12 February 2009

and create confusion with the neighbors. At nine o’ clock in the morning everybody had left except Neal and Jeffries who were still yakking and talking like maniacs. People got up to make breakfast and heard strange subterranean voices from next door saying “Yes! yes!” It never ended. Beverly cooked a big breakfast. The time was coming to goof along to Mexico. Neal took the car to the nearest station and had everything shipshape. It was a 37 Ford sedan with the rightside door unhinged and stuck on the frame. The rightside front seat was also broken and you sat there leaning back with your face to the tattered roof. “Just like Min n’ Bill” said Neal. “We’ll go coughing and bouncing down to Mexico, it’ll take us days and days!” I looked over the map. A total of nineteen hundred miles mostly Texas to Laredo, and then another 767 miles through all Mexico to the great city near the Isthmus. I couldn’t imagine this trip. It was the most fabulous of all. It was no longer east-west but magic SOUTH. We saw a vision of the entire Western Hemisphere rockribbing clear down to Tierra del Fuega and us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and other worlds. “Man this will finally take us to IT!” said Neal with definite faith. He tapped my arm. “Just wait and see. Hoo! Whee!” I went with Jeffries concluding the last of his Denver business, and met his poor father who stood in the door of the house saying “Frank---Frank---Frank.” “What is it, Dad?” “Don’t go.” “Oh it’s settled, I have to go now; why do you have to do that Pa?” The old man had gray hair and large almond eyes and a tense mad neck. “Frank” he simply said “don’t go. Don’t make your old father cry. Don’t leave me alone again.” Frank had explained to me that his father was going mad in recent years. It broke my heart to see all of this. “Neal” said the old man addressing me “don’t take my Frank away from me. I used to take him to the park when he was a little boy and explain the swans to him. Then his little brother drowned in the same pond. I don’t want you to take my boy away.” “Father” said Frank “we’re leaving now, goodbye.” He struggled with his grips. His father took him by the arm. “Frank, Frank, Frank, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.” We fled with our heads bowed and the old man still stood in the doorway of his Den-