here..
.All you got to do is move north when it’s over here,. counseled Montana Slim, .and jes follow
the harvest till you get to Canada.. The boys nodded vaguely; they didn’t take much stock in his
advice.
Meanwhile the blond young fugitive sat the same way; every now and then Gene leaned out of his
Buddhistic trance over the rushing dark plains and said something tenderly in the boy’s ear. The boy
nodded. Gene was taking care of him, of his moods and his fears. I wondered where the hell they
would go and what they would do. They had no cigarettes. I squandered my pack on them, I loved
them so. They were grateful and gracious. They never asked, I kept offering. Montana Slim had his
own but never passed the pack. We zoomed through another crossroads town, passed another line
of tall lanky men in jeans clustered in the dim light like moths on the desert, and returned to the
tremendous darkness, and the stars overhead were pure and bright because of the increasingly thin
air as we mounted the high hill of the western plateau, about a foot a mile, so they say, and no trees
obstructing any low-leveled stars anywhere. And once I saw a moody whitefaced cow in the sage by
the road as we flitted by. It was like riding a railroad train, just as steady and just as straight.
By and by we came to a town, slowed down, and Montana Slim said, .Ah, pisscall,. but the
Minnesotans didn’t stop and went right on through. .Damn, I gotta go,. said Slim.
.Go over the side,. said somebody.
.Well, I will. he said, and slowly, as we all watched, he inched to the back of the platform on his
haunch, holding on as best he could, till his legs dangled over. Somebody knocked on the window of
the cab to bring this to the attention of the brothers. Their great smiles broke as they turned. And just
as Slim was ready to proceed, precarious as it was already, they began zigzagging the truck at
seventy miles an hour. He fell back a moment; we saw a whale’s spout in the air; he struggled back
to a sitting position. They swung the truck. Wham, over he went on his side, watering all over
himself. In the roar we could hear him faintly cursing, like the whine of a man far across the hills.
.Damn . . . damn . . .. He never knew we were doing this deliberately; he just struggled, as grim as
Job. When he was finished, as such, he was wringing wet, and now he had to edge and shimmy his
way back, and with a most woebegone look, and everybody laughing, except the sad blond boy,
and the Minnesotans roaring in the cab. I handed him the bottle to make up for it.
.What the hail,. he said, .was they doing that on purpose?.
21
.They sure were..
.Well, damn me, I didn’t know that. I know I tried it back in Nebraska and didn’t have half so
much trouble..
We came suddenly into the town of Ogallala, and here the fellows in the cab called out,
.Pisscall!. and with great good delight. Slim stood sullenly by the truck, ruing a lost opportunity.
The two Dakota boys said good-by to everybody and figured they’d start harvesting here. We
watched them disappear in the night toward the shacks at the end of town where lights were burning,
where a watcher of the night in jeans said the employment men would be. I had to buy more
cigarettes. Gene and the blond boy followed me to stretch their legs. I walked into the least likely
place in the world, a kind of lonely Plains soda fountain for the local teenage girls and boys. They
were dancing, a few of them, to the music on the jukebox. There was a lull when we came in. Gene
and Blondey just stood there, looking at nobody; all they wanted was cigarettes. There were some
pretty girls, too. And one of them made eyes at Blondey and he never saw it, and if he had he
wouldn’t have cared, he was so sad and gone.
I bought a pack each for them; they thanked me. The truck was ready to go. It was getting on
midnight now, and cold. Gene, who’d been around the country more times than he could count on
his fingers and toes, said the best thing to do now was for all of us to bundle up under the big
tarpaulin or we’d freeze. In this manner, and with the rest of the bottle, we kept warm as the air grew
ice-cold and pinged our ears. The stars seemed to get brighter the more we climbed the High Plains.
