.That’s where I’m going too!. I cried. .I’m very glad you let me sit with you, I was very lonelyand I’ve been traveling a hell of a lot.. And we settled down to telling our stories. Her story was this:She had a husband and child. The husband beat her, so she left him, back at Sabinal, south ofFresno, and was going to LA to live with her sister awhile. She left her little son with her family, whowere grape-pickers and lived in a shack in the vineyards. She had nothing to do but brood and getmad. I felt like putting my arms around her right away. We talked and talked. She said she loved totalk with me. Pretty soon she was saying she wished she could go to New York too. .Maybe wecould!. I laughed. The bus groaned up Grapevine Pass and then we were coming down into thegreat sprawls of light. Without coming to any particular agreement we began holding hands, and inthe same way it was mutely and beautifully and purely decided that when I got my hotel room in LAshe would be beside me. I ached all over for her; I leaned my head in her beautiful hair. Her littleshoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it..I love love,. she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Ourstories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that.You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in thisworld; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that. She confessed she saw mewatching her in the bus station. .I thought you was a nice college boy...Oh, I’m a college boy!. I assured her. The bus arrived in Hollywood. In the gray, dirty dawn,like the dawn when Joel McCrea met Veronica Lake in a diner, in the picture Sullivan’s Travels,she slept in my lap. I looked greedily out tine window: stucco houses and palms and drive-ins, thewhole mad thing, the ragged promised land, the fantastic end of America. We got off the bus at MainStreet, which was no different from where you get off a bus in Kansas City or Chicago or Boston redbrick, dirty, characters drifting by, trolleys grating in the hopeless dawn, the whorey smell of abig city.And here my mind went haywire, I don’t know why. I began getting the foolish paranoiac visionsthat Teresa, or Terry - her name - was a common little hustler who worked the buses for a guy’sbucks by making appointments like ours in LA where she brought the sucker first to a breakfastplace, where her pimp waited, and then to a certain hotel to which he had access with his gun or hiswhatever. I never confessed this to her. We ate breakfast and a pimp kept watching us; I fanciedTerry was making secret eyes at him. I was tired and felt strange and lost in a faraway, disgustingplace. The goof of terror took over my thoughts and made me act petty and cheap. .Do you knowthat guy?. I said..What guy you mean, honey?. I let it drop. She was slow and hung-up about everything she did;51it took her a long time to eat; she chewed slowly and stared into space, and smoked a cigarette, andkept talking, and I was like a haggard ghost, suspicioning every move she made, thinking she wasstalling for time. This was all a fit of sickness. I was sweating as we went down the street hand inhand. The first hotel we hit had a room, and before I knew it I was locking the door behind me andshe was sitting on the bed taking off her shoes. I kissed her meekly. Better she’d never know. Torelax our nerves I knew we needed whisky, especially me. I ran out and fiddled all over twelveblocks, hurrying till I found a pint of whisky for sale at a newsstand. I ran back, all energy. Terry wasin the bathroom, fixing her face. I poured one big drink in a water glass, and we had slugs. Oh, it wassweet and delicious and worth my whole lugubrious voyage. I stood behind her at the mirror, and wedanced in the bathroom that way. I began talking about my friends back east.I said, .You ought to meet a great girl I know called Doric. She’s a six-foot redhead. If you cameto New York she’d show you where to get work...Who is this six-foot redhead?. she demanded suspiciously. .Why do you tell me about her?. Inher simple soul she couldn’t fathom my kind of glad, nervous talk. I let it drop. She began to getdrunk in the bathroom..Come on to bed!. I kept saying..Six-foot redhead, hey? And I thought you was a nice college boy, I saw you in your lovelysweater and I said to myself, Hmm, ain’t he nice? No! And no! And no! You have to be a goddampimp like all of them!..What on earth are you talking about?..Don’t stand there and tell me that six-foot redhead ain’t a madame, ‘cause I know a madamewhen I