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you innumerable motherlike beings, by the force of imaginary destiny you see
a myriad visions and experience endless emotions... I smile... To a Yogi,
everything is fine and splendid!... In the goodly quiet of this
Self-Benefiting sky Enclosure, the timely sounds I hear are all my fellows"
sounds... At such a pleasant place, in solitude, I, Milarepa, happily
remain, meditating upon the void-illuminating mind -- The more Ups and Downs
the more Joy I feel -- The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I
feel... "
But in the morning (and I'm no Milarepa who could also sit naked in the
snow and was seen flying on one occasion) here comes Ron Blake back with Pat
McLear and Pat's wife the beautiful one, and by God their little sweet five
year old girl who is such a pleasant sight to see as she goes jongling and
jiggling through the fields to look for flowers, everything to her is
perfectly new beautiful primordial Garden of Eden morning here in this
tortured human canyon -- And a rather beautiful morning develops -- There's
fog so we close the blinds and light the fire and the lamp, me and Pat, and
sit there drinking from the jug he brought talking about literature and
poetry while his wife listens and occasionally gets up to heat more coffee
and tea or goes out to play with Ron and the little girl -- Pat and I are in
a serious talkative mood and I feel that lonely shiver in my chest which
always warns me: you actually love people and you're glad Pat is here.
Pat is one if not THE most handsome man I've ever seen -- Strange that
he's announced in a preface to his poems that his heroes, his Triumvirate,
are Jean Harlow, Rimbaud and Billy the Kid because he himself is handsome
enough to play Billy the Kid in the movies, that same darkhaired handsome
slightly sliteyed look you expect from the myth appearance of Billy the Kid
(I suppose not the actual real life William Bonnie who's said to've been a
pimply cretin monster).
So we launch on a big discussion of everything in the comfortable gloom
of the cabin by the warm red glow of the girly fire, I'm wearing dark
glasses anyway for fun, Pat says "Well Jack I didnt have a chance to talk to
you yesterday or even last year or even ten years ago when I first met you,
I remember I was terrified of you and Pomeray when you ran up my steps one
night with sticks of tea, you looked like a couple of car thieves or bank
robbers -- And you know a lot of this sneery stuff they've written against
us, against San Francisco or beat poetry and writers is because a lot of us
don't LOOK like writers or intellectuals or anything, you and Pomeray I must
say look awful in a way, I'm sure I dont fill the bill either" -- 'Man you
oughta go to Hollywood and play Billy the Kid" -- "Man I'd rather go to
Hollywood and play Rimbaud" -- 'Well you can't play Jean Harlow" -- "I'd
really like to just get my "Dark Brown" published in Paris, do you know that
when you think it's possible a word from you to Gallimard or Girodias would
help" -- "I dunno" -- "Do you know that when I read your poems Mexico City
Blues I immediately turned around and started writing a brand new way, you
enlightened me with that book" -- "But it's nothing like what you do, in
fact it's miles away, I am a language spinner and you're idea man" and so on
we talk till about noon and Ron's been in and out, "s'made jaunts to the
beach with the little ladies and Pat and I don't realize the sun has come
out but still sit there deep in the cabin by now talking about Villon and
Cervantes.
Suddenly, boom, the door of the cabin is flung open with a loud crash
and a burst of sunlight illuminates the room and I see an Angel standing arm
outstretched in the door! -- It's Cody! all dressed in his Sunday best in a
suit! beside him are ranged several graduating golden angels from Evelyn
golden beautiful wife down to the most dazzling angel of them all little
Timmy with the sun striking off his hair in beams! -- It's such an
incredible sight and surprise that both Pat and I rise from our chairs
involuntarily, like we've been lifted up in awe, or scared, tho I dont feel
scared so much as ecstatically amazed as tho I've seen a vision... And the
way Cody stands there not saying a word with his arm outstretched for some
reason, struck a pose of some sort to surprise us or warn us, he's so much
like St Michael at the moment it's unbelievable especially as I also
suddenly realize what he's just actually done, he's had wife and kiddies
sneak up ever so quiet up the porch steps (which are noisy and creaky),
across the wood planks, easy and tiptoeing, stood there awhile while he
prepared to fling the door open, all lined up and stood straight, then pow,
he's opened the door and thrown the golden universe into the dazzled mystic
eyes of big hip Pat McLear and big amazed grateful me -- It reminds me of
the. "time I once saw a whole tiptoeing gang of couples sneaking into our
back kitchen door on West Street in Lowell the leader telling me to shush as
I stand there nine years old amazed, then all bursting in on my father
innocently listening to the Primo Carnera-Ernie Schaaft fight on the old
1930s radio -- For a big roaring toot... But Cody's oldfashioned family
tiptoe sneak carries that strange apocalyptic burst of gold he somehow
always manages to produce, like I said elsewhere the time in Mexico he drove
an old car over a rutted road very slowly as we were all high on tea and I
saw golden Heaven, or the other times he's always seemed so golden like as I
say in a davenport of some sort in Heaven in the golden top of Heaven.
