在路上 英文版-20

large almond eyes and a tense, mad neck..Stan,. he simply said, .don’t go. Don’t make your old grandfather cry. Don’t leave me aloneagain.. It broke my heart to see all this..Dean,. said the old man, addressing me, .don’t take my Stan away from me. I used to take himto the park when he was a little boy and explain the swans to him. Then his little sister drowned in thesame pond. I don’t want you to take my boy away...No,. said Stan, .we’re leaving now. Good-by.. He struggled with his grips.His grandfather took him by the arm. .Stan, Stan, Stan, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go..We fled with our heads bowed, and the old man still stood in the doorway of his Denver side-street cottage with the beads hanging in the doors and the overstaffed furniture in the parlor. He wasas white as a sheet. He was still calling Stan. There was something paralyzed about his movements,and he did nothing about leaving the doorway, but just stood in it, muttering, .Stan,. and .Don’tgo,. and looking after us anxiously as we rounded the corner..God, Shep, I don’t know what to say...Never mind!. Stan moaned. .He’s always been like that..We met Stan’s mother at the bank, where she was drawing money for him. She was a lovelywhite-haired woman, still very young in appearance. She and her son stood on the marble floor ofthe bank, whispering. Stan was wearing a Levi outfit, jacket and all, and looked like a man going toMexico sure enough. This was his tender existence in Denver, and he was going off with the namingtyro Dean. Dean came popping around the corner and met us just on time. Mrs. Shephard insistedon buying us all a cup of coffee..Take care of my Stan,. she said. .No telling what things might happen in that country...We’ll all watch over each other,. I said. Stan and his mother strolled on ahead, and I walked inback with crazy Dean; he was telling me about the inscriptions carved on toilet walls in the East andin the West..They’re entirely different; in the East they make cracks and corny jokes and obvious references,scatological bits of data and drawings; in the West they just write their names, Red O’Hara,Blufftown Montana, came by here, date, real solemn, like, say, Ed Dunkel, the reason being theenormous loneliness that differs just a shade and cut hair as you move across the Mississippi.. Well,there was a lonely guy in front of us, for Shephard’s mother was a lovely mother and she hated tosee her son go but knew he had to go. I saw he was fleeing his grandfather. Here were the three ofus - Dean looking for his father, mine dead, Stan fleeing his old one, and going off into the nighttogether. He kissed his mother in the rushing crowds of 17th and she got in a cab and waved at us.Good-by, good-by.We got in the car at Babe’s and said good-by to her. Tim was riding with us to his house outsidetown. Babe was beautiful that day; her hair was long and blond and Swedish, her freckles showed inthe sun. She looked exactly like the little girl she had been. There was a mist in her eyes. She mightjoin us later with Tim - but she didn’t. Good-by, good-by.We roared off. We left Tim in his yard on the Plains outside town and I looked back to watch155Tim Gray recede on the plain. That strange guy stood there for a full two minutes watching us goaway and thinking God knows what sorrowful thoughts. He grew smaller and smaller, and still hestood motionless with one hand on a washline, like a captain, and I was twisted around to see moreof Tim Gray till there was nothing but a growing absence in space, and the space was the eastwardview toward Kansas that led all the way back to my home in Atlantis.Now we pointed our rattly snout south and headed for Castle Rock, Colorado, as the sun turnedred and the rock of the mountains to the west looked like a Brooklyn brewery in November dusks.Far up in the purple shades of the rock there was someone walking, walking, but we could not see;maybe that old man with the white hair I had sensed years ago up in the peaks. Zacatecan Jack. Buthe was coming closer to me, if only ever just behind. And Denver receded back of us like the city ofsalt, her smokes breaking up in the air and dissolving to our sight.1564It was May. And how can homely afternoons in Colorado with its farms and irrigation ditches andshady dells - the places where little boys go swimming - produce a bug like the bug that bit StanShephard? He had his arm draped over the broken door and was riding along and talking happilywhen suddenly a bug flew into his arm and embedded a long stinger in it that made him howl. It hadcome out of an American afternoon. He yanked and slapped at his arm and dug out the stinger, andin a few minutes his arm had begun to swell and