And we moved! We flashed past the mysterious white signs in the night somewhere in New Jersey4 that say SOUTH (with an arrow) and WEST (with an arrow) and took the south one. New Orleans! It burned in our brains. From the dirty snows of "frosty fagtown New York," as Dean called it, all the way to the greeneries and river smells of old New Orleans at the washed-out bottom of America; then west. Ed was in the back seat; Marylou and Dean and I sat in front and had the warmest talk about the goodness and joy of life. Dean suddenly became tender. "Now dammit, look here, all of you, we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING. Am I right?" We all agreed. "Here we go, we're all together ... What did we do in New York? Let's forgive." We all had our spats6 back there. "That's behind us, merely by miles and inclinations7. Now we're heading down to New Orleans to dig Old Bull Lee and ain't that going to be kicks and listen will you to this old tenorman blow his top"--he shot up the radio vo- lume till the car shuddered--"and listen to him tell the story and put down true relaxation8 and knowledge."
We all jumped to the music and agreed. The purity of the road.
The white line in the middle of the highway unrolled and hugged our left front tire as if glued to our groove9. Dean hunched his muscular neck, T-shirted in the winter night, and blasted the car along. He in- sisted I drive through Baltimore for traffic practice; that was all right,except he and Marylou insisted on steering while they kissed and fooled around. It was crazy; the radio was on full blast. Dean beat drums on the dashboard till a great sag1 developed in it; I did too. The poor Hudson--the slow boat to China--was receiving her beating.
"Oh man, what kicks!" yelled Dean. "Now Marylou, listen real- ly, honey, you know that I'm hotrock capable of everything at the same time and I have unlimited10 energy--now in San Francisco we must go on living together. I know just the place for you--at the end of the regu- lar chain-gang run--I'll be home just a cut-hair less than every two days and for twelve hours at a stretch, and man, you know what we can do in twelve hours, darling. Meanwhile I'll go right on living at Camille's like nothin, see, she won't know. We can work it, we've done it before." It was all right with Marylou, she was really out for Camille's scalp. The understanding had been that Marylou would switch to me in Fris- co, but I now began to see they were going to stick and I was going to be left alone on my butt12 at the other end of the continent. But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking13 to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
We arrived in Washington at dawn. It was the day of Harry14 Truman's inauguration for his second term. Great displays of war might were lined along Pennsylvania Avenue as we rolled by in our battered15 boat. There were 6-295, PT boats, artillery16, all kinds of war material that looked murderous in the snowy grass; the last thing was a regular small ordinary lifeboat that looked pitiful and foolish. Dean slowed down to look at it. He kept shaking his head in awe17. "What are these people up to? Harry's sleeping somewhere in this town ... Good old Harry ... Man from Missouri, as I am ... That must be his own boat." Dean went to sleep in the back seat and Dunkel drove. We gave him specific instructions to take it easy. No sooner were we snoring than he gunned the car up to eighty, bad bearings and all, and not only that but he made a triple pass at a spot where a cop was arguing with a motorist--he was in the fourth lane of a four-lane highway, going the wrong way. Naturally the cop took after us with his siren whining18. We were stopped. He told us to follow him to the station house. There was a mean cop in there who took an immediate19 dislike to Dean; he could smell jail all over him. He sent his cohort outdoors to question Marylou and me privately20. They wanted to know how old Marylou was, they were trying to whip up a Mann Act idea. But she had her marriage certificate. Then they took me aside alone and wanted to know who was sleeping with Marylou. "Her husband," I said quite simply. They were curious. Something was fishy21. They tried some amateur Sherlock- ing by asking the same questions twice, expecting us to make a slip. I said, "Those two fellows are going back to work on the railroad in Cali- fornia, this is the short one's wife, and I'm a friend on a two-week vaca- tion from college."
The cop smiled and said, "Yeah? Is this really your own wallet?" Finally the mean one inside fined Dean twenty-five dollars. We told them we only had forty to go all the way to the Coast; they said that made no difference to them. When Dean protested, the mean cop threatened to take him back to Pennsylvania and slap a special charge on him.
"What charge?"
