.What is the meaning of this?.
.I was only trying this door. I thought this was the - ah -mop room. I was looking for a mop..
.What do you mean you were looking for a mop?.
.Well - ah..
And I stepped up and said, .One of the men puked in the hall upstairs. We have to mop it up..
.This is not the mop room. This is my room. Another incident like this and I’ll have you fellows
investigated and thrown out! Do you understand me clearly?.
.A fellow puked upstairs,. I said again.
.The mop room is down the hall. Down there.. And he pointed, and waited for us to go and get
a mop, which we did, and foolishly carried it upstairs.
I said, .Goddammit, Remi, you’re always getting us into trouble. Why don’t you lay off? Why do
you have to steal all the time?.
.The world owes me a few things, that’s all. You can’t teach the old maestro a new tune. You go
on talking like that and I’m going to start calling you Dostioffski..
Remi was just like a little boy. Somewhere in his past, in his lonely schooldays in France, they’d
taken everything from him; his stepparents just stuck him in schools and left him there; he was
browbeaten and thrown out of one school after another; he walked the French roads at night
devising curses out of his innocent stock of words. He was out to get back everything he’d lost;
there was no end to his loss; this thing would drag on forever.
The barracks cafeteria was our meat. We looked around to make sure nobody was watching,
and especially to see if any of our cop friends were lurking about to check on us; then I squatted
down, and Remi put a foot on each shoulder and up he went. He opened the window, which was
never locked since he saw to it in the evenings, scrambled through, and came down on the flour
table. I was a little more agile and just jumped and crawled in. Then we went to the soda fountain.
Here, realizing a dream of mine from infancy, I took the cover off the chocolate ice cream and stuck
my hand in wrist-deep and hauled me up a skewer of ice cream and licked at it. Then we got ice-
cream boxes and stuffed them, poured chocolate syrup over and sometimes strawberries too, then
44
walked around in the kitchens, opened iceboxes, to see what we could take home in our pockets. I
often tore off a piece of roast beef and wrapped it in a napkin. .You know what President Truman
said,. Remi would say. .We must cut down on the cost of living..
One night I waited a long time as he filled a huge box full of groceries. Then we couldn’t get it
through the window. Remi had to unpack everything and put it back. Later in the night, when he
went off duty and I was all alone on the base, a strange thing happened. I was taking a walk along
the old canyon trail, hoping to meet a deer (Remi had seen deer around, that country being wild even
in 1947), when I heard a frightening noise in the dark. It was a huffing and puffing. I thought it was a
rhinoceros coming for me in the dark. I grabbed my gun. A tall figure appeared in the canyon gloom;
it had an enormous head. Suddenly I realized it was Remi with a huge box of groceries on his
shoulder. He was moaning and groaning from the enormous weight of it. He’d found the key to the
cafeteria somewhere and had got his groceries out the front door. I said, .Remi, I thought you were
home; what the hell are you doing?.
And he said, .Paradise, I have told you several times what President Truman said, we must cut
down on the cost of living.. And I heard him huff and puff into the darkness. I’ve already
described that awful trail back to our shack, up hill and down dale. He hid the groceries in the tall
grass and came back to me. .Sal, I just can’t make it alone. I’m going to divide it into two boxes
and you’re going to help me..
.But I’m on duty..
.I’ll watch the place while you’re gone. Things are getting rough all around. We’ve just got to
make it the best way we can, and that’s all there is to it.. He wiped his face. .Whoo! I’ve told you
time and time again, Sal, that we’re buddies, and we’re in this thing together. There’s just no two
ways about it. The Dostioffskis, the cops, the Lee Anns, all the evil skulls of this world, are out for
our skin. It’s up to us to see that nobody pulls any schemes on us. They’ve got a lot more up their
sleeves besides a dirty arm. Remember that. You can’t teach the old maestro a new tune..
I finally asked, .Whatever are we going to do about shipping out?. We’d been doing these things
for ten weeks. I was making fifty-five bucks a week and sending my aunt an average of forty. I’d
spent only one evening in San Francisco in all that time. My life was wrapped in the shack, in Remi’s
battles with Lee Ann, and in the middle of the night at the barracks.
Remi was gone off in the dark to get another box. I struggled with him on that old Zorro road.
We piled up the groceries a mile high on Lee Ann’s kitchen table. She woke up and rubbed her
eyes.
.You know what President Truman said?. She was delighted. I suddenly began to realize that
everybody in America is a natural-born thief. I was getting the bug myself. I even began to try to see
if doors were locked. The other cops were getting suspicious of us; they saw it in our eyes; they
understood with unfailing instinct what was on our minds. Years of experience had taught them the
likes of Remi and me.
