Big Sur (11 page)

“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 T.V. 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 matter-of-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

M
C
L
EAR 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 P.T.A. 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 Zoom, “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) “
I b'lieve we're comin 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, Duluomeray, 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 wont 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's 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

T
HE 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 T.V. 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 itself—The shelves pile higher—They're full of misty documents or documents of the Mist—The mind has convoluted in every tuckaway everywhichaway 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.