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furniture was gone; he and his wife and baby were moving closer to the town of Testament. Theyhad bought a new parlor set and their old one was going to my aunt’s house in Paterson, though wehadn’t yet decided how. When Dean heard this he at once offered his services with the Hudson. Heand I would carry the furniture to Paterson in two fast trips and bring my aunt back at the end of thesecond trip. This was going to save us a lot of money and trouble. It was agreed upon. My sister-inlawmade a spread, and the three battered travelers sat down to eat. Marylou had not slept sinceDenver. I thought she looked older and more beautiful now.I learned that Dean had lived happily with Camille in San Francisco ever since that fall of 1947;he got a job on the railroad and made a lot of money. He became the father of a cute little girl, AmyMoriarty. Then suddenly he blew his top while walking down the street one day. He saw a ‘49Hudson for sale and rushed to the bank for his entire roll. He bought the car on the spot. Ed Dunkelwas with him. Now they were broke. Dean calmed Camille’s fears and told her he’d be back in amonth. .I’m going to New York and bring Sal back.. She wasn’t too pleased at this prospect..But what is the purpose of all this? Why are you doing this to me?..It’s nothing, it’s nothing, darling - ah - hem - Sal has pleaded and begged with me to come andget him, it is absolutely necessary for me to - but we won’t go into all these explanations - and I’ll tellyou why . . . No, listen, I’ll tell you why.. And he told her why, and of course it made no sense.Big tall Ed Dunkel also worked on the railroad. He and Dean had just been laid off during aseniority lapse because of a drastic reduction of crews. Ed had met a girl called Galatea who was66living in San Francisco on her savings. These two mindless cads decided to bring the girl along to theEast and have her foot the bill. Ed cajoled and pleaded; she wouldn’t go unless he married her. In awhirlwind few days Ed Dunkel married Galatea, with Dean rushing around to get the necessarypapers, and a few days before Christmas they rolled out of San Francisco at seventy miles per,headed for LA and the snowless southern road. In LA they picked up a sailor in a travel bureau andtook him along for fifteen dollars’ worth of gas. He was bound for Indiana. They also picked up awoman with her idiot daughter, for four dollars’ gas fare to Arizona. Dean sat the idiot girl with himup front and dug her, as he said, .All the way, man! such a gone sweet little soul. Oh, we talked, wetalked of fires and the desert turning to a paradise and her parrot that swore in Spanish.. Droppingoff these passengers, they proceeded to Tucson. All along the way Galatea Dunkel, Ed’s new wife,kept complaining that she was tired and wanted to sleep in a motel. If this kept up they’d spend allher money long before Virginia. Two nights she forced a stop and blew tens on motels. By the timethey got to Tucson she was broke. Dean and Ed gave her the slip in a hotel lobby and resumed thevoyage alone, with the sailor, and without a qualm.Ed Dunkel was a tall, calm, unthinking fellow who was completely ready to do anything Deanasked him; and at this time Dean was too busy for scruples. He was roaring through Las Cruces,New Mexico, when he suddenly had an explosive yen to see his sweet first wife Marylou again. Shewas up in Denver. He swung the car north, against the feeble protests of the sailor, and zoomed intoDenver in the evening. He ran and found Marylou in a hotel. They had ten hours of wild lovemaking.Everything was decided again: they were going to stick. Marylou was the only girl Dean ever reallyloved. He was sick with regret when he saw her face again, and, as of yore, he pleaded and beggedat her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he wasmad. To soothe the sailor, Dean fixed him up with a girl in a hotel room over the bar where the oldpoolhall gang always drank. But the sailor refused the girl and in fact walked off in the night and theynever saw him again; he evidently took a bus to Indiana.Dean, Marylou, and Ed Dunkel roared east along Colfax and out to the Kansas plains. Greatsnowstorms overtook them. In Missouri, at night, Dean had to drive with his scarf-wrapped headstuck out the window, with snowglasses that made him look like a monk peering into the manuscriptsof the snow, because the windshield was covered with an inch of ice. He drove by the birth countyof his forebears without a thought. In the morning the car skidded on an icy hill and flapped into aditch. A farmer offered to help them out. They got hung-up when they picked up a hitchhiker whopromised them a dollar