We were in Wyoming now. Flat on my back, I stared straight up at the magnificent firmament,
glorying in the time I was making, in how far I had come from sad Bear Mountain after all, and
tingling with kicks at the thought of what lay ahead of me in Denver - whatever, whatever it would
be. And Mississippi Gene began to sing a song. He sang it in a melodious, quiet voice, with a river
accent, and it was simple, just .I got a purty little girl, she’s sweet six-teen, she’s the purti-est thing
you ever seen,. repeating it with other lines thrown in, all concerning how far he’d been and how he
wished he could go back to her but he done lost her.
I said, .Gene, that’s the prettiest song..
.It’s the sweetest I know,. he said with a smile.
.I hope you get where you’re going, and be happy when you do..
.I always make out and move along one way or the other..,
Montana Slim was asleep. He woke up and said to me,’ .Hey, Blackie, how about you and me
investigatin’ Cheyenne \ together tonight before you go to Denver?.
.Sure thing.. I was drunk enough to go for anything.
As the truck reached the outskirts of Cheyenne, we saw the high red lights of the local radio
station, and suddenly we were bucking through a great crowd of people that poured along both
sidewalks. .Hell’s bells, it’s Wild West Week,. said Slim. Big crowds of businessmen, fat
businessmen in boots and ten-gallon hats, with their hefty wives in cowgirl attire, bustled and
whoopeed on the wooden sidewalks of old Cheyenne; farther down were the long stringy boulevard
lights of new downtown Cheyenne, but the celebration was focusing on Oldtown. Blank guns went
off. The saloons were crowded to the sidewalk. I was amazed, and at the same time I felt it was
ridiculous: in my first shot at the West I was seeing to what absurd devices it had fallen to keep its
proud tradition. We had to jump off the truck and say good-by; the Minnesotans weren’t interested
in hanging around. It was sad to see them go, and I realized that I would never see any of them
again, but that’s the way it was. .You’ll freeze your ass tonight,. I warned. .Then you’ll burn ‘em in
the desert tomorrow afternoon..
.That’s all right with me long’s as we get out of this cold night,. said Gene. And the truck left,
22
threading its way through the crowds, and nobody paying attention to the strangeness of the kids
inside the tarpaulin, staring at the town like babes from a coverlet. I watched it disappear into the
night.
23
5
I was with Montana Slim and we started hitting the bars. I had about seven dollars, five of which I
foolishly squandered that night. First we milled with all the cowboy-dudded tourists and oilmen and
ranchers, at bars, in doorways, on the sidewalk; then for a while I shook Slim, who was wandering a
little slaphappy in the street from all the whisky and beer: he was that kind of drinker; his eyes got
glazed, and in a minute he’d be telling an absolute stranger about things. I went into a chili joint and
the waitress was Mexican and beautiful. I ate, and then I wrote her a little love note on the back of
the bill. The chili joint was deserted; everybody was somewhere else, drinking. I told her to turn the
bill over. She read it and laughed. It was a little poem about how I wanted her to come and see the
night with me.
.I’d love to, Chiquito, but I have a date with my boy friend..
.Can’t you shake him?.
.No, no, I don’t,. she said sadly, and I loved the way she said it.
.Some other time I’ll come by here,. I said, and she said, .Any time, kid.. Still I hung around,
just to look at her, and had another cup of coffee. Her boy friend came in sullenly and wanted to
know when she was off. She bustled around to close the place quick. I had to get out. I gave her a
smile when I left. Things were going on as wild as ever outside, except that the fat burpers were
getting drunker and whooping up louder. It was funny. There were Indian chiefs wandering around in
big headdresses and really solemn among the flushed drunken faces. I saw Slim tottering along and
joined him.