"Never mind what charge. Don't worry about ithati, wise-guy."We had to give them the twenty-five. But first Ed Dunkel, that culprit, offered to go to jail. Dean considered it. The cop was infuriated; he said, "If you let your partner go to jail I'm taking you back to Penn- sylvania right now. You hear that?" All we wanted to do was go. "Another speeding ticket in Virginia and you lose your car," said the mean cop as a parting volley. Dean was red in the face. We drove off silently. It was just like an invitation to steal to take our trip-money away from us. They knew we were broke and had no relatives on the road or to wire to for money. The American police are involved in psy-chological warfare23 against those Americans who don't frighten them with imposing24 papers and threats. It's a Victorian police force; it peers out of musty windows and wants to inquire about everything, and can make crimes if the crimes don't exist to its satisfaction. "Nine lines of crime, one of boredom," said Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Dean was so mad he wanted to come back to Virginia and shoot the cop as soon as he had a gun.
"Pennsylvania!" he scoffed25. "I wish I knew what that charge was! Vag, probably; take all my money and charge me vag. Those guys have it so damn easy. They'll out and shoot you if you complain, too." There was nothing to do but get happy with ourselves again and forget about it. When we got through Richmond we began forgetting about it, and soon everything was okay.
Now we had fifteen dollars to go all the way. We'd have to pick up hitchhikers and bum26 quarters off them for gas. In the Virginia wil- derness suddenly we saw a man walking on the road. Dean zoomed27 to a stop. I looked back and said he was only a bum and probably didn't have a cent.
"We'll just pick him up for kicks!" Dean laughed. The man was a ragged28, bespectacled mad type, walking along reading a paperbacked muddy book he'd found in a culvert by the road. He got in the car and went right on reading; he was incredibly filthy29 and covered with scabs. He said his name was Hyman Solomon and that he walked all over the USA, knocking and sometimes kicking at Jewish doors and demanding money: "Give me money to eat, I am a Jew."
He said it worked very well and that it was coming to him. We asked him what he was reading. He didn't know. He didn't bother to look at the title page. He was only looking at the words, as though he had found the real Torah where it belonged, in the wilderness30.
"See? See? See?" cackled Dean, poking31 my ribs32. "I told you it was kicks. Everybody's kicks, man!" We carried Solomon all the way to Testament33. My brother by now was in his new house on the other side of town. Here we were back on the long, bleak34 street with the railroad track running down the middle and the sad, sullen35 Southerners loping in front of hardware stores and five-and-tens.
Solomon said, "I see you people need a little money to continue your journey. You wait for me and I'll go hustle36 up a few dollars at a Jewish home and I'll go along with you as far as Alabama." Dean was all beside himself with happiness; he and I rushed off to buy bread and cheese spread for a lunch in the car. Marylou and Ed waited in the car. We spent two hours in Testament waiting for Hyman Solomon to show up; he was hustling37 for his bread somewhere in town, but we couldn't see him. The sun began to grow red and late.
Solomon never showed up so we roared out of Testament.
"Now you see, Sal, God does exist, because we keep getting hung-up with this town, no matter what we try to do, and you'll notice the strange Biblical name of it, and that strange Biblical character who made us stop here once more, and all things tied together all over like rain connecting everybody the world over by chain touch ... " Dean rattled38 on like this; he was overjoyed and exuberant39. He and I sudden- ly saw the whole country like an oyster40 for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there. Off we roared south. We picked up another hitchhiker. This was a sad young kid who said he had an aunt who owned a grocery store in Dunn, North Carolina, right outside Fayetteville. "When we get there can you bum a buck41 off her? Right! Fine! Let's go!" We were in Dunn in an hour, at dusk. We drove to where the kid said his aunt had the grocery store. It was a sad little street that dead-ended at a factory wall. There was a grocery store but there was no aunt. We wondered what the kid was talking about. We asked him how far he was going; he didn't know. It was a big hoax42; once upon a time, in some lost back-alley adventure, he had seen the grocery store in Dunn, and it was the first story that popped into his disordered, feverish43 mind. We bought him a hot dog, but Dean said we couldn't take him along because we needed room to sleep and room for hitchhikers who could buy a little gas. This was sad but true. We left him in Dunn at nightfall.