if they’d let him ride to Memphis. In Memphis he went into his house,puttered around looking for the dollar, got drunk, and said he couldn’t find it. They resumed acrossTennessee; the bearings were beat from the accident. Dean had been driving ninety; now he had tostick to a steady seventy or the whole motor would go whirring down the mountainside. Theycrossed the Great Smoky Mountains in midwinter. When they arrived at my brother’s door they hadnot eaten for thirty hours - except for candy and cheese crackers.They ate voraciously as Dean, sandwich in hand, stood bowed and jumping before the bigphonograph, listening to a wild bop record I had just bought called .The Hunt,. with Dexter Gordonand Wardell Gray blowing their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantasticfrenzied volume. The Southern folk looked at one another and shook their heads in awe. .What kindof friends does Sal have, anyway?. they said to my brother. He was stumped for an answer.Southerners don’t like madness the least bit, not Dean’s kind. He paid absolutely no attention tothem. The madness of Dean had bloomed into a weird flower. I didn’t realize this till he and I andMarylou and Dunkel left the house for a brief spin-the-Hudson, when for the first time we were aloneand could talk about anything we wanted. Dean grabbed the wheel, shifted to second, mused a67minute, rolling, suddenly seemed to decide something and shot the car full-jet down the road in a furyof decision..All right now, children,. he said, rubbing his nose and bending down to feel the emergency andpulling cigarettes out of the compartment, and swaying back and forth as he did these things anddrove. .The time has come for us to decide what we’re going to do for the next week. Crucial,crucial. Ahem!. He dodged a mule wagon; in it sat an old Negro plodding along. .Yes!. yelledDean. .Yes! Dig him! Now consider his soul - stop awhile and consider.. And he slowed down thecar for all of us to turn and look at the old jazzbo moaning along. .Oh yes, dig him sweet; nowthere’s thoughts in that mind that I would give my last arm to know; to climb in there and find out justwhat he’s poor-ass pondering about this year’s turnip greens and ham. Sal, you don’t know it but Ionce lived with a farmer in Arkansas for a whole year, when I was eleven. I had awful chores, I hadto skin a dead horse once. Haven’t been to Arkansas since Christmas nineteen-forty-three, fiveyears ago, when Ben Gavin and I were chased by a man with a gun who owned the car we weretrying to steal; I say all this to show you that of the South I can speak. 1 have known - I mean, man,I dig the South, I know it in and out - I’ve dug your letters to me about it. Oh yes, oh yes,. he said,trailing off and stopping altogether, and suddenly jumping the car back to seventy and hunching overthe wheel. He stared doggedly ahead. Marylou was smiling serenely. This was the new and completeDean, grown to maturity. I said to myself, My God,, he’s changed. Fury spat out of his eyes when hetold of things he hated; great glows of joy replaced this when he suddenly got happy; every muscletwitched to live and go. .Oh, man, the things I could tell you,. he said, poking me, .Oh, man, wemust absolutely find the time -What has happened to Carlo? We all get to see Carlo, darlings, firstthing tomorrow. Now, Marylou, we’re getting some bread and meat to make a lunch for New York.How much money do you have, Sal? We’ll put everything in the back seat, Mrs. P’s furniture, andall of us will sit up front cuddly and close and tell stories as we zoom to New York. Marylou,honeythighs, you sit next to me, Sal next, then Ed at the window, big Ed to cut off drafts, whereby hecomes into using the robe this time. And then we’ll all go off to sweet life, ‘cause now is the time andwe all know time!. He rubbed his jaw furiously, he swung the car and passed three trucks, he roaredinto downtown Testament, looking in every direction and seeing everything in an arc of 180 degreesaround his eyeballs without moving his head. Bang, he found a parking space in no time, and wewere parked. He leaped out of the car. Furiously he hustled into the railroad station; we followedsheepishly. He bought cigarettes. He had become absolutely mad in his movements; he seemed to bedoing everything at the same time. It was. a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky,vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands,rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying .Am,. and sudden slitting of the eyes to seeeverywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking.It was very cold in Testament; they’d had an unseasonable snow. He stood in the long bleak mainstreet that runs along-the