He said, .I just wrote a postcard to my Paw in Montana. You reckon you can find a mailbox and
put it in?. It was a strange request; he gave me the postcard and tottered through the swinging doors
of a saloon. I took the card, went to the box, and took a quick look at it. .Dear Paw, I’ll be home
Wednesday. Everything’s all right with me and I hope the same is with you. Richard.. It gave me a
different idea of him; how tenderly polite he was with his father. I went in the bar and joined him. We
picked up two girls, a pretty young blonde and a fat brunette. They were dumb and sullen, but we
wanted to make them. We took them to a rickety nightclub that was already closing, and there I
spent all but two dollars on Scotches for them and beer for us. I was getting drunk and didn’t care;
everything was fine. My whole being and purpose was pointed at the little blonde. I wanted to go in
there with all my strength. I hugged her and wanted to tell her. The nightclub closed and we all
wandered out in the rickety dusty streets. I looked up at the sky; the pure, wonderful stars were still
there, burning. The girls wanted to go to the bus station, so we all went, but they apparently wanted
to meet some sailor who was there waiting for them, a cousin of the fat girl’s, and the sailor had
friends with him. I said to the blonde, .What’s up?. She said she wanted to go home, in Colorado
just over the line south of Cheyenne. .I’ll take you in a bus,. I said.
.No, the bus stops on the highway and I have to walk across that damn prairie all by myself. I
spend all afternoon looking at the damn thing and I don’t aim to walk over it tonight..
.Ah, listen, we’ll take a nice walk in the prairie flowers..
.There ain’t no flowers there,. she said. .I want to go to New York. I’m sick and tired of this.
Ain’t no place to go but Cheyenne and ain’t nothin in Cheyenne..
.Ain’t nothin in New York..
.Hell there ain’t,. she said with a curl of her lips.
The bus station was crowded to the doors. All kinds of people were waiting for buses or just
standing around; there were a lot of Indians, who watched everything with their stony eyes. The girl
24
disengaged herself from my talk and joined the sailor and the others. Slim was dozing on a bench. I
sat down. The floors of bus stations are the same all over the country, always covered with butts and
spit and they give a feeling of sadness that only bus stations have. For a moment it was no different
from being in Newark, except for the great hugeness outside that I loved so much. I rued the way I
had broken up the purity of my entire trip, not saving every dime, and dawdling and not really making
time, fooling around with this sullen girl and spending all my money. It made me sick. I hadn’t slept in
so long I got too tired to curse and fuss and went off to sleep; I curled up on the seat with my canvas
bag for a pillow, and slept till eight o’clock in the morning among the dreamy murmurs and noises of
the station and of hundreds of people passing.
I woke up with a big headache. Slim was gone - to Montana, I guess. I went outside. And there
in the blue air I saw for the first time, far off, the great snowy tops of the Rocky Mountains. I took a
deep breath. I had to get to Denver at once. First I ate a breakfast, a modest one of toast and coffee
and one egg, and then I cut out of town to the highway. The Wild West festival was still going on;
there was a rodeo, and the whooping and jumping were about to start all over again. I left it behind
me. I wanted to see my gang in Denver. I crossed a railroad overpass and reached a bunch of
shacks where two highways forked off, both for Denver. I took the one nearest the mountains so I
could look at them, and pointed myself that way. I got a ride right off from a young fellow from
Connecticut who was driving around the country in his jalopy, painting; he was the son of an editor in
the East. He talked and talked; I was sick from drinking and from the altitude. At one point I almost
had to stick my head out the window. But by the time he let me off at Longmont, Colorado, I was
feeling normal again and had even started telling him about the state of my own travels. He wished
me luck.
It was beautiful in Longmont. Under a tremendous old tree was a bed of green lawn-grass
belonging to a gas station. I asked the attendant if I could sleep there, and he said sure; so I
stretched out a wool shirt, laid my face flat on it, with an elbow out, and with one eye cocked at the
snowy Rockies in the hot sun for just a moment. I fell asleep for two delicious hours, the only
discomfort being an occasional Colorado ant. And here I am in Colorado! I kept thinking gleefully.
Damn! damn! damn! I’m making it! And after a refreshing sleep filled with cobwebby dreams of my
past life in the East I got up, washed in the station men’s room, and strode off, fit and slick as a
fiddle, and got me a rich thick milkshake at the road-house to put some freeze in my hot, tormented
stomach.