I drove through South Carolina and beyond Macon, Georgia, as Dean, Marylou, and Ed slept. All alone in the night I had my own thoughts and held the car to the white line in the holy road. What was I doing? Where was I going? I'd soon find out. I got dog-tired beyond Macon and woke up Dean to resume. We got out of the car for air and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the dark- ness all around us was fragrant44 green grass and the smell of fresh ma- nure and warm waters. "We're in the South! We've left the winter!" Faint daybreak illuminated45 green shoots by the side of the road. I took a deep breath; a locomotive howled across-the darkness, Mobile- bound. So were we. I took off my shirt and exulted46. Ten miles down the road Dean drove into a filling-station with the motor off, noticed that the attendant was fast asleep at the desk, jumped out, quietly filled the gas tank, saw to it the bell didn't ring, and rolled off like an Arab with a five-dollar tankful of gas for our pilgrimage.
I slept and woke up to the crazy exultant47 sounds of music and Dean and Marylou talking and the great green land rolling by. "Where are we?"
"Just passed the tip of Florida, man--Flomaton, it's called." Flor- ida! We were rolling down to the coastal48 plain and Mobile; up ahead were great soaring clouds of the Gulf49 of Mexico. It was only thirty-two hours since we'd said good-by to everybody in the dirty snows of the North. We stopped at a gas station, and there Dean and Marylou played piggyback around the tanks and Dunkel went inside and stole three packs of cigarettes without trying. We were fresh out. Rolling into Mobile over the long tidal highway, we all took our winter clothes off and enjoyed the Southern temperature. This was when Dean started telling his life story and when, beyond Mobile, he came upon an ob- struction of wrangling50 cars at a crossroads and instead of slipping around them just balled right through the driveway of a gas station and went right on without relaxing his steady continental51 seventy. We left gaping52 faces behind us. He went right on with his tale. "I tell you it's true, I started at nine, with a girl called Milly Mayfair in back of Rod's garage on Grant Street--same street Carlo lived on in Denver. That's when my father was still working at the smithy's a bit. I remem- ber my aunt yelling out the window, 'What are you doing down there in back of the garage?' Oh honey Marylou, if I'd only known you then! Wow! How sweet you musta been at nine." He tittered maniacally53; he stuck his finger in her mouth and licked it; he took her hand and rubbed it over himself. She just sat there, smiling serenely54.
Big long Ed Dunkel sat looking out the window, talking to him- self. "Yes sir, I thought I was a ghost that night." He was also wonder- ing what Galatea Dunkel would say to him in New Orleans.
Dean went on. "One time I rode a freight from New Mexico clear to LA--I was eleven years old, lost my father at a siding, we were all in a hobo jungle, I was with a man called Big Red, my father was out drunk in a boxcar--it started to roll--Big Red and I missed it--I didn't see my father for months. I rode a long freight all the way to California, really flying, first-class freight, a desert Zipper55. All the way I rode over the couplings--you can imagine how dangerous, I was only a kid, I didn't know--clutching a loaf of bread under one arm and the other hooked around the brake bar. This is no story, this is true. When I got to LA I was so starved for milk and cream I got a job in a dairy and the first thing I did I drank two quarts of heavy cream and puked."
"Poor Dean," said Marylou, and she kissed him. He stared ahead proudly. He loved her.
We were suddenly driving along the blue waters of the Gulf, and at the same time a momentous56 mad thing began on the radio; it was the Chicken Jazz'n Gumbo disk-jockey show from New Orleans, all mad jazz records, colored records, with the disk jockey saying, "Don't worry about inothingi!" We saw New Orleans in the night ahead of us with joy. Dean rubbed his hands over the wheel. "Now we're going to get our kicks!" At dusk we were coming into the hum- ming streets of New Orleans. "Oh, smell the people!" yelled Dean with his face out the window, sniffing58. "Ah! God! Life!" He swung around a trolley59. "Yes!" He darted60 the car and looked in every direction for girls. "Look at iheri!" The air was so sweet in New Orleans it seemed to come in soft bandannas61; and you could smell the river and really smell the people, and mud, and molasses, and every kind of tropical exhala- tion with your nose suddenly removed from the dry ices of a Northern winter. We bounced in our seats. "And dig her!" yelled Dean, pointing at another woman. "Oh, I love, love, love women! I think women are wonderful! I love women!" He spat5 out the window; he groaned62; he clutched his head. Great beads63 of sweat fell from his forehead from pure excitement and exhaustion64.
