Part One Chapter 6

In those days I didn't know Dean as well as I do now, and the first thing I wanted to do was look up Chad King, which I did. I called up his house,  talked to his mother--she said, "Why,  Sal, what are you doing in  Denver?"  Chad is a slim blond boy with a strange witch- doctor face that goes' with his interest in anthropology¹ and prehistory Indians.  His nose  beaks² softly and almost creamily under a golden flare³ of hair; he has the beauty and grace of a Western hotshot who's danced in roadhouses and played a little football. A quavering twang comes out when he speaks. "The  thing I always liked, Sal, about the Plains Indians was the way they always got s'danged embarrassed af- ter they boasted the number of scalps they got. In Ruxton's iLife in the Far Westi there's an Indian who gets red all over blushing because he got so many scalps and he runs like hell into the plains to glory over his deeds in hiding. Damn, that tickled⁴ imei!"
Chad's mother located him, in the drowsy⁵ Denver afternoon, working over his Indian basket-making at the local museum. I called him  there; he came and picked me up in his old Ford⁶ coupe that he used to take trips in the mountains, to dig for Indian objects. He came into the bus station wearing jeans and a big smile. I was sitting on my bag on the floor talking  to the very same sailor who'd been in the Cheyenne  bus  station  with  me,  asking  him  what  happened  to  the blonde. He was so bored he didn't answer. Chad and I got in his little coupe and the first thing he had to do was get maps at the State build- ing. Then he had to see an old schoolteacher,  and so on, and all I wanted to do was drink beer. And in the back of my  mind was the wild thought, Where is Dean and what is he doing right now? Chad had decided⁷ not to be Dean's friend any more, for some odd  reason, and he didn't even know where he lived.
"Is Carlo Marx in town?"
"Yes." But he wasn't talking to him any more either. This was the beginning of Chad King's withdrawal⁸ from our general gang. I was had an apartment waiting for me up Colfax Avenue, that Roland Major was already living in it and was waiting for me to join him. I sensed some kind of conspiracy⁹ in the air, and this conspiracy lined up two groups in the gang: it was Chad King and Tim Gray and Roland Major, together with the Rawlinses, generally agreeing to ignore Dean Moriar- ty and Carlo Marx. I was smack¹⁰ in the middle of this interesting war.
It was a war with social overtones. Dean was the son of a wino, one of the most tottering¹¹ bums¹² of Larimer Street, and Dean had in fact been brought up generally on Larimer Street and thereabouts. He used to plead in court at the age of six to have his father set free. He used to beg in front of Larimer alleys¹³ and sneak¹⁴ the money back to his father, who waited among the broken bottles with an old buddy¹⁵. Then when Dean grew up he began hanging around the Glenarm poolhalls; he set a Denver record for stealing cars and  went to the reformatory. From the age of eleven to seventeen he was  usually in reform school. His specialty¹⁶ was stealing cars, gunning for girls coming out of high school in the afternoon, driving them out to the mountains, making them, and coming back to sleep in any available hotel bathtub in town. His father, once a respectable and hardworking tinsmith, had become a wine  al- coholic, which is worse than a whisky alcoholic¹⁷, and was reduced to riding freights to Texas in the winter and back to Denver in the sum- mer. Dean had brothers on his dead mother's side--she died when he was small--but they disliked him. Dean's only buddies¹⁸ were the pool- hall boys.  Dean, who had the tremendous energy of a new kind of American saint, and Carlo were the underground monsters of that sea- son in Denver, together with the poolhall gang, and, symbolizing¹⁹ this most beautifully, Carlo had a basement apartment on Grant Street and we all met there many a night that went to dawn--Carlo, Dean, myself, Tom Snark, Ed Dunkel, and Roy Johnson. More of these others later.
My first afternoon in Denver I slept in Chad King's room while his mother went on with her housework downstairs and Chad worked have slept if it hadn't been for Chad King's father's invention. Chad King's father, a fine kind man, was in his seventies, old and feeble, thin and drawn-out, and telling stories with a slow, slow relish²⁰; good sto- ries, too, about his boyhood on the North Dakota plains in the eighties, when for diversion he rode ponies²¹ bareback and chased after coyotes with a club. Later he became a country schoolteacher in the Oklahoma panhandle, and finally a businessman of many devices in Denver. He still had his old office over a garage down the street--the rolltop desk was still there, together with countless²² dusty papers of past excitement and moneymaking. He had invented a special air-conditioner. He put an ordinary fan in a window frame and somehow conducted cool wa- ter through coils in front of the whirring blades. The result was perfect within four feet of the fan bull;--and then the water apparently²³ turned into steam in the hot day and the downstairs part of the house was just as hot as usual. But I was sleeping right under the fan on Chad's bed, with a big bust  of Goethe staring at me, and I comfortably went to sleep, only to wake up  in twenty minutes freezing to death. I put a blanket on and still I was cold. Finally it was so cold I couldn't sleep, and  I  went  downstairs.  The  old  man  asked  me  how his  invention worked. I said it worked damned good, and I meant it within bounds. I liked the man. He was lean with memories. "I  once  made a spot re- mover that has since been copied by big firms in the  East. I've been trying to collect on that for some years now. If I only had enough mon- ey to raise a decent lawyer ... " But it was too late to raise a decent law- yer; and he sat in his house dejectedly. In the evening we had a won- derful dinner his mother cooked, venison steak that Chad's uncle had shot in the mountains. But where was Dean?