hear about one, and you, you’re just a pimp like all the rest I meet, everybody’s a pimp...Listen, Terry, I am not a pimp. I swear to you on the Bible I am not a pimp. Why should I be apimp? My only interest is you...All the time I thought I met a nice boy. I was so glad, I hugged myself and said, Hmm, a realnice boy instead of a pimp...Terry,. I pleaded with all my soul. .Please listen to me and understand, I’m not a pimp.. Anhour ago I’d thought she was a hustler. How sad it was. Our minds, with their store of madness, haddiverged. O gruesome life, how I moaned and pleaded, and then I got mad and realized I waspleading with a dumb little Mexican wench and I told her so; and before I knew it I picked up herred pumps and hurled them at the bathroom door and told her to get out. .Go on, beat it!. I’d sleepand forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever. There was a dead silence in thebathroom. I took my clothes off and went to bed.Terry came out with tears of sorriness in her eyes. In her simple and funny little mind had beendecided the fact that a pimp does not throw a woman’s shoes against the door and does not tell herto get out. In reverent and sweet little silence she took all her clothes off and slipped her tiny bodyinto the sheets with me. It was brown as grapes. I saw her poor belly where there was a Caesarianscar; her hips were so narrow she couldn’t bear a child without getting gashed open. Her legs werelike little sticks. She was only four foot ten. I made love to her in the sweetness of the wearymorning. Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found theclosest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon.5213For the next fifteen days we were together for better or for worse. When we woke up wedecided to hitchhike to New York together; she was going to be my girl in town. I envisioned wildcomplexities with Dean and Marylou and everybody - a season, a new season. First we had to workto earn enough money for the trip. Terry was all for starting at once with the twenty dollars I had left.I didn’t like it. And, like a damn fool, I considered the problem for two days, as we read the wantads of wild LA papers I’d never seen before in my life, in cafeterias and bars, until my twentydwindled to just over ten. We were very happy in our little hotel room. In the middle of the night Igot up because I couldn’t sleep, pulled the cover over baby’s bare brown shoulder, and examinedthe LA night. What brutal, hot, siren-whining nights they are! Right across the street there wastrouble. An old rickety rundown rooming house was the scene of some kind of tragedy. The cruiserwas pulled up below and the cops were questioning an old man with gray hair. Sobbings came fromwithin. I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life.LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winterbut there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.South Main Street, where Terry and I took strolls with hot dogs, was a fantastic carnival of lightsand wildness. Booted cops frisked people on practically every corner. The beatest characters in thecountry swarmed on the sidewalks - all of it under those soft Southern California stars that are lostin the brown halo of the huge desert encampment LA really is. You could smell tea, weed, I meanmarijuana, floating in the air, together with the chili beans and beer. That grand wild sound of bopfloated from beer parlors; it mixed medleys with every kind of cowboy and boogie-woogie in theAmerican night. Everybody looked like Hassel. Wild Negroes with bop caps and goatees camelaughing by; then long-haired brokendown hipsters straight off Route 66 from New York; then olddesert rats, carrying packs and heading for a park bench at the Plaza; then Methodist ministers withraveled sleeves, and an occasional Nature Boy saint in beard and sandals. I wanted to meet them all,talk to everybody, but Terry and I were too busy trying to get a buck together.We went to Hollywood to try to work in the drugstore at Sunset and Vine. Now there was acorner! Great families off jalopies from the hinterlands stood around the sidewalk gaping for sight ofsome movie star, and the movie star never showed up. When a limousine passed they rushed eagerlyto the curb and ducked to look: some character in dark glasses sat inside with a bejeweled blonde..Don Ameche! Don Ameche!. .No, George Murphy! George Murphy!. They milled around,looking at one another. Handsome queer boys who had come to Hollywood to be cowboys walkedaround, wetting their eyebrows