We bounced the car up on the Algiers ferry and found our-selves crossing the Mississippi River by boat. "Now we must all get out and dig the river and the people and smell the world," said Dean, bus- tling with his sunglasses and cigarettes and leaping out of the car like a jack-in-the-box. We followed.
On rails we leaned and looked at the great brown father of wa- ters rolling down from mid-America like the torrent65 of broken souls-- bearing Montana logs and Dakota muds and Iowa vales and things that had drowned in Three Forks, where the secret began in ice. Smoky New Orleans receded66 on one side; old, sleepy Algiers with its warped67 woodsides bumped us on the other. Negroes were working in the hot afternoon, stoking the ferry furnaces that burned red and made our tires smell. Dean dug them, hopping68 up and down in the heat. He rushed around the deck and upstairs with his baggy69 pants hanging halfway70 down his belly71. Suddenly I saw him eagering on the flying bridge. I expected him to take off on wings. I heard his mad laugh all over the boat--"Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!" Marylou was with him. He cov- ered everything in a jiffy, came back with the full story, jumped in the car just as everybody was tooting to go, and we slipped off, passing two or three cars in a narrow space, and found ourselves darting72 through Algiers.
"Where? Where?" Dean was yelling.
We decided73 first to clean up at a gas station and inquire for Bull's whereabouts. Little children were playing in the drowsy74 river sunset; girls were going by with bandannas and cotton blouses and bare legs. Dean ran up the street to see everything. He looked around; he nodded; he rubbed his belly. Big Ed sat back in the car with his hat over his eyes, smiling at Dean. I sat on the fender. Marylou was in the women's John. From bushy shores where infinitesimal men fished with sticks, and from delta75 sleeps that stretched up along the reddening land, the big humpbacked river with its mainstream76 leaping came coil- ing around Algiers like a snake, with a nameless rumble77. Drowsy, pe- ninsular Algiers with all her bees and shanties78 was like to be washed away someday. The sun slanted79, bugs flip-flopped, the awful waters groaned.
We went to Old Bull Lee's house outside town near the river levee. It was on a road that ran across a swampy80 field. The house was a dilapidated old heap with sagging81 porches running around and weep- ing willows82 in the yard; the grass was a yard high, old fences leaned, old barns collapsed83. There was no one in sight. We pulled right into the yard and saw washtubs on the back porch. I got out and went to the screen door. Jane Lee was standing11 in it with her eyes cupped toward the sun. "Jane," I said. "It's me. It's us."
She knew that. "Yes, I know. Bull isn't here now. Isn't that a fire or something over there?" We both looked toward the sun.
"You mean the sun?"
"Of course I don't mean the sun--I heard sirens that way. Don't you know a peculiar84 glow?" It was toward New Orleans; the clouds were strange.
"I don't see anything," I said.
Jane snuffed down her nose. "Same old Paradise."
That was the way we greeted each other after four years; Jane used to live with my wife and me in New York. "And is Galatea Dun- kel here?" I asked. Jane was still looking for her fire; in those days she ate three tubes of benzedrine paper a day. Her face, once plump and Germanic and pretty, had become stony85 and red and gaunt. She had caught polio in New Orleans and limped a little. Sheepishly Dean and the gang came out of the car and more or less made themselves at home. Galatea Dunkel came out of her stately retirement86 in the back of the house to meet her tormentor87. Galatea was a serious girl. She was pale and looked like tears all over. Big Ed passed his hand through his hair and said hello. She looked at him steadily88.