In the daytime Remi and I went out with the gun and tried to shoot quail in the hills. Remi sneaked
up to within three feet of the clucking birds and let go a blast of the .32. He missed. His tremendous
laugh roared over the California woods and over America. .The time has come for you and me to go
and see the Banana King..
It was Saturday; we got all spruced up and went down to the bus station on the crossroads. We
rode into San Francisco and strolled through the streets. Remi’s huge laugh resounded everywhere
we went. .You must write a story about the Banana King,. he warned me. .Don’t pull any tricks on
the old maestro and write about something else. The Banana King is your meat. There stands the
Banana King.. The Banana King was an old man selling bananas on the corner. I was completely
45
bored. But Remi kept punching me in the ribs and even dragging me along by the collar. .When you
write about the Banana King you write about the human-interest things of life.. I told him I didn’t
give a damn about the Banana King. .Until you learn to realize the importance of the Banana King
you will know absolutely nothing about the human-interest things of the world,. said Remi
emphatically.
There was an old rusty freighter out in the bay that was used as a buoy. Remi was all for rowing
out to it, so one afternoon Lee Ann packed a lunch and we hired a boat and went out there. Remi
brought some tools. Lee Ann took all her clothes off and lay down to sun herself on the flying bridge.
I watched her from the poop. Remi went clear down to the boiler rooms below, where rats scurried
around, and began hammering and banging away for copper lining that wasn’t there. I sat in the
dilapidated officer’s mess. It was an old, old ship and had been beautifully appointed, with
scrollwork in the wood, and built-in seachests. This was the ghost of the San Francisco of Jack
London. I dreamed at the sunny messboard. Rats ran in the pantry. Once upon a time there’d been a
blue-eyed sea captain dining in here.
I joined Remi in the bowels below. He yanked at everything loose. .Not a thing. I thought there’d
be copper, I thought there’d be at least an old wrench or two. This ship’s been stripped by a bunch
of thieves.. It had been standing in the bay for years. The copper had been stolen by a hand that was
a hand no more.
I said to Remi, .I’d love to sleep in this old ship some night when the fog comes in and the thing
creaks and you hear the big B-O of the buoys..
Remi was astounded; his admiration for me doubled. .Sal, I’ll pay you five dollars if you have the
nerve to do that. Don’t you realize this thing may be haunted by the ghosts of old sea captains? I’ll
not only pay you five, I’ll row you out and pack you a lunch and lend you blankets and candle..
.Agreed!. I said. Remi ran to tell Lee Ann. I wanted to jump down from a mast and land right in
her, but I kept my promise to Remi. I averted my eyes from her.
Meanwhile I began going to Frisco more often; I tried everything in the books to make a girl. I
even spent a whole night with a girl on a park bench, till dawn, without success. She was a blonde
from Minnesota. There were plenty of queers. Several times I went to San Fran with my gun and
when a queer approached me in a bar John I took out the gun and said, .Eh? Eh? What’s that you
say?. He bolted. I’ve never understood why I did that; I knew queers all over the country. It was
just the loneliness of San Francisco and the fact that I had a gun. I had to show it to someone. I
walked by a jewelry store and had the sudden impulse to shoot up the window, take out the finest
rings and bracelets, and run to give them to Lee Ann. Then we could flee to Nevada together. The
time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I’d go crazy.
I wrote long letters to Dean and Carlo, who were now at Old Bull’s shack in the Texas bayou.
They said they were ready to come join me in San Fran as soon as this-and-that was ready.
Meanwhile everything began to collapse with Remi and Lee Ann and me. The September rains
came, and with them harangues. Remi had flown down to Hollywood with her, taking my sad silly
movie original, and nothing had happened. The famous director was drunk and paid no attention to
them; they hung around his Malibu Beach cottage; they started fighting in front of other guests; and
they flew back.
The final topper was the racetrack. Remi saved all his money, about a hundred dollars, spruced
me up in some of his clothes, put Lee Ann on his arm, and off we went to Golden Gate racetrack
near Richmond across the bay. To show you what a heart that guy had, he put half of our stolen
groceries in a tremendous brown paper bag and took them to a poor widow he knew in Richmond
in a housing project much like our own, wash flapping in the California sun. We went with him. There
46
were sad ragged children. The woman thanked Remi. She was the sister of some seaman he vaguely
knew. .Think nothing of it, Mrs. Carter,. said Remi in his most elegant and polite tones. .There’s
plenty more where that came from..
