Part One Chapter 14

At dawn my bus was zooming¹ across the Arizona desert--Indio, Ely the Salome (where she danced); the great dry stretches leading to Mex- ican  mountains in the south. Then we swung north to the Arizona mountains,  Flagstaff, clifftowns. I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall,  "iLe Grand Meaulnesi" by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the  American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it  mystified my longing². In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak³ Sunday  afternoon  we  rode  through  one  Oklahoma  flat-town  after another; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus  roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.
We arrived in St. Louis at noon. I took a walk down by the Mississippi River and watched the logs that came floating from Montana in  the  north--grand  Odyssean  logs  of  our continental  dream.  Old steamboats   with  their  scrollwork  more  scrolled  and  withered  by weathers sat in the  mud inhabited by rats. Great clouds of afternoon overtopped the  Mississippi  Valley. The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated⁴ the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I  made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories. She was coming from Washington State, where she had spent the summer picking apples. Her home was on an  upstate New York farm. She invited me to come there. We made a date to meet at a New York hotel anyway. She got off at Columbus, Ohio, and I slept all the way to Pittsburgh. I was wearier than I'd been for years and years. I had three hundred and sixty-five miles yet to hitchhike to New York,and a dime⁵ in my pocket. I walked five miles to get out of Pittsburgh, and two rides, an apple truck and a big trailer truck, took me to Har- risburg  in  the  soft  Indian-summer  rainy  night.  I  cut  right  along.  I wanted to get home.
It was the night of the Ghost of the Susquehanna. The Ghost was a shriveled little old man with a paper satchel⁶ who claimed he was headed for "Canady." He walked very fast, commanding me to follow, and said there was a bridge up ahead we could cross. He was about sixty years old; he  talked incessantly⁷ of the meals he had, how much butter they gave him for  pancakes, how many extra slices of bread, how the old men had called him  from a porch of a charity home in Maryland and invited him to stay for the weekend, how he took a nice warm bath before he left; how he found a brand-new hat by the side of the road in Virginia and that was it on his head; how he hit every Red Cross in town and showed them his World War I credentials⁹; how the Harrisburg Red Cross was not worthy¹⁰ of the name; how he managed in  this  hard  world.  But  as  far  as  I  could  see  he  was  just  a  semi- respectable walking hobo of some kind who covered the entire Eastern Wilderness¹¹ on foot, hitting Red Cross offices and sometimes bumming¹² on Main Street corners for a dime. We were bums¹³ together. We walked seven miles along the mournful Susquehanna. It is a terrifying river. It has bushy cliffs on both sides that lean like hairy ghosts over the un- known waters. Inky night covers all. Sometimes from the railyards across  the river rises a great red locomotive flare¹⁴ that illuminates¹⁵ the horrid¹⁶ cliffs. The little man said he had a fine belt in his satchel and we stopped for him to fish it out. "I got me a fine belt here somewheres-- got it in Frederick, Maryland. Damn, now did I leave that thing on the counter at Fredericksburg?"
"You mean Frederick."
"No, no, Fredericksburg, iVirginiai!" He was always talking about  Frederick, Maryland, and Fredericksburg, Virginia. He walked right in the  road in the teeth of advancing traffic and almost got hit several times. I plodded¹⁷ along in the ditch. Any minute I expected the poor little madman to go flying in the night, dead. We never found that bridge. I left him at a railroad underpass and, because I was so sweaty from the hike, I changed shirts and put on two sweaters; a roadhouse illuminated my sad  endeavors. A whole family came walking down the dark road and wondered what I was doing. Strangest thing of all, a tenorman was blowing very fine blues¹⁸ in this Pennsylvania hick house; I listened and moaned. It  began to rain hard. A man gave me a ride back to Harrisburg and told me I was on the wrong road. I suddenly saw the little hobo standing¹⁹ under a  sad streetlamp with his thumb stuck  out--poor  forlorn  man,  poor  lost  sometime  boy,  now  broken ghost of the penniless wilds. I told my driver the story and he stopped to tell the old man.
"Look here, fella, you're on your way west, not east."
"Heh?" said the little ghost. "Can't tell me I don't know my way around here. Been walkin this country for years. I'm headed for Canady."
"But this ain't the road to Canada, this is the road to Pittsburgh and Chicago." The little man got disgusted with us and walked off. The last I saw  of him was his bobbing little white bag dissolving in the darkness of the mournful Alleghenies.
