Desolation Angels (37 page)

“Irwin if you'd really seen a vision of eternity you wouldnt care about influencing American Civilization.”

“But that's just the point, it's where I at least have some authority to speak instead of just stale ideas and sociological hangups out of handbooks—I have a Blakean message for the Iron Hound of America.”

“Whoopee—and whattaya do next?”

“I become a big dignified poet people listen to—I spend quiet evenings with my friends in my smoking jacket, perhaps—I go out and buy everything I want in the supermarket—
I have a voice in the supermarket!
”

“Okay?”

“And you can come and have your publications arranged
at once,
those incompetents are stalling out of just stupid confusion. ‘Road' is a big mad book that will change America! They can even make money with it. You'll be dancing naked on your fan mail. You can look Boisvert in the eye. Big Faulkners and Hemingways will grow thoughtful thinking of you. It's
time!
See?” He stood holding his arms out like a symphony conductor. His eyes were fixed on me hypnotically mad. (Once he'd said to me seriously, on pot, “I want you to listen to my speeches like across Red Square.”) “The Lamb of America will be raised! How can the East have any respect for a country that has no prophetic Poets! The Lamb must be raised! Big trembling Oklahomas need poetry and nakedness! Airplanes must fly for a reason from one gentle heart to an open heart! Namby pamby dillydallyers in offices have to have somebody give them a rose! Wheat's got to be sent to India! New hip classical doll scenes can take place in bus stations, or in the Port Authority, or the Seventh Avenue toilet, or in Missus Rocco's parlor in East
Bend
or something” shaking his shoulder with his old New York hipster hunch, the neck convulsive …

“Well, maybe I'll go with ya.”

“You might even get yourself a girlfriend in New York like you used to do—Duluoz, the trouble with you is you havent a girl in years. Why do you think that you have grimy black hands that shouldnt go on the white shiny flesh of chicks? They all wanta be loved, they're all human trembling souls scared of you because you glare at them because you're afraid of them.”

“That's right Jack!” pipes in Simon. “Gotta give those girls a little workout boy, sonny boy, hey sonny boy!” coming over and rocking my knees.

“Is Lazarus going with us?” I ask.

“Sure. Lazarus can take big long walks up Second Avenue and look at the pumpernickel breads or help old men into the Library.”

“He can read papers upsidedown in the Empire State Building” says Simon still laughing.

“I can gather firewood on the River,” says Lazarus from his bed with the sheet up to his chin.

“
What?
” We all turn to hear him again, he hasnt spoken in 24 hours.

“I can gather firewood on the river,” he concludes closing down the word “river” as tho it was a pronouncement that none of us need discuss anymore. But he repeats it one last time … “on the river.” “Firewood,” he adds, and suddenly there he is giving me that humorous side-glance meaning he's just pulling all our legs but wont say it's so.

P
ART
T
WO

P
ASSING
T
HROUGH
N
EW
Y
ORK

22

It was a horrible trip. We contacted, that is Irwin contacted in a perfect businesslike efficient way this Italian from New York who was a language teacher in Mexico but looked exactly like a Las Vegas gambler, a Mott Street hood, in fact I wondered what he was doing in Mexico really. He had an ad in the paper, a car, a Puerto Rican passenger already contracted, and the rest of us could fit all around with all the shebang's baggage on the roof of the car. Three in front and three in back, knee to knee in horror for three thousand miles! But no other way—

The morning we left (I forgot to mention that Gaines had been sick several times and sent us downtown on junk errands that were difficult and dangerous …) Gaines was sick the morning we left but we tried to rush away without being noticed. Actually of course I wanted to go in and say goodbye to him but the car was waiting and there was no doubt he wanted me to go downtown get his morphine (he was short again). We could hear him coughing as we passed the street window with the sad pink drape, 8 o'clock in the
A.M.
I couldn't resist just sticking my head against the hole in the window saying: “Hey Bull, we're going now. I'll see ya—when I come back—I'll be back soon—”

“No! No!” he cried in the trembling sick voice he had when he tried to convert his addiction withdrawal pain to barbiturate torpor, which left him a mess of tangled bathrobes and sheets and spilled piss. “No! I want you to go downtown do somethin for me—It wont take long—”

Irwin tried to assuage him thru the window but Gaines started crying. “An old man like me, you shouldnt leave me alone. Not like this especially not when I'm sick and cant raise my hand to find my cigarettes—”

“But you were all right before Jack and I got here, you'll be all right again.”

