d me gonna go flyin down that Bay Shore highway and as usual you're gonna ask your usual dumb almost Okie wino questions, Hey Cody" (whining like a old drunk) 7 b'lieve we're coming into Burlingame aint it? and you're always wrong, hee hee, old crazy dumb fuckin old Jack, then we go rubbin shoulders into that City and go poppin right up to my sweet little old baby Willamine that I want you to meet inasmuch and also I want you go dig because she's gonna dig YOU my dear old sonumbitch Jack, and I'm gonna leave you two little lovebirds together for days on end alone, you can live there and just enjoy that gone little woman because also" (his tone now businesslike) "I want her to dig as much as possible everything you got to tell her about what YOU know, hear me? She's my soulmate and confidante and mistress and I want her to be happy and learn" -- "What's she look like? " I ask grossly -- And I see the grimace on his face, he really knows me, "Eh well she looks alright, she has a gone little body that's all I can say and in bed she is by far the first and only and last possible greatest everything you dig" -- This being just another of a long line of occasions when Cody gets me to be a sub-beau for his beauties so that everything can tie in together, he really loves me like a brother and more than that, he gets annoyed at me sometimes especially when I fumble and blumble like with a bottle or the time I almost stripped the gears of the car because I forgot I was driving, in which case actually I remind him of his old wino father but the fantastic thing is that HE reminds ME of MY father so that we have this strange eternal father-image relationship that goes on and on sometimes with tears, it's easy for me to think of Cody and almost cry, sometimes I can see the same tearful expression in his eyes when he sometimes looks at me -- He reminds me of my father because he too blusters and hurries and fills all his pockets with Racing Forms and papers and pencils and we're all ready to go on some mission in the night he takes with ultimate seriousness as tho we were going on the last trip of them all but it always ends up being a hilarious meaningless Marx Brothers adventure which gives me even more reason to love him (and my father too) -- That way -- And finally in the book I wrote about us ('On The Road') I forgot to mention two important things, that we were both devout little Catholics in our childhood, which gives us something in common tho we never talk about it, it's just there in our natures, and secondly and most important that strange business when we shared another girl (Marylou, or that is, let's call her Joanna) and Cody at the time announced "That's what we'll be old buddy, you and me, double husbands, later on we'll have whole Harreeeem and reams of Hareems boy, and we'll call ourselves or that is" (flutter) "ourself Duluomeray, see Duluoz and Pomeray, Duluo-meray, see, hee hee hee" tho he was younger then and really silly but that gives an indication of the way he felt about me: some kind of new thing in the world actually where men can really be angelic friends and not be homosexual and not fight over girls -- But alas the only thing we'd ever fought about was money, or the ridiculous time we fought about a little line of marijuana dust running down the middle of a page where we were separating our shares with a knife, when I objected I wanted some of the dust he yelled "Our original agreement had nothing to do with the dust! " and he slumps it all into his pocket and stalks off redfaced so I jump up and pack and announce I'm leaving and Evelyn drives me to the City but the car won't start (this is years ago) so Cody redfaced and crazy and ashamed now has to push us with the clunker, there we go down San Jose boulevard with Cody behind us pushing us and with Cody behind us pushing us and bumping us not just to give us a start but to chastise me for being so greedy and I shouldnt leave at all -- In fact he'd back up and come up on our rear and really wham us -- That night ending me dead drunk on Mal Damlette's floor on North Beach -- And in any case the whole question of us, the two most advanced men friends in the world still fighting over money after all being, as Julien says in New York, indication of the fact that "Money is the only thing Canucks ever fight about, and Okies too I guess" but Julien I suppose imagining and fantasizing himself as a noble Scotsman who fights about honor (tho I tell him "Ah you Scotchmen save your spit in your watchpocket'). Lacrimae rerum, the tears of things, all the years behind me and Cody, the way I always say "me and Cody" instead of "Cody and I" or some such, and Irwin watching us across the world night now with a bite of marvel on his lower lip saying "Ah, angels of the West, Companions in Heaven" and writing letters asking "What now, what's the latest, what visions, what arguments, what sweet agreements? " and such. That night the kids end up sleeping in the jeep anyway because they're afraid of the big black woods and I sleep by the creek in my bag and in the morning we're all set to go back to Los Gatos and see the villain play -- Frustrated Ron is casting sad eyes at Evelyn, apparently she's put him off because she says to me (and I dont blame her) "Really the way Cody presses people on me it's awful, at least I should have my own choice" (but she laughing because it's funny and it is funny the way Cody does it anxious and harried wondering if that's what she really wants and wants no such thing) -- 'At least not with utter strangers, " says I to be funny -- She: "Besides I'm so sick of all this sex business, that's all he talks about, his friends, here they are all open channels to do good as co creators with God and all they think about is behinds -- that's why you're so refreshing" she adds -- "But I aint so refreshing as all that? hey! " -- But that's my relationship with Evelyn, we're real pals and we can kid about anything even the first night I met her in Denver in 1947 when we danced and Cody watched anxiously, a kind of romantic pair in fact and I shudder sometimes to think of all that stellar mystery of how she IS going to get me in a future lifetime, wow -- And I seriously do believe that will be my salvation, too. A long way to go. 25 The silly stupid hiss-the-villain play is alright in itself but just as we arrive at the scene of the chuck wagons and tents all done up real old western style there's a big fat sheriff type with two sixshooters standing at the admission gate, Cody says "That's to give it color see" but I'm drunk and as we all pile out of the car I go up to the fat sheriff and start telling him a Southern joke (in fact just the plot of an Erskine Caldwell short story) which he receives with a witless smiling expression or really like the expression of an executioner or a Southern constable listening to a Yankee talk -- So naturally I'm surprised later when we go into the cute old west saloon and the kids start banging on the old piano and I join them with big loud Stravinsky chords, here comes two gun sheriff fatty coming in and saying in a menacing voice like TV western movies "You cant play that piano" -- I'm surprised, turning to Evelyn, to learn that he's the blasted proprietor of the whole place and if he says I cant play the piano there's nothing I can do about it legally -- But besides that he's got actual bullets in those six guns -- He's going all out to play the part -- But to be yanked from joyful pianothumping with kids to see that awful dead face of negative horror I just jump up and say "Alright, the hell with it I'm leaving anyway" so Cody follows me to the car where I take another swig of white port -- "Let's get the hell out of here" I say... "Just what I was thinkin about, " says Cody, "in fact I've already arranged with the director of the play to drive Evelyn and the kids home so we'll just go to the City now" -- "Great! " -- "And I've told Evelyn we're cuttin out so let's go. " ` 'I'm sorry Cody I screwed up your little family party'- "No No" he protests "Man I have to come to these things you know and be a big hubby and father type and you know I'm on parole and I gotta put up appearances but it's a drag" -- To show what a drag it is we go scootin down that road passing six cars easy as pie -- "And I'm GLAD this happened because it gave us an excuse, hee hee titter you know to get outa there, I was thinking for an excuse when it happened, that old fart is crazy you know! he's a millionaire you know! I've talked to him, that little beady brain, and you be glad you missed hangin around till that performance, man, and that AUDIENCE, ow, ugh, I almost wish I was back in San Quentin but here we go, son! " So of old we're alone in a car at night bashing down the line to a specific somewhere, nothing nowhere about it whatever, especially this time in a way -- That white line is feeding into our fender like an anxious impatient electronic quiver shuddering in the night and how beautifully sometimes it curves one side or the other as he smoothly swerves for passing or for something else, avoiding a bump or something... And on the big highway Bay Shore how beautifully he just swings in and out of lanes almost effortlessly and completely unnoticeable passing to the right and to the left without a flaw all kinds of cars with anxious eyes turning to us, altho he's the only one on the road who knows how to drive completely well -- it's blue dusk all up and down the California world -- Frisco glitters up ahead -- Our radio plays rhythm and blues as we pass the joint back and forth in jutjawed silence both looking ahead with big private thoughts now so vast we cant communicate them any more and if we tried it would take a million years and a billion books -- Too late, too late, the history of everything we've seen together and separately has become a library in itselt -- me shelves pile higher -- They're full of misty documents or documents of the Mist -- The mind has convoluted in every tuckaway every-whichaway tuckered hole till there's no more the expressing of our latest thoughts let alone old -- Mighty genius of the mind Cody whom I announce as the greatest writer the world will ever know if he ever gets down to writing again like he did earlier -- It's so enormous we both sit here sighing in fact -- "No the only writing I done, " he says, "a few letters to Willamine, in fact quite a few, she's got em all wrapped in ribbons there, I figgered if I tried to write a book or sumptin or prose or sumptin they'd just take it away from me when I left so I wrote her "bout three letters a week for two years -- and the trouble of course and as I say and you've heard a million times is the mind flows the mind rises and nobody can by any possible c- oh hell, I dont wanta talk about it" -- Besides I can see from glancing at him that becoming a writer holds no interest for him because life is so holy for him there's no need to do anything but live it, writing's just an afterthought or a scratch anyway at the surface -- But if he could! if he would! there I am riding in California miles away from home where my poor cat's buried and my mother grieves and that's what I'm thinking. It always makes me proud to love the world somehow -- Hate's so easy compared -- But here I go flattering myself helling headbent to the silliest hate I ever had. 26 Altho Cody's said these things I'm very well aware that the real arrangement of the evening is that we're just going to see Billie together so she can get her kicks meeting me (after hearing about me from him and after reading my books etc. ) and in fact Cody has already conferred with Evelyn about how I'm going to be staying at their house in Los Gatos for a month, as of old sleeping in my bag in the backyard not because they dont want me to sleep in the house but it's my idea, but it's beautiful anyway to sleep under the stars and anyway I therefore keep out of the way of the family when they get up to go to work and school... At noon they see me shambling in from the big back field yard yawning for coffee -- And I'm in line for that, i. e., that's what I want to do and that's my plan -- but when we run upstairs to Willamine's apartment and come bursting