girl, I think I love this girl---but I've got two kids and a wife, and there's certain obligations there. And on top of everything else, I love my wife. I'm gifted with love. I love my kids. I love all my relatives." As he kept on, I felt jilted and sad: "I have a boat, a little sixteen-footer. I have two cars. There's room in the back yard for a swimming pool." He found his girlfriend at work. She ran a furniture store, and I lost him there.
The clouds stayed the same until night. Then, in the dark, I didn't see the storm gathering16. The driver of the Volkswagen, a college man, the one who stoked my head with all the hashish, let me out beyond the city limits just as it began to rain. Never mind the speed I'd been taking, I was too overcome to stand up. I lay out in the grass off the exit ramp and woke in the middle of a puddle17 that had filled up around me.
And later, as I've said, I slept in the back seat while the Oldsmobile---the family from Marshalltown---splashed along through the rain. And yet I dreamed I was looking right through my eyelids18, and my pulse marked off the seconds of time. The Interstate through western Missouri was, in that era, nothing more than a two-way road, most of it. When a semi truck came toward us and passed going the other way, we were lost in a blinding spray and a warfare19 of noises such as you get being towed through an automatic car wash. The wipers stood up and lay down across the windshield without much effect. I was exhausted20, and after an hour I slept more deeply.
I'd known all along exactly what was going to happen. But the man and his wife woke me up later, denying it viciously.
"Oh---no!"
"NO!"
I was thrown against the back of their seat so hard that it broke. I commenced bouncing back and forth21. A liquid which I knew right away was human blood flew around the car and rained down on my head. When it was over I was in the back seat again, just as I had been. I rose up and looked around. Our headlights had gone out. The radiator22 was hissing23 steadily24. Beyond that, I didn't hear a thing. As far as I could tell, I was the only one conscious. As my eyes adjusted I saw that the baby was lying on its back beside me as if nothing had happened. Its eyes were open and it was feeling its cheeks with its little hands.
In a minute the driver, who'd been slumped25 over the wheel, sat up and peered at us. His face was smashed and dark with blood'. It made my teeth hurt to look at him---but when he spoke26, it didn't sound as if any of his teeth were broken.
"What happened?"
"The baby's okay," I said, although I had no idea how the baby was.
He turned to his wife.
"Janice," he said. "Janice, Janice!"
"Is she okay?"
"She's dead!" he said, shaking her angrily.
"No, she's not." I was ready to deny everything myself now.
Their little girl was alive, but knocked out. She whimpered in her sleep. But the man went on shaking his wife.
"Janice!" he hollered.
His wife moaned.
"She's not dead," I said, clambering from the car and running away.
"She won't wake up," I heard him say.
I was standing28 out here in the night, with the baby, for some reason, in my arms. It must have still been raining, but I remember nothing about the weather. We'd collided with another car on what I now perceived was a two-lane bridge. The water beneath us was invisible in the dark.
Moving toward the other car I began to hear rasping, metallic29 snores. Somebody was flung halfway30 out the passenger door, which was open, in the posture31 of one hanging from a trapeze by his ankles. The car had been broadsided, smashed so flat that no room was left inside it even for this person's legs, to say nothing of a driver or any other passengers. I just walked right on past.
Headlights were coming from far off. I made for the head of the bridge, waving them to a stop with one arm and clutching the baby to my shoulder with the other.
It was a big semi, grinding its gears as it decelerated. The driver rolled down his window and I shouted up at him, "There's a wreck. Go for help."
"I can't turn around here," he said.
He let me and the baby up on the passenger side, and we just sat there in the cab, looking at the wreckage32 in his headlights.
"Is everybody dead?" he asked.
"I can't tell who is and who isn't," I admitted.
"What time is it?"
"Oh, it's around quarter after three," he said.
By his manner he seemed to endorse34 the idea of not doing anything about this. I was relieved and tearful. I'd thought something was required of me, but I hadn't wanted to find out what it was.
