23 September 2008

a great silence like the inherent silence of the Apocalypse. But Neal knew this, he’d mentioned it many times. “I’ve pleaded and pleaded with Louanne for a peaceful sweet understanding of pure love between us forever with all the hassles thrown out---she understands---her mind is bent on something else---she’s after me---she won’t understand how much I love her---she’s knitting my doom.” “The truth of the matter is we don’t understand our women, we blame on them and it’s all our fault” I said. “But it isn’t as simple as that” warned Neal. “Peace will come suddenly, we won’t understand when it does, see man?” Doggedly, bleakly, he pushed the car through New Jersey; at dawn I drove across the Pulaski Skyway as he slept in the back. We arrived at Ozone Park at nine in the morning to find Louanne and Al Hinkle sitting around smoking butts from the ashtrays; they hadn’t eaten since Neal and I left. My mother paid for the groceries and cooked up a tremendous breakfast. Now it was time for the western threesome to find new living quarters in Manhattan proper. Allen had a pad on York Avenue; they were moving in in the evening. We slept all day, Neal and I, and woke up as a great snowstorm ushered in New Year’s Eve 1948. Al Hinkle was sitting in my easy chair telling about the previous New Year’s. “I was in Chicago. I was broke. I was sitting at the window of my hotel room on North Clark street and the most delicious smell rose to my nostrils from the bakery downstairs. I didn’t have a dime but I went down and talked to the girl. She gave me bread and coffee cakes free. I went back to my room and ate them. I stayed in my room all night. In Farmington Utah once, where I went to work with Ed Uhl, you know Ed Uhl the rancher’s son in Denver, I was in my bed and all of a sudden I saw my dead mother standing in the corner with light all around her. I said ‘Mother!’ She disappeared. I have visions all the time,” said Al Hinkle nodding his head. “What are you going to do about Helen?” “Oh we’ll see. When we get to New Orleans. Don’t you think so, huh?” He was starting to turn to me as well for advice; one Neal wasn’t enough for him. “What are you going to do with yourself Al?” I asked. “I don’t know” he said. “I just go along. I dig life.” He repeated it, following Neal’s line. He had