Incidentally, a very beautiful Colorado gal shook me that cream; she was all smiles too; I was
grateful, it made up for last night. I said to myself, Wow! What’ll Denver be like! I got on that hot
road, and off I went in a brand-new car driven by a Denver businessman of about thirty-five. He
went seventy. I tingled all over; I counted minutes and subtracted miles. Just ahead, over the rolling
wheatfields all golden beneath the distant snows of Estes, I’d be seeing old Denver at last. I pictured
myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged
and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I
had was .Wow!. The man and I had a long, warm conversation about our respective schemes in
life, and before I knew it we were going over the wholesale fruitmarkets outside Denver; there were
smokestacks, smoke, railyards, red-brick buildings, and the distant downtown gray-stone buildings,
and here I was in Denver. He let me off at Larimer Street. I stumbled along with the most wicked
grin of joy in the world, among the old bums and beat cowboys of Larimer Street.
25
6
In those days I didn’t know Dean as well as I do now, and the first thing I wanted to do was look
up Chad King, which I did. I called up his house, talked to his mother - she said, .Why, Sal, what
are you doing in Denver?. Chad is a slim blond boy with a strange witch-doctor face that goes’ with
his interest in anthropology and prehistory Indians. His nose beaks softly and almost creamily under a
golden flare or’ hair; he has the beauty and grace of a Western hotshot who’:, danced in roadhouses
and played a little football. A quavering twang comes out when he speaks. .The thing I always liked,
Sal, about the Plains Indians was the way they always got s’danged embarrassed after they boasted
the number of scalps they got. In Ruxton’s Life in the Far West there’s an Indian who gets red all
over blushing because he got so many scalps and he runs like hell into the plains to glory over his
deeds in hiding. Damn, that tickled me!.
Chad’s mother located him, in the drowsy Denver afternoon, working over his Indian basket-
making at the local museum. I called him there; he came and picked me up in his old Ford coupe that
he used to take trips in the mountains, to dig for Indian objects. He came into the bus station wearing
jeans and a big smile. I was sitting on my bag on the floor talking to the very same sailor who’d been
in the Cheyenne bus station with me, asking him what happened to the blonde. He was so bored he
didn’t answer. Chad and I got in his little coupe and the first thing he had to do was get maps at the
State building. Then he had to see an old schoolteacher, and so on, and all I wanted to do was drink
beer. And in the back of my mind was the wild thought, Where is Dean and what is he doing right
now? Chad had decided not to be Dean’s friend any more, for some odd reason, and he didn’t even
know where he lived.
.Is Carlo Marx in town?.
.Yes.. But he wasn’t talking to him any more either. This was the beginning of Chad King’s
withdrawal from our general gang. I was to take a nap in his house that afternoon. The word was
that Tim Gray had an apartment waiting for me up Coif ax Avenue, that Roland Major was already
living in it and was waiting for me to join him. I sensed some kind of conspiracy in the air, and this
conspiracy lined up two groups in the gang: it was Chad King and Tim Gray and Roland Major,
together with the Rawlinses, generally agreeing to ignore Dean Moriarty and Carlo Marx. I was
smack in the middle of this interesting war.
It was a war with social overtones. Dean was the son of a wino, one of the most tottering bums of
Larimer Street, and Dean had in fact been brought up generally on Larimer Street and thereabouts.
He used to plead in court at the age of six to have his father set free. He used to beg in front of
Larimer alleys and sneak the money back to his father, who waited among the broken bottles with an
old buddy. Then when Dean grew up he began hanging around the Glenarm pool-halls; he set a
Denver record for stealing cars and went to the reformatory. From the age of eleven to seventeen he
was usually in reform school. His specialty was stealing cars, gunning for girls coming out of high
school in the afternoon, driving them out to the mountains, making them, and coming back to sleep in
any available hotel bathtub in town. His father, once a respectable and hardworking tinsmith, had
become a wine alcoholic, which is worse than a whisky alcoholic, and was reduced to riding freights
to Texas in the winter and back to Denver in the summer. Dean had brothers on his dead mother’s
side - she died when he was small - but they disliked him. Dean’s only buddies were the poolhall
boys. Dean, who had the tremendous energy of a new kind of American saint, and Carlo were the
underground monsters of that season in Denver, together with the poolhall gang, and, symbolizing this
most beautifully, Carlo had a basement apartment on Grant Street and we all met there many a night
26
that went to dawn - Carlo, Dean, myself, Tom Snark, Ed Dunkel, and Roy Johnson. More of these
others later.