in to this neat little well arranged pad with goldfish bowl, books, strange doodads, neat kitchen, the whole clean as a pin, and there's Billie herself a blonde with arched eyebrows exactly like the male Julien blond with arched eyebrows and I yell out "It's Julien by God it's Julien! " (and by now I'm drunk anyway because we've as of old picked up an old hitch hiker on Bay Shore who says his name is Joe Ihnat and we bought him a bottle and I bought me one too, never will forget old Joe Ihnat in fact somehow because he said he was a Russian and his was an ancient Russian name and when I wrote out our names he said my name was an ancient Russian name also) (tho it's Breton) (and also told us he'd just been beaten up by a young Negro for no reason in a public toilet and Cody gasps and says to me "I've met those Negroes that beat up old men, they're called the Strongarms in San Quentin, they're all put away among themselves away from the other prisoners, they're all Negroes and it seems all they wanta do is beat up old defenseless men, he's tellin the absolute truth'... "But why do they do that? "... "Oh man I dont know they just wanta hit up on some old man that cant hit back and just beat him and beat him till he's dead" and Oh the horror of Cody's knowledge of the world when all is said and done) -- So now we're sitting with Billie in her pad, outside the window you see the glittering lights of the city again, ah Urbi y Roma, the world again, and she's got these mad blue eyes, arched eyebrows, intelligent face, just like Julien, I keep sayig "Julien goddamit! " and I see even in my drunkenness a little worried flutter in Cody's eyes -- The fact of the matter being, Billie and I go for each other like two tons of bricks right there in front of Cody so that when he rises and announces he's going back to Los Gatos to get some sleep to go to work it's already well agreed I'm staying right where I am and not only for tonight but for weeks months years. Poor Cody -- Yet you see I've already explained why actually subconsciously this is what he really wants to happen but he wont admit it ever and always invents reasons around this to get mad at me and call me a bastard -- But aside from Cody I find Billie to be a very companionable strange kid in this lonesome night and I actually NEED to stay with her awhile -- In fact both Billie and I explain to Cody why -- But there's nothing evil, man-against-man or sinister about any of it, it's just a strange innocence, a spontaneous burst of love in fact and Cody understands that bettern anybody else anyway so he leaves at midnight saying he'll be back tomorrow night and all of a sudden I'm alone with a charming woman and we're talking a blue streak sitting cross-legged facing each other on the floor in a litter of books and bottles. It gives me a pang of pain and remorse really now to recall that on this first night her apartment was so neat and clean and charming -- The chair by the goldfish bowl which I quickly appropriated as my old man chair, where I sat constantly sipping port for a whole week, the kitchen with its intelligent arrangements of spices and eggs in the icebox, and for that matter too the poor little son of Billie sleeping in a well arranged back room (her son from her deceased husband who was also a railroad man) Elliott the child's name and I didn't get to see him till later that night -- And with the huge packet of Cody's San Quentin letters in her hand she launches forth on her theories about Cody and eternity but all I can keep saying as I swig from my bottle is "Julien, you're talking too much! Julien, Julien, my God who'd ever dream I'd run into a woman who looks like Julien... you look like Julien but you're not Julien and on top of that you're a woman, how goddam strange" -- In fact she had to pack me off to bed drunk -- But not before our first lovely undertaking of love and everything Cody said about her being absolutely true -- But the main thing being that tho she looked like Julien etc. and had Cody's big sad abstract letters about Karma in a ribbon and actually went out in the morning and earned a hundred a week in fashion modeling she had the most musical beautiful and sad voice I've ever heard in my life The things she's saying are really rather inane because after all her education is based on really Californian hysterias like the earlier mistress of Cody Rosemarie who also was thin and pale haired and crazy and kept talking abstract (Like she's saying "I thought I could do something to ease the contradiction between immanent and universal ethics which I thought was my problem and was what I hoped to gain thru therapy, like, any evolution presupposes an involution and all that kind of thinking" as I sigh, but she does say something interesting once in a while like "While Cody was in prison my main occupation was praying for him, I had an all day going, there was also a bit we did together every evening from 9: 00 to 9: 09 but he's out now and something else is happening I'm not sure what... but I'm sure we aid the storm when we transcend time in one respect and can't even keep up with it in others... ")-But also all kinds of to-me-unimportant and uninteresting crap about channels about people being either closed or open channels and Cody is a big open channel pouring out all his holy gysm on Heaven, I really can't remember, or the destinies, the sighs, the rooftops of all that, the stars are shining down on their poor heads as they draw breath to explain inanities really -- Like the letters to her (I glance at them) are all about how they've met and their souls have collided in this dimension because of some unfulfilled Karma on another planet and in another plane that is, and now they have to gird themselves to assume this big responsibility to meet some measure of this and that, I dont even wanta go into it -- Because also the fact of the matter being, when Willamine talks to me I'm utterly bored, I'm only interested in the sad music of her voice and in the strange circumstance (I guess Karmalike too) that she looks like poor Julien. Her voice is the main point -- She talks with a broken heart... Her voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost, musically too, like in a lost grove, it's almost too much to bear sometimes like some fantastic futuristic Jerry Southern singer in a night club who steps up to the mike in the spotlight in Las Vegas but doesn't even have to sing, just talk, to make men sigh and women wonder I guess (if women ever wonder)... So that as she's trying to explain all that nonsense to me (all that philosophy of hers and Cody's and Cody's new buddy Perry, coming up the next day) I just sit and marvel and stare at her mouth wondering where all the beauty is coming from and why -- And we end up making love sweetly too -- A little blonde well experienced in all the facets of lovemaking and sweet with compassion and just too much so that b'dawn we're already going to get married and fly away to Mexico in a week -- In fact I can see it now, a great big four way marriage with Cody and Evelyn. For she is the great enemy of Evelyn -- She's not satisfied just to be Cody's lover and soul heart she wants to go right over there and lay Evelyn down on the line and take Cody away with her forever and to do this she'll even have a deadend heaven deep love affair with old Jack (same pattern of old) -- There's not much difference between her and Evelyn when you listen to their talk about Cody except in Evelyn's case I'm always fascinatedly interested -- Billie actually bores me tho of course I cant tell her that -- Evelyn is still the champ and I wonder about Cody. O the ups and downs and juggling of women, blondes at that, all in that great magical City of the Gandharvas of San Francisco and here I am alone on a magic carpet with one of em, whee, at first of course it's a great ball, a great new eye-shattering explosion of experience -- Not dreaming, I, what's to come -- For with sad musical Billie in my arms and my name Billie too now, Billie and Billie arm in arm, oh beautiful, and Cody has given his consent in a way, we go roaming the Genghiz Khan clouds of soft love and hope and anybody who's never done this is crazy -- Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned, that thing I saw (that horror of snake emptiness) when I took the deep iodine deathbreath on the Big Sur beach is now justified and hosannah'd and raised up like a sacred urn to Heaven in the mere fact of the taking off of clothes and clashing wits and bodies in the inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love... Dont let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even ever dares to write the true story of love, it's awful, we're stuck with a 50% incomplete literature and drama -- Lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow -- The secret underground truth of mad desire hiding under fenders under buried junkyards throughout the world, never mentioned in newspapers, written about haltingly and like corn by authors and painted tongue in cheek by artists, agh, just listen to Tris-tan und Isolde by Wagner and think of him in a Bavarian field with his beloved naked beauty under the fall leaves. How strange in all, and making everything that's happened in the past weeks, the backs and forths and pains of me in City and Sur, all piled up now rationally like a big construction whereon could be built a divingboard which would enable me clumsily to dive into Billie's soul and therefore why complain? In the middle of the night she fetches the little 4 year old boy to show me the spiritual beauty of her son -- He is one of the weirdest persons I've ever met -- He has large liquid brown eyes very beautiful and he hates anybody who comes near his mother and keeps asking her questions constantly like "Why do you stay with him? why is he here, who is he? " or "Why is it dark outside? " or "Why does the sun shine yesterday? " or anything, he'll just ask questions about everything and she answers every one of them with extreme delight and patience till I say "Doesnt he bother you with all these questions? why dont you let him croon and goof like a little child, he's tugging at your knee asking EVERYTHING man why don't you just let him singsong? "... She answers "1 answer him because I may be missing his next question, everything he asks me and says to me represents something important about the abso-lute I may be missing" -- "What do you mean the absolute? " -- "You yourself said everything is the absolute" but of course she's right and I realize that in my dirty old soul I'm already jealous of Elliott. 