Saturday, December 21, 2013
sleeping. His face was down on his good hand and the bandaged hand,
automatically and dutifully remained in the air. The people in the front
seat sighed with relief. I heard them whispering mutiny. “We can’t let
him drive any more, he’s absolutely crazy, they must have let him out of
an asylum or something.” I rose to Neal’s defense and leaned forward to
talk to them. “He’s not crazy, he’ll be all right, and don’t worry about
his driving, he’s the best in the world.” “I just can’t stand it” said
the girl with a suppressed hysterical whisper. I sat back and enjoyed
nightfall on the desert and waited for poor child Angel Neal to wake up
again. He woke up just as we were on a hill overlooking Salt Lake City’s
neat patterns of light (the tourists wanted to see a famous hospital up
there) and opened his eyes to the place in this spectral world where he
was born unnamed and bedraggled years ago. “Jack, Jack, look, this is
where I was born, think of it! People change, they eat meals year after
year and change with every meal. EE! Look!” He was so excited it made me
cry. Where would it all lead? The tourists insisted on driving the car
the rest of the way to Denver. Okay, we didn’t care. We sat back and
talked. In any case they got too tired in the morning and Neal took the
wheel in Eastern Colorado desert at Craig. We spent almost the entire
night crawling cautiously over Strawberry Pass in Utah and lost
immeasurable time. They went to sleep. Neal headed pell-mell for the
mighty wall of Berthoud Pass that stood a hundred miles ahead on the
roof of the world, a tremendous Gibraltarian door shrouded in clouds. He
took Berthoud Pass like a duck on a June bug---same as Tehatchapi,
cutting off the motor, floating it, passing everybody and never halting
the rhythmic advance that the mountains themselves intended, till we
overlooked the great hot plain of Denver again---as I’d first seen it
after Central City with the kids---and Neal was home. It was with great
deal of silly relief that these people let us off the car at the corner
of 27th and Federal. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk
again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. Now we
had a number of circumstances to deal with in Denver and they were of
an entirely different order than 1947. We could either get another TB
car at once
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