"Harlan Ellison - Paingod & Other Delusions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

the answer off so casually: “No, I guess not.” She clumped back to her room, got back in bed, and rolled herself up
in the covers and went to sleep. So casually.
So even if you weren’t here in the body, Harlan, you helped. No telling whether this will happen again, or
how many times, or what might trigger it, but this time you helped. I thank you for having the guts to put your own
fear and loneliness down on paper and then allowing it to be published: it takes courage. And has done someone
some good.
Thought you might like to know.

That’s another kind of pain, and it’s real, and if that letter didn’t hurt you where you hurt best, then nothing
in this book will touch you, and maybe you ought to be volunteering for something like the Genocide Corps in Brazil.
Here’s another pain that crushes. I went to Driver Survival School last Saturday. I’d gotten a ticket I didn’t
deserve (are there any other kinds?) and the judge at my trial suggested if I wanted to take a day’s worth of traffic
school the ticket would be dismissed. So I did the deed.
Traffic Survival School, what a ripoff, I thought. Cynical and smartass like the other fifty people booked for
that day. Seven and a half hours of bullshit from some redneck cop.
Sure. But something happened. Something that turned me around. You’ve got to know, I don’t like cops. It’s
a gut reaction I’ve had since I was a tiny tot. My first encounter with the Man is recorded in a story called “Free With
This Box” and you’ll be able to read it in a few months when Pyramid reissues GENTLEMAN JUNKIE. The story was
written a long time ago, and the event happened even longer ago, but the reaction is as fresh in me as if it had
happened yesterday. So I went with a snarl on my lips and a loathing for the Laws that Bonnie and Clyde would have
envied.
But the two California Highway Patrol officers who lectured the class were sharp and open and knew they
had a captive audience, and course-corrected for it. But still everyone in the room was cynical, taking it all as a lark,
dragged by the waste of having to spend a dynamite Saturday in a small room in the Sportsmen’s Lodge, sitting on a
hard chair and learning the whys&wherefores of the new California U-turn law.
Until they showed the obligatory highway safety horror film. I’ve seen them before, so have you. Endless
scenes of maimed and crushed men and women being crowbarred out of burning wrecks; women with their beads split
open like pomegranates, their brains on the tarmac; guys who’d been hit by trains at crossings, legs over here, arms
over there; shots of cars that demonstrate the simple truth that the human body is only a Baggie filled with fluid-the
tuck&roll interiors evenly coated with blood and meat. And it sickens you, and you turn your head away, and
sensitive stomachs heave, and no one makes clever remarks, and you want to puke. But it somehow has no more effect
in totality than the 7:00 News with film of burned Vietnamese babies. You never think it’ll happen to you.
Until they came to the final scene of the film, and it was so hairy even the Cal Highway officers grew weak: a
six-year-old black kid had been hit by a car. Black ghetto neighborhood. Hundreds of peoople lining the street
rubbernecking. Small shape covered by a blanket in the middle of the street. Cops all over the place. According to the
film it wasn’t the driver’s fault, kid had run Out from between parked cars, driver hadn’t had time to stop,
centerpunched the kid doing 35.
Shot of the car. A tiny dent. Not enough to even Earl Scheib it. Small shape under a blanket.
Then they brought the mother out to identify the kid. Two men supporting her between them. They staggered
forward with her and a cop lifted the edge of the blanket.
They must have had someone there with a directional mike. I got every breath, every moan, every whisper of
air. Oh my God. The sound of that woman’s scream. The pain. From out of the center of the earth. No human throat
was ever meant to produce such a terrible sound. She collapsed, just sank away like limp meat between the supporting
men. And the film ended. And I still heard that scream.
It’s five days later as I write this. I cannot block that scream from my mind. I never will. I now drive more
slowly, I now fasten my safety belt, I now take no chances. I have always been a fast driver, some say a crazy driver;
though I’ve never had an accident and used to race sports cars, I always thought I was a fucking Barney Oldfield. No
more. Chuckle if you will, friends, but I’m on the wagon. And that wagon gonna move very carefully. I don’t ever want
to hear that scream outside my head.
Are you aware of how much pain there is in the world? Yeah, I’m aware. Now. Because I’ve been writing for