27 June 2008

bustled around to close the place quick. I had to get out. I gave her a smile when I left. Things were going on as wild as ever outside, except that the fat burpers were getting drunker and whooping up louder. It was funny. There were Indian chiefs wandering around in big headdresses and really solemn among the flushed drunken faces. I saw Slim tottering along and joined him. He said “I just wrote a postcard to my Paw in Montana. You reckon you can find a mailbox and put it in.” It was a strange request; he gave me the postcard and tottered through the swinging doors of a saloon. I took the card, went to the box and took a quick look at it. “Dear Paw, I’ll be home Wednesday. Everything’s all right with me and I hope the same’s with you. Richard.” It gave me a different idea of him; how tenderly polite he was with his father. I went in the bar and joined him. Sometime in the distant dawn I planned to get on the road for Denver, the last 100 miles but instead of that we picked up two girls who were wandering in the crowds, a pretty young blonde and a fat brunette sister of some kind. They were dumb and sullen but we wanted to make them. We took them to a rickety nightclub that was already closing and there I spent all but two dollars on Scotches for them and beer for us. I was getting drunk and didn’t care; everything was fine. My whole being and purpose was pointed at the little blonde’s middle; I wanted to go in there with all my strength. I hugged her and wanted to tell her. The nightclub closed and we all wandered out in the rickety dusty streets. I looked up at the sky; the pure wonderful stars were still there, burning. The girls wanted to go to the bus station so we all went, but they apparently wanted to go there to meet some sailor who was there waiting for them, a cousin of the fat girl’s, and the sailor had friends with him. I said to the blonde “What’s up.” She said she wanted to go home, in Colorado just over the line south of Cheyenne. “I’ll take you in a bus,” I said. “No, the bus stops on the hiway and I have to walk across that damned prairie all by myself. I spend all afternoon looking at the damn thing and I don’t aim to walk over it tonight.” “Ah listen, we’ll take a nice walk in the prairie flowers.” “There ain’t no flowers there,” she said. “I want to go to New York, I’m sick and