Call Me the Breeze Read Online Free PDF Page A

van in ten minutes flat.
    Thirty and thirty and ten and six
How many’s that? It’s seventy-six!
Seventy-six! Seventy-six!
    The British Ambassador’s in the grave
The British Ambassador’s in the grave
Number plate 6, 6 M-I-K!
On this beautiful summer’s day!
    Seventy-six! Seventy-six!
What the fuck do you make of this?
    The minute the show was over, the switchboard was jammed with calls of complaint, mostly from in or around the Scotsfield area. One woman said: ‘Those foul-mouthed hooligans don’t represent us!’
    Dumb motherfuckers
, I thought, as I lit up a spliff and had me a laugh. Then I opened up
The Family
.
    And the more I read it, all I kept thinking of was that old good Charlie — the Charlie before things had to go and get themselves fucked up — hooking his thumbs into his belt and grinning: ‘You’re looking good, man!’ not realizing for a minute or so just who it was he was talking to — me and ‘My Lady’. Jacy strumming her guitar as she sat in the sun and Charlie slapping me on the back as he said: ‘She’s one good chick, man! One hell of a chick, believe me!’ The two of us sitting there as he opened his tobacco pouch and thought for a long time before asking: ‘You ever been to India?’ I shook my head. ‘I’m gonna go there one day,’ he said. ‘When the revolution’s done. I’m gonna go up to the mountains and seek out the prophets.’
    ‘A pity you didn’t meet The Seeker,’ I told him. ‘He knew, man! He
knew
— you know what I’m saying?’
    ‘Right,’ said Charlie as he popped the rollie between his lips. ‘Friend o’ yours then, Joey?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘he sure was, Charlie. He sure was. He’s dead now. Overdosed in London.’
    ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he said as he exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘He’s not dead. He’s sitting right there beside you.’
    I was so stoned I could hardly think straight!
    ‘There’s always a frog beside the pond, Joey,’ Charlie said then, and I thought about that for a good long time as the desert sun burnt on, trying to figure out what Charlie had meant, for you always knew he meant something.
Romantics
    Sometimes after work I’d go into Barbarella’s and have myself a few beers and, if she wasn’t there, just sit there and think about stuff she might say — in a downtown club maybe, looking into my eyes with the smoke curling from the cigarette as one of our favourite songs was played. They were always playing our favourite numbers in Barbarella’s. Sitting there with the table lamps glowing and a couple of dancers moving in the shadows we’d look at one another and smile, especially if the song — which a lot of the time it seemed to be — was ‘I’m Not in Love’ by 10cc. I liked that one and I knew so didshe, the way it was about someone who was so deeply in love that not only could they not admit it but had to keep on denying it, it was so strong. Knowing that sooner or later they’d be forced to give in.
    When I went home, I read some more of
Don Juan
and then opened up
Siddhartha
, the other Hermann Hesse book I’d just started reading. I sat up until dawn, really getting into it. I happened just by accident to notice in the paper that Martin Scorsese’s film
Taxi Driver
was tipped for movie of the year.
Showbands
    Any time you rang Boo now, or called to his house, he was below in the garage practising with the band. One night when I was working behind the bar he called by for a beer. ‘Say, Joey, can you do Mount-mellick this Friday?’ he says.
    I nodded and slapped up the pint. ‘Sure thing!’ I says.
    So that was my first gig with The Mohawks, lugging hired amplifiers from a weatherbeaten bandwagon into a draughty old country parish hall. The band that night was Magic and the Swallows, their lead singer a rotund headcase in a suit made of lightbulbs. ‘Don’t care for your kind of music much,’ he said, ‘but I’ll say you’ve got some guts.’
    We hung out for a while