"Where have you been? Why did you do this to me?" And she gave Dean a dirty look; she knew the score. Dean paid absolutely no attention; what he wanted now was food; he asked Jane if there was anything. The confusion began right there.
Poor Bull came home in his Texas Chevy and found his house invaded by maniacs89; but he greeted me with a nice warmth I hadn't seen in him for a long time. He had bought this house in New Orleans with some money he had made growing black-eyed peas in Texas with an old college schoolmate whose father, a mad-paretic, had died and left a fortune. Bull himself only got fifty dollars a week from his own family, which wasn't too bad except that he spent almost that much per week on his drug habit--and his wife was also expensive, gobbling up about ten dollars' worth of benny tubes a week. Their food bill was the lowest in the country; they hardly ever ate; nor did the children--they didn't seem to care. They had two wonderful children: Dodie, eight years old; and little Ray, one year. Ray ran around stark90 naked in the yard, a little blond child of the rainbow. Bull called him "the Little Beast," after W. C. Fields. Bull came driving into the yard and unrolled himself from the car bone by bone, and came over wearily, wearing glasses, felt hat, shabby suit, long, lean, strange, and laconic, saying, "Why, Sal, you finally got here; let's go in the house and have a drink."
It would take all night to tell about Old Bull Lee; let's just say now, he was a teacher, and it may be said that he had every right to teach because he spent all his time learning; and the things he learned were what he considered to be and called "the facts of life," which he learned not only out of necessity but because he wanted to. He dragged his long, thin body around the entire United States and most of Europe and North Africa in his time, only to see what was going on; he married a White Russian countess in Yugoslavia to get her away from the Nazis91 in the thirties; there are pictures of him with the inter- national cocaine92 set of the thirties--gangs with wild hair, leaning on one another; there are other pictures of him in a Panama hat, surveying the streets of Algiers; he never saw the White Russian countess again. He was an exterminator93 in Chicago, a bartender in New York, a sum- mons-server in Newark. In Paris he sat at cafe tables, watching the sul- len French faces go by. In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world. In Istanbul he threaded his "way through crowds of opium94 addicts95 and rug-sellers, looking for the facts. In English hotels he read Spengler and the Marquis de Sade. In Chicago he planned to hold up a Turkish bath, hesitated just for two minutes too long for a drink, and wound up with two dollars and had to make a run for it. He did all these things merely for the experience. Now the final study was the drug habit. He was now in New Orleans, slipping along the streets with shady characters and haunting connec- tion bars.
There is a strange story about his college days that illustrates96 something else about him: he had friends for cocktails97 in his well- appointed rooms one afternoon when suddenly his pet ferret rushed out and bit an elegant teacup queer on the ankle and everybody high- tailed it out the door, screaming. Old Bull leaped up and grabbed his shotgun and said, "He smells that old rat again," and shot a hole in the wall big enough for fifty rats. On the wall hung a picture of an ugly old Cape98 Cod99 house. His friends said, "Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?" and Bull said, "I like it because it's ugly." All his life was in that line. Once I knocked on his door in the 60th Street slums of New York and he opened it wearing a derby hat, a vest with nothing underneath100, and long striped sharpster pants; in his hands he had a cookpot, birdseed in the pot, and was trying to mash101 the seed to roll in cigarettes. He also experimented in boiling codeine cough syrup102 down to a black mash--that didn't work too well. He spent long hours with Shakespeare--the "Immortal Bard," he called him--on his lap. In New Orleans he had begun to spend long hours with the Mayan Codices on his lap, and, although he went on talking, the book lay open all the time. I said once, "What's going to happen to us when we die?" and he said, "When you die you're just dead, that's all." He had a set of chains in his room that he said he used with his psychoanalyst; they were ex- perimenting with narcoanalysis and found that Old Bull had seven separate personalities, each growing worse and worse on the way down, till finally he was a raving103 idiot and had to be restrained with chains. The top personality was an English lord, the bottom the idiot. Halfway he was an old Negro who stood in line, waiting with every- one else, and said, "Some's bastards104, some's ain't, that's the score."
