chapter one
or all I know, you're just
getting into the habit of reading excellent literature books, so you haven't
heard of me yet. Fact is, most folks call me Holden, but I'm going to keep
my last name to myself, for a short spell at least, 'cause there's a ton of
nasty people around this great country of ours who are jealous of me and
would kidnap me for an extremely huge ransom if they could find me.
If you feel obliged to write
me a fan letter, just go ahead and mail it to: Holden, Bowling Green,
Kentucky, United States of America. I'm a famous person, plain and simple,
so the postman will know where to find me in a flash. Shoot, there's only
two or three more Holdens in town, four tops, and they don't get much in the
way of fan mail, being that they're not too famous and all.
Make sure and put my zip
code, which is 54945, on your envelope. It's a snap to remember, 'cause it's
the same backwards as it is forwards. Yep, what goes around comes around,
all right. I don't know who first said those words about going around and
coming around, but he had to be a genius or at least an extremely
intellectual type person who's been to town a few times so to speak, someone
with a college education and some deep insights into the way water goes
under the dam.
I'm about to hire a
professional photographer to make up a batch of close-up photos. If you want
one, put a return envelope in with your fan letter, big enough to hold an 8
by 10, one of those real glossy jobs that shows off my wavy hair, long
eyelashes, and extremely smooth skin that's never had a pimple or a scar or
any other type of serious blemish, for that matter.
I'll put one of my photos in
the mail, but make sure and stick a couple of stamps on your return
envelope, 'cause even though I'm famous, I'm not rich yet, and I'm expecting
a ton of requests, at least hundreds, maybe thousands even, for all I know.
And send along two or three bucks too, four tops, to cover the cost of the
photo and handling. Like they say, one picture is usual worth a couple
hundred words, or maybe as many as a few thousand, at least.
You'll want to mail your fan
letter right quick, 'cause I'm moving to the Big Apple (New York City) in a
few weeks or months, as soon as I get enough dough saved up and feel a
little better. Then, the big publishing companies will get my books quicker.
Shoot, I might even hand deliver them, which could be a lot quicker than
mailing them, depending on how far apart my new residence and the big
publishing companies happen to be.
'Course, you could always
wait 'til I move and write me in the Big Apple, but there may be a lot more
guys named Holden living there, maybe as many as several dozen, and some of
them might even be famous, too. So, it might take longer for the postman to
track me down, even if you put my new zip code on your envelope, not that I
know what it's going to be yet. And, there's always the chance it won't be
the same backwards as it is forwards.
A body doesn't just set down
one day in the early morning hours, or even in the late evening hours, if he
happens to be more of a night person, and decide to write a book, just like
that, in a flash. Any advanced author will tell you there's always got to be
a big reason for writing a full length book instead of having what might be
a smaller reason, in which case the same advanced author might choose to
write a short story or even an essay of some type.
Well, the big reason I'm
writing my book is 'cause I'm living at this new place now, which is
extremely different from the nice house with the flower garden and new air
conditioner where I grew up with my mom and sister and dad. I don't usual
gripe too much, but this isn't the most pleasant place to live. Some folks
might call it a loony bin or a mental hospital or even an insane asylum if
they still use old-fashioned words that classy people with good manners and
a college education don't say too much anymore. It's the same thing as not
calling anyone a Negro nowadays. Just say "African-American," even though it
takes a little longer.
Like me, the other guys who
live here don't seem to have any physical type disease that's messing up any
of their bodily parts. It's more the way they act or behave that's so messed
up, although the more I think about it, sick is sick, and where the basic
cause is coming from isn't all that important when you're feeling flat out
rotten. Think about it. Whether your sickness happens to be the physical
type or the mental type doesn't matter too much when a body needs a lot of
help on his way down the path to feeling perfect again.
I got to thinking, after
being here a spell, two or three weeks, four tops, that most folks who never
stayed at a place like this might be interested in reading about what
happens here and the reasons that cause a body to come and live here in the
first place. 'Course, I could of gone on a panel discussion over to the
junior college or a talk show on the TV, but sometimes, particular when
you're taking some strong kinds of medicine, you forget some of the
important stuff you want to talk about and you want folks to know. But if
you quick write it all down in a book, you have a permanent record of stuff,
which will always be there even after you forget it or croak.