hurt. Dean and I couldn’t figure what it was. Thething was to wait and see if the swelling went down. Here we were, heading for unknown southernlands, and barely three miles out of hometown, poor old hometown of childhood, a strange feverishexotic bug rose from secret corruptions and sent fear into our hearts. .What is it?..I’ve never known of a bug around here that can make a swelling like that...Damn!. It made the trip seem sinister and doomed. We drove on. Stan’s arm got worse. We’dstop at the first hospital and have him get a shot of penicillin. We passed Castle Rock, came toColorado Springs at dark. The great shadow of Pike’s Peak loomed to our right. We bowled downthe Pueblo highway. .I’ve hitched thousands and thousands of times on this road,. said Dean. .I hidbehind that exact wire fence there one night when I suddenly took fright for no reason whatever..We all decided to tell our stories, but one by one, and Stan was first. .We’ve got a long way togo,. preambled Dean, .and so you must take every indulgence and deal with every single detail youcan bring to mind - and still h won’t all be told. Easy, easy,. he cautioned Stan, who began telling hisstory, .you’ve got to relax too.. Stan swung into his life story as we shot across the dark. He startedwith his experiences in France but to round out ever-growing difficulties he came back and started atthe beginning with his boyhood in Denver. He and Dean compared times they’d seen each otherzooming around on bicycles. .One time you’ve forgotten, I know - Arapahoe Garage? Recall? Ibounced a ball at you on the corner and you knocked it back to me with your fist and it went in thesewer. Grammar days. Now recall?. Stan was nervous and feverish. He wanted to tell Deaneverything. Dean was now arbiter, old man, judge, listener, approver, nodder. .Yes, yes, go onplease.. We passed Walsenburg; suddenly we passed Trinidad, where Chad King was somewhereoff the road in front of a campfire with perhaps a handful of anthropologists and as of yore he toowas telling his life story and never dreamed we were passing at that exact moment on the highway,headed for Mexico, telling our own stories. O sad American night! Then we were in New Mexicoand passed the rounded rocks of Raton and stopped at a diner, ravingly hungry for hamburgers,some of which we wrapped in a napkin to eat over the border below. .The whole vertical state ofTexas lies before us, Sal,. said Dean. .Before we made it horizontal.Every bit as long. We’ll be in Texas in a few minutes and won’t be out till tomorrow this time andwon’t stop driving. Think of it..We drove on. Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dalhart, which I’dcrossed in 1947. It lay glimmering on the dark floor of the earth, fifty miles away. The land bymoonlight was all mesquite and wastes. On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew hugeand rusty, she mellowed and rolled, till the morning star contended and dews began to blow in ourwindows - and still we rolled. After Dalhart - empty crackerbox town - we bowled for Amarillo, andreached it in the morning among windy panhandle grasses that only a few years ago waved around acollection of buffalo tents. Now there were gas stations and new 1950 jukeboxes with immenseornate snouts and ten-cent slots and awful songs. All the way from Amarillo to Childress, Dean and Ipounded plot after plot of books we’d read into Stan, who asked for it because he wanted to know.157At Childress in the hot sun we turned directly south on a lesser road and highballed across abysmalwastes to Paducah, Guthrie, and Abilene, Texas. Now Dean had to sleep, and Stan and I sat in thefront seat and drove. The old car burned and bopped and struggled on. Great clouds of gritty windblew at us from shimmering spaces. Stan rolled right along with stories about Monte Carlo andCagnes-sur-Mer and the blue places near Menton where dark-faced people wandered among whitewalls.Texas is undeniable: we burned slowly into Abilene and all woke up to look at it. .Imagine livingin this town a thousand miles from cities. Whoop, whoop, over there by the tracks, old town Abilenewhere they shipped the cows and shot it up for gumshoes and drank red-eye. Look out there!.yelled Dean out the window with his mouth contorted like W. C. Fields. He didn’t care about Texasor any place. Red-faced Texans paid him no mind and hurried along the burning sidewalks. Westopped to eat on the highway south of town. Nightfall seemed like a million miles away as weresumed for Coleman and Brady - the heart of Texas, only, wildernesses of brush with an occasionalhouse near a thirsty creek and a fifty-mile dirt road detour and endless heat. .Old dobe Mexico’s along way away,. said Dean sleepily