27 The mat of night admits the groaning glory godlike love I guess but at the same time it's also boring in a way and we both laugh to discuss that -- We stay awake that first night till dawn discussing everything in the books from Cody in every detail down to me in every detail to her in every detail to Evelyn to books and philosophies and religions and the absolute and I end up whispering her poems... Poor kid has to get up in the morning and go to work and I'm left there snoring drunk... But she makes her neat breakfast and takes Elliott off to the daily babysitter lady and I wake up at one in the afternoon alone and take a swig of wine and get in the hot bath to read a book -- The phone keeps ringing, everybody from Monsanto to Fagan to McLear to the Moon Man has somehow found out where I am and what the number is, tho none of them have previously even met Billie let alone seen her -- I shudder to realize Cody will get mad for making his secret life so public. But here comes Perry -- Like me Perry has that strange brotherly relationship with Cody whereby he gets to be confidant and sometimes lover of all Cody's gals... And I can see why -- He looks just like me only he's young and looks like I did when first Cody met me but the point is not that so much, he is a tempestuous lost tossed soul just out of Soledad State Prison for attempted robbery with a boyish face and black hair falling over it but powerful chick muscular arms that I realize he could break a man in half with -- His name is strange too, Perry Yturbide, I immediately say: "I know what you are, Basque" -- "Basque? is that it? I never found out! let's call my mother longdistance in Utah and tell her that! " -- And he rings up his mother way over there, on Billie's phone bill, and here I am bottle of port wine in one hand and butt in mouth talking to a Basque ex con's mother in Utah telling her in fact reassuring her "Yes I believe it's a Basque name" -- She's saying "Hey, what you say? who are you? " And there's Perry smiling all glad -- A very strange kid -- It's been a long time in fact in my literary sort of life that I've met a real tough hombre like that out of jails and with those arms of steel and that fevered concern that scares governments and makes officials pale, that's why he's always put away in prison this type of man -- Yes yet the type of man the country always needs when there's a little old war started by an aging governor -- A real dangerous character, in fact, Perry, because tho I appreciate his poetic soul and everything I realize looking at him he's capable of exploding and killing somebody for an idea maybe or for love. Some of his own friends ring Billie's doorbell, everybody seems to know I'm there, they come up, they are strange anarchistic Negroes and ex cons, it seems to be some sort of gang, I begin to wonder -- Like a ring of fevered sages, the Negroes are intense and crazy and intellectual but they've all got those strong muscular arms again and all have jail records yet they all talk as tho the end of the world depended on their words -- Hard to explain (but will do). Billie and her gang in fact, with all that fancy rigamarole about spiritual matters I wonder if it isnt just a big secret hustler outfit tho I also realize that I've noticed it before in San Francisco a kind of ephemeral hysteria that hides in the air over the rooftops among certain circles there leading always to suicide and maim... Me just an innocent lost hearted meditator and Goop among strange intense criminal agitators of the heart -- It reminds me in fact of a nightmare I had just before coming out to the Coast, in the dream I'm back in San Francisco but there's something funny going on: there's dead silence throughout the entire city: men like printers and office executives and house-painters are all standing silently in second floor windows looking down on the empty streets of San Francisco: once in a while some beatniks walk by below, also silent: they're being watched but not only by the authorities but by everybody: the beatniks seem to have the whole street system to themselves: but nobody's saying anything: and in this intense silence I take a ride on a self propelled platform right downtown and out to the farms where a woman running a chicken farm invites me to join her and live with her... The little platform rolling quietly as the people are watching from windows in groups of profile like the profiles in old Van Dyck paintings, intense, suspicious, momentous -- This Billie business reminding me of that but because to me the only thing that matters is the conceptions in my own mind, there has to be no reality anyway to what I suppose is going on -- But this also an indication of the coming madness in Big Sur. 28 Strange -- and Perry Yturbide that first day while Billie's at work and we've just called his mother now wants me to come with him to visit a general of the US Army -- 'Why? and what's all these generals looking out of silent windows? " I say -- but nothing surprises Perry -- "We'll go there because I want you to dig the most beautiful girls we ever saw, " in fact we take a cab -- But the "beautiful girls" turn out to be eight and nine and ten years old, daughters of the general or maybe even cousins or daughters of a next door strange general, but the mother is there, there are also boys playing in a backroom, we have Elliott with us whom Perry has carried on his shoulders all the way -- I look at Perry and he says "I wanted you to see the most beautiful little cans in town" and I realize he's dangerously insane -- In fact he then says "See this perfect beauty? " a pony tailed ten year old daughter of the general (who ain't home yet) "I'm going to kidnap her right now" and he takes her by the hand and they go out on the street for an hour while I sit there over drinks talking to the mother -- There's some vast conspiracy to make me go mad anyway -- The mother is polite as ordinarily -- The general comes home and he's a rugged big baldheaded general and with him is his best friend a photographer called Shea, a thin well combed welldressed ordinary downtown commercial photographer of the city -- I dont understand anything -- But suddenly little Elliott is crying in the other room and I rush in there and see that the two boys have whacked him or something because he did something wrong so I chastise them and carry Eliiott back into the livingroom on my shoulders like Perry does, only Eliiott wants to get down off my shoulders at once, in fact he won't even sit on my lap, in fact he hates my guts -- I call Billie desperately at her agency and she says she'll be over to pick us all up and adds 'How's Perry today? "... "He's kidnapping little girls he says are beautiful, he wants to marry ten year old girls with pony tails" -- "That's the way he is, be sure to dig him" -- In her musical sad voice over the phone. I turn my poor tortured attention to the general who says he was an anti-Fascist fighter with the Maquis during World War II and also a guerilla in the South Pacific and knows one of the finest restaurants in San Francisco where we can all go feast, a Fillipino restaurant near Chinatown, I say okay, great -- He gives me more booze -- Seeing the amusing Irish face of Shea the photographer I yell "You can take my picture anytime you want" and he says sinister: "Not for propaganda reasons, anything but propaganda reasons" -- "What the hell do you mean propaganda reasons, I aint got nothin to do with propaganda" (and here comes Perry back through the door with Poopoo holding his hand, they've gone to dig the street and have a coke) and I realize everybody is just living their lives quietly but it's only me that's insane. In fact I yearn to have old Cody around to explain all this to me tho it soon becomes apparent to me not even Cody could explain, I'm beginning to go seriously crazy, just like Subterranean Irene went crazy tho I don't realize it yet... I'm beginning to read plots into every simple line -- Besides the "general" scares me even further by turning out to be a strange affluent welldressed civilian who doesn't even help me to pay the tab for the Fillipino dinner which we have, meeting Billie at the restaurant, and the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunchy mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say "Fuck you, I eat the way I like" splashing gravy everywhere I cant understand what's going on -- Because also the general has suggested this dinner but I have to pay for everybody, him, Shea, Perry, Billie, Eliiott, me, others, strange apocalyptic madness is now shuddering in my eyeballs and I'm even running out of money in their Apocalypse which they themselves have created in this San Francisco silence anyway. I yearn to go hide and cry in Evelyn's arms but I end up hiding in Billie's arms and here she goes again, the second evening, explaining all her spiritual ideas -- "But what about Perry? what's he up to? and who's that strange general? what are you, a bunch of communists? " 29 The little child refuses to sleep in his crib but has to come trotting out and watch us make love on the bed but Billie says "That's good, he'll learn, what other way will he ever learn? " -- I feel ashamed but because Billie is there and she's the mother I must go along and not worry... Another sinister fact -- At one point the poor child is drooling long slavers of spit from his lips watching, I cry "Billie, look at him, it's not good for him" but she says again "Anything he wants he can have, even us. " "But kid it's not fair, why doesn't he just sleep? " -- "He doesn't wanta sleep, he wants to be with us" -- "Ooh, " and I realize Billie is insane and I'm not as insane as I thought and there's something wrong -- I feel myself skidding: also because during the following week I keep sitting in that same chair by the goldfish bowl drinking bottle after bottle of port like an automaton, worrying about something, Monsanto comes to visit, McLear, Fagan, everybody, they call to me dashing up the stairs and we have long drunken days talking but I never seem to get out of that chair and never even take another delightful warm bath reading books -- And at night Billie comes home and we pitch into love again like monsters who dont know what else to do and by now I'm too blurry to know what's going on anyway tho she reassures me everything is alright, and meanwhile Cody has completely disappeared -- In fact I call him up and say "Are you gonna come back and get me here? " -- "Yes yes yes in a few days, stay there" as tho maybe he wants me to learn what's happening like putting me through an ordeal to see what I have to say about it because he's been through the ordeal himself. In fact everything is going crazy. Perry's visits scare me: I begin to think he must be one of those "strong armers" who beat up old men: I watch him warily -- All this time he's pacing back and forth saying "Man dont you appreciate those sweet little cans? what does it matter how old a woman is, nine or nineteen, those little pony tails jiggling as they walk with those little jigglin cans" -- 'Did you ever kidnap one? " -- "You out of wine, I'll make a run for you get some more, or would you rather have pot or sumptin? what's wrong with you? " -- "I dont know what's goin on! " -- "You're drinking too much maybe. Cody told me you're falling apart man, dont do it" -- "But what's goin on? " -- "Who cares, pops, we're all swinging in love and trying to go from day to day with self respect while all the squares are putting us down" -- "Who? " -- "The Squares, putting down Us ... we wanta swing and live and carry across the night like when we get to L. A. I'm goin to show you the maddest scene some friends of mine down there" (in my drunkenness I've already projected a big trip with Billie and Elliott and Perry to Mexico but we're going to stop in L. A. to see a rich woman Perry knows who's going to give him money and if she doesn't he's going to get it anyway, and as I say Billie and I are going to be married too) -- The insanest week of my life -- Billie at night saying "You're worried that I cant handle marrying you but of course we can, Cody wants it too, I'll talk to your mother and make her love me and need me: Jack! " she suddenly cries with anguished musical voice (because I've just said "Ah Billie go get yourself a he-man and get married'), "You're my last chance to marry a He Man! " -- 'Whattayou mean He Man, dont you realize I'm crazy? " -- "You're crazy but you're my last chance to have an understanding with a He Man" -- "What about Cody? " "Cody will never leave Evelyn" -- Very strange -- But more, tho I don't understand it. 30 I do understand the strange day Ben Fagan finally came to visit me alone, bringing wine, smoking his pipe, and saying "Jack you need some sleep, that chair you say you've been sitting in for days have you noticed the bottom is falling out of it? " -- I get on the floor and by God look and it's true, the springs are coming out -- "How long have you been sitting in that chair? " -- "Every day waiting for Billie to come home and talking to Perry and the others all day... My God let's go out and sit in the park, " I add -- In the blur of days McLear has also been over on a forgotten day when, on nothing but his chance mention that maybe I could get his book published in Paris I jump up and dial longdistance for Paris and call Claude Gallimard and only get his butler apparently in some Parisian suburb and I hear the insane giggle on the other end of the line -- "Is this the home, c'est le chez eux de Monsieur Gallimard? " -- Giggle -- "Ou est Monsieur Gallimard? " -- Giggle -- A very strange phone call -- McLear waiting there expectantly to get his "Dark Brown" published -- So in a fury of madness I then call London to talk to my old buddy Lionel just for no