We proceeded to the racetrack. He made incredible twenty-dollar bets to win, and before the
seventh race he was broke. With our last two food dollars he placed still another bet and lost. We
had to hitchhike back to San Francisco. I was on the road again. A gentleman gave us a ride in his
snazzy car. I sat up front with him. Remi was trying to put a story down that he’d lost his wallet in
back of the grandstand at the track. .The truth is,. I said, .we lost all our money on the races, and
to forestall any more hitching from racetracks, from now on we go to a bookie, hey, Remi?. Remi
blushed all over. The man finally admitted he was an official of the Golden Gate track. He let us off at
the elegant Palace Hotel; we watched him disappear among the chandeliers, his pockets full of
money, his head held high.
.Wagh! Whoo!. howled Remi in the evening streets of Frisco. .Paradise rides with the man who
runs the racetrack and swears he’s switching to bookies. Lee Ann, Lee Ann!. He punched and
mauled her. .Positively the funniest man in the world! There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito.
Aaah-how!. He wrapped himself around a pole to laugh.
That night it started raining as Lee Ann gave dirty looks to both of us. Not a cent left in the house.
The rain drummed on the roof. .It’s going to last for a week,. said Remi. He had taken off his
beautiful suit; he was back in his miserable shorts and Army cap and T-shirt. His great brown sad
eyes stared at the planks of the floor. The gun lay on the table. We could hear Mr. Snow laughing his
head off across the rainy night somewhere.
.I get so sick and tired of that sonofabitch,. snapped Lee Ann. She was on the go to start
trouble. She began needling Remi. He was busy going through his little black book, in which were
names of people, mostly seamen, who owed him money. Beside their names he wrote curses in red
ink. I dreaded the day I’d ever find my way into that book. Lately I’d been sending so much money
to my aunt that I only bought four or five dollars’ worth of groceries a week. In keeping with what
President Truman said, I added a few more dollars’ worth. But Remi felt it wasn’t my proper share;
so he’d taken to hanging the grocery slips, the long ribbon slips with itemized prices, on the wall of
the bathroom for me to see and understand. Lee Ann was convinced Remi was hiding money from
her, and that I was too, for that matter. She threatened to leave him.
Remi curled his lip. .Where do you think you’ll go?.
.Jimmy..
.Jimmy? A cashier at the racetrack? Do you hear that, Sal, Lee Ann is going to go and put the
latch on a cashier at the racetrack. Be sure and bring your broom, dear, the horses are going to eat a
lot of oats this week with my hundred-dollar bill..
Things grew to worse proportions; the rain roared. Lee Ann originally lived in the place first, so
she told Remi to pack up and get out. He started packing. I pictured myself all alone in this rainy
shack with that untamed shrew. I tried to intervene. Remi pushed Lee Ann. She made a jump for the
gun. Remi gave me the gun and told me to hide it; there was a clip of eight shells in it. Lee Ann began
screaming, and finally she put on her raincoat and went out in the mud to find a cop, and what a cop
-if it wasn’t our old friend Alcatraz. Luckily he wasn’t home. She came back all wet. I hid in my
corner with my head between my knees. Gad, what was I doing three thousand miles from home?
Why had I come here? Where was my slow boat to China?
.And another thing, you dirty man,. yelled Lee Ann. .Tonight was the last time I’ll ever make you
your filthy brains and eggs, and your filthy Iamb curry, so you can fill your filthy belly and get fat and
sassy right before my eyes..
47
.It’s all right,. Remi just said quietly. .It’s perfectly all right. When I took up with you I didn’t
expect roses and moonshine and I’m not surprised this day. I tried to do a few things for you - I tried
my best for both of you; you’ve both let me down. I’m terribly, terribly disappointed in both of you,.
he continued in absolute sincerity. .I thought something would come of us together, something fine
and lasting, I tried, I flew to Hollywood, I got Sal a job, I bought you beautiful dresses, I tried to
introduce you to the finest people in San Francisco. You refused, you both refused to follow the
slightest wish I had. I asked for nothing in return. Now I ask for one last favor and then I’ll never ask
a favor again. My stepfather is coming to San Francisco next Saturday night. All I ask is that you
come with me and try to look as though everything is the way I’ve written him. In other words, you,
Lee Ann, you are my girl, and you, Sal, you are my friend. I’ve arranged to borrow a hundred
dollars for Saturday night. I’m going to see that my father has a good time and can go away without
any reason in the world to worry about me..
This surprised me. Remi’s stepfather was a distinguished doctor who had practiced in Vienna,
Paris, and London. I said, .You mean to tell me you’re going to spend a hundred dollars on your
stepfather? He’s got more money than you’ll ever have! You’ll be in debt, man!.