from the back seat, .so keep her rolling, boys, and we’ll bekissing senoritas b’dawn ‘cause this old Ford can roll if y’know how to talk to her and ease heralong - except the back end’s about to fall but don’t worry about it till we get there.. And he went tosleep.I took the wheel and drove to Fredericksburg, and here again I was crisscrossing the old mapagain, same place Marylou and I had held hands on a snowy morning in 1949, and where wasMarylou now? .Blow!. yelled Dean in a dream and I guess he was dreaming of Frisco jazz andmaybe Mexican mambo to come. Stan talked and talked; Dean had wound him up the night beforeand now he was never going to stop. He was in England by now, relating adventures hitchhiking onthe English road, London to Liverpool, with his hair long and his pants ragged, and strange Britishtruck-drivers giving him lifts in glooms of the Europe void. We were all red-eyed from the continualmistral-winds of old Tex-ass. There was a rock in each of our bellies and we knew we were gettingthere, if slowly. The car pushed forty with shuddering effort. From Fredericksburg we descended thegreat western high plains. Moths began smashing our windshield. .Getting down into the hot countrynow, boys, the desert rats and the tequila. And this is my first time this far south in Texas,. addedDean with wonder. .Gawd-damn! this is where my old man comes in the wintertime, sly old bum..Suddenly we were in absolutely tropical heat at the bottom of a five-mile-long hill, and up aheadwe saw the lights of old San Antonio. You had the feeling all this used to be Mexican territoryindeed. Houses by the side of the road were different, gas stations beater, fewer lamps. Deandelightedly took the wheel to roll us into San Antonio. We entered town in a wilderness of Mexicanrickety southern shacks without cellars and with old rocking chairs on the porch. We stopped at amad gas station to get a grease job. Mexicans were standing around in the hot light of the overheadbulbs that were blackened by valley summerbugs, reaching down into a soft-drink box and pullingout beer bottles and throwing the money to the attendant. Whole families lingered around doing this.All around there were shacks and drooping trees and a wild cinnamon smell in the air. Franticteenage Mexican girls came by with boys. .Hoo!. yelled Dean. .Si! Maniana!. Music was comingfrom all sides, and all kinds of music. Stan and I drank several bottles of beer and got high. We werealready almost out of America and yet definitely in it and in the middle of where it’s maddest.Hotrods blew by. San Antonio, ah-haa!.Now, men, listen to me - we might as well goof a coupla hours in San Antone and so we will goand find a hospital clinic for Stan’s arm and you and I, Sal, will cut around and get these streets dug lookat those houses across the street, you can see right into the front room and all the purty158daughters layin around with True Love magazines, wheel Come, let’s go!.We drove around aimlessly awhile and asked people for the nearest hospital clinic. It was neardowntown, where things looked more sleek and American, several semi-skyscrapers and manyneons and chain drugstores, yet with cars crashing through from the dark around town as if therewere no traffic laws. We parked the car in the hospital driveway and I went with Stan to see anintern while Dean stayed in the car and changed. The hall of the hospital was full of poor Mexicanwomen, some of them pregnant, some of them sick or bringing their little sick kiddies. It was sad. Ithought of poor Terry and wondered what she was doing now. Stan had to wait an /entire hour till anintern came along and looked at his swollen arm. There was a name for the infection he had, butnone of us bothered to pronounce it. They gave him a shot of penicillin.Meanwhile Dean and I went out to dig the streets of Mexican San Antonio. It was fragrant andsoft - the softest air I’d ever known - and dark, and mysterious, and buzzing. Sudden figures of girlsin white bandannas appeared in the humming dark. Dean crept along and said not a word. .Oh, thisis too wonderful to do anything!. he whispered. .Let’s just creep along and see everything. Look!Look! A crazy San Antonio f pool shack.. We went in. A dozen boys were shooting pool at threetables, all Mexicans. Dean and I bought Cokes and shoved nickels in the jukebox and playedWynonie Blues Harris and Lionel Hampton and Lucky Millinder and jumped. Meanwhile Deanwarned me to watch..Dig, now, out of the corner of your eye and as we listen to Wynonie blow about his baby’spudding and as we also smell the soft air as you say - dig the kid, the crippled kid shooting pool attable one, the butt of the joint’s jokes, y’see, he’s been the butt all his