Monday, December 23, 2013
Hunkey! I look for him everywhere I go and I never find him. He used to
get us so hung up in Texas here. We’d drive in with Bill for groceries
and Hunkey’d disappear. We’d have to go looking for him in every
shooting gallery in town.” We were entering Houston. “We had to look for
him in this niggertown most of the time. Man, he’d be blasting with
every mad cat he could find. One night we lost him and took a hotel
room. We were supposed to bring ice back to Joan because her food was
rotting. It took us two days to find Hunkey. I got hung up myself---I
gunned shopping women in the afternoon, right here, downtown,
supermarkets”---we flashed by in the empty night---“and found a real
gone dumb girl who was out of her mind and just wandering trying to
steal an orange. She was from Wyoming. I took her back to the room. Bill
was drunk. Allen was writing poetry. Hunkey didn’t show up till
midnight, at the Jeep. We found him sleeping in the backseat; he said he
took about five sleeping pills. Man if my memory could only work the
way my mind works I could tell you every detail of the things we
did---Ah! But we know time. Everything takes care of itself. I could
close my eyes and this car would take care of itself.” In the empty
Houston streets of four o’clock in the morning a motorcycle kid suddenly
roared through all bespangled and bedecked with glittering buttons,
visor, slick black jacket, a Texas poet of the night, girl gripped on
his back like a papoose, hair flying, onward-going, singing “Houston,
Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas- -and sometimes Kansas City---and sometimes
old Antone, ah-haaa!” They pinpointed out of sight. “Wow! Dig that gone
gal on his belt! Yes!” Neal tried to catch up with them. “Now wouldn’t
it be fine if we could all get together and have a real going goofbang
together with everybody sweet and fine and agreeable, no hassels…Ah! But
we know time.” He bent to it and pushed the car. Beyond Houston his
energies great as they were gave out and I drove. Rain began to fall
just as I took the wheel. Now we were on the great Texas plain and as
Neal said “You drive and drive and you’re still in Texas tomorrow
night.” The rain lashed down. I drove through a rickety little cow-town
with a muddy main street and found myself in a dead end. “Hey, what do
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