17 June 2008

minds. We felt silly and didn’t know what to say and I for one didn’t want to get hung up with a carnival I was in such a bloody hurry to get to the gang in Denver. I said “I don’t know, I’m going as fast as I can and I don’t think I have the time.” Eddie said the same thing, and the old man waved his hand and casually sauntered back to his car and drove off. And that was that. We laughed about it awhile and speculated what it would have been like. I for one had visions of a dark and dusty night on the plains, and the faces of Nebraska families wandering by, Okies mostly, with their rosy children looking at everything in awe, and I know I would have felt like the devil himself rooking them with all those cheap carnival tricks that they make you do…and the ferris wheel revolving in the flatlands darkness, and Godalmighty the sad music of the merry-go-round and me wanting to get on to my goal…and sleeping in some gilt wagon on a bed of burlap. Eddie turned out to be a pretty absentminded pal of the road. A funny old contraption rolled by, driven by an old man, it was made of some kind of aluminum, square as a box, a trailor no doubt, but a weird crazy Nebraska homemade trailer, and he was going very slow and stopped. We rushed up; he said he could only take one; without a word, after a look from me, Eddie jumped in and slowly rattled from my sight, and wearing my wool plaid shirt, the very shirt I’d worn to write the first half of my book. Well, lackaday, I kissed the shirt goodbye, it only had sentimental value in any case, besides of which, though I didn’t know it, I was destined to retrieve it some ways up the road. I waited in our personal godawful Preston for a long, long time, several hours; I kept thinking it was getting night but actually it was only early afternoon, but dark. Denver, Denver, how would I ever get to Denver. I was just about giving up and planning to sit over coffee in a stew when a fairly new car stopped, driven by a young guy. I ran like mad. “Where you going?” “Denver.” “Well I can take you a hundred miles up the line.” “Grand, grand, you saved my life.” “I used to hitch hike myself, That’s why I always pickup a fellow.” “I would too if I had a car.” And so we talked, and he told me about his life which wasn’t very interesting and I started to sleep some and woke