life. The other fellows aremerciless but they love him..The crippled kid was some kind of malformed midget with a great big beautiful face, much toolarge, in which enormous brown eyes moistly gleamed. .Don’t you see, Sal, a San Antonio MexTom Snark, the same story the world over. See, they hit him on the ass with a cue? Ha-ha-ha! hearthem laugh. You see, he wants to win the game, he’s bet four bits. Watch! Watch!. We watched asthe angelic young midget aimed for a bank shot. He missed. The other fellows roared. .Ah, man,.said Dean, .and now watch.. They had the little boy by the scruff of the neck and were mauling himaround, playful. He squealed. He stalked out in the night but not without a backward bashful, sweetglance. .Ah, man, I’d love to know that gone little cat and what he thinks and what kind of girls hehas - oh, man, I’m high on this air!. We wandered out and negotiated several dark, mysteriousblocks. Innumerable houses hid behind verdant, almost jungle-like yards; we saw glimpses of girls infront rooms, girls on porches, girls in the bushes with boys. .I never knew this mad San Antonio!Think what Mexico’ll be like! Lessgo! Lessgo!. We rushed back to the hospital. Stan was readyand said he felt much better. We put our arms around him and told him everything we’d done.And now we were ready for the last hundred and fifty miles to the magic border. We leaped intothe car and off. I was so exhausted by now I slept all the way through Dilley and Encinal to Laredoand didn’t wake up till they were parking the car in front of a lunchroom at two o’clock in themorning. .Ah,. sighed Dean, .the end of Texas, the end of America, we don’t know no more.. Itwas tremendously hot: we were all sweating buckets. There was no night dew, not a breath of air,nothing except billions of moths smashing at bulbs everywhere and the low, rank smell of a hot riverin the night nearby - the Rio Grande, that begins in cool Rocky Mountain dales and ends upfashioning world-valleys to mingle its heats with the Mississippi muds in the great Gulf.Laredo was a sinister town that morning. All kinds of cab-drivers and border rats wanderedaround, looking for opportunities. There weren’t many; it was too late. It was the bottom and dregsof America where all the heavy villains sink, where disoriented people have to go to be near a159specific elsewhere they can slip into unnoticed. Contraband brooded in the heavy syrup air. Copswere red-faced and sullen and sweaty, no swagger. Waitresses were dirty and disgusted. Justbeyond, you could feel the enormous presence of whole great Mexico and almost smell the billiontortillas frying and smoking in the night. We had no idea what Mexico would really be like. We wereat sea level again, and when we tried to eat a snack we could hardly swallow it. I wrapped it up innapkins for the trip anyway. We felt awful and sad. But everything changed when we crossed themysterious bridge over the river and our wheels rolled on official Mexican soil, though it wasn’tanything but carway for border inspection. Just across the street Mexico began. We looked withwonder. To our amazement, it looked exactly like Mexico. It was three in the morning, and fellows instraw hats and white pants were lounging by the dozen against battered pocky storefronts..Look - at - those - cats!. whispered Dean, .Oo,. he breathed softly, .wait, wait.. TheMexican officials came out, grinning, and asked please if we would take out our baggage. We did.We couldn’t take our eyes from across the street. We were longing to rush right up there and get lostin those mysterious Spanish streets. It was only Nuevo Laredo but it looked like Holy Lhasa to us..Man, those guys are up all night,. whispered Dean. We hurried to get our papers straightened. Wewere warned not to drink tapwater now we were over the border. The Mexicans looked at ourbaggage in a desultory way. They weren’t like officials at all. They were lazy and tender. Deancouldn’t stop staring at them. He turned to me..See how the cops are in this country. I can’t believe it!. He rubbed his eyes. .I’m dreaming..Then it was time to change our money. We saw great stacks of pesos on a table and learned thateight of them made an American buck, or thereabouts. We changed most of our money and stuffedthe big rolls in our pockets with delight.1605Then we turned our faces to Mexico with bashfulness and wonder as those dozens of Mexicancats watched us from under their secret hatbrims in the night. Beyond were music and all-nightrestaurants with smoke pouring out of the door. .Whee,. whispered Dean very softly..Thassall!. A Mexican official grinned. .You boys all set. Go ahead. Welcome Mehico. Havegood time. Watch you money. Watch you driving. I say this