My first afternoon in Denver I slept in Chad King’s room while his mother went on with her
housework downstairs and Chad worked at the library. It was a hot high-plains afternoon in July. I
would not have slept if it hadn’t been for Chad King’s father’s invention. Chad King’s father, a fine
kind man, was in his seventies, old and feeble, thin and drawn-out, and telling stories with a slow,
slow relish; good stories, too, about his boyhood on the North Dakota plains in the eighties, when
for diversion he rode ponies bareback and chased after coyotes with a club. Later he became a
country schoolteacher in the Oklahoma panhandle, and finally a businessman of many devices in
Denver. He still had his old office over a garage down the street - the rolltop desk was still there,
together with countless dusty papers of past excitement and moneymaking. He had invented a
special air-conditioner. He put an ordinary fan in a window frame and somehow conducted cool
water through coils in front of the whirring blades. The result was perfect - within four feet of the fan
bull; - and then the water apparently turned into steam in the hot day and the downstairs part of the
house was just as hot as usual. But I was sleeping right under the fan on Chad’s bed, with a big bust
of Goethe staring at me, and I comfortably went to sleep, only to wake up in twenty minutes freezing
to death. I put a blanket on and still I was cold. Finally it was so cold I couldn’t sleep, and I went
downstairs. The old man asked me how his invention worked. I said it worked damned good, and I
meant it within bounds. I liked the man. He was lean with memories. .I once made a spot remover
that has since been copied by big firms in the East. I’ve been trying to collect on that for some years
now. If I only had enough money to raise a decent lawyer . . .. But it was too late to raise a decent
lawyer; and he sat in his house dejectedly. In the evening we had a wonderful dinner his mother
cooked, venison steak that Chad’s uncle had shot in the mountains. But where was Dean?
27
7
The following ten days were, as W. C. Fields said, .fraught with eminent peril. - and mad. I
moved in with Roland Major in the really swank apartment that belonged to Tim Gray’s folks. We
each had a bedroom, and there was a kitchenette with food in the icebox, and a huge living room
where Major sat in his silk dressing gown composing his latest Hemingwayan short story - a choleric,
red-faced, pudgy hater of everything, who could turn on the warmest and most charming smile in the
world when real life confronted him sweetly in the night. He sat like that at his desk, and I jumped
around over the thick soft rug, wearing only my chino pants. He’d just written a story about a guy
who comes to Denver for the first time. His name is Phil. His traveling companion is a mysterious and
quiet fellow called Sam. Phil goes out to dig Denver and gets hung-up with arty types. He comes
back to the hotel room. Lugubriously he says, .Sam, they’re here too.. And Sam is just looking out
the window sadly. .Yes,. says Sam, .I know.. And the point was that Sam didn’t have to go and
look to know this. The arty types were all over America, sucking up its blood. Major and I were
great pals; he thought I was the farthest thing from an arty type. Major liked good wines, just like
Hemingway. He reminisced about his recent trip to France. .Ah, Sal, if you could sit with me high in
the Basque country with a cool bottle of Poignon Dix-neuf, then you’d know there are other things
besides boxcars..
.I know that. It’s just that I love boxcars and I love to read the names on them like Missouri
Pacific, Great Northern, Rock Island Line. By Gad, Major, if I could tell you everything that
happened to me hitching here..