I thought all the wilderness of America was in the West till theGhost of the Susquehanna showed me different. No, there is a wilder- ness in the East; it's the same wilderness Ben Franklin plodded in the oxcart days when he was postmaster, the same as it was when George Washington was a wild-buck²⁰ Indian-fighter, when Daniel Boone told stories by Pennsylvania  lamps and promised to find the Gap, when Bradford built his road and men whooped²¹ her up in log cabins. There were not great Arizona spaces for the little man, just the bushy wilder- ness of eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland,  and Virginia, the backroads, the black-tar roads that curve among the mournful rivers like Susque- hanna, Monongahela, old Potomac and Monocacy. 
That night in Harrisburg I had to sleep in the railroad station on a bench; at dawn the station masters threw me out. Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable²² and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage  of  a  gruesome  grieving  ghost  you  go  shuddering  through nightmare life. I stumbled haggardly out of the station; I had no more control. All I could see of the morning was a whiteness like the white- ness of the tomb. I was starving to death. All I had left in the form of calories were the last of the  cough drops I'd bought in Shelton, Ne- braska, months ago; these I sucked for their sugar. I didn't know how to panhandle. I stumbled out of town with barely enough strength to reach the city limits. I knew I'd be arrested if  I spent another night in Harrisburg. Cursed city! The ride I proceeded to get was with a skinny, haggard man who believed in controlled starvation for  the sake of health. When I told him I was starving to death as we rolled east he said, "Fine, fine, there's nothing better for you. I myself haven't eaten for three days. I'm going to live to be a hundred and fifty years old." He was a bag of bones, a floppy²³ doll, a broken stick, a maniac²⁴. I might have  gotten a ride with an affluent²⁵ fat man who'd say, "Let's stop at this restaurant and have some pork chops and beans." No, I had to get a ride that morning with a maniac who believed in controlled starva- tion for the sake of health. After a hundred miles he grew lenient²⁶ and took out bread-and-butter sandwiches from the back of the car. They were hidden  among his salesman samples. He was selling plumbing²⁷ fixtures²⁸ around Pennsylvania. I devoured²⁹ the bread and butter. Sud- denly I began to laugh. I was all alone in the car, waiting for him as he made business calls in Allentown, and I laughed and laughed. Gad³⁰, I was sick and tired of life.  But  the madman drove me home to New York.
Suddenly I found myself on Times Square. I had traveled eight thousand miles  around  the American  continent and I  was back  on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my  innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York  with its millions and millions hustling³¹ forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream--grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying,  just  so  they  could  be  buried  in  those  awful  cemetery  cities beyond Long Island City. The high towers of the land--the other end of the land, the place where Paper America is born. I stood in a subway doorway³², trying to get enough nerve to pick up a beautiful long butt⁸, and every time I stooped great  crowds rushed by and obliterated³³ it from my sight, and finally it was crushed. I had no money to go home in the bus. Paterson is quite a few miles from Times Square. Can you picture me walking those last miles through the Lincoln Tunnel or over the Washington Bridge and into New Jersey³⁴? It was dusk. Where was Hassel? I dug the square for Hassel; he wasn't there, he was in Riker's Island, behind bars. Where Dean? Where everybody? Where life? I had my home to go to, my place to lay my head down and figure the losses and figure the gain that I knew was in there somewhere too. I had to panhandle two bits for the bus. I finally hit a Greek minister who was standing around the corner. He gave me the quarter with  a nervous lookaway. I rushed immediately to the bus.
When I got home I ate everything in the icebox. My aunt got up and  looked at me. "Poor little Salvatore," she said in Italian. "You're thin, you're  thin. Where have you been all this time?" I had on two shirts and two sweaters; my canvas bag had torn cottonfield pants and the tattered³⁵ remnants  of my huarache shoes in it. My aunt and I de- cided to buy a new electric refrigerator with the money I had sent her from California; it was to be the first one in the family. She went to bed, and late at night I couldn't sleep and  just smoked in bed. My half- finished manuscript was on the desk. It was October, home, and work again. The first cold winds rattled³⁶ the windowpane, and I had made it just in time. Dean had come to my house, slept several  nights there, waiting for me; spent afternoons talking to my aunt as she worked on a great rag rug woven of all the clothes in my family for years, which was now finished and spread on my bedroom  floor, as complex and as rich as the passage of time itself; and then he had left, two days before I arrived,  crossing  my  path  probably  somewhere in  Pennsylvania  or Ohio, to go to San Francisco. He had his own life there; Camille had just gotten an apartment. It had never occurred to me to look her up while I was in Mill City.
Now it  was too late and I had also missed Dean.

