Magic Bus by Rory Maclean Read Free Book Online Page A

resurrection. Poets of this now life. This here life. This one being lived and living.’
    â€˜The Beats and hippies are ancient history,’ says Terry.
    â€˜History that put us on the road today,’ I reply, trying to ease his cynicism. ‘History that brought minority rights, ecology and alternative medicine into the mainstream. History that also for a few short years tied together the world.’
    â€˜There’s too much economic pressure on us to have those kinds of aspirations these days,’ he goes on.
    â€˜And Haight’s now a mix of Carmel and Calcutta,’ adds Jeff. ‘Gentrified real estate, wall-to-wall beggars and way out of my price bracket.’
    Penny stares at them though the cigarette smoke. The light catches her rings and flashes prisms across the ceiling. A shiver crosses her lips. ‘Back then, we believed we were all one,’ she says with feeling.
    â€˜Taking acid does that to you,’ I point out.
    The raised, arrow-straight road drifts west to skirt the Tuz Gölü salt lake. Knuckles of burnt earth reach down from supine hills,through yellow grasses, to stretch their fingers into the dirty, white water. The sweep of salty liquid blazes in the heat, promising cool relief, delivering only crusty, ankle-deep slough.
    â€˜Wicked scenery,’ says Jeff with a yawn.
    Low clam-shell islands, flecked with feeding gulls, break the horizon. A far cloud of dust is thrown up by a tractor. The sunlight is red against wind-breaks of poplars. We stop for fuel and split the cost.
    As we drive on, Penny’s monologues rove across the universe, or at least most of southern California, from the ghosts of Owsley’s LSD factory to Cassady, the model for Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty and chauffeur of Kesey’s bus. Then she sleeps again, slipping back into the sixties as day slides into night. Jeff and Debbie talk in hushed whispers, saying, ‘Isn’t she something?’ and ‘Yeah, a tie-dyed dinosaur.’
    I stare at her folded figure and see a story-spinner, stuck in a time warp, so tribal that she speaks only to those who know her language. Her juvenility fringes on the naive. Her introversion whiffs of egotism. Yet there remains an enticing purity about her, as if the ideals of her youth still guide her daily decisions and the trials of the world have not tarnished the dream of her own existence.
    It’s dark when we reach the coast. The azure Mediterranean is a black void which fills the windscreen. We pull off the highway after midnight and shudder down a dirt track to Kadir’s Treehouses. The electricity has failed, so the only light comes from our headlights.
    Along the floor of the steep, forested valley, wooden cabins rise on timber stilts. Above our heads, perilous walkways like narrow Nepalese footbridges loop between cock-eyed balconies. A year ago, the lofty shanty town won a Golden Backpack Award as the world’s best hostel, but tonight its treetop love nests and rickety, cedar-bark dormitories seem deserted. No travellers do yoga on the open verandas. No sunburnt guests play backgammon in the trees.
    Mary suggests that, rather than disturb her, we let Penny sleepon in the Camper, but she’s wide awake as soon as the engine is switched off.
    â€˜I’m not tired,’ she sparks. Then she asks, ‘What’s that noise?’
    Music echoes up from the beach. I try to make out the song.
    â€˜Dear God,’ Penny laughs in recognition. ‘It’s Jimmy Morrison.’

6. Light My Fire
    â€˜You know that it would be untrue…’
    We’re stumbling in the dark towards the music, blind but for torchlight playing off the stones. Around us rises a forest of ancient masonry within a lush grove of vines and wafer-leafed bay trees. Our light catches a bone, a pillar, a startled night bird. Its feeble beam shivers off a glass-smooth pool.
    â€˜â€¦ You know that I would be a