with hincty fingertip. The most beautiful little gone gals in the worldcut by in slacks; they came to be starlets; they ended up in drive-ins. Terry and I tried to find work atthe drive-ins. It was no soap anywhere. Hollywood Boulevard was a great, screaming frenzy of cars;there were minor accidents at least once a minute; everybody was rushing off toward the farthestpalm - and beyond that was the desert and nothingness. Hollywood Sams stood in front of swankrestaurants, arguing exactly the same way Broadway Sams argue at Jacob’s Beach, New York, onlyhere they wore light-weight suits and their talk was cornier. Tall, cadaverous preachers shudderedby. Fat screaming women ran across the boulevard to get in line for the quiz shows. I saw JerryColonna buying a car at Buick Motors; he was inside the vast plate-glass window, fingering hismustachio. Terry and I ate in a cafeteria downtown which was decorated to look like a grotto, withmetal tits spurting everywhere and great impersonal stone buttockses belonging to deities and soapyNeptune. People ate lugubrious meals around the waterfalls, their faces green with marine sorrow.53All the cops in LA looked like handsome gigolos; obviously they’d come to LA to make the movies.Everybody had come to make the movies, even me. Terry and I were finally reduced to trying to getjobs on South Main Street among the beat countermen and dishgirls who made no bones about theirbeatness, and even there it was no go. We still had ten dollars..Man, I’m going to get my clothes from Sis and we’ll hitchhike to New York,. said Terry..Come on, man. Let’s do it. If you can’t boogie I know I’ll show you how.’. That last part was asong of hers she kept singing. We hurried to her sister’s house in the sliverous Mexican shackssomewhere beyond Alameda Avenue. I waited in a dark alley behind Mexican kitchens because hersister wasn’t supposed to see me. Dogs ran by. There were little lamps illuminating the little rat alleys.I could hear Terry and her sister arguing in the soft, warm night. I was ready for anything.Terry came out and led me by the hand to Central Avenue, which is the colored main drag of LA.And what a wild place it is, with chickenshacks barely big enough to house a jukebox, and thejukebox blowing nothing but blues, bop, and jump. We went up dirty tenement stairs and came tothe room of Terry’s friend Margarina, who owed Terry a skirt and a pair of shoes. Margarina was alovely mulatto; her husband was black as spades and kindly. He went right out and bought a pint ofwhisky to host me proper. I tried to pay part of it, but he said no. They had two little children. Thekids bounced on the bed; it was their play-place. They put their arms around me and looked at mewith wonder. The wild humming night of Central Avenue - the night of Hamp’s .Central AvenueBreakdown. - howled and boomed along outside. They were singing in the halls, singing from theirwindows, just hell be damned and look out. Terry got her clothes and we said good-by. We wentdown to a chickenshack and played records on the jukebox. A couple of Negro characterswhispered in my ear about tea. One buck. I said okay, bring it. The connection came in andmotioned me to the cellar toilet, where I stood around dumbly as he said, .Pick up, man, pick up...Pick up what?. I said.He had my dollar already. He was afraid to point at the floor. It was no floor, just basement.There lay something that looked like a little brown turd. He was absurdly cautious. .Got to look outfor myself, things ain’t cool this past week.. I picked up the turd, which was a brown-papercigarette, and went back to Terry, and off we went to the hotel room to get high. Nothing happened.It was Bull Durham tobacco. I wished I was wiser with my money.Terry and I had to decide absolutely and once and for all what to do. We decided to hitch toNew York with our remaining money. She picked up five dollars from her sister that night. We hadabout thirteen or less. So before the daily room rent was due again we packed up and took off on ared car to Arcadia, California, where Santa Anita racetrack is located under snow-cappedmountains. It was night. We were pointed toward the American continent. Holding hands, wewalked several miles down the road to get out of the populated district. It was a Saturday night. Westood under a roadlamp, thumbing, when suddenly cars full of young kids roared by with streamersflying. .Yaah! Yaah! we won! we won!. they all shouted. Then they yoohooed us and got great gleeout of seeing a guy and a girl on the road. Dozens