1 zooming   

adj.快速上升的v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去分词 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨

参考例句：

• Zooming and panning are navigational tools for exploring 2D and 3D information. 缩放和平移是浏览二维和三维信息的导航工具。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• Panning and zooming, especially when paired together, create navigation difficulties for users. 对于用户来说，平移和缩放一起使用时，产生了更多的导航困难。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

2 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

3 bleak   

adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的

参考例句：

• They showed me into a bleak waiting room.他们引我来到一间阴冷的会客室。
• The company's prospects look pretty bleak.这家公司的前景异常暗淡。

4 illuminated   

adj.被照明的；受启迪的

参考例句：

• Floodlights illuminated the stadium. 泛光灯照亮了体育场。
• the illuminated city at night 夜幕中万家灯火的城市

5 dime   

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角

参考例句：

• A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
• The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

6 satchel   

n.(皮或帆布的)书包

参考例句：

• The school boy opened the door and flung his satchel in.那个男学生打开门，把他的书包甩了进去。
• She opened her satchel and took out her father's gloves.打开书箱，取出了她父亲的手套来。

7 incessantly   

ad.不停地

参考例句：

• The machines roar incessantly during the hours of daylight. 机器在白天隆隆地响个不停。
• It rained incessantly for the whole two weeks. 雨不间断地下了整整两个星期。

8 butt   

n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶

参考例句：

• The water butt catches the overflow from this pipe.大水桶盛接管子里流出的东西。
• He was the butt of their jokes.他是他们的笑柄。

9 credentials   

n.证明，资格，证明书，证件

参考例句：

• He has long credentials of diplomatic service.他的外交工作资历很深。
• Both candidates for the job have excellent credentials.此项工作的两个求职者都非常符合资格。

10 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

11 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

12 bumming   

发哼（声），蜂鸣声

参考例句：

• I've been bumming around for the last year without a job. 我已经闲荡了一年，一直没有活干。
• He was probably bumming his way home. “他多半是不花钱搭车回家。

13 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。

14 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。

15 illuminates   

v.使明亮( illuminate的第三人称单数 )；照亮；装饰；说明

参考例句：

• The light shines on from over there and illuminates the stage. 灯光从那边照进来，照亮了舞台。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The sun illuminates the sky. 太阳照亮了天空。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 horrid   

adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的

参考例句：

• I'm not going to the horrid dinner party.我不打算去参加这次讨厌的宴会。
• The medicine is horrid and she couldn't get it down.这种药很难吃，她咽不下去。

17 plodded   

v.沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 )；努力从事；沉闷地苦干；缓慢进行（尤指艰难枯燥的工作）

参考例句：

• Our horses plodded down the muddy track. 我们的马沿着泥泞小路蹒跚而行。
• He plodded away all night at his project to get it finished. 他通宵埋头苦干以便做完专题研究。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