railroad, clad in nothing but a T-shirt and low-hanging pants with the beltunbuckled, as though he was about to take them off. He came sticking his head in to talk to Marylou;he backed away, fluttering his hands before her. .Oh yes, I know! I know you, I know you,darling!. His laugh was. maniacal; it started low and ended high, exactly like the laugh of a radiomaniac, only faster and more like a titter. Then he kept reverting to businesslike tones. There was nopurpose in our coming downtown, but he found purposes. He made us all hustle, Marylou for thelunch groceries, me for a paper to dig the weather report, Ed for cigars. Dean loved to smoke cigars.He smoked one over the paper and talked. .Ah, our holy American slopjaws in Washington areplanning further inconveniences -ah-hem! -aw -hup! hup!. And he leaped off and rushed tosee a colored girl that just then passed outside the station. .Dig her,. he said, standing with limp68finger pointed, fingering himself with a goofy smile, .that little gone black lovely. Ah! Hmm!. We gotin the car and flew back to my brother’s house.I had been spending a quiet Christmas in the country, as I realized when we got back into thehouse and I saw the Christmas tree, the presents, and smelled the roasting turkey and listened to thetalk of the relatives, but now the bug was on me again, and the bug’s name was Dean Moriarty and1 was off on another spurt around the road.692We packed my brother’s furniture in back of the car and took off at dark, promising to be backin thirty hours - thirty hours for a thousand miles north and south. But that’s the way Dean wanted it.It was a tough trip, and none of us noticed it; the heater was not working and consequently thewindshield developed fog and ice; Dean kept reaching out while driving seventy to wipe it with a ragand make a hole to see the road. .Ah, holy hole!. In the spacious Hudson we had plenty of roomfor all four of us to sit up front. A blanket covered our laps. The radio was not working. It was abrand-new car bought five days ago, and already it was broken. There was only one installment paidon it, too. Off we went, north to Washington, on 301, a straight two-lane highway without muchtraffic. And Dean talked, no one else talked. He gestured furiously, he leaned as far as me sometimesto make a point, sometimes he had no hands on the wheel and yet the car went as straight as anarrow, not for once deviating from the white line in the middle of the road that unwound, kissing ourleft front tire.It was a completely meaningless set of circumstances that made Dean come, and similarly I wentoff with him for no reason. In New York I had been attending school and romancing around with agirl called Lucille, a beautiful Italian honey-haired darling that I actually wanted to marry. All theseyears I was looking for the woman I wanted to marry. I couldn’t meet a girl without saying to myself,What kind of wife would she make? I told Dean and Marylou about Lucille. Marylou wanted toknow all about Lucille, she wanted to meet her. We zoomed through Richmond, Washington,Baltimore, and up to Philadelphia on a winding country road and talked. .I want to marry a girl,. Itold them, .so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This can’t go on all the time - all thisfranticness and jumping around. We’ve got to go someplace, find something...Ah now, man,. said Dean, .I’ve been digging you for years about the home and marriage andall those fine wonderful things about your soul.. It was a sad night; it was also a merry night. InPhiladelphia we went into a lunchcart and ate hamburgers with our last food dollar. The counterman-it was three A.M. - heard us talk about money and offered to give us the hamburgers free, plusmore coffee, if we all pitched in and washed dishes in the back because his regular man hadn’tshown up. We jumped to it. Ed Dunkel said he was an old pearldiver from way back and pitched hislong arms into the dishes. Dean stood googing around with a towel, so did Marylou. Finally theystarted necking among the pots and pans; they withdrew to a dark corner in the pantry. Thecounterman was satisfied as long as Ed and I did the dishes. We finished them in fifteen minutes.When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of MetropolitanNew York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears tokeep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York. We swishedthrough the Lincoln Tunnel and cut over to Times Square; Marylou wanted to see it..Oh damn, I wish I could find Hassel. Everybody look sharp, see if they can find him.. We allscoured the sidewalks. .Good old gone Hassel. Oh you should have seen him in Texas..So now Dean had come about four thousand miles