.That’s all right,. said Remi quietly and with defeat in his voice. .I ask only one last thing of you that
you try at least to make things look all right and try to make a good impression. I love my
stepfather and I respect him. He’s coming with his young wife. We must show him every courtesy..
There were times when Remi was really the most gentlemanly person in the world. Lee Ann was
impressed, and looked forward to meeting his stepfather; she thought he might be a catch, if his son
wasn’t.
Saturday night rolled around. I had already quit my job with the cops, just before being fired for
not making enough arrests, and this was going to be my last Saturday night. Remi and Lee Ann went
to meet his stepfather at the hotel room first; I had traveling money and got crocked in the bar
downstairs. Then I went up to join them all, late as hell. His father opened the door, a distinguished
tall man in pince-nez. .Ah,. I said on seeing him, .Monsieur Boncoeur, how are you? Je suis haut!.
I cried, which was intended to mean in French, .I am high, I have been drinking,. but means
absolutely nothing in French. The doctor was perplexed. I had already screwed up Remi. He
blushed at me.
We all went to a swank restaurant to eat - Alfred’s, in North Beach, where poor Remi spent a
good fifty dollars for the five of us, drinks and all. And now came the worst thing. Who should be
sitting at the bar in Alfred’s but my old friend Roland Major! He had just arrived from Denver and
got a job on a San Francisco paper. He was crocked. He wasn’t even shaved. He rushed over and
slapped me on the back as I lifted a highball to my lips. He threw himself down on the booth beside
Dr. Boncoeur and leaned over the man’s soup to talk to me. Remi was red as a beet.
.Won’t you introduce your friend, Sal?. he said with a weak smile.
.Roland Major of the San Francisco Argus,. I tried to say with a straight face. Lee Ann was
furious at me.
Major began chatting in the monsieur’s ear. .How do you like teaching high-school French?. he
yelled. .Pardon me, but I don’t teach high-school French.. .Oh, I thought you taught high-school
French.. He was being deliberately rude. I remembered the night he wouldn’t let us have our party in
Denver; but I forgave him.
I forgave everybody, I gave up, I got drunk. I began talking moonshine and roses to the doctor’s
young wife. I drank so much I had to go to the men’s room every two minutes, and to do so I had to
hop over Dr. Boncoeur’s lap. Everything was falling apart. My stay in San Francisco was coming to
an end. Remi would never talk to me again. It was horrible because I really loved Remi and I was
48
one of the very few people in the world who knew what a genuine and grand fellow he was. It would
take years for him to get over it. How disastrous all this was compared to what I’d written him from
Paterson, planning my red line Route 6 across America. Here I was at the end of America - no more
land - and now there was nowhere to go but back. I determined at least to make my trip a circular
one: I decided then and there to go to Hollywood and back through Texas to see my bayou gang;
then the rest be damned.
Major was thrown out of Alfred’s. Dinner was over anyway, so I joined him; that is to say, Remi
suggested it, and I went off with Major to drink. We sat at a table in the Iron Pot and Major said,
.Sam, I don’t like that fairy at the bar,. in a loud voice.
.Yeah, Jake?. I said.
.Sam,. he said, .I think I’ll get up and conk him.. .No, Jake,. I said, carrying on with the
Hemingway imitation. .Just aim from here and see what happens.. We ended up swaying on a street
corner.
In the morning, as Remi and Lee Ann slept, and as I looked with some sadness at the big pile of
wash Remi and I were scheduled to do in the Bendix machine in the shack in the back (which had
always been such a joyous sunny operation among the colored women and with Mr. Snow laughing
his head off), I decided to leave. I went out on the porch. .No, dammit,. I said to myself, .I
promised I wouldn’t leave till I climbed that mountain.. That was the big side of the canyon that led
mysteriously to the Pacific Ocean.
So I stayed another day. It was Sunday. A great heat wave descended; it was a beautiful day, the
sun turned red at three. I started up the mountain and got to the top at four. All those lovely
California cottonwoods and eucalypti brooded on all sides. Near the peak there were no more trees,
just rocks and grass. Cattle were grazing on the top of the coast. There was the Pacific, a few more
foothills away, blue and vast and with a great wall of white advancing from the legendary potato
patch where Frisco fogs are born. Another hour and it would come streaming through the Golden
Gate to shroud the romantic city in white, and a young man would hold his girl by the hand and climb
slowly up a long white sidewalk with a bottle of Tokay in his pocket. That was Frisco; and beautiful
women standing in white doorways, waiting for their men; and Coit Tower, and the Embarcadero,
and Market Street, and the eleven teeming hills.
