06 October 2008

restaurant and if the restaurant is closed that’s your tough shit. That was all right; we found a lunch cart. Hinkle immediately jammed coffee cakes in his jacket; he was a compulsive thief. I could see it was going to be some trip. We ate and paid half of what we ate. In the scraggly Virginia dawn poor Rhoda, head bowed, huddled in her coat, not wanted for Cal, made her way back to a crossroads bus stop on foot. That was the last of Rhoda. Neal went to sleep in the back seat and Hinkle drove. We gave him specific instructions to take it easy. No sooner were we snoring that he gunned the car up to eighty, bad rods 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 hiway, going the wrong way. Naturally the cop took after us with his siren whining. We were stopped. He told us to follow him to the station house. There was a mean cop in there who took an immediate dislike for Neal; he could smell jail all over him. He sent his cohort outdoors to question Louanne and I privately. They wanted to know how old Louanne was, they were trying to whip up a Mann Act idea. But she had her marriage license. Then they took me aside alone and wanted to know who was sleeping with Louanne. “Her husband” I said quite simply. They were curious. Something was fishy. They tried some amateur Sherlocking by asking the same question twice expecting us to make a slip. I said “Those two fellows are going back to work on the railroad in California, this is the short one’s wife, and I’m a friend on a two week vacation from college.” The cop smiled and said “Yeah? Is this really your own wallet?” Finally the mean one inside fined Neal 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 Neal 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 bout that wise guy.” We had to give them forty. Then Al Hinkle, who was the culprit, offered to go to jail so we could resume our journey. Neal considered it. The cop was infuriated; he said “If you let your buddy go to jail I’m taking you back to Pennsylvania right now. You hear that?” It was all