reason at all and I finally reach him at home he's saying on the wire "You're calling me from San Francisco? but why? "... Which I can't answer any more than the giggling butler (and to add to my madness, of course, why should a longdistance call to Paris to a publisher end up with a giggle and a longdistance call to an old friend in London end up with the friend getting mad? ) -- So Fagan now sees I'm going overboard crazy and I need sleep -- "We'll get abottle! " I yell -- But end up, he's sitting in the grass of the park smoking his pipe, from noon to 6 P. M., and I'm passed out exhausted sleeping in the grass, bottle unopened, only to wake up once in a while wondering where I am and by God I'm in Heaven with Ben Fagan watching over men and me. And I say to Ben when I wake up in the gathering 6 P. M. dusk "Ah Ben I'm sorry I ruined our day by sleeping like this" but he says: "You needed the sleep, I told ya" -- "And you mean to tell me you been sitting all afternoon like that? " -- 'Watching unexpected events, " says he, "like there seems to be sound of a Bacchanal in those bushes over there" and I look and hear children yelling and screaming in hidden bushes in the park -- "What they doing? " -- "I dont know: also a lot of strange people went by" -- "How long have I been sleeping? " -- "Ages" -- "I'm sorry" -- "Why should be sorry, I love you anyway" -- "Was I snoring? " -- 'You've been snoring all day and I've been sitting here all day" -- "What a beautiful day! " -- 'Yes it's been a beautiful day" -- "How strange! " -- "Yes, strange... but not so strange either, you're just tired" -- "What do you think of Billie? " -- He chuckles over his pipe: "What do you expect me to say? that the frog bit your leg? " -- "Why do you have a diamond in your forehead? " -- "I dont have a diamond in my forehead damn you and stop making arbitrary conceptions! " he roars -- "But what am I doing? " -- "Stop thinking about yourself, will ya, just float with the world" -- "Did the world float by the park? " -- "All day, you should have seen it, I've smoked a whole package of Edgewood, it's been a very strange day" -- "Are you sad I didn't talk to you? " -- "Not at all, in fact I'm glad: we better be starting back, " he adds, 'Billie be coming home from work soon now" -- "Ah Ben, Ah Sunflower" -- "Ah shit" he says -- "It's strange" -- "Who said it wasn't" -- "I dont understand it" -- 'Dont worry about it" -- "Hmm holy room, sad room, life is a sad room" -- "All sentient beings realize that, " he says sternly -- Benjamin my real Zen Master even more than all our Georges and Arthurs actually -- "Ben I think I'm going crazy" -- "You said that to me in 1955" -- "Yeh but my brain's gettin soft from drinkin and drinkin and drinkin" -- "What you need is a cup of tea I'd say if I didn't know that you're too crazy to know how really crazy you are" -- "But why? what's going on? " -- "Did you come three thousand miles to find out? " -- "Three thousand miles from where, after all? from whiney old me" -- "That's alright, everything is possible, even Nietzsche knew that" -- "Aint nothin wrong with old Nietzsche" -- " "Xcept he went mad too" -- "Do you think I'm going mad? " -- "Ho ho ho" (hearty laugh) -- 'What's that mean, laughing at me? " -- "Nobody's laughing at you, dont get excited" -- "What'll we do now? " -- "Let's go visit the museum over there" -- There's a museum of some sort across the grass of the park so I get up wobbly and walk with old Ben across the sad grass, at one point I put my arm over his shoulder and lean on him -- "Are you a ghoul? " I ask -- 'Sure, why not? " -- "I like ghouls that let me sleep? " -- "Duluoz it's good for you to drink in a way "cause you're awful stingy with yourself when you're sober" -- "You sound like Julien" -- "I never met Julien but I understand Billie looks like him, you kept saying that before you went to sleep" -- "What happened while I was asleep? " "Oh, people went by and came back and forth and the sun sank and finally sank down and's gone now almost as you can see, what you want, just name it you got it" -- "Well I want sweet salvation" -- "What's sposed to be sweet about salvation? maybe it's sour" -- "It's sour in my mouth" -- 'Maybe your mouth is too big, or too small, salvation is for little kitties but only for awhile" -- "Did you see any little kitties today? " -- "Shore, hundreds of came to visit you while you were sleeping" -- "Really? " -- "Sure, didn't you know you were saved? " -- "Now come on! " -- "One of them was real big and roared like a lion but he had a big wet snout and kissed you and you said "Ah"" -- "What's this museum up here? " -- "Let's go in and find out'... That's the way Ben is, he doesnt know what's going on either but at least he waits to find out maybe -- But the museum is closed -- We stand there on the steps looking at the closed door -- "Hey, " I say, "the temple is closed. " So suddenly in red sundown me and Ben Fagan arm in arm are walking slowly sadly back down the broad steps like two monks going down the esplanade of Kyoto (as I imagine Kyoto somehow) and we're both smiling happily suddenly -- I feel good because I've had my sleep but mainly I feel good because somehow old Ben (my age) has blessed me by sitting over my sleep all day and now with these few silly words -- Arm in arm we slowly descend the steps without a word -- it's been the only peaceful day I've had in California, in fact, except alone in the woods, which I tell him and says "Well, who said you werent alone now? " making me realize the ghostliness of existence tho I feel his big bulging body with my hands and say: "You sure some pathetic ghost with all that ephemeral heavy crock a flesh" -- "I didn't say nottin" he laughs -- "Whatever I say Ben, dont mind it, I'm just a fool" -- "You said in 1957 in the grass drunk on whiskey you were the greatest thinker in the world" -- "That was before I fell asleep and woke up: now I realize I'm no good at all and that makes me feel free" -- "You're not even free being no good, you better stop thinking, that's all'... "I'm glad you visited me today. I think I might have died'... "It's all your fault'... "What are we gonna do with our lives? " -- "Oh, " he says, "I dunno, just watch em I guess" -- "Do you hate me?... well, do you like me?... well, how are things? " -- "The hicks are alright" -- "Anybody hex ya lately...? "... "Yeh, with cardboard games? " -- "Cardboard games? " I ask... "Well you know, they build cardboard houses and put people in them and the people are cardboard and the magician makes the dead body twitch and they bring water to the moon, and the moon has a strange ear, and all that, so I'm alright, Goof. " 'Okay. " 31 So there I am as it starts to get dark standing with one hand on the window curtain looking down on the street as Ben Fagan walks away to get the bus on the corner, his big baggy corduroy pants and simple blue Goodwill workshirt, going home to the bubble bath and a famous poem, not really worried or at least not worried about what I'm worried about tho he too carries that anguishing guilt I guess and hopeless remorse that the potboiler of time hasnt made his early primordial dawns over the pines of Oregon come true -- I'm clutching at the drapes of the window like the Phantom of the Opera behind the masque, waiting for Billie to come home and remembering how I used to stand by the windows like this in my childhood and look out on dusky streets and think how awful I was in this development everybody said was supposed to be "my life" and "their lives'. -- Not so much that I'm a drunkard that I feel guilty about but that others who occupy this plane of "life on earth" with me don't feel guilty at all -- Crooked judges shaving and smiling in the morning on the way to their heinous indifferences, respectable generals ordering soldiers by telephone to go die or drop dead, pickpockets nodding in cells saying "I never hurt anybody, " "that's one thing you can say for me, yes sir', Women who regard themselves saviors of men simply stealing their substance because they think their swan-rich necks deserve it anyway (though for every swan-rich neck you lose there's another ten waiting, each one ready to lay for a lemon), in fact awful hugefaced monsters of men just because their shirts are clean deigning to control the lives of working men by running for Governor saying "Your tax money in my hands will be aptly used, " "You should realize how valuable I am and how much you need me, without me what would you be, not led at all? " -- Forward to the big designed mankind cartoon of a man standing facing the rising sun with strong shoulders with a plough at his feet, the necktied governor is going to make hay while the sun rises -- ? -- I feel guilty for being a member of the human race -- Drunkard yes and one of the worst fools on earth -- In fact not even a genuine drunkard just a fool -- But I stand there with hand on curtain looking down for Billie, who's late, Ah me, I remember that frightening thing Mila-repa said which is other than those reassuring words of his I remembered in the cabin of sweet loneness on Big Sur: "When the various experiences come to light in meditation, do not be proud and anxious to tell other people, else to Goddesses and Mothers you will bring annoyance" and here I am a perfectly obvious fool American writer doing just that not only for a living (which I was always able to glean anyway from railroad and ship and lifting boards and sacks with humble hand) but because if I don't write what actually I see happening in this unhappy globe which is rounded by the contours of my deathskull I think I'll have been sent on earth by poor God for nothing -- Tho being a Phantom of the Opera why should that worry me? -- In my youth leaning my brow hopelessly on the typewriter bar, wondering why God ever was anyway? -- Or biting my lip in brown glooms in the parlor chair in which my father's died and we've all died a million deaths -- Only Fagan can understand and now he's got his bus -- And when Billie comes home with Elliott I smile and sit down in the chair and it utterly collapses under me, blang, I'm sprawled on the floor with surprise, the chair has gone. 'How'd that happen? " wonders Billie and at the same time we both look at the fishbowl and both the goldfishes are upsidedown floating dead on the surface of the water. I've been sitting in that chair by that fishbowl for a week drinking and smoking and talking and now the goldfish are dead. "What killed them? " "I don't know" -- "Did I kill them because I gave them some Kelloggs corn flakes? " -- "Mebbe, you're not supposed to give them anything but their fish food" -- "But I thought they were hungry so I gave them a few flicks of corn flakes" -- "Well I dont know what killed them'... "But why dont anybody know? what happened? why do they do this? otters and mouses and every damn thing dyin on all sides Billie, I cant stand it, it's all my goddam fault every time! " -- "Who said it was your fault dear? "... "Dear? you call me dear? why do you call me dear? "... "Ah, let me love you" (kissing me), "just because you dont deserve it" -- (Chastised): "Why dont I deserve it" -- "Because you say so... " -- "But what about the fish'... "I dont know, really" -- "Is it because I've been sitting in that crumbling chair all week blowing smoke on their water? and all the others smoking and all the talk? " -- But the little kid Elliott comes crawling up his mommy's lap and starts asking questions: "Billie, " he calls her, "Billie, Billie, Billie, " feeling her face, I'm almost going mad from the sadness of it all -- "What did you do all day? " -- "I was with Ben Fagan and slept in the park... Billie what are we gonna do? " -- "Anytime you say like you said, we'll get married and fly to Mexico with Perry and Elliott'... 