“No, no, call Jack! Dont leave me like this! Dont you remember all the old days we had together and the times I fixed you up with those pawn tickets and laid money on ya—If you leave me like this this morning I'm goinna
die!
” he cried. We couldnt see him, just hear him from his pillow. Irwin called Simon to yell something at Gaines and together we actually ran away in shame and miserable horror, with our luggage, down the street—Simon looked at us whitefaced. We swirled around the sidewalk in confusion. But the cab we'd already hailed was waiting and the natural cowardly thing to do was just pile right in and head for New York. Simon came after, jumping in. It was a “Whoo” of relief but I never knew how Gaines got out of that particular day's sickness. But he did. But you'll see what happened, later …

The driver was Norman. When we were all seated in Norman's car he said the springs would bust before New York or even before Texas. Six men and a pile of bags and rucksacks on the roof tied all around with rope. A miserable American scene again. So Norman started the motor, raced it, and like those dynamite trucks in movies about South America he started rolling at one mile per hour, then 2, then 5, as we all held our breath of course, but he got her going to 20, then 30, then out on the hiway to 40 and 50 and we suddenly all realized it was just a long car ride and we'd just breeze on hiways in a good old American machine.

So we settled down to the trip beginning with the rolling of joints of pot, to which the young Puerto Rican passenger Tony didnt object—he was on his way to Harlem. Strangest of all suddenly this big gangster Norman starts singing arias in a piercing tenor voice as he drives along, the which goes on all the way all night to Monterey. Irwin joins him from beside me in the back singing arias I never knew he knew, or singing the notes of Bach's Toccata and Fugue. I'm so befoggled by all these years of traveling and suffering sadness I almost forget to realize Irwin and I used to listen to Bach's Toccata and Fugue with earphones in the Columbia Library.

Lazarus sits in front and the Puerto Rican gets interested in interviewing him, finally so does Norman realizing what a weird kid he is. By the time we get to New York three days and nights later he is sternly advising Lazarus to exercise a lot, drink milk, walk straight and join the Army.

But at first there's hostility in the car. Norman comes on rough with us thinking we're a bunch of faggy poets. As we hit the mountains at Zimapan we're all high and suspicious anyway on tea. But he makes it worse. “Now you all have to consider me the captain and absolute master of this ship. You just cant sit there lettin me do all the work. Cooperate! When we come to a left curve, we all together singing lean to the left, and vicie vercie with the right coives. You got that?” At first I laugh thinking it's funny (also very practical for the tires as he explained) but no sooner we hit the first mountain curve and we (the boys) lean over, Norman and Tony aint even leaning over at all but just laughing. “Now the right!” says Norman, and again the same silly thing.

“Hey how
come
you aint leaning!” I yell.

“I've got my
driving
to think about. Now you boys just do what I say and everything'll be fine and we'll get to New York,” a little peevish now that someone had spoken out. I was scared of him at first. In my pot paranoia I suspected he and Tony were crooks who would just hold us up en route for whatever we had, which wasnt much though. As we went along and he grew more annoying it was Irwin (who never fights) finally saying:

“Oh shut up”

& all the car was cool thereon.

23

It even became a good trip and it was even almost fun at the border at Laredo to have to unpack all the incredible heap on the roof including Norman's bicycle and show it to guards in steel rimmed spectacles who saw they had no chance to check everything in such a hopeless clutter of junk.