There's something extremely
amazing I haven't told too many folks. It's a secret that shouldn't be
passed around, 'cause you can never tell how people are going to feel about
extremely amazing stuff. Some of them could even get angry ("mad" isn't
polite to say) and come after me. Some people are like that I can tell you;
they're out there where you least expect them. Fact is, there are those kind
of sneaky, mean people all over this great country of ours, and you have to
be alert at all times and stay on your toes to keep ahead of them.
So, keep this amazing thing
to yourself without blabbing it around to everyone you meet. Well, maybe you
could pass it along to your very closest buddy if you really felt a strong
urge and it just had to come gushing out of you, like GUSH, or you'd get
extremely tense. But don't go much farther or further than that and just
spread it around to perfect strangers and them.
Now that I think about it
some more, I did tell it to one other person. There was this guy at the old
Triple-P Arcade, where my close buddies and me hung out, who laughed when I
told him and put his pointer finger to his head and made a circle, like I
was off my goddam rocker or something. His name was Ward Stradlater, the guy
at the arcade, not that his name is all that important.
Stradlater was nice enough
most of the time, but he was one of those muscle beach types who don't know
their own strength. And, a lot of times he acted like he didn't have much
besides muscles between his ears too, if you get my drift. He was kind of a
famous kid, though, 'cause when he was no more than 11 or 12 he jumped into
a pond that his little sister fell into and pulled her out just in time to
save her from drownding. He even got his picture in the paper, and most
folks in town thought he was a hero, which isn't a bad thing to be, if you
can.
So anyway, the amazing thing
about me is I remember things from before I was born. I can close my eyes
and see it clear as the back of my hand. I'm floating in this liquid that's
a little salty, all warm and comfortable and peaceful, and I can hear this
steady thumping noise, lub-a-dub, lub-a-dub, lub-a-dub, and so on, which is
my dear old mom's heart beating away nice and steady as she goes.
You can hear all kinds of
sounds inside your dear old mom before you're born, not just her heartbeats,
but her blood moving through her veins and arteries, her stomach gas
growling, her backbones creaking from the lumbago, and any other kind of
inside noise you could possible think of, too. The blood moving all around
sounds like WHOOOOSH, only not so loud, more like whoooosh, which is
about the same as one of those soft sounds you hear from a babbling brook
running on down off a mountain top in the sky when the snow is melting on
the first warm day in the springtime.
It's not that I been to any
mountain tops yet, or even some foothills for that matter, but if you're an
advanced author, you have the amazing ability to imagine what stuff sounds
like or looks like, without actual hearing it or seeing it in your real
life. Then, alls you have to do is put your imaginations into the right
words, like shimmering moonbeams, which I have seen a time or two, even
though I haven't been to any mountains yet, even Black Mountain, which is
just down the road a piece.
Anyway, being that I was just
a fetus, and a young one at that, not much more than an embryo really, I was
just starting to figure things out. The main thing I could tell for sure was
that I was growing. Fact is, I was growing full speed ahead, pretty near at
the speed of light would be my best guess. I was sprouting billions and
billions of new bodily cells every day, really more cells than anyone could
ever hope to count or would even want to, for that matter. They were just
popping up and moving all around, quick as a flash, to whatever bodily
system they were supposed to make.
Some of those new cells knew
they had to go to my brain, and others knew they had to go to my liver, and
a few figured they better get on down and make me some toenails.
I've thought about my bodily
cells a lot, not that I dwell on them for hours at a time or anything, but I
still haven't figured out how they know exactly where to go, or how to get
there.
It's got to be kind of
important, 'cause you wouldn't want a stray toenail cell clogging up your
grey matter or a neuron (brain cell) hanging around your navel or some other
bodily part, messing around where it's not supposed to be and gumming up
your inner workings somehow.