19 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

20 buck   

n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃

参考例句：

• The boy bent curiously to the skeleton of the buck.这个男孩好奇地弯下身去看鹿的骸骨。
• The female deer attracts the buck with high-pitched sounds.雌鹿以尖声吸引雄鹿。

21 whooped   

叫喊( whoop的过去式和过去分词 )； 高声说； 唤起

参考例句：

• The bill whooped through both houses. 此提案在一片支持的欢呼声中由两院匆匆通过。
• The captive was whooped and jeered. 俘虏被叱责讥笑。

22 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

23 floppy   

adj.松软的，衰弱的

参考例句：

• She was wearing a big floppy hat.她戴了顶松软的大帽子。
• Can you copy those files onto this floppy disk?你能把那些文件复制到这张软盘上吗？

24 maniac   

n.精神癫狂的人；疯子

参考例句：

• Be careful!That man is driving like a maniac!注意！那个人开车像个疯子一样！
• You were acting like a maniac,and you threatened her with a bomb!你像一个疯子，你用炸弹恐吓她！

25 affluent   

adj.富裕的，富有的，丰富的，富饶的

参考例句：

• He hails from an affluent background.他出身于一个富有的家庭。
• His parents were very affluent.他的父母很富裕。

26 lenient   

adj.宽大的，仁慈的

参考例句：

• The judge was lenient with him.法官对他很宽大。
• It's a question of finding the means between too lenient treatment and too severe punishment.问题是要找出处理过宽和处罚过严的折中办法。

27 plumbing   

n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究

参考例句：

• She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche. 她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。
• They're going to have to put in new plumbing. 他们将需要安装新的水管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

28 fixtures   

（房屋等的）固定装置( fixture的名词复数 )； 如（浴盆、抽水马桶）； 固定在某位置的人或物； （定期定点举行的）体育活动

参考例句：

• The insurance policy covers the building and any fixtures contained therein. 保险单为这座大楼及其中所有的设施保了险。
• The fixtures had already been sold and the sum divided. 固定设备已经卖了，钱也分了。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

29 devoured   

吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光

参考例句：

• She devoured everything she could lay her hands on: books, magazines and newspapers. 无论是书、杂志，还是报纸，只要能弄得到，她都看得津津有味。
• The lions devoured a zebra in a short time. 狮子一会儿就吃掉了一匹斑马。

30 gad   

n.闲逛；v.闲逛

参考例句：

• He is always on the gad.他老是闲荡作乐。
• Let it go back into the gloaming and gad with a lot of longing.就让它回到暮色中，满怀憧憬地游荡吧。

31 hustling   

催促（hustle的现在分词形式）

参考例句：

• Our quartet was out hustling and we knew we stood good to take in a lot of change before the night was over. 我们的四重奏是明显地卖座的， 而且我们知道在天亮以前，我们有把握收入一大笔钱。
• Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. 开汽车的人在繁忙的交通中急急忙忙地互相超车。

32 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

33 obliterated   

v.除去( obliterate的过去式和过去分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭

参考例句：

• The building was completely obliterated by the bomb. 炸弹把那座建筑物彻底摧毁了。
• He began to drink, drank himself to intoxication, till he slept obliterated. 他一直喝，喝到他快要迷糊地睡着了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

34 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

35 tattered   

adj.破旧的，衣衫破的

参考例句：

• Her tattered clothes in no way detracted from her beauty.她的破衣烂衫丝毫没有影响她的美貌。
• Their tattered clothing and broken furniture indicated their poverty.他们褴褛的衣服和破烂的家具显出他们的贫穷。

36 rattled   

慌乱的，恼火的

参考例句：

• The truck jolted and rattled over the rough ground. 卡车嘎吱嘎吱地在凹凸不平的地面上颠簸而行。
• Every time a bus went past, the windows rattled. 每逢公共汽车经过这里，窗户都格格作响。