'I'm afraid of Perry and I'm afraid of Elliott" -- "He's only a little boy" -- "Billie I dont wanta get married. I'm afraid... " -- 'Afraid? " -- "I wanta go home and die with my cat. " I could be a handsome thin young president in a suit sitting in an oldfashioned rocking chair, no instead I'm just the Phantom of the Opera standing by a drape among dead fish and broken chairs -- Can it be that no one cares who made me or why?... "Jack what's the matter, what are you talking about? " but suddenly as she's making supper and poor little Elliott is waiting there with spoon upended in fist I realize it's just a little family home scene and I'm just a nut in the wrong place -- And in fact Billie starts saying "Jack we should be married and have quiet suppers like this with Elliott, something would sanctify you forever I'm positive. " 'What have I done wrong? " -- "What you've done wrong is withhold your love from a woman like me and from previous women and future women like me -- can you imagine all the fun we'd have being married, putting Elliott to bed, going out to hear jazz or even taking planes to Paris suddenly and all the things I have to teach you and you teach me -- instead all you've been doing is wasting life really sitting around sad wondering where to go and all the time it's right there for you to take" "Supposin I dont want it" -- "That's part of the picture where you say you dont want it, of course you want... " -- "But I dont, I'm a creepy strange guy you dont even know" -- ('Cweepy? what's cweepy? Billie? what's cweepy? " is asking poor little Elliott)... And meanwhile Perry comes in for a minute and I pointblank say to him 'I don't understand you Perry, 1 love you, dig you, you're wild, but what's all this business where you wanta kidnap little girls? " but suddenly as I'm asking that I see tears in his eyes and I realize he's in love with Billie and has always been, wow I even say it, "You're in love with Billie aint ya? I'm sorry, I'm cuttin out" -- "What are you talkin about man? " -- It's a big argument then about how he and Billie are just friends so 1 start singing Just Friends like Sinatra "Two friends but not like before" but goodhearted Perry seeing me sing runs downstairs to get another bottle for me -- But nevertheless the fish are dead and the chair is broken. Perry in fact is a tragic young man with enormous potentials who's just let himself swing and float to hell I guess, unless something else happens to him soon, I look at him and realize that besides loving Billie secretly and truly he must also love old Cody as much as I do and all the world bettern I do yet he is the character who is always being put away behind bars for this -- Rugged, covered with woe, he sits there with his black hair always over his brow, over his black eyes, his iron arms hanging helplessly like the arms of a powerful idiot in the madhouse, with the beauty of lostness pasted all over him -- Who is he? in fact? -- And why doesnt blonde Billie washing the homey dishes there acknowledge his love? -- In fact me and Perry end up we're both sitting with hanging heads when Billie comes back in the livingroom and sees us like that, like two repentant catatonics in hell -- Some Negro comes in and says if I give him a few dollars he'll get some pot but as soon as I give him five dollars he suddenly says "Well I aint gonna get nothin" -- 'You got five dollars, go out and get it" -- "I aint sure I can get any" -- I dont like him at all -- I suddenly realize I can leap up and throw him on the floor and take the five dollars away from him but I dont even care about the money but I am mad about him doing that -- "Who is that guy? " -- I know that if I start fighting him he has a knife and we'll wreck Billie's livingroom too -- But suddenly another Negro comes in and turns out a sweet visit talking about jazz and brotherhood and they all leave and me and Billie are alone to wonder some more. All the muscular gum of sex is such a bore, but Billie and I have such a fantastic sexball anyway that's why we're able to philosophize like that and agree and laugh together in sweet nakedness "Oh baby we're together crazy, we could live in an old log cabin in the hills and never say anything for years, it was meant that we'd meet'... She's saying all kinds of things as an idea begins to dawn on me: 'Say I know Billie, let's leave the City and take Elliott with us and go to Monsanto's cabin in the woods for a week or two and forget everything" "Yes I can call up my boss right now and get a coupla weeks off, Oh Jack let's do it" -- "And it'll be good for Elliott, get away from all these sinister friends of yours, my God" -- "Perry aint sinister. " 'We'll get married and go away and have a lodge in the Adirondacks, at night by the lamp we'll have simple suppers with Elliott" -- Til make love to you always" "But you wont even have to because we both realize we're bugs... our lodge will have truth written all over it but tho the whole world come smear it with big black paints of hate and lies we'll be falling dead drunk in truth" "Have some coffee" -- "My hands'll grow numb and I wont be able to handle the axe but still I'll be the truth man... I'll stand by the drape of the window night listening to the babble of all the world and I'll tell you about it" "But Jack I love you and that's not the only reason why, don't you see that we're meant for each other from the beginning, didn't you see that when you came in with Cody and started calling me Julien for that silly reason you told me about where I look like some old buddy you know in New York" -- "Who hates Cody's guts and Cody hates him" -- 'But dont you see what a waste it is? " -- "But what about Cody? you want me to marry you but you love Cody and in fact Perry loves you too? " -- "Sure but what's wrong with that or all that? there's perfect love between us forever there's no doubt about it but we only have two bodies" -- (a strange statement) -- I stand by the window looking out on the glittering San Francisco night with its magic cardboard houses saying "And you have Elliott who doesnt like me and I dont like myself either, how about that? " (Billie says nothing to this but only stores up an anger that comes out later) -- 'But we can call Dave Wain and he'll drive us to Big Sur cabin and we'll be alone in the woods at least" -- "I'm telling you that's what I wanta do! " -- "Call him now! " -- I tell her the number and she dials it like a secretary "O the sad music of it all, I've done it all, seen it all, done everything with everybody" I say phone in hand, "the whole world's coming on like a high school sophomore eager to learn what he calls New things, mind you, the same old singsong sad song truth of death... because the reason I yell death so much is because I'm really yelling life, because you cant have death without life, hello Dave? there you are? know what I'm callin you about? listen pal... take that big brunette Romana that Rumanian madwoman and pack her in Willie and come down to Billie's here and pick us up, we'll pack while you's en route, honey's on, and we'll all go spend two weeks of bliss in/ Monsanto's cabin" -- "Does Monsanto agree? "... "I'll call him right now and ask him, he'll say sure'... "Well I thought I'd be painting Romana's wall tomorrow but maybe I'd a just got drunk doin that anyway: sure you wanta do all this now? " -- "Yes yeh yeh, come on... " "And I can bring Romana? " ... "Yes but why not? "... "And what's the purpose of all this? "... "Ah Daddy, maybe just to see you again and we can talk about purposes anywhere: you wanta go on a lecture tour to Utah university and Brown university and tell the well scrubbed kids? " -- 'Scrubbed with what? "... "Scrubbed with hopeless perfection of pioneer puritan hope that leaves nothing but dead pigeons to look at? " -- "Okay I'll be right out... first I gotta get Willie's tank filled up and an oil change too" -- 'I'll pay you when you get here" -- "I heard you were eloping with Billie" -- "Who told you that? " -- "It was in the paper today'... "Well we'll start off by getting into Willie again and dont bring Ron Blake, we'll be just two couples dig? " -- 'Yeh -- and lissen I'll bring my surf castin rod and catch some fish down there'... "We'll have a ball... and listen Dave I'm grateful you're free and willing to drive us down there, I'm down in the mouth, I've been sitting here for a week drinking and the chair broke and the fish died and I'm all screwed up again" -- "Well you shouldnt oughta drink that sweet stuff all the time and you never eat" -- "But that's not the real trouble" "Well we'll decide what the real trouble is" -- "That's right" -- "Methinks the real trouble is those pigeons" -- "Why? " "I dunno, remember when we were in East St Louis with George, and Jack you said you'd love those beautiful dancing girls if you knew they would live forever as beautiful as they are? " "But that's only a quote from Buddha" -- "Yeh, but the girls didn't expect all that" -- "How ya feeling Dave? what's Fagan doing tonight" -- "Oh he's sitting in his room writing something, calls it his G O O F B O O K, has big wild drawings in it, and Lex Pascal is drunk again and the music is playing and I'm real sad and I'm glad you called'... "You like me Dave? " -- "I ain't got nothin else to do, kid" -- "But you really have somethin else to do really? " -- "Lissen never mind, I'll be up, you call Monsanto right away tho because we also gotta get the corral gate keys from him" -- "I'm glad I know you Dave" -- "Me too Jack" -- "Why? " "Maybe I wanted to stand on my head in the snow to prove it but I do, am glad, will be glad, after all that's right there's nothing else for us to do but solve these damn problems and I've got one right here in my pants for Romana" "But that's so sick and tired to call life a problem that can be solved" -- "Yes but I'm just repeating what I read in the dead pigeon textbooks" -- "But Dave I love you" -- "Okay I'll be right over. " 32 We pack up little Eliott's pathetic warmclothes and put food together and get the hamper all set and wait for Dave to come sadly in the night -- And we have a big talk... "Billie but why did the fish die? " but she knows already they probably died because I gave them Kelloggs cornflakes or something went wrong, one thing sure is that she didnt forget to feed them or anything, it's all me, all my fault, I'd as soon be rusted by autumn too-much-think than be dead-fisher cause of those poor little hunks of golden death floating on that scummy water -- It reminds me of the otter -- But I cant explain it to Billie who's all abstract and talking about our abstract soul-meetings in hell, and little Elliott is pulling at her asking "Where we going? where we going? what for? what for? " She's saying "And all because you think you don't deserve to be loved because you think you caused the death of the goldfish tho they probably just died on their own accord'... "Why would they do that? why? what kind of logic is that for fish to have? " -- "Or because you think you drink too much and therefore every time you're feeling good on a little booze you give up and say your hands hang helpless, like you said last night when you were holding me with those hands blessing my heart and my body with your love, O Jack it's time for you to wake up and come with me or at least come with somebody and open your eyes to why God's put you here, stop all that staring at the floor, you and Perry both you're crazy -- I'll draw you magic moon circles'll change all your luck" -- I look her dead in the eye and it is blue and I say "O Billie, forgive me" -- "But you see you go there talkin guilty again" -- "Well I dont know all those big theories about how everything should be goddamit all I know is that I'm a helpless hunk of helpful horse manure looking in your eye saying Help me" -- "But when you make those big final statements it doesnt help you" -- "Of course I know that but what do you want? " -- "I want us to get married and settle down to a sensible understanding about eternal things" -- "And you may be right" -- I see it all raving before me the endless yakking kitchen mouthings of life, the long dark grave of tomby talks under midnight kitchen bulbs, in fact it fills me with love to realize that life so avid and misunderstood nevertheless reaches out skinny skeleton hand to me and to Billie too -- But you know what I mean. And this is the way it begins. 