The Rawlinses lived a few blocks away. This was a delightful family - a youngish mother, part
owner of a decrepit, ghost-town hotel, with five sons and two daughters. The wild son was Ray
Rawlins, Tim Gray’s boyhood buddy. Ray came roaring in to get me and we took to each other right
away. We went off and drank in the Colfax bars. One of Ray’s sisters was a beautiful blonde called
Babe - a tennis-playing, surf-riding doll of the West. She was Tim Gray’s girl. And Major, who was
only passing through Denver and doing so in real style in the apartment, was going out with Tim
Gray’s sister Betty. I was the only guy without a girl. I asked everybody, .Where’s Dean?. They
made smiling negative answers.
Then finally it happened. The phone rang, and it was Carlo Marx. He gave me the address of his
basement apartment. I said, .What are you doing in Denver? I mean what are you doing? What’s
going on?.
.Oh, wait till I tell you..
I rushed over to meet him. He was working in May’s department store nights; crazy Ray Rawlins
called him up there from a bar, getting janitors to run after Carlo with a story that somebody had
died. Carlo immediately thought it was me who had died. And Rawlins said over the phone, .Sal’s in
Denver,. and gave him my address and phone.
.And where is Dean?.
.Dean is in Denver. Let me tell you.. And he told me that Dean was making love to two girls at
the same time, they being Marylou, his first wife, who waited for him in a hotel room, and Camille, a
new girl, who waited for him in a hotel room. .Between the two of them he rushes to me for our own
unfinished business..
.And what business is that??.
.Dean and I are embarked on a tremendous season together. We’re trying to communicate with
absolute honesty and absolute completeness everything on our minds. We’ve had to take
28
benzedrine. We sit on the bed, crosslegged, facing each other. I have finally taught Dean that he can
do anything he wants, become mayor of Denver, marry a millionairess, or become the greatest poet
since Rimbaud. But he keeps rushing out to see the midget auto races. I go with him. He jumps and
yells, excited. You know, Sal, Dean is really hung-up on things like that.. Marx said .Hmm. in his
soul and thought about this.
.What’s the schedule?. I said. There was always a schedule in Dean’s life.
.The schedule is this: I came off work a half-hour ago. In that time Dean is balling Marylou at the
hotel and gives me time to change and dress. At one sharp he rushes from Marylou to Camille - of
course neither one of them knows what’s going on - and bangs her once, giving me time to arrive at
one-thirty. Then he comes out with me - first he has to beg with Camille, who’s already started
hating me - and we come here to talk till six in the morning. We usually spend more time than that,
but it’s getting awfully complicated and he’s pressed for time. Then at six he goes back to Marylou and
he’s going to spend all day tomorrow running around to get the necessary papers for their
divorce. Marylou’s all for it, but she insists on banging in the interim. She says she loves him - so
does Camille..
Then he told me how Dean had met Camille. Roy Johnson, the poolhall boy, had found her in a
bar and took her to a hotel; pride taking over his sense, he invited the whole gang to come up and
see her. Everybody sat around talking with Camille. Dean did nothing but look out the window. Then
when everybody left, Dean merely looked at Camille, pointed at his wrist, made the sign .four.
(meaning he’d be-back at four), and went out. At three the door was locked to-Roy Johnson. At
four it was opened to Dean. I wanted to go-right out and see the madman. Also he had promised to
fix me up; he knew all the girls in Denver.
Carlo and I went through rickety streets in the Denver night. The air was soft, the stars so fine, the
promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream. We came to the rooming
house where Dean haggled with* Camille. It was an old red-brick building surrounded by wooden
garages and old trees that stuck up from behind fences. We went up carpeted stairs. Carlo knocked;
then he darted to the back to hide; he didn’t want Camille to see him. I stood in the door. Dean
opened it stark naked. I saw a brunette on the bed, one beautiful creamy thigh covered with black
lace, look up with mild wonder.
.Why, Sa-a-al!. said Dean. .Well now - ah - ahem - yes, of course, you’ve arrived - you old
sonumbitch you finally got on that old road. Well, now, look here - we must - yes, yes, at once - we