Bull had a sentimental105 streak106 about the old days m America,especially 1910, when you could get morphine in a drugstore without prescription107 and Chinese smoked opium in their evening windows and the country was wild and brawling108 and free, with abundance and any kind of freedom for everyone. His chief hate was Washington bureau- cracy; second to that, liberals; then cops. He spent all his time talking and teaching others. Jane sat at his feet; so did I; so did Dean; and so had Carlo Marx. We'd all learned from him. He was a gray, nonde- script-looking fellow you wouldn't notice on the street, unless you looked closer and saw his mad, bony skull109 with its strange youthful- ness--a Kansas minister with exotic, phenomenal fires and mysteries. He had studied medicine in Vienna; had studied anthropology110, read everything; and now he was settling to his life's work, which was the study of things them-selves.-in the streets of life and the night. He sat in his chair; Jane brought drinks, martinis. The shades by his chair were always drawn111, day and night; it was his corner of the house. On his lap were the Mayan Codices and an air gun which he occasionally raised to pop benzedrine tubes across the room. I kept rushing around, putting up new ones. We all took shots and meanwhile we talked. Bull was curious to know the reason for this trip. He peered at us and snuffed down his nose, ithfumpi, like a sound in a dry tank.
"Now, Dean, I want you to sit quiet a minute and tell me what you're doing crossing the country like this."
Dean could only blush and say, "Ah well, you know how it is." "Sal, what are you going to the Coast for?" "Only for a few days.
I'm coming back to school." "What's the score with this Ed Dunkel? What kind of character is he?" At that moment Ed was making up to Galatea in the bedroom; it didn't take him long. We didn't know what to tell Bull about Ed Dunkel. Seeing that we didn't know anything about ourselves, he whipped out three sticks of tea and said to go ahead, supper'd be ready soon.
"Ain't nothing better in the world to give you an appetite. I once ate a horrible lunchcart hamburg on tea and it seemed like the most delicious thing in the world. I just got back from Houston last week, went to see Dale about our black-eyed peas. I was sleeping in a motel one morning when all of a sudden I was blasted out of bed. This damn fool had just shot his wife in the room next to mine. Everybody stood around confused, and the guy just got in his car and drove off, left the shotgun on the floor for the sheriff. They finally caught him in Houma, drunk as a lord. Man ain't safe going around this country any more without a gun." He pulled back his coat and showed us his revolver. Then he opened the drawer and showed us the rest of his arsenal112. In New York he once had a sub-machine-gun under his bed. "I got some- thing better than that now--a German Scheintoth gas gun; look at this beauty, only got one shell. I could knock out a hundred men with this gun and have plenty of time to make a getaway. Only thing wrong, I only got one shell."
"I hope I'm not around when you try it," said Jane from the kitchen. "How do iyoui know it's a gas shell?" Bull snuffed; he never paid any attention to her sallies but he heard them. His relation with his wife was one of the strangest: they talked till late at night; Bull liked to hold the floor, he went right on in his dreary113 monotonous114 voice, she tried to break in, she never could; at dawn he got tired and then Jane talked and he listened, snuffing and going thfump down his nose. She loved that man madly, but in a delirious115 way of some kind; there was never any mooching and mincing around, just talk and a very deep companionship that none of us would ever be able to fathom116. Some- thing curiously117 unsympathetic and cold between them was really a form of humor by which they communicated their own set of subtle vibrations118. Love is all; Jane was never more than ten feet away from Bull and never missed a word he said, and he spoke119 in a very low voice, too.
Dean and I were yelling about a big night in New Orleans and wanted Bull to show us around. He threw a damper on this. "New Or- leans is a very dull town. It's against the law to go to the colored sec- tion. The bars are insufferably dreary."
I said, "There must be some ideal bars in town."
"The ideal bar doesn't exist in America. An ideal bar is some- thing that's gone beyond our ken57. In nineteen ten a bar was a place where men went to meet during or after work, and all there was was a long counter, brass120 rails, spittoons, player piano for music, a few mir- rors, and barrels of whisky at ten cents a shot together with barrels of beer at five cents a mug. Now all you get is chromium, drunken wom- en, fags, hostile bartenders, anxious owners who hover121 around the door, worried about their leather seats and the law; just a lot of scream- ing at the wrong time and deadly silence when a stranger walks in."
