Big Sur/Chapter 17
I end up groaning drunk on the floor this time beside Dave’s floor mattress forgetting that he’s not even there.
But a strange thing happened that morning I remember now: before Cody’s call from downvalley: I’m feeling hopelessly idiotically depressed again groaning to remember Tyke’s dead and remembering that sinking beach but at the side of the radiator in the toilet lies a copy of Boswell’s Johnson which we'd been discussing so happy in the car: I open to any page then one more page and start reading from the top left and suddenly I’m in an entirely perfect world again: old Doc Johnson and Boswell are visiting a castle in Scotland belonging to a deceased friend called Rorie More, they're drinking sherry by the great fireplace looking at the picture of Rorie on the wall, the widow of Rorie is there, Johnson suddenly says “Sir, here’s what I would do to deal with the sword of Rorie More” (the portrait shows old Rorie with his Highlands flinger) “I’d get inside him with a dirk and stab him to my pleasure like an animal” and bleary with hangover I realize that if there was any way for Johnson to express his sorrow to the widow of Rorie More on the unfortunate circumstance of his death, this was the way—So pitiful, irrational, yet perfect—I rush down to the kitchen where Dave Wain and some others are already eating breakfast of sorts and start reading the whole thing to the lot of them—Jonesy looks at me askance over his pipe for being so literary so early in the morning but I’m not being literary at all—Again I see death, the death of Rorie More, but Johnson’s response to death is ideal and so ideal I only wish old Johnson be sitting in the kitchen now—(Help! I’m thinking).
The call comes from Cody in Los Gatos that he lost his job tire recapping—“Because we were there last night?”—“No no something entirely different, he’s gotta lay off some men because his mortgage is bleeding him and all that and some girl is tryna sue him for forging a check and all that, so man I've got to find another job but I have to pay the rent and everything’s all fucked up down here, Oh old buddy how about, cant you, I plead or I dont plead, or honestly, Jack, ah, lend me a hundred dollars willya?”—“By God Cody I’ll be right down and GIVE you a hundred dollars”—“You mean you’ll really do that, listen just to lend to me is enough but if you insist, hm” (fluttering his eyelashes over the phone because he knows I mean it) “you old loverboy you, how you gonna get down here there and give me that money there son and make my old heart glad”—“I’ll have Dave drive me down”—“Okay I’ll pay the rent with it right away and because it’s now Friday, why, Thursday or whatever, that’s right Thursday, why I dont have to be lookin for a new job till next Monday so you can stay here and we'll have a long weekend just goofin and talkin boy like we used to do, I can demolish you at chess or we can watch a baseball game” and in a whisper “and we can sneak into the City see and see my purty baby”—So I ask Dave Wain and yes he’s ready to go anytime, he’s just following me like I often follow people myself, and so off we go again.
And on the way we drop in on Monsanto at the bookstore and the idea suddenly comes to me for Dave and me and Cody to go to the cabin and spend a big quiet crazy weekend (how?) but when Monsanto hears this idea he’ll come too, in fact he'll bring his little Chinese buddy Arthur Ma and well catch McLear at Santa Cruz and go visit Henry Miller and suddenly another big huge ball is begun.
So there's Willie waiting down on the street, I go to the store, buy the bottle, Dave wheels Willie around, Ron Blake and now Ben Fagan are on the back mattress, I’m sitting in my front seat rocking chair as now in broad afternoon we go blattin again down that Bay Shore highway to see old Cody and Monsanto’s in back of us in his jeep with Arthur Ma, two jeeps now, and about to be two more as I’ll show—Coming to Cody’s in mid afternoon, his own house already filled with visitors (local Los Gatos literaries and all kinds of people the phone there ringing continually too) and Cody says to Evelyn “I’ll just spend a couple days with Jack and the gang like the old days and look for a job Monday”—“Okay”—So we all go to a wonderful pizza restaurant in Los Gatos where the pizzas are piled an inch high with mushrooms and meat and anchovies or anything you want, I cash a travelers check at the supermarket, Cody takes the 100 in cash, gives it to Evelyn in the restaurant, and later that day the two jeeps resume down to Monterey and down that blasted road I walked on blistered feet back to the frightful bridge at Raton Canyon—And Id thought I'd never see the place again. But now I was coming back loaded with observers. The sight of the canyon down there as we renegotiated the mountain road made me bite my lip with marvel and sadness.