Not that he means to produce this effect: he's just standing there with
innate dramatic mystery holding forth his arm as if to say Behold, the sun!
and Behold, the angels! sorta pointing at all the golden heads of his family
and Pat and I stand aghast.
"Happy birthday Jack! " yells Cody or some such ordinary crazy inane
greeting "I've come to you with good news! I've brought Evelyn and Emily and
Gaby and Timmy because we're all so grateful and glad because everything has
worked out absolutely dead perfect, or living perfect, boy, with that little
old hunnerd dollars you gave me let me tell you the fantastic story of what
happened" (to him it was utterly fantastic), "I went out and traded in my
Nash that as you know wont even start but I have to have m'old buddies push
it down the road for me, this guy had a perfect gem of a purple or what
color is it Maw? magenty, slamelty, a jeepster station-wagon Jack but a
perfect beauty mind you listen with a beautiful radio, a brand new set of
backup lights, thisa and thata down to the perfect new tires and that
wonderful shiney paint job, that color'll knock you out, that's what it is,
Grape! " (as Evelyn murmurs the color) "Grape color for all the old grape
wine jacks, so we've come here to not only thank you and see you again but
to celebrate this, and on top of all that, occasion, goo me I'm all so gushy
and girly, hee hee hee, yes that's right come on in children and then go out
and get that gear in the car and get ready to sleep outdoors tonight and get
that good open fresh air, Jack on top of all that and my heart is jess OVER
flowin I got a NEW JOB!! along with that splissly little old beautiful new
jeep! a new job right downtown in Los Gatos in fact I dont even have to
drive to work any more, I can walk it, just half a mile, now Ma you come in
here, meet old Pat McLear here, start up some eggs or some of that steak we
brought, open up that vieen roossee wine we brought for drunk old Jack that
good old boy while I personally private take him to walk with me back down
the road where the jeep is parked, unlock that gate, you got the corral key
Jack, okay, and we'll talk and walk just like old times and drive back real
slow in my new slowboat to China. " So it's a whole new day, a whole new
situation the way it is with Cody, in fact a whole new universe as suddenly
we're alone again really for the first time in ages walking rapidly down the
road to go get the car and he looks at me with that hand-rubbing wicked look
like he's about to spring a surprise on me that's the top surprise of them
all, "You guessed it old buddy I have here the LAST, the absolutely LAST yet
most perfect of all blackhaired seeded packed tight superbomber joints in
the world which you and I are now going to light up, "s'why I didnt want you
to bring any of that wine right away, why boy we got time to drink wine and
wine and dance" and here he is lighting up, says "Now dont walk too fast,
it's time to stroll along like we used to do remember sometimes on our
daysoff on the railroad, or walkin across that Third and Townsend tar like
you said and the time we watched the sun go down so perfect holy purple over
that Mission cross -- Yessir, slow and easy, lookin at this gone valley" so
we start to puff the pot but as usual it creates doubtful paranoias in both
our minds and we actually sort of fall silent on the way to the car which is
a beautiful grape colour at that, a brand new shiney Jeepster with all the
equipments, and the whole golden reunion deteriorates into Cody's
matter-of-fact lecture on why the car is going to be such a honey (the
technical details) and he even yells at me to hurry up with that corral
gate, "Cant wait here all day, hor hor hor. "
But that's not the point, about pot paranoia, yet maybe it is at that
-- I've long given it up because it bugs me anyway
-- But so we drive back slowly to the shack and Evelyn and Pat's wife
have met and are having woman talk and McLear and I and Cody talk around the
table planning excursions with the kids to the beach. And there's Evelyn and
I havent had a chance to talk to her for years either, Oh the old days when
we'd stay up late by the fireplace as I say discussing Cody's soul, Cody
this and Cody that, you could hear the name Cody ringing under the roofs of
America from coast to coast almost to hear his women talking about him,
always pronouncing "Cody" with a kind of anguish yet there was girlish
squealing pleasure in it, "Cody has to learn to control the enormous forces
in him" and Cody "will always modify his little white lies so much that they
turn into black ones', and according to Irwin Garden Cody's women were
always having transcontinental telephone talks about his dong (which is
possible).
Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete
relationship with his women to the point where they ended up in one
convoluted octopus mess of souls and tears and fellatio and hotel room
schemes and rushing in and out of cars and doors and great crises in the
middle of the night, wow that madman you can at least write on his grave
someday "He Lived, He Sweated" -- No halfway house is Cody's house -- Tho
now as I say sorta sweetly chastised and a little bored at last with the
world after the crummy injustice of his arrest and sentence he's sorta
quieted down and where he'd launch into a tremendous explanation of every
one of his thoughts for the benefit of everybody in the room as he's putting
on his socks and arranging his papers to leave, now he just flips it aside
and may make a stale shrug -- A Jesuit at work -- Tho I remember one crazy
moment in the shack that was typically Cody-like: complicated and
simultaneous with a million nuances as though the whole of creation suddenly
exploded and imploded together in one moment: at the moment that Pat's
pretty little angel daughter is coming in to hand me an extremely tiny
flower ('It's for you, " she says direct to me) (for some reason the poor
little thing thinks I need a flower, or else her mother instructed her for
charming reasons, like adornment) Cody is furiously explaining to his little
son Tim "Never let the right hand know what your left hand is doing" and at
that moment I'm trying to close my pafm around the incredibly small flower
and it's so small I cant even do that, cant feel it, cant hardly see it, in
fact such a small flower only that little girl could have found it, but I
look up to Cody as he says that to Tim, and also to impress Evelyn who's
watching me, I announced 'Never let the left hand know what the right hand
is doing but this right hand cant even hold this flower" and Cody only looks
up "Yass yass. "
So what started as a big holy reunion and surprise party in Heaven
deteriorates to a lot of showoff talk, actually, at least on my part, but
when I get to drink the wine I feel lighter and we all go down to the beach
-- I walk in front with Evelyn but when we get to the narrow path I walk in
front like an Indian to show her what a big Indian I've been all summer --
I'm bursting to tell her everything -- "See that grove there, once in a
while you'll be surprised out of your shoes to see the mule quietly standing
there with locks of hair like Ruth's over his forehead, a big Biblical mule
meditating, or over there, but up here, and look at that bridge, now what do
you think of that? " -- All the kids are fascinated by the upsidedown car
wreck... At one point I'm sitting in the sand as Cody walks up my way, I say
to him imitating Wallace Beery and scratching my armpits "Cuss a man for
dyin in Death Valley" (the last lines of that great movie Twenty Mule Team)
and Cody says "That's right, if anybody can imitate old Wallace Beery that's
the only way to do it, you had just the right timber there in the tone of
your voice there, Cuss a man for dyin in Death Valley hee hee yes" but he
rushes off to talk to McLear's wife.
Strange sad desultory the way families and people sorta scatter around
a beach and look vaguely at the sea, all disorganized and picnic sad -- At
one point I'm telling Evelyn that a tidal wave from Hawaii could very easily
come someday and we'd see it miles away a huge wall of awful water and "Boy
it would take some doing to run back and climb up these cliffs, huh? " but
Cody hears this and says, "What? " and I say "It would wash over us and take
us all to Salinas I bet" and Cody says "What? that brand new jeep? I'm goin
back and move it! " (an example of his strange humor).
"How'd'st rain rule here? " says I to Evelyn to show her what a big
poet I am -- She really loves me, used to love me in the old days like a
husband, for awhile there she had two husbands Cody and me, we were a
perfect family till Cody finally got jealous or maybe I got jealous, it was
wild for awhile I'd be coming home from work on the railroad all dirty with
my lamp and just as I came in for my Joy bubblebath old Cody was rushing off
on a call so Evelyn had her new husband in the second shift then when Cody
come home at dawn all dirty for his Joy bubblebath, ring, the phone's rung
and the crew clerk's asked me out and I'm rushing off to work, both of us
using the same old clunker car in shifts -- And Evelyn always maintaining
that she and I were really made for each other but her Karma was to serve
Cody in this particular lifetime, which I really believe and I believe she
loves him, too, but she'd say "I'll get you. Jack, in another lifetime...