33 It sounds all so sad but it was actually such a gay night as Dave and Romana came over and there's all the business of packing boxes and clothes down to the car, nipping out of bottles, getting ready in fact to sing all the way to Big Sur 'Home On the Range" and "I'm Just a Lonsome Old Turd" by Dave Wain -- Me sitting up front next to Dave and Romana for some reason maybe because I wanted to identify with my old broken front rockingchair and lean there flapping and singing but with Romana between us the seat is pinned down and no longer flaps -- Meanwhile Billie is on the back mattress with sleeping child and off we go booming down Bay Shore to that other shore whatever it will bring, the way people always feel whenever they essay some trip long or short especially in the night... The eyes of hope looking over the glare of the hood into the maw with its white line feeding in straight as an arrow, the lighting of fresh cigarettes, the buckling to lean forward to the next adventure something that's been going on in America ever since the covered wagons clocked the deserts in three months flat -- Billie doesn't mind that I dont sit in back with her because she knows I wanta sing and have a good time -- Romana and I hit up fantastic medleys of popular and folk songs of all kinds and Dave contributes his New York Chicago blue light nightclub romantic baritone specialities -- My wavering Sinatra is barely heard in fact -- Beat on your knees and yell and sing Dixie and Banjo On My Knee, get raucous and moan out Red River Valley, "Where's my harmonica, I been meanin to buy me a eight dollar harmonica for eight years now. " It always starts out good like that, the bad moments -- Nothing is gained or lost also by the fact that I insist we stop at Cody's en route so I can pick up some clothes I left there but secretly I want Evelyn to finally come face to face with Billie -- It surprises me more however to see the look of absolute fright on Cody's face as we pour into his livingroom at midnight and I announce that Billie's in the jeep sleeping -- Evelyn is not perturbed at all and in fact says to me privately in the kitchen "I guess it was bound to happen sometime she'd come here and see it but I guess it was destined to be you who'd bring her" "What's Cody so worried about? " -- "You're spoiling all his chance to be real secretive" -- "He hasnt come and seen us for a whole week, that's in a way what happened, he just left me stranded there: I've been feeling awful, too" -- "Well if you want you can ask her to come in" "Well we're leaving in a minute anyway, you wanta see her at least? " "I dont care" -- Cody is sitting in the livingroom absolutely rigid, stiff, formal, with a big Irish stone in his eye: I know he's really mad at me this time tho I dont really know why I go out and there's Billie alone in the car over sleeping Elliott biting her fingernail -- "You wanta come in and meet Evelyn? " -- "I shouldnt, she wont like that, is Cody there? " -- "Yah" -- So Willamine climbs out (I remember just then Evelyn telling me seriously that Cody always calls his women by their full first names, Rosemarie, Joanna, Evelyn, Willamine, he never gives them silly nicknames nor uses them). The meeting is not eventful, of course, both girls keep their silence and hardly look at each other so it's all me and Dave Wain carrying on with the usual boloney and I see that Cody is really very sick and tired of me bringing gangs arbitrarily to his place, running off with his mistress, getting drunk and thrown out of family plays, hundred dollars or no hundred dollars he probably feels I'm just a fool now anyway and hopelessly lost forever but I dont realize that myself because I'm feeling good -- I want us to resume down that road singing bawdier and darker songs till we're negotiating narrow mountain roads at the pitch of the greatest songs. I try to ask Cody about Perry and all the other strange characters who visit Billie in the City but he just looks at me out of the corner eye and says "Ah, yah, hm, "... I dont know and I never will know what he's up to anyway in the long run: I realize I'm just a silly stranger goofing with other strangers for no reason far away from anything that ever mattered to me whatever that was... Always an ephemeral "visitor" to. the Coast never really involved with anyone's lives there because I'm always ready to fly back across the country but not to any life of my own on the other end either, just a traveling stranger like Old Bull Balloon, an exemplar of the loneliness of Doren Coit actually waiting for the only real trip, to Venus, to the mountain of Mien Mo -- Tho when I look out of Cody's livingroom window just then I do see my star still shining for me as it's done all these 38 years over crib, out ship windows, jail windows, over sleepingbags only now it's dummier and dimmer and getting blurreder damnit as tho even my own star be now fading away from concern for me as I from concern for it... In fact we're all strangers with strange eyes sitting in a midnight livingroom for nothing -- And small talk at that, like Billie saying "I always wanted a nice fireplace" and I'm yelling "Dont worry we got one at the cabin hey Dave? and all the wood's chopped! " and Evelyn: -- 'What does Monsanto think of you using his cabin all summer, weren't you supposed to go there alone in secret? " -- "It's too late now! " I sing swigging from the bottle without which I'd only drop with shame face flat on the floor or on the gravel driveway -- And Dave and Romana look a little uneasy finally so we all get up to go, zoom, and that's the last time I see Cody or Evelyn anyway. And as I say our songs grow mightier as the road grows darker and wilder, finally here we are on the canyon road the headlights just reaching out there around bleak sand shoulders -- Down to the creek where I unlock the corral gate -- Across the meadow and back to the haunted cabin -- Where on the strength of that night's booze and getaway gladness Billie and I actually have a good time lighting fires and making coffee and gong to be together in the one sleepingbag easy as pie after we've bundled up little Elliott and Dave and Romana have retired in his double nylon bag by the creek in the moonlight. No, it's the next day and night that concerns me. 34 The whole day begins simply enough with me getting up feeling fair and going down to the creek to slurp up water in my palms and wash up, seeing the languid waving of one large brown thigh over the mass of Dave's nylons indicative of an early morning love scene, in fact Romana telling us later at breakfast "When I woke up this morning and saw all those trees and water and clouds I told Dave "It's a beautiful universe we created"'... A real Adam and Eve waking up, in fact this being one of Dave's gladdest days because he'd really wanted to get away from the City again anyway and this time with a pretty doll, and's brought his surf casting gear planning a big day -- And we've brought a lot of good food -- The only trouble is there's no more wine so Dave and Romana go off in Willie to get some more anyway at a store thirteen miles south down the highway -- Billie and I are alone talking by the fire... I begin to feel extremely low as soon as last night's alcohol wears off. Everything is trembly again, the trembling hand, I cant for a fact even light the fire and Billie has to do it -- "I cant light a fire any more! " I yell... "Well I can" she says in a rare instance when she lets me have it for being such a nut -- Little Elliott is constantly pulling at her asking this and that, "What is that stick for, to put in the fire? why? how does it burn? why does it burn? where are we? when are we leaving" and the pattern develops where she begins to talk to him instead of me anyway because I'm just sitting there staring at the floor sighing -- Later when he takes his nap we go down the path to the beach, about noon, both of us sad and silent -- "What's the matter I wonder" I say out loud -- She: 'Everything was alright last night when we slept in the bag together now you wont even hold my hand... goddamit I'm going to kill myself! " -- Because I've begun to realize in my soberness that this thing has come too far, that I dont love Billie, that I'm leading her on, that I made a mistake dragging everyone here, that I simply wanta go home now, I'm just plumb sick and tired just like Cody I guess of the whole nervewracking scene bad enough as it is always pivoting back to this poor haunted canyon which again gives me the willies as we walk under the bridge and come to those heartless breakers busting in on sand higher than earth and looking like the heartlessness of wisdom -- Besides I suddenly notice as if for the first time the awful way the leaves of the canyon that have managed to be blown to the surf are all hesitantly advancing in gusts of wind then finally plunging into the surf, to be dispersed and belted and melted and taken off to sea -- I turn around and notice how the wind is just harrying them off trees and into the sea, just hurrying them as it were to death -- In my condition they look human trembling to that brink -- Hastening, hastening -- In that awful huge roar blast of autumn Sur wind. Boom, clap, the waves are still talking but now I'm sick and tired of whatever they ever said or ever will say -- Billie wants me to stroll with her down towards the caves but I dont want to get up from the sand where I'm sitting back to boulder... She goes alone -- I suddenly remember James Joyce and stare at the waves realizing "All summer you were sitting here writing the so called sound of the waves not realizing how deadly serious our life and doom is, you fool, you happy kid with a pencil, dont you realize you've been using words as a happy game -- all those marvelous skeptical things you wrote about graves and sea death it's ALL TRUE YOU FOOL! Joyce is dead! The sea took him! it will take YOU! " and I look down the beach and there's Billie wading in the treacherous undertow, she's already groaned several times earlier (seeing my indifference and also of course the hopelessness at Cody's and the hopelessness of her wrecked apartment and wretched life) "Someday I'm going to commit suicide, " I suddenly wonder if she's going to horrify the heavens and me too with a sudden suicide walk into those awful undertows... I see her sad blonde hair flying, the sad thin figure, alone by the sea, the leaf-hastening sea, she suddenly reminds me of something... I remember her musical sighs of death and I see the words clearly imprinted in my mind over her figure in the sand: -- ST CAROLYN BY THE SEA -- "You were my last, chance" she's said but dont all women say that?... But can it be by "last chance" she doesnt mean mere marriage but some profoundly sad realization of something in me she really needs to go on living, at least that impression coming across anyway on the force of all the gloom we've shared -- Can it be I'm withholding from her something sacred just like she says, or am I just a fool who'll never learn to have a decent eternally minded deepdown relation with a woman and keep throwing that away for a song at a bottle? -- In which case my own life is over anyway and there are the Joycean waves with their blank mouths saying "Yes that's so, " and there are the leaves hurrying one by one down the sand and dumping in -- In fact the creek is freighting hundreds more of them a minute right direct from the back hills -- That big wind blasts and roars, it's all yellow sunny and blue fury everywhere -- I see the rocks wobble as it seems God is really getting mad for such a world and's about to destroy it: big cliffs wobbling in my dumb eyes: God says "It's gone too far, you're all destroying everything one way or the other wobble boom the end is NOW. " 'The Second Coming, tick lock, " I think shuddering -- St Carolyn by the Sea is going in further -- I could run and go see her but she's so far away -- I realize that if that nut is going to try this I'll have to make an awful run and swim to get her -- I get up and edge over but just then she turns around and starts back... "And if 1 call her "that nut" in my secret thoughts wonder what she calls me? " -- O hell, I'm sick of life -- If I had any guts I'd drown myself in that tiresome water but that wouldnt be getting it over at all, I can just see the big transformations and plans jellying down there to curse us up in some