When another car showed coming in the opposite direction, I thought I should talk to them. "Can you keep the baby?" I asked the truck driver.
"You'd better hang on to him," the driver said. "It's a boy, isn't it?"
"Well, I think so," I said.
The man hanging out of the wrecked35 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.
Before too long there were cars backed up for a ways at either end of the bridge, and headlights giving a night-game atmosphere to the steaming rubble36, and ambulances and cop cars nudging through so that the air pulsed with color. I didn't talk to anyone. My secret was that in this short while I had gone from being the president of this tragedy to being a faceless onlooker37 at a gory38 wreck. At some point an officer learned that I was one of the passengers, and took my statement. 'I don't remember any of this, except that he told me, "Put out your cigarette." We paused in our conversation to watch the dying man being loaded into the ambulance. He was still ab've, still dreaming obscenely. The blood ran off him in strings39. His knees jerked and his head rattled40.
There was nothing wrong with me, and I hadn't seen anything, but the policeman had to question me and take me to the hospital anyway. The word came over his car radio that the man was now dead, just as we came under the awning41 of the emergency-room entrance.
I stood in a tiled corridor with my wet sleeping bag bunched against the wall beside me, talking to a man from the local funeral home.
The doctor stopped to tell me I'd better have an X-ray.
"No."
"Now would be the time. If something turns up later ..."
"There's nothing wrong with me."
Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab42 of brilliance43 radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked45 as I imagined an eagle would shriek44. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.
"There's nothing wrong with me"---I'm surprised I let those words out. But it's always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.
Some years later, one time when I was admitted to the Detox at Seattle General Hospital, I took the same tack46.
"Are you hearing unusual sounds or voices?" the doctor asked.
"Help us, oh God, it hurts," the boxes of cotton screamed.
"Not exactly," I said.
"Not exactly," he said. "Now, what does that mean."
"I'm not ready to go into all that," I said. A yellow bird fluttered close to my face, and my muscles grabbed. Now I was flopping47 like a fish. When I squeezed shut my eyes, hot tears exploded from the sockets48. When I opened them, I was on my stomach.
"How did the room get so white?" I asked.
点击
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1
heroin
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| n.海洛因 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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3
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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4
sopping
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| adj. 浑身湿透的 动词sop的现在分词形式 | |
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5
ramp
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| n.暴怒，斜坡，坡道；vi.作恐吓姿势，暴怒，加速；vt.加速 | |
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6
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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7
zoomed
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| v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去式 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨 | |
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8
linings
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| n.衬里( lining的名词复数 )；里子；衬料；组织 | |
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9
veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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10
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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11
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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12
camaraderie
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| n.同志之爱，友情 | |
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13
pint
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| n.品脱 | |
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14
cylindrical
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| adj.圆筒形的 | |
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15
holders
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| 支持物( holder的名词复数 )； 持有者； （支票等）持有人； 支托（或握持）…之物 | |
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16
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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17
puddle
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| n.(雨)水坑，泥潭 | |
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18
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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19
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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20
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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21
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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22
radiator
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| n.暖气片，散热器 | |
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23
hissing
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| n. 发嘶嘶声, 蔑视 动词hiss的现在分词形式 | |
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24
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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25
slumped
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| 大幅度下降，暴跌( slump的过去式和过去分词 )； 沉重或突然地落下[倒下] | |
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26
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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27
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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28
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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29
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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30
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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31
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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32
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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33
thermos
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| n.保湿瓶，热水瓶 | |
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34
endorse
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| vt.(支票、汇票等)背书，背署；批注；同意 | |
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35
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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36
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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37
onlooker
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| n.旁观者，观众 | |
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38
gory
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| adj.流血的；残酷的 | |
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39
strings
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| n.弦 | |
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40
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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41
awning
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| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
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42
slab
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| n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上 | |
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43
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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44
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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45
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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47
flopping
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| n.贬调v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的现在分词 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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48
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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49
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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50
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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