02 March 2009

guys are real CATS. Ain’t never seen anything like it. And they’re talking and wondering about us just like we are but with a difference of their own, their interest probably resolving around how we’re dressed---same as ours---but the strangeness of the things we have in the car and the strange ways that WE laugh so different from them, and maybe even the way we smelled compared to them. Nevertheless I’d give my eye-teeth to nknow what they’re saying about us.” And neal tried. “Hey Gregor, man…what your brother say just then?” Gregor turned mournful high brown eyes on Neal. “Yeah, yeah.” “No you didn’t understand my question. What you boys talking about?” “Oh” said Gregor with great perturbation “you no like this mariguana?” “Oh yes, yes fine! What you TALK about?” “Talk? Yes, we talk. How you like Mexico.” It was hard to come around without a common language. And everybody grew quiet and cool and high again and just enjoyed the breeze from the desert and mused separate national thoughts. It was time for the gurls. The brothers eased back to their station under the tree, the mother watched from her sunny doorway, and we slowly bounced back to town. But now the bouncing was no longer unpleasant, it was the most pleasant and graceful billowy trip in the world, as over a blue sea, and Neal’s face was suffused with an unnatural glow that was like gold as he told us to understand the springs of the car now for the first time and dig the ride. Up and down we bounced and even Gregor understood and laughed, Then he pointed left to show which way to go for the girls, and Neal, looking left with indescribable delight and leaning that way, pulled the wheel around and rolled us smoothly and surely to the goal, meanwhile listening to Gregor’s attempts to speak and saying grandly and magniloquently “Yes, of course! There’s not a doubt in my mind! Decidedly, man! Oh indeed! Why, pish, posh, you say the dearest things to me! Of course! Yes! Please go on!” To this Gregor talked gravely and with magnificent Spanish eloquence. For a mad moment I thought Neal was understanding everything he said by sheer wild insight and sudden revelatory genius inspired by his supreme and glowing happiness. In that moment, too, he looked so exactly like