from Frisco, via Arizona and up to Denver,inside four days, with innumerable adventures sandwiched in, and it was only the beginning.703We went to my house in Paterson and slept. I was the first to wake up, late in the afternoon.Dean and Marylou were sleeping on my bed, Ed and I on my aunt’s bed. Dean’s battered unhingedtrunk lay sprawled on the floor with socks sticking out. A phone call came for me in the drugstoredownstairs. I ran down; it was from New Orleans. It was Old Bull Lee, who’d moved to NewOrleans. Old Bull Lee in his high, whining voice was making a complaint. It seemed a girl calledGalatea Dunkel had just arrived at his house for a guy Ed Dunkel; Bull had no idea who these peoplewere. Galatea Dunkel was a tenacious loser. I told Bull to reassure her that Dunkel was with Deanand me and that most likely we’d be picking her up in New Orleans on the way to the Coast. Thenthe girl herself talked on the phone. She wanted to know how Ed was. She was all concerned abouthis happiness..How did you get from Tucson to New Orleans?. I asked. She said she wired home for moneyand took a bus. She was determined to catch up with Ed because she loved him. I went upstairs andtold Big Ed. He sat in the chair with a worried look, an angel of a man, actually..All right, now,. said Dean, suddenly waking up and leaping out of bed, .what we must do is eat,at once. Marylou, rustle around the kitchen see what there is. Sal, you and I go downstairs and callCarlo. Ed, you see what you can do straightening out the house.. I followed Dean, bustlingdownstairs.The guy who ran the drugstore said, .You just got another call -this one from San Francisco fora guy called Dean Moriarty. I said there wasn’t anybody by that name.. It was sweetest Camille,calling Dean. The drugstore man, Sam, a tall, calm friend of mine, looked at me and scratched hishead. .Geez, what are you running, an international whorehouse?.Dean tittered maniacally. .I dig you, man!. He leaped into the phone booth and called SanFrancisco collect. Then we called Carlo at his home in Long Island and told him to come over. Carloarrived two hours later. Meanwhile Dean and I got ready for our return trip alone to Virginia to pickup the rest of the furniture and bring my aunt back. Carlo Marx came, poetry under his arm, and satin an easy chair, watching us with beady eyes. For the first half-hour he refused to say anything; atany rate, he refused to commit himself. He had quieted down since the Denver Doldrum days; theDakar Doldrums had done it. In Dakar, wearing a beard, he had wandered the back streets withlittle children who led him to a witch-doctor who told him his fortune. He had snapshots of crazystreets with grass huts, the hip back-end of Dakar. He said he almost jumped off the ship like HartCrane on the way back. Dean sat on the floor with a music box and listened with tremendousamazement at the little song it played, .A Fine Romance. - .Little tinkling whirling doodlebells. Ah!Listen! We’ll all bend down together and look into the center of the music box till we learn about thesecrets - tinklydoodle-bell, whee.. Ed Dunkel was also sitting on the floor; he had my drumsticks; hesuddenly began beating a tiny beat to go with the music box, that we barely could hear. Everybodyheld his breath to listen. .Tick . . . tack . . . tick-tick . . . tack-tack.. Dean cupped a hand over hisear; his mouth hung open; he said, .Ah! Whee!.Carlo watched this silly madness with slitted eyes. Finally he slapped his knee and said, .I havean announcement to make...Yes? Yes?..What is the meaning of this voyage to New York? What kind of sordid business are you onnow? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?..Whither goest thou?. echoed Dean with his mouth open. We sat and didn’t know what to say;71there was nothing to talk about any more. The only thing to do was go. Dean leaped up and said wewere ready to go back to Virginia. He took a shower, I cooked up a big platter of rice with all thatwas left in the house, Marylou sewed his socks, and we were ready to go. Dean and Carlo and Izoomed into New York. We promised to see Carlo in thirty hours, in time for New Year’s Eve. Itwas night. We left him at Times Square and went back through the expensive tunnel and into NewJersey and on the road. Taking turns at the wheel, Dean and I made Virginia in ten hours..Now this is the first time we’ve been alone and in a position to talk for years,. said Dean. Andhe talked all night. As in a dream, we were zooming back through sleeping Washington and back inthe Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daybreak, pulling up at my brother’s door ateight A.M. And all this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything hetalked about, every detail of every moment that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief..And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God. We’ve passed through all forms. Youremember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me aboutNietzsche. You see how long ago? Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything sincethe Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can’t make it with geometry and geometrical systems ofthinking. It’s all this!. He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true. .Andnot only that but we both understand that I couldn’t have time to explain why I know and you knowGod exists.. At one point I moaned about life’s troubles - how poor my family was, how much Iwanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter. .Troubles, you see, is thegeneralization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung-up. My head rings!. hecried, clasping his head. He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes -that furious,ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails. .Since Denver, Sal, alot of things -Oh, the things - I’ve thought and thought. I used to be in reform school all the time, Iwas a young punk, asserting myself - stealing cars a psychological expression of my position, hinctyto show. All my jail-problems are pretty straight now. As far as I know I shall never be in jail again.The rest is not my fault.. We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars in the road..Think of it,. said Dean. .One day he’ll put a stone through a man’s windshield and the man willcrash and die - all on account of that little kid. You see what I mean? God exists without qualms. Aswe roll along this way 1 am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us - thateven you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel. (I hated to drive and drove carefully) - .the thing will goalong of itself and you won’t go off the road and I can sleep. Furthermore we know America, we’reat home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it’s the same in every corner, Iknow the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicatedsweetness zigzagging every side.. There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what hemeant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word .pure. a great deal. I had neverdreamed Dean would become a mystic. These were the first days of his mysticism, which would leadto the strange, ragged W. C. Fields saintliness of his later days.Even my aunt listened to him with a curious half-ear as we roared back north to New York thatsame night with the furniture in the back. Now that my aunt was in the car, Dean settled down totalking about his worklife in San Francisco. We went over every single detail of what a brakemanhas to do, demonstrating every time we passed yards, and at one point he even jumped out of thecar to show me how a brakeman gives a highball at a meet at a siding. My aunt retired to the backseat and went to sleep. In Washington at four A.M. Dean again called Camille collect in Frisco.Shortly after this, as we pulled out of Washington, a cruising car overtook us with siren going and wehad a speeding ticket in spite of the fact that we were going about thirty. It was the California licenseplate that did it. .You guys think you can rush through here as fast as you want just because you72come from California?. said the cop.I went with Dean to the sergeant’s desk and we tried to explain to the police that we had nomoney. They said Dean would have to spend the night in jail if we didn’t round up the money. Ofcourse my aunt had it, fifteen dollars; she had twenty in all, and it was going to be just fine. And infact while we were arguing with the cops one of them went out to peek at my aunt, who sat wrappedin the back of the car. She saw him..Don’t worry, I’m not a gun moll. If you want to come and search the car, go right ahead. I’mgoing home with my nephew, and this furniture isn’t stolen; it’s my niece’s, she just had a baby andshe’s moving to her new house.. This flabbergasted Sherlock and he went back in the station house.My aunt had to pay the fine for Dean or we’d be stuck in Washington; I had no license. Hepromised to pay it back, and he actually did, exactly a year and a half later and to my aunt’s pleasedsurprise. My aunt - a respectable woman hung-up in this sad world, and well she knew the world.She told us about the cop. .He was hiding behind the tree, trying to see what I looked like. I toldhim - I told him to search the car if he wanted. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.. She knew Dean hadsomething to be ashamed of, and me too, by virtue of my being with Dean, and Dean and I acceptedthis sadly.My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet andasked for forgiveness. But Dean knew this; he’d mentioned it many times. .I’ve pleaded andpleaded with Marylou for a peaceful sweet understanding of pure love between us forever with allhassles thrown out -she understands; her mind is bent on something else - she’s after me; she won’tunderstand how much I love her, she’s knitting my doom...The truth of the matter is we don’t understand our women; we blame on them and it’s all ourfault,. I said..But it isn’t as simple as that,. warned Dean. .Peace will come suddenly, we won’t understandwhen it does - see, man?. Doggedly, bleakly, he pushed the car through New Jersey; at dawn Idrove into Paterson as he slept in the back. We arrived at the house at eight in the morning to findMarylou and Ed Dunkel sitting around smoking butts from the ashtrays; they hadn’t eaten since Deanand I left. My aunt bought groceries and cooked up a tremendous breakfast.734Now it was time for the Western threesome to find new living quarters in Manhattan proper.Carlo had a pad on York Avenue; they were moving in that evening. We slept all day, Dean and I,and woke up as a great snowstorm ushered in New Year’s Eve, 1948. Ed Dunkel was sitting in myeasy chair, telling about the previous New Year’s. .I was in Chicago. I was broke. I was sitting atthe window of my hotel room on North Clark Street and the most delicious smell rose to my nostrilsfrom the bakery downstairs. I didn’t have a dime but I went down and talked to the girl. She gaveme bread and coffee cakes free. I went back to my room and ate them. I stayed in my room allnight. In Farmington, Utah, once, 。。 here I went to work with Ed Wall - you know Ed Wall, therancher’s son in Denver - I was in my bed and all of a sudden I saw my dead mother standing in thecorner with light all around her. I said, ’Mother!’ She disappeared. I have visions all the time,. saidEd Dunkel, nodding his head..What are you going to do about Galatea?..Oh, we’ll see. When we get to New Orleans. Don’t you think so, huh?. He was starting to turnto me as well for advice; one Dean wasn’t enough for him. But he was already in love with Galatea,pondering it..What are you going to do with yourself, Ed?. I asked..I don’t know,. he said. .I just go along. I dig life.. He repeated it, following Dean’s line. He hadno direction. He sat reminiscing about that night in Chicago and the hot coffee cakes in the lonelyroom.The snow whirled outside. A big party was on hand in New York; we were all going. Deanpacked his broken trunk, put it in the car, and we all took off for the big night. My aunt was happywith the thought that my brother would be visiting her the following week; she sat with her paper andwaited for the midnight New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square. We roared into New York,swerving on ice. I was never scared when Dean drove; he could handle a car under anycircumstances. The radio had been fixed and now he had wild bop to urge us along the night. I didn’tknow where all this was leading; I didn’t care.Just about that time a strange thing began to haunt me. It was this: I had forgotten something.There was a decision that I was about to make before Dean showed up, and now it was driven clearout of my mind but still hung on the tip of my mind’s tongue. I kept snapping my fingers, trying toremember it. I even mentioned it. And I couldn’t even tell if it was a real decision or just a thought Ihad forgotten. It haunted and flabbergasted me, made me sad. It had to do somewhat with theShrouded Traveler. Carlo Marx and I once sat down together, knee to knee, in two chairs, facing,and I told him a dream I had about a strange Arabian figure that was pursuing me across the desert;that I tried to avoid; that finally overtook me just before I reached the Protective City. .Who is this?.said Carlo. We pondered it. I proposed it was myself, wearing a shroud. That wasn’t it. Something,someone, some spirit was pursuing all of us across the desert of life and was bound to catch usbefore we reached heaven. Naturally, now that I look back on it, this is only death: death willovertake us before heaven. The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh andgroan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that wasprobably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) indeath. But who wants to die? In the rush of events I kept thinking about this in the back of my mind.I told it to Dean and he instantly recognized it as the mere simple longing for pure death; and becausewe’re all of us never in life again, he, rightly, would have nothing to do with it, and I agreed with him74then.