We argued about bars. "All right," he said, "I'll take you to New Orleans tonight and show you what I mean." And he deliberately122 took us to the dullest bars. We left Jane with the children; supper was over; she was reading the want ads of the New Orleans iTimes-Picayune.i I asked her if she was looking for a job; she only said it was the most interesting part of the paper. Bull rode into town with us and went right on talking. "Take it easy, Dean, we'll get there, I hope; hup, there's the ferry, you don't have to drive us clear into the river." He held on. Dean had gotten worse, he confided123 in me. "He seems to me to be headed for his ideal fate, which is compulsive psychosis dashed with a jigger of psychopathic irresponsibility and violence." He looked at Dean out of the corner of his eye. "If you go to California with this madman you'll never make it. Why don't you stay in New Orleans with me? We'll play the horses over to Graetna and relax in my yard. I've got a nice set of knives and I'm building a target. Some pretty juicy dolls downtown, too, if that's in your line these days." He snuffed. We were on the ferry and Dean had leaped out to lean over the rail. I fol- lowed, but Bull sat on in the car, snuffing, thfump. There was a mystic wraith124 of fog over the brown waters that night, together with dark driftwoods; and across the way New Orleans glowed orange-bright, with a few dark ships at her hem22, ghostly fogbound Cereno ships with Spanish balconies and ornamental125 poops, till you got up close and saw they were just old freighters from Sweden and Panama. The ferry fires glowed in the night; the same Negroes plied126 the shovel127 and sang. Old Big Slim Hazard had once worked on the Algiers ferry as a deckhand; this made me think of Mississippi Gene128 too; and as the river poured down from mid-America by starlight I knew, I knew like mad that eve- rything I had ever known and would ever know was One. Strange to say, too, that night we crossed the ferry with Bull Lee a girl committed suicide off the deck; either just before or just after us; we saw it in the paper the next day.
We hit all the dull bars in the French Quarter with Old Bull and went back home at midnight. That night Marylou took everything in the books; she took tea, goofballs, benny, liquor, and even asked Old Bull for a shot of M, which of course he didn't give her; he did give her a martini. She was so saturated129 with elements of all kinds that she came to a standstill and stood goofy on the porch with me. It was a wonderful porch Bull had. It ran clear around the house; by moonlight with the willows it looked like an old Southern mansion130 that had seen better days. In the house Jane sat reading the want ads in the living room; Bull was in the bathroom taking his fix, clutching his old black necktie in his teeth for a tourniquet131 and jabbing with the needle into his woesome arm with the thousand holes; Ed Dunkel was sprawled132 out with Galatea in the massive master bed that Old Bull and Jane nev- er used; Dean was rolling tea; and Marylou and I imitated Southern aristocracy.
"Why, Miss Lou, you look lovely and most fetching tonight."
"Why, thank you, Crawford, I sure do appreciate the nice things you do say."
Doors kept opening around the crooked133 porch, and members of our sad drama in the American night kept popping out to find out where everybody was. Finally I took a walk alone to the levee. I wanted to sit on the muddy bank and dig the Mississippi River; in- stead of that I had to look at it with my nose against a wire fence. When you start separating the people from their rivers what have you got? "Bureaucracy!" says Old Bull; he sits with Kafka on his lap, the lamp burns above him, he snuffs, ithfumpi. His old house creaks. And the Montana log rolls by in the big black river of the night. " Tain't nothin but bureaucracy. And unions! Especially unions!" But dark laughter would come again.