other wretched suffering form eternities of it -- I guess that's what the kid feels -- She looks so sad down there wandering Ophelialike in bare feet among thunders. On top of that now here come the tourists, people from other cabins in the canyon, it's the sunny season and they're out two three times a week, what a dirty look I get from the elderly lady who's apparently heard about the "author" who was secretly invited to Mr Monsanto's cabin but instead brought gangs and bottles and today worst of all trollopes -- (Because in fact earlier that morning Dave and Romana have already made love on the sand in broad daylight visible not only to others down the beach but from that high new cabin on the shoulder of the cliff) (tho hidden from sight from the bridge by cliffwall) -- So it's all well known news now there's a ball going on in Mr Monsanto's cabin and him not even here -- This elderly lady being accompanied by children of all kinds -- So that when Billie returns from the far end of the beach and starts back with me down the path (and I'm silly with a big footlong wizard pipe in my mouth trying to light it in the wind to cover up) the lady gives her the once over real close but Billie only smiles lightly like a little girl and chirps hello. I feel like the most disgraceful and nay disreputablewretch on earth, in fact my hair is blowing in beastly streaks across my stupid and moronic face, the hangover has now worked paranoia into me down to the last pitiable detail. Back at the cabin I cant chop wood for fear I'll cut a foot off, I cant sleep, I cant sit, I cant pace, I keep going to the creek to drink water till finally I'm going down there a thousand times making Dave Wain wonder as he's come back with more wine -- We sit there slugging out of our separate bottles, in my paranoia I begin to wonder why I get to drink just the one bottle and he the other -- But he's gay "I am now going out surf castin and catch us a grabbag of fish for a marvelous supper; Romana you get the salad ready and anything else you can think of; we'll leave you alpne now" he adds to gloomy me and Billie thinking he's in our way, "and say, why dont we go to Nepenthe and private our grief tonight and enjoy the moonlight on the terrace with Manhattans, or go see Henry Miller? " -- "No! " I almost yell, "I mean I'm so exhausted I dont wanta do anything or see anybody'... (already feeling awful guilt about Henry Miller anyway, we've made an appointment with him about a week ago and instead of showing up at his friend's house in Santa Cruz at seven we're all drunk at ten calling long distance and poor Henry just said "Well I'm sorry I dont get to meet you Jack but I'm an old man and at ten o'clock it's time for me to go to bed, you'd never make it here till after midnight now') (his voice on the phone just like on his records, nasal, Brooklyn, goodguy voice, and him disappointed in a way because he's gone to the trouble of writing the preface to one of my books) (tho I suddenly now think in my remorseful paranoias 'Ah the hell with it he was only gettin in the act like all these guys write prefaces so you dont even get to read the author first') (as an example of how really psychotically suspicious and loco I was getting). Alone with Billie's even worse -- "I cant see anything to do now, " she says by the fire like an ancient Salem housewife ('Or Salem witch? " I'm leering) -- "I could have Elliott taken care of in a private home or an orphanage and just go to a nunnery myself, there's a lot of them around -- or I could kill myself and Elliott both" -- "Dont talk like that" -- "There's no other way to talk when there's no more directions to take" -- "You've got me all wrong I wouldnt be any good for you" -- "I know that now, you want to be a hermit you say but you dont do it much I noticed, you're just tired of life and wanta sleep, in a way that's how I feel too only I've got Elliott to worry about... I could take both our lives and solve that" -- 'You, creepy talk" -- 'You told me the first night you loved me, that I was most interesting, that you hadn't met anyone you liked so much then you just went on drinking, I really can see now what they say about you is true: and all the others like you: O I realize you're a writer and suffer through too much but you're really ratty sometimes... but even that I know you cant help and I know you're not really ratty but awfully broken up like you explained to me, the reasons ... but you're always groaning about how sick you are, you really dont think about others enough and I KNOW you cant help it, it's a curious disease a lot of us have anyway only better hidden sometimes... but what you said the first night and even just now about me being St Carolyn in the Sea, why dont you follow through with what your heart knows is Good and best and true, you give up so easy to discouragement... then I guess too you dont really want me and just wanta go home and resume your own life maybe with Louise your girlfriend'... "No I couldn't with her either. I'm just bound up inside like constipation, I cant move emotionally like you'd say emotionally as tho that was some big grand magic mystery everybody saying "O how wonderful life is, how miraculous, God made this and God made that", how do you know he doesnt hate what He did: He might even be drunk and not noticing what he went and done tho of course that's not true" -- "Maybe God is dead" -- "No, God cant be dead because He's the unborn'... "But you have all those philosophies and sutras you were talking about" -- 'But dont you see they've all become empty words, I realize I've been playing like a happy -- child with words words words in a big serious tragedy, look around" -- "You could make some effort, damn it! " But what's even ineffably worse is that the more she advises me and discusses the trouble the worse and worse it gets, it's as tho she didn't know what she was doing, like an unconscious witch, the more she tries to help the more I tremble/almost too realizing she's doing it on purpose and knows she's witching me but it's all gotta be formally understood as "help" dingblast it -- She must be some kind of chemical counterpart to me, I just cant stand her for a minute, I'm racked with guilt because all the evidence there seems to say she's a wonderful person sympathizing in her quiet sad musical voice with an obvious rogue nevertheless none of these rational guilts stick -- All I feel is the invisible stab from her -- She's hurting me! -- At some points in our conversation I'm a veritable ham actor jumping up to twitch my head, that's the effect she has -- "What's the matter? " she asks softly -- Which makes me almost scream and I've never screamed in my life -- It's the first time in my life I'm not confident I can hold myself together no matter what happens and be inly calm enough to even smile with condescension at the screaming hysterias of women in madwards -- I'm in the same madward all of a sudden... And what's happened? what's caused it... "Are you driving me mad on purpose? " I finally blurt... But naturally she protests I'm talking out of my head, there's no such evident intention anywhere, we're just on a happy weekend in the country with friends. "Then there's something wrong with ME! " I yell -- "That's obvious but why dont you try to calm down and for instance like make love to me, I've been begging you all day and all you do is groan and turn away as tho I was an ugly old bat" -- She comes and offers herself to me softly and gently but I just stare at my quivering wrists -- It's really very awful -- It's hard to explain -- Besides then the little boy is constantly coming at Billie when she kneels at my lap or sits on it or tries to soothe my hair and comfort me, he keeps saying in the same pitiful voice "Dont do it Billie dont do it Billie dont do it Billie" till finally she has to give up that sweet patience of hers where she answers his every little pathetic question and yell "Shut up! Elliott will you shut upl DO I have to beat you again! " and I groan "No! " but Elliott yells louder "Dont do it Billie dont do it Billie dont do it Billie! " so she sweeps him off and starts whacking him screamingly on the porch and I am about to throw in the towel and gasp up my last, it's horrible. Besides when she beats Elliott she herself cries and then will be yelling madwoman things like "I'll kill both of us if you dont stop, you leave me no alternative! O my child! " suddenly picking him up and embracing him rocking tears, and gnashing of hair and all under those old peaceful blue-jay trees where in fact the jays are still waiting for their food and watching all this -- Even so Alf the Sacred Burro is in the yard waiting for somebody to give him an apple -- I look up at the sun going down golden throughout the insane shivering canyon, that blasted rogue wind comes topping down trees a mile away with an advancing roar that when it hits the broken cries of mother and son in grief are blown away with all those crazy scattering leaves -- The creek screeches -- A door bangs horribly, a shutter follows suit, the house shakes -- I'm beating my knees in the din and cant even hear that. 'What's I got to do with you committing suicide anyway? " I'm yelling -- "Alright, it has nothing to do with you" -- "So okay you have no husband but at least you've got little Elliott, he'll grow up and be okay, you can always meanwhile go on with your job, get married, move away, do something, maybe it's Cody but more than that I'd say it's all those mad characters making you insane and wanta kill yourself like that -- Perry... " -- "Dont talk about Perry, he's wonderful and sweet and I love him and he's much kinder to me than you'll ever be: at least he gives of himself -- "But what's all this giving of ourselves, what's there to give that'll help anybody'... "You'll never know you're so wrapped up in yourself -- We're now starting to insult each other which would be a healthy sign except she keeps breaking down and crying on my shoulder more or less again insisting I'm her last chance (which isnt true)... "Let's go to a monastery together, " she adds madly... "Evelyn, I mean Billie you might go to a nunnery at that, by God get thee to a nunnery, you look like you'd make a nun, maybe that's what you need all that talk about Cody about religion maybe all this worldly horror is just holding you back from what you call your true realizing, you could become a big reverend mother someday with not a worry on your mind tho I met a reverend mother once who cried... ah it's all so sad" -- "What did she cry about? " -- "I dont know, after talking to me, I remember I said some silly things like "the universe is a woman because it's round" but I think she cried because she was remembering her early days when she had a romance with some soldier who died, at least that's what they say, she was the greatest woman I ever saw, big blue eyes, big smart woman... you could do that, get out of this awful mess and leave it all behind" -- "But I love love too much for that" -- "And not because you're sensual either you poor kid" -- In fact we quiet down a little and do actually make love in spite of Elliott pulling at her 'Billie don't do it don't do it Billie don't do it" till right in the middle I'm yelling "Don't do what? what's he mean? -- can it be he's right and Billie you shouldnt do it? can it be we're sinning after all's said and done? O this is insane! -- but he's the most insane of them all, " in fact the child is up on bed with us tugging at her shoulder just like a grownup jealous lover trying to pull a woman off another man (she being on top indication of exactly how helpless and busted down I've become and here it is only four in the afternoon) -- A little drama going on in the cabin maybe a little different than what cabins are intended for or the local neighbors are imagining. 