And you'll be very happy" -- "What? " I'd yell to joke, "me running up the
eternal halls of Karma tryina get away from you hey? " -- "It'll take you
eternities to get rid of me, " she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I
want her to say I'll never get rid of her... I wanta be chased for eternity
till I catch her.
"Ah Jack" she says putting her arm around me on the beach, "it's nice
to see you again, Oh I wish we could be quiet again and just have our
suppers of homemade pizza all together and watch TV together, you have so
many friends and responsibilities now it's sad, and you get sick drinking
and everything, why dont you just come stay with us awhile and rest" -- "I
will" -- But Ron Blake is redhot for Evelyn and keeps coming over to dance
with seaweeds and impress her, he's even asked me to ask Cody to let him
spend some time alone with Evelyn, Cody's said "Go ahead man. "
Having run out of liquor in fact Ron does get his opportunity to be
alone with Evelyn as Cody and me and the kids in one car, and McLear and
family in the other start for Monterey to stock up for the night and also
more cigarettes -- Evelyn and Ron light a bonfire on the beach to wait for
us... As we're driving along little Timmy says to Paw "We shoulda brought
Mommy with us, her pants got wet in the beach" -- "By now they oughta be
steamin, " says Cody matterof-factly in another one of his fantastic puns as
he lockwallops that awful narrow dirt canyon road like a getaway car in the
mountains in a movie, we leave poor McLear miles back -- When Cody comes to
a narrow tight curve with all our death staring us in the face down that
hole he just swerves the curve saying "The way to drive in the mountains is,
boy, no fiddlin around, these roads dont move, you're the one that moves'...
And we come out on the highway and go right battin up to Monterey in the Big
Sur dusk where down there on the faint gloamy frothing rocks you can hear
the seals cry.
24
McLear exhibits another strange facet of his handsome but faintly
"decadent" Rimbaud-type personality at his summer camp by coming out in the
livingroom with a goddamn HAWK on his shoulder -- It's his pet hawk, of all
things, the hawk is black as night and sits there on his shoulder pecking
nastily at a clunk of hamburg he holds up to it -- In fact the sight of that
is so rarely poetic, McLear whose poetry is really like a black hawk, he's
always writing about darkness, dark brown, dark bedrooms, moving curtains,
chemical fire dark pillows, love in chemical fiery red darkness, and writes
all that in beautiful long lines that go across the page irregularly and
aptly somehow -- Handsome Hawk McLear, in fact I suddenly yell out "Now I
know your real name! it's M'Lear! M'Lear the Scotch Highland moorhaunter
with his hawk about to go mad and tear his white hair in a tempest" -- Or
some such silly thing, feeling good again now we've got new wine -- Time to
go back to the cabin and fly down that dark highway the way only Cody can
fly (even bettern Dave Wain but you feel safer with Dave Wain tho the reason
Cody gives you a sense of dooming boom as he pushes the night out the wheels
is not because he'll lose perfect control of the car but you feel the car
will take off suddenly up to Heaven or at least just up into what the
Russians call the Dark Cosmos, there's a booming rushing sound out the
window when Cody bats her down the white line at night, with Dave Wain it's
all conversation and smooth sailing, with Cody it's a crisis about to get
worse) -- And now he's saying to me "Not only today but the other day with
the boys, that beautiful McLear woman there, wow, with her tight blue jeans,
man I cried under a tree to see that poppin around so innocent like, whoo,
so I tell you what we're gonna do old buddy: tomorrow we go back to Los
Gatos the whole family and we've dropped Evelyn and the kids home after the
hiss-the-villain play we're all gonna see at seven... "
-- "The what? " -- "It's a play, " he says suddenly imitating the tired
whiney voice of an old PTA Committee woman, "you go there and you sit down
and out comes this old 1910 play about villains foreclosing the mortgage,
mustaches, you know, calico tears, you can sit there you see and hiss the
villain all you want even for all I know yell obscenities or something I
dunno -- But it's Evelyn's world, you know, she's designing the sets and
that's the work she's done while I was in the can so I cant begrudge her
that, in fact I aint got a word in edgewise, when you're the father of a
family you go along with the little woman acourse, and the kids enjoy it,
after that plan and after you've hissed the villain we'll drop them home and
then old buddy" zooming up the car even of all thinks, the hawk is black as
night and sits there faster in lieu of rubbing his hands with zeal, so to
say Zocm, "you and 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.