of such cars passed, full of young faces and.throaty young voices,. as the saying goes. I hated every one of them. Who did they think theywere, yaahing at somebody on the road just because they were little high-school punks and theirparents carved the roast beef on Sunday afternoons? Who did they think they were, making fun of agirl reduced to poor circumstances with a man who wanted to belove? We were minding our ownbusiness. And we didn’t get a blessed ride.We had to walk back to town, and worst of all we needed coffee and had the misfortune of goinginto the only place open, which was a high-school soda fountain, and all the kids were there andremembered us. Now they saw that Terry was Mexican, a Pachuco wildcat; and that her boy was54worse than that.With her pretty nose in the air she cut out of there and we wandered together in the dark up alongthe ditches of the highways. I carried the bags. We were breathing fogs in the cold night air. I finallydecided to hide from the world one more night with her, and the morning be damned. We went intoa motel court and bought a comfortable little suite for about four dollars - shower, bathtowels, wallradio, and all. We held each other tight. We had long, serious talks and took baths and discussedthings with the light on and then with the light out. Something was being proved, I was convincing herof something, which she accepted, and we concluded the pact in the dark, breathless, then pleased,like little lambs.In the morning we boldly struck out on our new plan. We were going to take a bus to Bakersfieldand work picking grapes. After a few weeks of that we were headed for New York in the properway, by bus. It was a wonderful afternoon, riding up to Bakersfield with Terry: we sat back, relaxed,talked, saw the countryside roll by, and didn’t worry about a thing. We arrived in Bakersfield in lateafternoon. The plan was to hit every fruit wholesaler in town. Terry said we could live in tents on thejob. The thought of living in a tent and picking grapes in the cool California mornings hit me right. Butthere were no jobs to be had, and much confusion, with everybody giving us innumerable tips, andno job materialized. Nevertheless we ate a Chinese dinner and set out with reinforced bodies. Wewent across the SP tracks to Mexican town. Terry jabbered with her brethren, asking for jobs. Itwas night now, and the little Mextown street was one blazing bulb of lights: movie marquees, fruitstands, penny arcades, five-and-tens, and hundreds of rickety trucks and mud-spattered jalopies,parked. Whole Mexican fruit-picking families wandered around eating popcorn. Terry talked toeverybody. I was beginning to despair. What I needed -what Terry needed, too -was a drink, sowe bought a quart of California port for thirty-five cents and went to the railroad yards to drink. Wefound a place where hobos had drawn up crates to sit over fires. We sat there and drank the wine.On our left were the freight cars, sad and sooty red beneath the moon; straight ahead the lights andairport pokers of Bakersfield proper; to our right a tremendous aluminum Quonset warehouse. Ah, itwas a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl andtalk and spit and be heavengoing. This we did. She was a drinking little fool and kept up with me andpassed me and went right on talking till midnight. We never budged from those crates. Occasionallybums passed, Mexican mothers passed with children, and the prowl car came by and the cop gotout to leak, but most of the time we were alone and mixing up our souls ever more and ever more tillit would be terribly hard to say good-by. At midnight we got up and goofed toward the highway.Terry had a new idea. We would hitchhike to Sabinal, her hometown, and live in her brother’sgarage. Anything was all right with me. On the road I made Terry sit down on my bag to make herlook like a woman in distress, and right off a truck stopped and we ran for it, all glee-giggles. Theman was a good man; his truck was poor. He roared and crawled on up the valley. We got toSabinal in the wee hours before dawn. I had finished the wine while Terry slept, and I was properstoned. We got out and roamed the quiet leafy square of the little California town -a whistle stopon the SP. We went to find her brother’s buddy, who would tell us where he was. Nobody home.As dawn began to break I lay flat on my back in the lawn of the town square and kept saying overand over again, .You won’t tell what he done up in Weed, will you? What’d he do up in Weed?You won’t tell will