to you personal, I’m Red, everybodycall me Red. Ask for Red. Eat good. Don’t worry. Everything fine. Is not hard enjoin yourself inMehico...Yes!. shuddered Dean and off we went across the street into Mexico on soft feet. We left thecar parked, and all three of us abreast went down the Spanish street into the middle of the dullbrown lights. Old men sat on chairs in the night and looked like Oriental junkies and oracles. No onewas actually looking at us, yet everybody was aware of everything we did. We turned sharp left intothe smoky lunchroom and went in to music of campo guitars on an American thirties jukebox. ShirtsleevedMexican cabdrivers and straw-hatted Mexican hipsters sat at stools, devouring shapelessmesses of tortillas, beans, tacos, whatnot. We bought three bottles of cold beer -cerveza was thename of beer - for about thirty Mexican cents.; or ten American cents each. We bought packs ofMexican cigarettes for six cents each. We gazed and gazed at our wonderful Mexican money thatwent so far, and played with it and looked around and smiled at everyone. Behind us lay the wholeof America and everything Dean and I had previously known: about life, and life on the road. Wehad finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of themagic. .Think of these cats staying up all hours of the night,. whispered Dean. .And think of this bigcontinent ahead of us with those enormous Sierra Madre mountains we saw in the movies, and thejungles all the way down and a whole desert plateau as big as ours and reaching clear down toGuatemala and God knows where, whoo! What’ll we do? What’ll we do? Let’s move!. We got outand went back to the car. One last glimpse of America across the hot lights of the Rio Grandebridge, and we turned our back and fender to it and roared off.Instantly we were out in the desert and there wasn’t light or a car for fifty miles across the flats.And just the dawn was coming over the Gulf of Mexico and we began see the ghostly shapes ofyucca cactus and organpipe on all sides. .What a wild country!. I yelped. Dean and I werecompletely awake. In Laredo we’d been half dead. Stan, who’d been to foreign countries before,just calmly slept in back seat. Dean and I had the whole of Mexico before us..Now, Sal, we’re leaving everything behind us and entering a new and unknown phase of things.All the years and troubles! and kicks - and now this! so that we can safely think of nothing else andjust go on ahead with our faces stuck out like this you see, and understand the world as, really andgenuinely speaking, other Americans haven’t done before us - they were here, weren’t they? TheMexican war. Cutting across here with cannon...This road,. I told him, .is also the route of old American 1 outlaws who used to skip over theborder and go down to old Monterrey, so if you’ll look out on that graying desert and picture theghost of an old Tombstone hellcat making lonely exile gallop into the unknown, you’ll see further . ....It’s the world,. said Dean. .My God!. he cried, slapping the wheel. .It’s the world! We can goright on to South America if the road goes. Think of it! Son-of-z-bitch! Gawd-damm!. We rushedon. The dawn spread immediately and we began to see the white sand of the desert and occasionalhuts in the distance off the road. Dean slowed down to peer at them. .Real beat huts, man, the kind161you only find in Death Valley and much worse. These people don’t bother with appearances.. Thefirst town ahead that had any consequence on the map was called Sabinas Hidalgo. We lookedforward to it -eagerly. .And the road don’t look any different than the American road,. cried Dean,.except one mad thing and if vou’ll notice, right here, the mileposts are written in kilometers and theyclick off the distance to Mexico City. See, it’s the only city in the entire land, everything points to it..There were only 767 more miles to that metropolis; in kilometers the figure was over a thousand..Damn! I gotta go!. cried Dean. For a while I closed my eyes in utter exhaustion and kept hearingDean pound the wheel with his fists and say, .Damn,. and .What kicks!. and .Oh, what a land!.and .Yes!. We arrived at Sabinas Hidalgo, across the desert, at about seven o’clock in the morning.We slowed down completely to see this. We woke up Stan in the back seat. We sat up straight todig. The main street was muddy and full of holes. On each side were dirty broken-down adobefronts. Burros walked in the street with packs. Barefoot women watched us from dark doorways.The street was completely crowded with people on foot beginning a new day in the Mexicancountryside. Old men with handlebar mustaches stared at us. The sight of three bearded, bedraggledAmerican youths instead of the usual