Jake's Long Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

back inside me for the reasons why, theonly answer I get is the decree is true: I got no right to enjoy life covered in normal people’s light, mine has to be mostly dark. And knowing that hurts. It really hurts.
    Why am I like this? The air around me is throbbing, as if I’ve got a permanent headache, except it’s all over my body, it starts at my soul. I don’t hardly know where I’m driving to. I’m just driving and my thoughts won’t give an answer to why or to where. Why?
Why
is it like this? To be going somewhere and yet it’s nowhere.
    One minute it was the same old same old suburban drabsville outside, now it’s farmland out the window. I can see it’s green but it’s as if shadowed in blackest, biggest thunder cloud about to open up. I can see the sun, and yet I can’t. Not as meaning bright and warm, and covering life in its rays, ’cos I’m a little bit shivery and out there is a little bit dark.
    Sheep, lots of sheep shapes all woolly and cuddly like li’l clouds fallen on the ground all the same shape. Cows grazing, how they chew their cud and look at a world even I can see they don’t really comprehend. (As if I comprehend it, sweet dull cows.) As if you do, slut. You’re a worthless bitch, Sharneeta Hurrey.
    (Why do I keep hearing that voice, my own in my head and yet I know it doesn’t belong to me? And why does she say I’m worthless? Like I’m a car she hasn’t even driven and she’s saying it ain’t worth shit. Why don’t you
try
it first, whoever the hell ya are? It goes. The engine still works.) Oh God, I think the engine still works. ’Cos you stop and listen sometimes and there’s nothing but stillness, like death waiting round the next corner, or down the hallway, or an alley, anywhere (and yet nowhere) out there.
    Engines, how long before the metal one under me’s gonna conk out? A lousy seven grand and it took me four years to pay off, with a final lump payment at the end. My life being mine, things hadn’t gone regular, it’s our one guarantee in life, our absolute certainty, that regularity of anything except problems and misery is our destiny.
    The effin’ finance company sucks off the blood of poor people and those of us who don’t know how to cope in this world, that’s too confusing, has too many complexities, too much paper, all them forms to fill out, another learning and language they speak. The shock of discovering I’m paying nearly thirty per cent interest when normal people pay, I later found out, eight.
    I was cruising a car yard, nothing else to do, what with my two flatmates not yet outta bed at eleven, when the salesman sidles up, you know the typeeven when you ain’t had experience of them. They just stick out, neon sign on their faces says: I’m so cool I can sell you anything. In their eyes there ain’t no soul, just facial posing. You know he can see you’re on the outer, that you don’t fit and never will. That smile promises maybe he can make you fit — as long as you have the price he charges.
    Lady, he opens up — Me? A lady? — Lady, I can tell you’re trying to figure how you can get a better car when your money situation says, not yet. Am I right? Would I be correct in my summation? (The hell’s that word mean?)
    Wrong. I don’t have a car, I told Mr Smoothie. (And where’d you get that hair-style from, bud? Your hair ain’t
that
silver.) Used to have a car but it went to sleep (and I couldn’t wake it, like I can’t wake part of myself, the somethin’ in me that’s died). One day the motor died and never started again.
    He laughed. Know a few people’s lives like that. (Mind-reader.) Not that any of us can talk, can we, miss? Oh, he was quick on his feet this tall charmer, thought I didn’t see him glancing at my left hand for the wedding ring. (As if any decent