you? What’d he do up in Weed?. This was from the picture Of Mice and Men,with Burgess Meredith talking to the foreman of the ranch. Terry giggled. Anything I did was all rightwith her. I could lie there and go on doing that till the ladies came out for church and she wouldn’tcare. But finally I decided we’d be all set soon because of her brother, and I took her to an old hotelby the tracks and we went to bed comfortably.55In the bright, sunny morning Terry got up early and went to find her brother. I slept till noon; whenI looked out the window I suddenly saw an SP freight going by with hundreds of hobos reclining onthe flatcars and rolling merrily along with packs for pillows and funny papers before their noses, andsome munching on good California grapes pickfed up by the siding. .Damn!. I yelled. .Hooee! It isthe promised land.. They were all coming from Frisco; in a week they’d all be going back in thesame grand style.Terry arrived with her brother, his buddy, and her child. Her brother was a wild-buck Mexicanhotcat with a hunger for booze, a great good kid. His buddy was a big flabby Mexican who spokeEnglish without much accent and was loud and overanxious to please. I could see he had eyes forTerry. Her little boy was Johnny, seven years old, dark-eyed and sweet. Well, there we were, andanother wild day began.Her brother’s name was Rickey. He had a ‘38 Chevy. We piled into that and took off for partsunknown. .Where we going?. I asked. The buddy did the explaining - his name was Ponzo, that’swhat everybody called him. He stank. I found out why. His business was selling manure to farmers;he had a truck. Rickey always had three or four dollars in his pocket and was happy-go-lucky aboutthings. He always said, .That’s right, man, there you go - dah you go, dah you go!. And he went.He drove seventy miles an hour in the old heap, and we went to Madera beyond Fresno to see somefarmers about manure.Rickey had a bottle. .Today we drink, tomorrow we work. Dah you go, man - take a shot!.Terry sat in back with her baby; I looked back at her and saw the flush of homecoming joy on herface. The beautiful green countryside of October in California reeled by madly. I was guts and juiceagain and ready to go. .Where do we go now, man?..We go find a farmer with some manure laying around. Tomorrow we drive back in the truck andpick it up. Man, we’ll make a lot of money. Don’t worry about nothing...We’re all in this together!. yelled Ponzo. I saw that was so - everywhere I went, everybody wasin it together. We raced through the crazy streets of Fresno and on up the valley to some farmers inback roads. Ponzo got out of the car and conducted confused conversations with old Mexicanfarmers; nothing, of course, came of it..What we need is a drink!. yelled Rickey, and off we went to a crossroads saloon. Americansare always drinking in crossroads saloons on Sunday afternoon; they bring their kids; they gabbleand brawl over brews; everything’s fine. Come nightfall the kids start crying and the parents aredrunk. They go weaving back to the house. Everywhere in America I’ve been in crossroads saloonsdrinking with dull; whole families. The kids eat popcorn and chips and play in back. This we did.Rickey and I and Ponzo and Terry sat drinking and shouting with the music; little baby Johnnygoofed with other children around the jukebox. The sun began to get red. Nothing had beenaccomplished. What was there to accomplish? .Mariana. said Rickey. .Manana, man, we make it;have another beer, man, dah you go, dab you go!.We staggered out and got in the car; off we went to a highway bar. Ponzo was a big, loud,vociferous type who knew everybody in San Joaquin Valley. From the highway bar I went with himalone in the car to find a farmer; instead we wound up in Madera Mextown, digging the girls andtrying to pick up a few for him and Rickey. And then, as purple dusk descended over the grapecountry, I found myself sitting dumbly in the car as he argued with some old Mexican at the kitchendoor about the price of a watermelon the old man grew in the back yard. We got the watermelon;we ate it on the spot and threw the rinds on the old man’s dirt sidewalk. All kinds of pretty little girlswere cutting down the darkening street. I said, .Where in the hell are we?..Don’t worry, man,. said big Ponzo. .Tomorrow we make a lot of money; tonight we don’t56worry.. We went back and picked up Terry and her brother and the kid and drove to Fresno in thehighway lights of night. We were all raving hungry. We bounced over the railroad tracks in Fresnoand