well-dressed tourists was of unusual interest to them. Webounced along over Main Street at ten miles an hour, taking everything in. A group of girls walkeddirectly in front of us. As we bounced by, one of them said, .Where you going, man?.I turned to Dean, amazed. .Did you hear what she said?. Dean was so astounded he kept ondriving slowly and saying, .Yes, I heard what she said, I certainly damn well did, oh me, oh my, Idon’t know what to do I’m so excited and sweetened in this morning world. We’ve finally got toheaven. It-couldn’t be cooler, it couldn’t be grander, it couldn’t be anything...Well, let’s go back and pick em up!. I said..Yes,. said Dean and drove right on at five miles an hour. He was knocked out, he didn’t have todo the usual things he-would have done in America. .There’s millions of them all along the road!. hesaid. Nevertheless he U-turned and came by the girls again. They were headed for work in thefields;, they smiled at us. Dean stared at them with rocky eyes. .Damn,. he said under his breath..Oh! This is too great to be true. Gurls, gurls. And particularly right now in my stage and condition,Sal, I am digging the interiors of these homes as we pass them - these gone doorways and you lookinside and see beds of straw and little brown kids sleeping and stirring to wake, their thoughtscongealing from the empty mind of sleep, their selves rising, and the mothers cooking up breakfast iniron pots, and dig them shutters they have for windows and the old men, the old men are so cooland grand and not bothered by anything. There’s no suspicion here, nothing like that. Everybody’scool, everybody looks at you with such straight brown eyes and they don’t say anything, just look,and in that look all of the human qualities are soft and subdued and still there. Dig all the foolishstories you read about Mexico and the sleeping gringo and all that crap) - and crap about greasersand so on - and all it is, people here are straight and kind and don’t put down any bull. I’m soamazed by this.. Schooled in the raw road night, Dean was come into the world to see it. He bentover the wheel and looked both ways and rolled along slowly. We stopped for gas the other side ofSabinas Hidalgo. Here a congregation of local straw-hatted ranchers with handlebar mustachesgrowled and joked in front of antique gas-pumps. Across the fields an old man plodded with a burroin front of his switch stick. The sun rose pure on pure and ancient activities of human life.Now we resumed the road to Monterrey. The great mountains rose snow-capped before us; webowled right for them. A gap widened and wound up a pass and we went with it. In a matter ofminutes we were out of the mesquite desert and climbing among cool airs in a road with a stone wallalong the precipice side and great whitewashed names of presidents on the cliff sides - ALEMAN!We met nobody on this high road. It wound among the clouds and took us to the great plateau on162top. Across this plateau the big manufacturing town of Monterrey sent smoke to the blue skies withtheir enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece. Entering Monterrey was likeentering Detroit, among great long walls of factories, except for the burros that sunned in the grassbefore them and the sight of thick city adobe neighborhoods with thousands of shifty hipsters hangingaround doorways and whores looking out of windows and strange shops that might have soldanything and narrow sidewalks crowded with Hongkong-like humanity. .Yow!. yelled Dean. .Andall in that sun. Have you dug this Mexican sun, Sal? It makes you high. Whoo! I want to get on andon - this road drives me!!. We mentioned stopping in the excitements of Monterrey, but Deanwanted to make extra-special time to get to Mexico City, and besides he knew the road would getmore interesting, especially ahead, always ahead. He drove like a fiend and never rested. Stan and Iwere completely bushed and gave it up and had to sleep. I looked up outside Monterrey and sawenormous weird twin peaks beyond Old Monterrey, beyond where the outlaws went.Montemorelos was ahead, a descent again to hotter altitudes. It grew exceedingly hot andstrange. Dean absolutely had to wake me up to see this. .Look, Sal, you must not miss.. I looked.We were going through swamps and alongside the road at ragged intervals strange Mexicans intattered rags walked along with machetes hanging from their rope belts, and some of them cut at thebushes. They all stopped to watch us without expression. Through the tangled bush we occasionallysaw thatched huts with African-like bamboo walls, just stick huts. Strange young girls, dark as themoon, stared from mysterious verdant doorways. .Oh, man, I want to stop and twiddle thumbs with