Big Sur

  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 palm 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 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 run 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 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

  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 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

  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 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.”