Big Sur/Chapter 33
It sounds all so sad but it was actually such a gay night as Dave and Romana came over and there’s all the business of packing boxes and clothes down to the car, nipping out of bottles, getting ready in fact to sing all the way to Big Sur “Home On the Range” and “I'm Just a Lonsome Old Turd” by Dave Wain—Me sitting up front next to Dave and Romana for some reason maybe because I wanted to identify with my old broken front rockingchair and lean there flapping and singing but with Romana between us the seat is pinned down and no longer flaps—Meanwhile Billie is on the back mattress with sleeping child and off we go booming down Bay Shore to that other shore whatever it will bring, the way people always feel whenever they essay some trip long or short especially in the night—The eyes of hope looking over the glare of the hood into the maw with its white line feeding in straight as an arrow, the lighting of fresh cigarettes, the buckling to lean forward to the next adventure something that’s been going on in America ever since the covered wagons clocked the deserts in three months flat—Billie doesnt mind that I dont sit in back with her because she knows I wanta sing and have a good time—Romana and I hit up fantastic medleys of popular and folk songs of all kinds and Dave contributes his New York Chicago blue light nightclub romantic baritone specialties—My wavering Sinatra is barely heard in fact—Beat on your knees and yell and sing Dixie and Banjo On My Knee, get raucous and moan out Red River Valley, “Where’s my harmonica, I been meanin to buy me a eight dollar harmonica for eight years now.”
It always starts out good like that, the bad moments—Nothing is gained or lost also by the fact that I insist we stop at Cody’s en route so I can pick up some clothes I left there but secretly I want Evelyn to finally come face to face with Billie—It surprises me more however to see the look of absolute fright on Cody’s face as we pour into his livingroom at midnight and I announce that Billie’s in the jeep sleeping—Evelyn is not perturbed at all and in fact says to me privately in the kitchen “I guess it was bound to happen sometime shed come here and see it but I guess it was destined to be you who’d bring her”—“What’s Cody so worried about?”—“You’re spoiling all his chance to be real secretive”—“He hasnt come and seen us for a whole week, that’s in a way what happened, he just left me stranded there: I’ve been feeling awful, too”—“Well if you want you can ask her to come in”—“Well were leaving in a minute anyway, you wanta see her at least?”—“I dont care”—Cody is sitting in the livingroom absolutely rigid, stiff, formal, with a big Irish stone in his eye: I know he’s really mad at me this time tho I dont really know why—I go out and there’s Billie alone in the car over sleeping Elliott biting her fingernail—“You wanta come in and meet Evelyn?”—“I shouldnt, she wont like that, is Cody there?”—“Yah”—So Willamine climbs out (I remember just then Evelyn telling me seriously that Cody always calls his women by their full first names, Rosemarie, Joanna, Evelyn, Willamine, he never gives them silly nicknames nor uses them).
The meeting is not eventful, of course, both girls keep their silence and hardly look at each other so it’s all me and Dave Wain carrying on with the usual boloney and I see that Cody is really very sick and tired of me bringing gangs arbitrarily to his place, running off with his mistress, getting drunk and thrown out of family plays, hundred dollars or no hundred dollars he probably feels I’m just a fool now anyway and hopelessly lost forever but I dont realize that myself because I’m feeling good—I want us to resume down that road singing bawdier and darker songs till were negotiating narrow mountain roads at the pitch of the greatest songs.
I try to ask Cody about Perry and all the other strange characters who visit Billie in the City but he just looks at me out of the corner eye and says “Ah, yah,hm,”—I dont know and I never will know what he’s up to anyway in the long run: I realize I’m just a silly stranger goofing with other strangers for no reason far away from anything that ever mattered to me whatever that was—Always an ephemeral “visitor” to the Coast never really involved with anyone’s lives there because I’m always ready to fly back across the country but not to any life of my own on the other end either, just a traveling stranger like Old Bull Balloon, an exemplar of the loneliness of Doren Coit actually waiting for the only real trip, to Venus, to the mountain of Mien Mo—Tho when I look out of Cody’s livingroom window just then I do see my star still shining for me as it’s done all these 38 years over crib, out ship windows, jail windows, over sleepingbags only now it’s dummier and dimmer and getting blurreder damnit as tho even my own star be now fading away from concern for me as I from concern for it—In fact we’re all strangers with strange eyes sitting in a midnight livingroom for nothing—And small talk at that, like Billie saying “I always wanted a nice fireplace” and I’m yelling “Dont worry we got one at the cabin hey Dave? and all the wood’s chopped!” and Evelyn:-“What does Monsanto think of you using his cabin all summer, werent you supposed to go there alone in secret?”—“It’s too late now!” I sing swigging from the bottle without which I’d only drop with shame face flat on the floor or on the gravel driveway—And Dave and Romana look a little uneasy finally so we all get up to go, zoom, and that’s the last time I see Cody or Evelyn anyway.
And as I say our songs grow mightier as the road grows darker and wilder, finally here we are on the canyon road the headlights just reaching out there around bleak sand shoulders—Down to the creek where I unlock the corral gate—Across the meadow and back to the haunted cabin—Where on the strength of that night’s booze and getaway gladness Billie and I actually have a good time lighting fires and making coffee and gong to be together in the one sleepingbag easy as pie after we’ve bundled up little Elliott and Dave and Romana have retired in his double nylon bag by the creek in the moonlight.
No, its the next day and night that concerns me.