35 But there's an awful paranoiac element sometimes in orgasm that suddenly releases not sweet genteel sympathy but some token venom that splits up in the body -- I feel a great ghastly hatred of myself and everything, the empty feeling far from being the usual relief is now as tho I've been robbed of my spinal power right down the middle on purpose by a great witching force -- I feel evil forces gathering down all around me, from her, the kid, the very walls of the cabin, the trees, even the sudden thought of Dave Wain and Romana is evil, they're all coming now -- I leave poor Billie face in hand and rush off to drink water in the creek but every time I do something like that I have to run back to be sorry and say so, but the moment I see her again "She's doing something else" I leer and I don't feel sorry at all -- She's mumbling face in hands and the little boy's crying at her side -- "My God she should get to a nunnery! " I think rushing back to the creek... Suddenly the water in the creek tastes different as tho somebody's thrown gasoline or kerosene in it upstream -- 'Maybe those neighbors wanta get back at me that's what! " -- I taste the water carefully and I'm positive that's what happened. Like an idiot I'm sitting by the creek staring when Dave Wain comes striding down with one fish on the line and his big cheerful western twang as tho nothing unusual's happened "Well boy I spent a whole two hours and look what I got! one measly but beautiful pathetic as you'll see holy little rainbow sea trout that I'm now going to clean... Now the way to clean fish is as follows, " and he kneels innocently by the creek to show me how -- I have nothing else to do but watch and smile -- He says: "Be prepared to be taken on tour of Farollone Island within next two years, boy, with wild canaries actually lighting on your boat hundreds of miles out at sea -- See I'm tryna to save money for a fishboat of my own, I think fishing is bettern anything and I intend to entirely reorganize my life for this tho I see the stern image of Fagan shrieking with a Roshi stick, but you ought to see how fast you can bait up hundreds of herring and clean salmon in one and a half minutes, it's a fact, and you walk about in hickory shirts and wool knit caps -- Man I know all about it and I'm writing a final definitive article on how clean hard work is the saviour of us all -- When you're out there it's a very primal light, fishing is -- You're a hunter -- Birds find fish for you -- Weather drives you -- Foolish mind-hangs dissolve before utter fatigue and everything comes in" -- As I squat there I imagine maybe Billie is telling Romana what happened in the cabin and Dave'11 know in a while tho he seems to know a lot that's going on -- He's hinted several times, like now, "You look like you're having the worse time of your life, that kid Elliott is enough to drive anybody crazy and Billie is sure a nervous little wench -- Now here's the way you scale, with this here knife" -- And I marvel that I cant be so useful and humanly simple and good enough to make small talk to make others feel better, like Dave, there he is long and hollow of cheeks from long drinking himself the past few weeks, but he's not complaining or moaning in the corner like me, at least he does something about it, he puts himself to the test -- He gives me that feeling again that I'm the only person in the world who is devoid of human beingness, damn it, that's true, that's the way I feel anyway -- "Ah Dave someday you and me'll go fishing in your abandoned mining camp on the Rogue River, huh, we'll be feeling better by then somehow gaddamit" "Well we've got to cut down on the sauce a whole lot, Jack, " saying "Jack" sadly a lot like Jarry Wagner used to do on our Dharmabumming mountain climbs where we'd confide dolors, "yes, and we drink too many SWEET drinks in a way, you know all that sugar and no food is bound to upset your metabolism and fill your blood with sugar to the point where you aint got the strength of a hen; you especially you've been drinking nothin but sweet port and sweet Manhattans now for weeks -- I promise you the holy flesh of this little fish will heal you, " (chuckle). I suddenly look at the fish and feel horrible all over again, that old death scheme is back only now I'm gonna put my big healthy Anglosaxon teeth into it and wrench away at the mournful flesh of a little living being that only an hour ago/was swimming happily in the sea, in fact even Dave thinking this and saying: "Ah yes that little muzzling mouth was blindly sucking away in the glad waters of life and now look at it, here's where the fittin head's chopped off, you dont have to look, us big drunken sinners are now going to use it for our sacrificial supper so in fact when we cook it I'm going to say an Indian prayer for it hoping it's the same prayer the local Indians used -- Jack in a way we might even start having fun here and make a great week out of it! " -- "Week? " -- "I thought we was coming here for a week" -- "Oh I said that didn't I... I feel awful about everything... I dont think I can make it... I'm going crazy with Billie and Elliott and me too... maybe I'll have to, maybe we'll have to leave or something, I think I'll die here" -- And Dave is disappointed naturally and here I've already routed him up out of his own affairs to drive down here anyway, another matter to make me feel like a rat. 36 But Dave's making the best of clomping up and down the cabin preparing the bag of cornmeal and starting the corn oil in the frying pan, Romana too she's making an exquisite big salad with lots of mayonnaise and in fact poor Billie is mutely helping her setting the table and the little boy is crooning by the stove it's almost like a happy domestic scene suddenly -- Only I watch it from the porch with horrified eyes -- Also because their shadows in the lamplight gone casting on the walls look huge and monsterlike and witch-like and warlock-like, I'm alone in the woods with happy ghosts -- The wind is howling as the sun goes down so I go in, but I go out at once again madly to my creek, always thinking the creek itself will give me water that will clear away everything and reassure me forever (also remembering in my distress Edgar Cayce's advice "Drink a lot of water') but "There's kerosene in the water! " I yell in the wind, nobody hearing -- I feel like kicking the creek and screaming -- I turn around and there's the cabin with its warm interiors, the silent people inside all noticeably glum because they cant understand anyway what's with the nut wandering in and out from cabin to creek, silent, wan faced, stupefacted, trembling and sweating like midsummer was on the roof and instead it's even cold now -- I sit in the chair with my back to the door and watch Dave as he lectures on bravely. 'What we're having is a sacrificial banquet with all kinds of goodies you see laid in a regal spread around one little delicious fish so that we all have to pray to the fish and take tiny little bites, we only have about four bites apiece and there's all kinds of parts of the fish where the bites are more significant -- But beyond that the way to properly fry a freshcaught fish is to be sure the oil is burning and furiously so when you lay the fish in it, not burning but real hot oil, well, yeh even burning, hand me the spat, you then gently lay the fish into the oil and create a tremendous crackling racket" (which he does as Romana cheers) (and I glance at Billie and she's thinking of something else like a nun in the corner) but Dave keeps on making jokes till he actually has us all smiling -- While the fish is cooking, tho, Romana as she's been doing all day is constantly handing me a bite to eat, some hors d'oeuvres or piece of tomato or other, apparently trying to help me feel better... "You've got to EAT" she and Dave keep saying but I dont want to eat and yet they're always holding out bites to my mouth until finally now I begin to frown thinking "What's all these bites they keep throwing at me, poison? -- and what's wrong with my eyes, they're all dilated black like I've had drugs, all I've had is wine, did Dave put drugs in my wine or something? thinking it will help or something? or are they members of a secret society that dopes people secretly the idea being to enlighten them or something? " even as Romana is handing me a bite and I take it from her big brown hands and chew... She's wearing purple panties and purple bras, nothing else, just for fun, Dave's slappin her on the can joyfully as he cooks the supper, it's some big erotic natural thing to do for Romana, she believes in showing her beautiful big body anyway -- In fact at one point when Billie's up leaning over a chair Dave goes behind Billie and playfully touches her and winks at me, but I'm not of all this like a moron and we could all be having fun such as soldiers dream the day away imagining, dammit -- But the venoms in the blood are asexual as well as asocial and a-everything -- "Billie's so nice and thin, like I'm used to Romana maybe I should switch around here for variety, " says Dave at the sizzling frying pan I look over my shoulder and see at first with a leap of joy but then with ominous fear an enormous full moon at full fat standing there between Mien Mo mountain and the north canyon wall, like saying to me as I look over my trembling shoulder "Hoo doo you. " But I say "Dave, look, as if all this wasn't enough" and I point out the moon to him, there's dead silence in the trees and also among us inside, there she is, vast lugubrious fullmoon that frights madmen and makes waters wave, she's got one or two treetops silhouetted and's got that whole side of the canyon lit up in silver Dave just looks at the moon with his tired madness eyes (over-excited eyes, my mother'd said) and says nothing I go out to the creek and drink water and come back and wonder about the moon and suddenly the four shadows in the cabin area all dead silent as tho they had conspired with the moon. "Time to eat, Jack, " says Dave coming out on the porch suddenly -- No one's saying anything -- I go in and sheepishly sit at the table like the useless pioneer who doesn't do anything to help the men or please the women, the idiot in the wagon train who nevertheless has to be fed Dave stands there saying "Oh full moon, here is our little fish which we are now going to partake of to feed us so that we shall be stronger; thank you Fish people, thank you Fish God; thank you moon for making our light tonight; this is the night of the fullmoon fish which we now consecrate with the first delicate bite" He takes his fork and opens the little fish carefully, it's beautifully breaded and fried and centered in a dazzle of salads and vegetables and cornmeal johnny-cakes, he opens a funny gill, goes under, removes a strange bite and projects it to my mouth saying "Take the first bite Jack, just a little bite, and be sure to chew very slowly" I do so, oily delicious bite but nothing delicious any more in my tongue -- Then the others take their little holy bites, little Elliott's eyes shining with delight at this wonderful game that however has started to frighten me -- For obvious reasons by now. As we eat Dave announces that he and I are sick from too much drinking and by God we're going to reform and see to it that we shape up, then he launches into stories as usual, ending in a talkative ordinary supper that I think will sorta straighten me out at first but after supper I feel even worse, "That fish has all the death of otters and mouses and snakes right in it or something" I'm thinking -- Billie is quietly washing the dishes without complaint, Dave is gladly smoking after-dinner cigarettes on the porch, but here I am again mooning by the creek hiding from all of them each five minutes tho I cant understand what makes me do it... I HAVE to get out of there... But I have no right to STAY AWAY -- So I keep coming back but it's all an insane revolving automatic directionless circle of anxiety, back and forth, around and around, till they're really by now so perturbed by my increasing silent departures and creepy returns they're all sitting without a word by the stove but now their heads are together and they're whispering -- From the woods I see those three shadowy heads whispering me by the stove -- What's Dave saying? -- And why do they look like they're plotting something further? -- Can it be it was all arranged by Dave Wain via Cody that I would meet Billie and be driven mad and now they've got me alone in the woods and are going to give me final poisons tonight th