hit the wild streets of Fresno Mextown. Strange Chinese hung out of windows, digging theSunday night streets; groups of Mex chicks swaggered around in slacks; mambo blasted fromjukeboxes; the lights were festooned around like Halloween. We went into a Mexican restaurant andhad tacos and mashed pinto beans rolled in tortillas; it was delicious. I whipped out my last shiningfive-dollar bill which stood between me and the New Jersey shore and paid for Terry and me. NowI had four bucks. Terry and I looked at each other..Where we going to sleep tonight, baby?..I don’t know..Rickey was drunk; now all he was saying was, .Dah you go, man - dah you go, man,. in a tenderand tired voice. It had been a long day. None of us knew what was going on, or what the GoodLord appointed. Poor little Johnny fell asleep on my arm. We drove back to Sabinal. On the way wepulled up sharp at a roadhouse on Highway 99. Rickey wanted one last beer. In back of theroadhouse were trailers and tents and a few rickety motel-style rooms. I inquired about the price andit was two bucks. I asked Terry how about it, and she said fine because we had the kid on ourhands now and had to make him comfortable. So after a few beers in the saloon, where sullen Okiesreeled to the music of a cowboy band, Terry and I and Johnny went into a motel room and got readyto hit the sack. Ponzo kept hanging around; he had no place to sleep. Rickey slept at his father’shouse in the vineyard shack..Where do you live, Ponzo?. I asked..Nowhere, man. I’m supposed to live with Big Rosey but she threw me out last night. I’m gonnaget my truck and sleep in it tonight.. Guitars tinkled. Terry and I gazed at the stars together andkissed. .Manana. she said. .Everything’ll be all right tomorrow, don’t you think, Sal-honey, man?..Sure, baby, manana.. It was always manana. For the next week that was all I heard manana,a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.Little Johnny jumped in bed, clothes and all, and went to sleep; sand spilled out of his shoes,Madera sand. Terry and I got up in the middle of the night and brushed the sand off the sheets. In themorning I got up, washed, and took a walk around the place. We were five miles out of Sabinal inthe cotton fields and grape vineyards. I asked the big fat woman who owned the camp if any of thetents were vacant. The cheapest one, a dollar a day, was vacant. I fished up a dollar and moved intoit. There were a bed, a stove, and a cracked mirror hanging from a pole; it was delightful. I had tostoop to get in, and when I did there was my baby and my baby boy. We waited for Rickey andPonzo to arrive with the truck. They arrived with beer bottles and started to get drunk in the tent..How about the manure?..Too late today. Tomorrow, man, we make a lot of money; today we have a few beers. What doyou say, beer?. I didn’t have to be prodded. .Dah you go -dah you go!. yelled Rickey. I began tosee that our plans for making money with the manure truck would never materialize. The truck wasparked outside the tent. It smelled like Ponzo.That night Terry and I went to bed in the sweet night air beneath our dewy tent. I was just gettingready to go to sleep when she said, .You want to love me now?.I said, .What about Johnny?..He don’t mind. He’s asleep.. But Johnny wasn’t asleep and he said nothing.The boys came back the next day with the manure truck and drove off to find whisky; they cameback and had a big time in the tent. That night Ponzo said it was too cold and slept on the ground inour tent, wrapped in a big tarpaulin smelling of cowflaps. Terry hated him; she said he hung around57with her brother in order to get close to her.Nothing was going to happen except starvation for Terry and me, so in the morning I walkedaround the countryside asking for cotton-picking work. Everybody told me to go to the farm acrossthe highway from the camp. I went, and the farmer was in the kitchen with his women. He came out,listened to my story, and warned me he was paying only three dollars per hundred pounds of pickedcotton. I pictured myself picking at least three hundred pounds a day and took the job. He fished outsome long canvas bags from the barn and told me the picking started at dawn. I rushed back toTerry, all glee. On the way a grape truck went over a bump in the road and threw off great bunchesof grapes on the hot tar. I picked them up and took them home. Terry was glad. .Johnny and me’llcome with you and help...Pshaw!. I said. .No such thing!..You see, you see, it’s very hard picking cotton. I show you how..