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.
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.
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
a myriad visions and experience endless emotions... I smile... To a Yogi,
everything is fine and splendid!... In the goodly quiet of this
Self-Benefiting sky Enclosure, the timely sounds I hear are all my fellows"
sounds... At such a pleasant place, in solitude, I, Milarepa, happily
remain, meditating upon the void-illuminating mind -- The more Ups and Downs
the more Joy I feel -- The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I
feel... "
But in the morning (and I'm no Milarepa who could also sit naked in the
snow and was seen flying on one occasion) here comes Ron Blake back with Pat
McLear and Pat's wife the beautiful one, and by God their little sweet five
year old girl who is such a pleasant sight to see as she goes jongling and
jiggling through the fields to look for flowers, everything to her is
perfectly new beautiful primordial Garden of Eden morning here in this
tortured human canyon -- And a rather beautiful morning develops -- There's
fog so we close the blinds and light the fire and the lamp, me and Pat, and
sit there drinking from the jug he brought talking about literature and
poetry while his wife listens and occasionally gets up to heat more coffee
and tea or goes out to play with Ron and the little girl -- Pat and I are in
a serious talkative mood and I feel that lonely shiver in my chest which
always warns me: you actually love people and you're glad Pat is here.
Pat is one if not THE most handsome man I've ever seen -- Strange that
he's announced in a preface to his poems that his heroes, his Triumvirate,
are Jean Harlow, Rimbaud and Billy the Kid because he himself is handsome
enough to play Billy the Kid in the movies, that same darkhaired handsome
slightly sliteyed look you expect from the myth appearance of Billy the Kid
(I suppose not the actual real life William Bonnie who's said to've been a
pimply cretin monster).
So we launch on a big discussion of everything in the comfortable gloom
of the cabin by the warm red glow of the girly fire, I'm wearing dark
glasses anyway for fun, Pat says "Well Jack I didnt have a chance to talk to
you yesterday or even last year or even ten years ago when I first met you,
I remember I was terrified of you and Pomeray when you ran up my steps one
night with sticks of tea, you looked like a couple of car thieves or bank
robbers -- And you know a lot of this sneery stuff they've written against
us, against San Francisco or beat poetry and writers is because a lot of us
don't LOOK like writers or intellectuals or anything, you and Pomeray I must
say look awful in a way, I'm sure I dont fill the bill either" -- 'Man you
oughta go to Hollywood and play Billy the Kid" -- "Man I'd rather go to
Hollywood and play Rimbaud" -- 'Well you can't play Jean Harlow" -- "I'd
really like to just get my "Dark Brown" published in Paris, do you know that
when you think it's possible a word from you to Gallimard or Girodias would
help" -- "I dunno" -- "Do you know that when I read your poems Mexico City
Blues I immediately turned around and started writing a brand new way, you
enlightened me with that book" -- "But it's nothing like what you do, in
fact it's miles away, I am a language spinner and you're idea man" and so on
we talk till about noon and Ron's been in and out, "s'made jaunts to the
beach with the little ladies and Pat and I don't realize the sun has come
out but still sit there deep in the cabin by now talking about Villon and
Cervantes.
Suddenly, boom, the door of the cabin is flung open with a loud crash
and a burst of sunlight illuminates the room and I see an Angel standing arm
outstretched in the door! -- It's Cody! all dressed in his Sunday best in a
suit! beside him are ranged several graduating golden angels from Evelyn
golden beautiful wife down to the most dazzling angel of them all little
Timmy with the sun striking off his hair in beams! -- It's such an
incredible sight and surprise that both Pat and I rise from our chairs
involuntarily, like we've been lifted up in awe, or scared, tho I dont feel
scared so much as ecstatically amazed as tho I've seen a vision... And the
way Cody stands there not saying a word with his arm outstretched for some
reason, struck a pose of some sort to surprise us or warn us, he's so much
like St Michael at the moment it's unbelievable especially as I also
suddenly realize what he's just actually done, he's had wife and kiddies
sneak up ever so quiet up the porch steps (which are noisy and creaky),
across the wood planks, easy and tiptoeing, stood there awhile while he
prepared to fling the door open, all lined up and stood straight, then pow,
he's opened the door and thrown the golden universe into the dazzled mystic
eyes of big hip Pat McLear and big amazed grateful me -- It reminds me of
the. "time I once saw a whole tiptoeing gang of couples sneaking into our
back kitchen door on West Street in Lowell the leader telling me to shush as
I stand there nine years old amazed, then all bursting in on my father
innocently listening to the Primo Carnera-Ernie Schaaft fight on the old
1930s radio -- For a big roaring toot... But Cody's oldfashioned family
tiptoe sneak carries that strange apocalyptic burst of gold he somehow
always manages to produce, like I said elsewhere the time in Mexico he drove
an old car over a rutted road very slowly as we were all high on tea and I
saw golden Heaven, or the other times he's always seemed so golden like as I
say in a davenport of some sort in Heaven in the golden top of Heaven.
