13 February 2009

ver side-street cottage with the beads hanging in the doors and the overstuffed furniture in the parlor. He was as white as a sheet. He was still calling Frank. There was something extremely paralyzed about all his movements and for this reason he did nothing about leaving the doorway but just stood in it muttering the name “Frank” and “don’t go” and looking after us anxiously as we rounded the corner. “God Jeff, I don’t know what to say.” “Never mind!” he moaned. “He’s always been like that. I wish you hadn’t seen him. My mother’s leaving him as soon as she gets straightened out.” “That poor old man’ll go mad if she leaves him.” “She’s too young for him anyway” said Frank. We met his mother at the bank where she was surreptitiously drawing money for him. She was a lovely white-haired woman still very young in appearance. She and her son stood on the marble floor of the bank whispering. Frank was wearing a levi outfit jacket and all and looked like a man going to Mexico sure enough. This was his tender existence in Denver and he was going off with the flaming tyro Neal. Neal came popping around the corner and met us just on time. Mrs. Jeffries insisted on buying us all a cup of coffee. “Take care of my Frank” she said “no telling what things might happen in that country.” “We’ll all watch over each other” I said. Frank and his mother strolled on ahead and I walked in back with crazy Neal: he was telling me about the inscriptions carved on shithouse walls in the east and in the west. “They’re entirely different, in the East they make cracks and corny jokes of all kinds; in the West they just write their names, Red O’hara, Bluffton Montana, came by here, date, the reason being the enormous loneliness that differs just a shade and cunthair as you move across the Mississippi.” Well there was a lonely guy in front of us, for Jeffries’ mother was a lovely mother and she hated to see her son go but knew he had to go. I saw he was fleeing his father. Here were the three of us---Neal looking for his father, mine dead, Frank fleeing his and going off into the night together. He kissed his mother in the rushing crowds of 17th and she got in a cab and waved at us. Goodbye, goodbye. We got into our old Ford heap and went back to Bev’s. here we spent a planned hour just sitting and