1 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

2 beaks   

n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 )；鹰钩嘴；尖鼻子；掌权者

参考例句：

• Baby cockatoos will have black eyes and soft, almost flexible beaks. 雏鸟凤头鹦鹉黑色的眼睛是柔和的，嘴几乎是灵活的。 来自互联网
• Squid beaks are often found in the stomachs of sperm whales. 经常能在抹香鲸的胃里发现鱿鱼的嘴。 来自互联网

3 flare   

v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发

参考例句：

• The match gave a flare.火柴发出闪光。
• You need not flare up merely because I mentioned your work.你大可不必因为我提到你的工作就动怒。

4 tickled   

（使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐

参考例句：

• We were tickled pink to see our friends on television. 在电视中看到我们的一些朋友，我们高兴极了。
• I tickled the baby's feet and made her laugh. 我胳肢孩子的脚，使她发笑。

5 drowsy   

adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的

参考例句：

• Exhaust fumes made him drowsy and brought on a headache.废气把他熏得昏昏沉沉，还引起了头疼。
• I feel drowsy after lunch every day.每天午饭后我就想睡觉。

6 Ford   

n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过

参考例句：

• They were guarding the bridge,so we forded the river.他们驻守在那座桥上，所以我们只能涉水过河。
• If you decide to ford a stream,be extremely careful.如果已决定要涉过小溪，必须极度小心。

7 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

8 withdrawal   

n.取回，提款；撤退，撤军；收回，撤销

参考例句：

• The police were forced to make a tactical withdrawal.警方被迫进行战术撤退。
• They insisted upon a withdrawal of the statement and a public apology.他们坚持要收回那些话并公开道歉。

9 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

10 smack   

vt.拍，打，掴；咂嘴；vi.含有…意味；n.拍

参考例句：

• She gave him a smack on the face.她打了他一个嘴巴。
• I gave the fly a smack with the magazine.我用杂志拍了一下苍蝇。

11 tottering   

adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠

参考例句：

• the tottering walls of the castle 古城堡摇摇欲坠的墙壁
• With power and to spare we must pursue the tottering foe. 宜将剩勇追穷寇。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

12 bums   

n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生

参考例句：

• The other guys are considered'sick" or "bums". 其他的人则被看成是“病态”或“废物”。
• You'll never amount to anything, you good-for-nothing bums! 这班没出息的东西，一辈子也不会成器。

13 alleys   

胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径

参考例句：

• I followed him through a maze of narrow alleys. 我紧随他穿过一条条迂迴曲折的窄巷。
• The children lead me through the maze of alleys to the edge of the city. 孩子们领我穿过迷宫一般的街巷，来到城边。

14 sneak   

vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行

参考例句：

• He raised his spear and sneak forward.他提起长矛悄悄地前进。
• I saw him sneak away from us.我看见他悄悄地从我们身边走开。

15 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

16 specialty   

n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长

参考例句：

• Shell carvings are a specialty of the town.贝雕是该城的特产。
• His specialty is English literature.他的专业是英国文学。

17 alcoholic   

adj.（含）酒精的，由酒精引起的；n.酗酒者

参考例句：

• The alcoholic strength of brandy far exceeds that of wine.白兰地的酒精浓度远远超过葡萄酒。
• Alcoholic drinks act as a poison to a child.酒精饮料对小孩犹如毒药。

18 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

19 symbolizing   

v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• This symbol later evolved into a common hieroglyphic symbolizing victory. 这幕场景后来逐渐演化为象征胜利的普通象形文字。 来自时文部分
• Mooncakes reunion, is symbolizing the Mid-Autumn festival will feed. 月饼象征着团圆，是中秋佳节必食之品。 来自互联网

20 relish   

n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味

参考例句：

• I have no relish for pop music.我对流行音乐不感兴趣。
• I relish the challenge of doing jobs that others turn down.我喜欢挑战别人拒绝做的工作。

21 ponies   

矮种马，小型马( pony的名词复数 )； ￡25 25 英镑

参考例句：

• They drove the ponies into a corral. 他们把矮种马赶进了畜栏。
• She has a mania for ponies. 她特别喜欢小马。

22 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

23 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。