Not that he means to produce this effect: he's just standing there with
innate dramatic mystery holding forth his arm as if to say Behold, the sun!
and Behold, the angels! sorta pointing at all the golden heads of his family
and Pat and I stand aghast.
"Happy birthday Jack! " yells Cody or some such ordinary crazy inane
greeting "I've come to you with good news! I've brought Evelyn and Emily and
Gaby and Timmy because we're all so grateful and glad because everything has
worked out absolutely dead perfect, or living perfect, boy, with that little
old hunnerd dollars you gave me let me tell you the fantastic story of what
happened" (to him it was utterly fantastic), "I went out and traded in my
Nash that as you know wont even start but I have to have m'old buddies push
it down the road for me, this guy had a perfect gem of a purple or what
color is it Maw? magenty, slamelty, a jeepster station-wagon Jack but a
perfect beauty mind you listen with a beautiful radio, a brand new set of
backup lights, thisa and thata down to the perfect new tires and that
wonderful shiney paint job, that color'll knock you out, that's what it is,
Grape! " (as Evelyn murmurs the color) "Grape color for all the old grape
wine jacks, so we've come here to not only thank you and see you again but
to celebrate this, and on top of all that, occasion, goo me I'm all so gushy
and girly, hee hee hee, yes that's right come on in children and then go out
and get that gear in the car and get ready to sleep outdoors tonight and get
that good open fresh air, Jack on top of all that and my heart is jess OVER
flowin I got a NEW JOB!! along with that splissly little old beautiful new
jeep! a new job right downtown in Los Gatos in fact I dont even have to
drive to work any more, I can walk it, just half a mile, now Ma you come in
here, meet old Pat McLear here, start up some eggs or some of that steak we
brought, open up that vieen roossee wine we brought for drunk old Jack that
good old boy while I personally private take him to walk with me back down
the road where the jeep is parked, unlock that gate, you got the corral key
Jack, okay, and we'll talk and walk just like old times and drive back real
slow in my new slowboat to China. " So it's a whole new day, a whole new
situation the way it is with Cody, in fact a whole new universe as suddenly
we're alone again really for the first time in ages walking rapidly down the
road to go get the car and he looks at me with that hand-rubbing wicked look
like he's about to spring a surprise on me that's the top surprise of them
all, "You guessed it old buddy I have here the LAST, the absolutely LAST yet
most perfect of all blackhaired seeded packed tight superbomber joints in
the world which you and I are now going to light up, "s'why I didnt want you
to bring any of that wine right away, why boy we got time to drink wine and
wine and dance" and here he is lighting up, says "Now dont walk too fast,
it's time to stroll along like we used to do remember sometimes on our
daysoff on the railroad, or walkin across that Third and Townsend tar like
you said and the time we watched the sun go down so perfect holy purple over
that Mission cross -- Yessir, slow and easy, lookin at this gone valley" so
we start to puff the pot but as usual it creates doubtful paranoias in both
our minds and we actually sort of fall silent on the way to the car which is
a beautiful grape colour at that, a brand new shiney Jeepster with all the
equipments, and the whole golden reunion deteriorates into Cody's
matter-of-fact lecture on why the car is going to be such a honey (the
technical details) and he even yells at me to hurry up with that corral
gate, "Cant wait here all day, hor hor hor. "
But that's not the point, about pot paranoia, yet maybe it is at that
-- I've long given it up because it bugs me anyway
-- But so we drive back slowly to the shack and Evelyn and Pat's wife
have met and are having woman talk and McLear and I and Cody talk around the
table planning excursions with the kids to the beach. And there's Evelyn and
I havent had a chance to talk to her for years either, Oh the old days when
we'd stay up late by the fireplace as I say discussing Cody's soul, Cody
this and Cody that, you could hear the name Cody ringing under the roofs of
America from coast to coast almost to hear his women talking about him,
always pronouncing "Cody" with a kind of anguish yet there was girlish
squealing pleasure in it, "Cody has to learn to control the enormous forces
in him" and Cody "will always modify his little white lies so much that they
turn into black ones', and according to Irwin Garden Cody's women were
always having transcontinental telephone talks about his dong (which is
possible).
Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete
relationship with his women to the point where they ended up in one
convoluted octopus mess of souls and tears and fellatio and hotel room
schemes and rushing in and out of cars and doors and great crises in the
middle of the night, wow that madman you can at least write on his grave
someday "He Lived, He Sweated" -- No halfway house is Cody's house -- Tho
now as I say sorta sweetly chastised and a little bored at last with the
world after the crummy injustice of his arrest and sentence he's sorta
quieted down and where he'd launch into a tremendous explanation of every
one of his thoughts for the benefit of everybody in the room as he's putting
on his socks and arranging his papers to leave, now he just flips it aside
and may make a stale shrug -- A Jesuit at work -- Tho I remember one crazy
moment in the shack that was typically Cody-like: complicated and
simultaneous with a million nuances as though the whole of creation suddenly
exploded and imploded together in one moment: at the moment that Pat's
pretty little angel daughter is coming in to hand me an extremely tiny
flower ('It's for you, " she says direct to me) (for some reason the poor
little thing thinks I need a flower, or else her mother instructed her for
charming reasons, like adornment) Cody is furiously explaining to his little
son Tim "Never let the right hand know what your left hand is doing" and at
that moment I'm trying to close my pafm around the incredibly small flower
and it's so small I cant even do that, cant feel it, cant hardly see it, in
fact such a small flower only that little girl could have found it, but I
look up to Cody as he says that to Tim, and also to impress Evelyn who's
watching me, I announced 'Never let the left hand know what the right hand
is doing but this right hand cant even hold this flower" and Cody only looks
up "Yass yass. "
So what started as a big holy reunion and surprise party in Heaven
deteriorates to a lot of showoff talk, actually, at least on my part, but
when I get to drink the wine I feel lighter and we all go down to the beach
-- I walk in front with Evelyn but when we get to the narrow path I walk in
front like an Indian to show her what a big Indian I've been all summer --
I'm bursting to tell her everything -- "See that grove there, once in a
while you'll be surprised out of your shoes to see the mule quietly standing
there with locks of hair like Ruth's over his forehead, a big Biblical mule
meditating, or over there, but up here, and look at that bridge, now what do
you think of that? " -- All the kids are fascinated by the upsidedown car
wreck... At one point I'm sitting in the sand as Cody walks up my way, I say
to him imitating Wallace Beery and scratching my armpits "Cuss a man for
dyin in Death Valley" (the last lines of that great movie Twenty Mule Team)
and Cody says "That's right, if anybody can imitate old Wallace Beery that's
the only way to do it, you had just the right timber there in the tone of
your voice there, Cuss a man for dyin in Death Valley hee hee yes" but he
rushes off to talk to McLear's wife.
Strange sad desultory the way families and people sorta scatter around
a beach and look vaguely at the sea, all disorganized and picnic sad -- At
one point I'm telling Evelyn that a tidal wave from Hawaii could very easily
come someday and we'd see it miles away a huge wall of awful water and "Boy
it would take some doing to run back and climb up these cliffs, huh? " but
Cody hears this and says, "What? " and I say "It would wash over us and take
us all to Salinas I bet" and Cody says "What? that brand new jeep? I'm goin
back and move it! " (an example of his strange humor).
"How'd'st rain rule here? " says I to Evelyn to show her what a big
poet I am -- She really loves me, used to love me in the old days like a
husband, for awhile there she had two husbands Cody and me, we were a
perfect family till Cody finally got jealous or maybe I got jealous, it was
wild for awhile I'd be coming home from work on the railroad all dirty with
my lamp and just as I came in for my Joy bubblebath old Cody was rushing off
on a call so Evelyn had her new husband in the second shift then when Cody
come home at dawn all dirty for his Joy bubblebath, ring, the phone's rung
and the crew clerk's asked me out and I'm rushing off to work, both of us
using the same old clunker car in shifts -- And Evelyn always maintaining
that she and I were really made for each other but her Karma was to serve
Cody in this particular lifetime, which I really believe and I believe she
loves him, too, but she'd say "I'll get you. Jack, in another lifetime...