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| v.下垂，下跌，消沉；n.下垂，下跌，凹陷，[航海]随风漂流 | |
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saga
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| n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇 | |
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3
hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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4
jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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5
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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6
spats
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| n.口角( spat的名词复数 )；小争吵；鞋罩；鞋套v.spit的过去式和过去分词( spat的第三人称单数 )；口角；小争吵；鞋罩 | |
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7
inclinations
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| 倾向( inclination的名词复数 )； 倾斜； 爱好； 斜坡 | |
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relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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groove
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| n.沟，槽；凹线，（刻出的）线条，习惯 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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13
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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14
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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15
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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16
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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17
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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18
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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19
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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20
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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21
fishy
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| adj. 值得怀疑的 | |
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22
hem
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| n.贴边，镶边；vt.缝贴边；(in)包围，限制 | |
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23
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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24
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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scoffed
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| 嘲笑，嘲弄( scoff的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bum
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| n.臀部；流浪汉，乞丐；vt.乞求，乞讨 | |
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27
zoomed
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| v.（飞机、汽车等）急速移动( zoom的过去式 )；（价格、费用等）急升，猛涨 | |
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28
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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29
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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30
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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31
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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32
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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33
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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34
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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35
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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36
hustle
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| v.推搡；竭力兜售或获取；催促；n.奔忙(碌) | |
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37
hustling
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| 催促（hustle的现在分词形式） | |
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38
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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39
exuberant
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| adj.充满活力的；（植物）繁茂的 | |
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40
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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41
buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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42
hoax
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| v.欺骗，哄骗，愚弄；n.愚弄人，恶作剧 | |
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43
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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44
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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45
illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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46
exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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48
coastal
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| adj.海岸的，沿海的，沿岸的 | |
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49
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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50
wrangling
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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51
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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52
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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53
maniacally
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54
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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55
zipper
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| n.拉链；v.拉上拉链 | |
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56
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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57
ken
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| n.视野，知识领域 | |
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58
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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59
trolley
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| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
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60
darted
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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61
bandannas
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| n.印花大手帕( bandanna的名词复数 ) | |
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62
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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63
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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64
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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65
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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66
receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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67
warped
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| adj.反常的；乖戾的；（变）弯曲的；变形的v.弄弯，变歪( warp的过去式和过去分词 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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68
hopping
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| n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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69
baggy
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| adj.膨胀如袋的，宽松下垂的 | |
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70
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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71
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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72
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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73
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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74
drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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75
delta
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| n.（流的）角洲 | |
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76
mainstream
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| n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的 | |
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77
rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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78
shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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79
slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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80
swampy
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| adj.沼泽的，湿地的 | |
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81
sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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82
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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83
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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84
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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85
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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86
retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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87
tormentor
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| n. 使苦痛之人, 使苦恼之物, 侧幕 =tormenter | |
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88
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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89
maniacs
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| n.疯子（maniac的复数形式） | |
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90
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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91
Nazis
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| n.（德国的）纳粹党员( Nazi的名词复数 )；纳粹主义 | |
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92
cocaine
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| n.可卡因，古柯碱（用作局部麻醉剂） | |
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93
exterminator
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| n.扑灭的人，害虫驱除剂 | |
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94
opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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95
addicts
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| 有…瘾的人( addict的名词复数 )； 入迷的人 | |
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96
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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97
cocktails
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| n.鸡尾酒( cocktail的名词复数 )；餐前开胃菜；混合物 | |
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98
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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99
cod
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| n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗 | |
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100
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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101
mash
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| n.麦芽浆，糊状物，土豆泥；v.把…捣成糊状，挑逗，调情 | |
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102
syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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103
raving
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| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
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104
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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105
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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106
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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107
prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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108
brawling
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| n.争吵，喧嚷 | |
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109
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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110
anthropology
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| n.人类学 | |
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111
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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112
arsenal
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| n.兵工厂，军械库 | |
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113
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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114
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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115
delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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116
fathom
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| v.领悟，彻底了解 | |
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117
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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118
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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119
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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120
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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121
hover
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| vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫 | |
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122
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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123
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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124
wraith
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| n.幽灵；骨瘦如柴的人 | |
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125
ornamental
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| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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126
plied
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| v.使用（工具）( ply的过去式和过去分词 )；经常供应（食物、饮料）；固定往来；经营生意 | |
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127
shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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128
gene
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| n.遗传因子，基因 | |
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129
saturated
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| a.饱和的，充满的 | |
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130
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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131
tourniquet
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| n.止血器，绞压器，驱血带 | |
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132
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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133
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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