The wind was whipping keen in the Rio Grande Valley, I felt great. We were in Texas again. You could smell it. The first thing I ordered was ice cream softies for all of us, nobody objecting at all. And we rolled to San Antonio in the night. It was Thanksgiving Day. Sad signs announced Turkey dinner in the cafés of San Antone. We didnt dare stop for that. The American road restless runners are terrified of relaxing even a minute. But outside San Antonio at 10
P.M.
Norman was too exhausted to go on and stopped the car near a dry riverbottom to nap in the front seat while Irwin and I and Laz and Simon took out our sleepingbags and spread them on the 20° frosty ground. Tony slept in the backseat. Irwin and Simon slithered somehow into Irwin's new Mexican-bought blue French sleepingbag with the hood, a slim bag and not even long enough for their feet. Lazarus was to get into my Army sleepingbag with me. I let him get in first and then slithered in where I could work the zipper over my neck. There was no way of turning over without a signal. The stars were cold and dry. Sagebrush with frost, the smell of cold winter cow dung. But that air, that divine Plains air, I actually fell asleep on it and in the middle of our sleep I made a motion to turn over and Laz went right over. It was strange. It was also uncomfortable because you couldnt move at all except to turn over en masse. But we were doing all right and it was Norman and Tony who couldnt stand the cold in the car who woke us all up at 3
A.M.
to resume with the heater on the run.

Motley dawn in Fredericksburg or someplace which I'd crossed a thousand times like.

24

Those long droning runs across a state's afternoon with some of us sleeping, some of us talking, some of us eating sandwiches of despair. Whenever I ride like that I always wake up from a nap with the sensation that I'm being driven to Heaven by the Heavenly Driver, no matter who he is. There's something strange about one person guiding the car while all the others dream with their lives in his steady hand, something noble, something old in mankind, some old trust in the Good Old Man. You come out of a drowsy dream of sheets on a roof and there you are in the Arkansas piny barrens zipping along at 60, wondering why and looking at the driver, who is stern, who is still, who is lonesome at the controls.

We arrived at Memphis in the evening and ate a good meal at last in a restaurant. It was then Irwin got mad at Norman and I was afraid Norman would stop the car and fight him in the road: some argument about Norman being a pest all the way which was really no longer true: so I said “Irwin you cant talk to him like that, he has a right to get sore.” So I established in the car that I was a big bumbling bullshitter who didnt want fights for any reason whatever. But Irwin wasnt mad at me either and Norman became silent on the subject. The only time I ever really fought a man was when he was socking my doubled-up buddy Steve Wadkovsky against the car at night, beaten but kept beating him, a big guy. I rushed in and engaged him across the road with rights and lefts some of which connected but all light like taps, or slaps, to his back, where his father dragged me off in dismay. I cant defend myself, only friends. So I didnt want Irwin to fight Norman. Once I got mad at Irwin (1953) and said I'd kick him in the pants but he said “I can beat you up with my mystic strength,” which scared me. Anyway Irwin doesnt take any bull from anybody, while me, I'm always sitting there with my Buddhist “vow of kindness” (vowed alone in the woods) taking abuse with pent up resentment that never comes out. But a man, hearing the Buddha (my hero) (my
other
hero, Christ is first) never answered abuse, came up to the sighing Bhagavat and spit in his face. Buddha is reported to have said: “Since I cant use your abuse, you may have it back.”

In Memphis Simon and Laz the brothers suddenly engaged in horseplay at the gas station sidewalk. Annoyed, Lazarus gave Simon one push and sent him skittering half way across the street, strong as an ox. One big Russian Patriarch Push that amazed me. Laz is six feet tall and wiry but as I say walks bent over, like an old 1910 hipster, rather like a farmer in the city. (The word “beat” comes from the old Southern countryside.)

In West Virginia at dawn Norman suddenly made me drive. “You can do it, dont worry, just drive, I'll relax.” And it was that morning I really learned how to drive. With one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel I somehow managed perfectly all kinds of curves right and left with going-to-work cars squeezing in on a narrow two lane. For the right curve the right hand, for the left the left. I was amazed. Everybody in the back seat was asleep, Norman talked to Tony.

I felt so proud of myself that I bought a quart of port wine in Wheeling that evening. That was the night of nights on the trip. We all got high and sang a million simultaneous arias as Simon drove grimly (Simon the old ambulance driver) clear to Washington D.C. at dawn, over a superhiway thru the woods. When we rolled into town Irwin yelled and shook Lazarus to wake up to see the Nation's capital. “I wanta sleep.”