And you'll be very happy" -- "What? " I'd yell to joke, "me running up the
eternal halls of Karma tryina get away from you hey? " -- "It'll take you
eternities to get rid of me, " she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I
want her to say I'll never get rid of her... I wanta be chased for eternity
till I catch her.
"Ah Jack" she says putting her arm around me on the beach, "it's nice
to see you again, Oh I wish we could be quiet again and just have our
suppers of homemade pizza all together and watch TV together, you have so
many friends and responsibilities now it's sad, and you get sick drinking
and everything, why dont you just come stay with us awhile and rest" -- "I
will" -- But Ron Blake is redhot for Evelyn and keeps coming over to dance
with seaweeds and impress her, he's even asked me to ask Cody to let him
spend some time alone with Evelyn, Cody's said "Go ahead man. "
Having run out of liquor in fact Ron does get his opportunity to be
alone with Evelyn as Cody and me and the kids in one car, and McLear and
family in the other start for Monterey to stock up for the night and also
more cigarettes -- Evelyn and Ron light a bonfire on the beach to wait for
us... As we're driving along little Timmy says to Paw "We shoulda brought
Mommy with us, her pants got wet in the beach" -- "By now they oughta be
steamin, " says Cody matterof-factly in another one of his fantastic puns as
he lockwallops that awful narrow dirt canyon road like a getaway car in the
mountains in a movie, we leave poor McLear miles back -- When Cody comes to
a narrow tight curve with all our death staring us in the face down that
hole he just swerves the curve saying "The way to drive in the mountains is,
boy, no fiddlin around, these roads dont move, you're the one that moves'...
And we come out on the highway and go right battin up to Monterey in the Big
Sur dusk where down there on the faint gloamy frothing rocks you can hear
the seals cry.
24
McLear exhibits another strange facet of his handsome but faintly
"decadent" Rimbaud-type personality at his summer camp by coming out in the
livingroom with a goddamn HAWK on his shoulder -- It's his pet hawk, of all
things, the hawk is black as night and sits there on his shoulder pecking
nastily at a clunk of hamburg he holds up to it -- In fact the sight of that
is so rarely poetic, McLear whose poetry is really like a black hawk, he's
always writing about darkness, dark brown, dark bedrooms, moving curtains,
chemical fire dark pillows, love in chemical fiery red darkness, and writes
all that in beautiful long lines that go across the page irregularly and
aptly somehow -- Handsome Hawk McLear, in fact I suddenly yell out "Now I
know your real name! it's M'Lear! M'Lear the Scotch Highland moorhaunter
with his hawk about to go mad and tear his white hair in a tempest" -- Or
some such silly thing, feeling good again now we've got new wine -- Time to
go back to the cabin and fly down that dark highway the way only Cody can
fly (even bettern Dave Wain but you feel safer with Dave Wain tho the reason
Cody gives you a sense of dooming boom as he pushes the night out the wheels
is not because he'll lose perfect control of the car but you feel the car
will take off suddenly up to Heaven or at least just up into what the
Russians call the Dark Cosmos, there's a booming rushing sound out the
window when Cody bats her down the white line at night, with Dave Wain it's
all conversation and smooth sailing, with Cody it's a crisis about to get
worse) -- And now he's saying to me "Not only today but the other day with
the boys, that beautiful McLear woman there, wow, with her tight blue jeans,
man I cried under a tree to see that poppin around so innocent like, whoo,
so I tell you what we're gonna do old buddy: tomorrow we go back to Los
Gatos the whole family and we've dropped Evelyn and the kids home after the
hiss-the-villain play we're all gonna see at seven... "
-- "The what? " -- "It's a play, " he says suddenly imitating the tired
whiney voice of an old PTA Committee woman, "you go there and you sit down
and out comes this old 1910 play about villains foreclosing the mortgage,
mustaches, you know, calico tears, you can sit there you see and hiss the
villain all you want even for all I know yell obscenities or something I
dunno -- But it's Evelyn's world, you know, she's designing the sets and
that's the work she's done while I was in the can so I cant begrudge her
that, in fact I aint got a word in edgewise, when you're the father of a
family you go along with the little woman acourse, and the kids enjoy it,
after that plan and after you've hissed the villain we'll drop them home and
then old buddy" zooming up the car even of all thinks, the hawk is black as
night and sits there faster in lieu of rubbing his hands with zeal, so to
say Zocm, "you and 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.
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.
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.
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