I spun around till I was dizzy; I thought I’d fall down as in a dream, clear off the precipice. Oh
where is the girl I love? I thought, and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little
world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent;
somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown
steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and
emptyheaded - at least that’s what I thought then.
49
12
In the morning Remi and Lee Ann were asleep as I quietly packed and slipped out the window
the same way I’d come in, and left Mill City with my canvas bag. And I never spent that night on the
old ghost ship - the Admiral Freebee, it was called - and Remi and I were lost to each other.
In Oakland I had a beer among the bums of a saloon with a wagon wheel in front of it, and I was
on the road again. I walked clear across Oakland to get on the Fresno road. Two rides took me to
Bakersfield, four hundred miles south. The first was the mad one, with a burly blond kid in a souped-
up rod. .See that toe?. he said as he gunned the heap to eighty and passed everybody on the road.
.Look at it.. It was swathed in bandages. .I just had it amputated this morning. The bastards
wanted me to stay in the hospital. I packed my bag and left. What’s a toe?. Yes, indeed, I said to
myself, look out now, and I hung on. You never saw a driving fool like that. He made Tracy in no
time. Tracy is a railroad town; brakemen eat surly meals in diners by the tracks. Trains howl away
across the valley. The sun goes down long and red. All the magic names of the valley unrolled -
Manteca, Madera, all the rest. Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves
and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the
color of love and Spanish mysteries. I stuck my head out the window and took deep breaths of the
fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of all moments. The madman was a brakeman with the
Southern Pacific and he lived in Fresno; his father was also a brakeman. He lost his toe in the
Oakland yards, switching, I didn’t quite understand how. He drove me into buzzing Fresno and let
me off by the south side of town. I went for a quick Coke in a little grocery by the tracks, and here
came a melancholy Armenian youth along the red boxcars, and just at that moment a locomotive
howled, and I said to myself, Yes, yes, Saroyan’s town.
I had to go south; I got on the road. A man in a brand-new pickup truck picked me up. He was
from Lubbock, Texas, and was in the trailer business. .You want to buy a trailer?. he asked me.
.Any time, look me up.. He told stories about his father in Lubbock. .One night my old man left the
day’s receipts settin on top of the safe, plumb forgot. What happened - a thief came in the night,
acetylene torch and all, broke open the safe, riffled up the papers, kicked over a few chairs, and left.
And that thousand dollars was settin right there on top of the safe, what do you know about that?.
He let me off south of Bakersfield, and then my adventure began. It grew cold. I put on the flimsy
Army raincoat I’d bought in Oakland for three dollars and shuddered in the road. I was standing in
front of an ornate Spanish-style motel that was lit like a jewel. The cars rushed by, LA-bound. I
gestured frantically. It was too cold. I stood there till midnight, two hours straight, and cursed and
cursed. It was just like Stuart, Iowa, again. There was nothing to do but spend a little over two
dollars for a bus the remaining miles to Los Angeles. I walked back along the highway to Bakersfield
and into the station, and sat down on a bench.
I had bought my ticket and was waiting for the LA bus when all of a sudden I saw the cutest little
Mexican girl in slacks come cutting across my sight. She was in one of the buses that had just pulled
in with a big sigh of airbrakes; it was discharging passengers for a rest stop. Her breasts stuck out
straight and true; her little flanks looked delicious; her hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes
were great big blue things with timidities inside. I wished I was on her bus. A pain stabbed my heart,
as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
The announcer called the LA bus. I picked up my bag and got on, and who should be sitting there
alone but the Mexican girl. I dropped right opposite her and began scheming right off. I was so
lonely, so sad, so tired, so quivering, so broken, so beat, that I got up my courage, the courage
50
necessary to approach a strange girl, and acted. Even then I spent five minutes beating my thighs in
the dark as the bus rolled down the road.
You gotta, you gotta or you’ll die! Damn fool, talk to her! What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you
tired enough of yourself by now? And before I knew what I was doing I leaned across the aisle to
her (she was trying to sleep on the seat) and said, .Miss, would you like to use my raincoat for a
pillow?.
She looked up with a smile and said, .No, thank you very much..
I sat back, trembling; I lit a butt. I waited till she looked at me, with a sad little sidelook of love,
and I got right up and leaned over her. .May I sit with you, miss?.
.If you wish..
And this I did. .Where going?.
.LA.. I loved the way she said .LA.; I love the way everybody says .LA. on the Coast; it’s
their one and only golden town when all is said and done,
