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  I settled in next to the trio once I spotted the bottle they shared. Upstanding already, the young fellow silently passed it to me without even looking to his elders for permission. Chuck was the young guy and Jed and Smitty the older ones. (Lord, what names!)

  "What's this all about?" I asked. Chuck opened his mouth, but didn't say anything and didn't close it. Smitty ran his fingers over his crackling white stubble. "Well, some people believe," he said, deliberate and slow, like Morse code, "that these are the End Times. But not the very end. The end of one thing, like the town," (he nodded back to the main drag) "and the beginning of something else," (he turned north towards my sweet City) "and the only place left for life is right here. In-between town for in-between people." Then he smiled and showed me his teeth, rotten but pleasant, a natural rot for once. "But it's Jed who has religion, he knows his Revelations. My conceptual framework is more of a Marxist existentialist one; the world's patina of logic and reason is melting away under this summer heat. We're seeing absurdity laid bare."

  I looked at Jed; he shrugged and shook his head. So I rapped about Buddha and told them the story of how Kilaya came to me in the form of beautiful woman (Smitty expressed a basic appreciation for that, though the fine point of even the most base of black beings turning towards protection of the dharma was probably lost on a Red, even a half-drunk one) and how a little burst of the absurd had saved me from a shambling horror born of dreams and eldritch force.

  "Explain Yardbird then," Chuck piped up. "C'mon Smitty, a damn ghost does three sets a week in this little one-outhouse town, just so the lumpenprole can take out a few bugmen? How does a dialectical materialist conception of history explain that?"

  Smitty just flicked a finger against the bottle, making the glass ring like a bell. "Big hominid brains perceive the world in unusual ways, especially under unusual circumstances. That doesn't mean, however, that reality doesn't exist. Why would supernatural beings create a town full of Organization Men? To stuff envelopes?"

  A train whistle blew in the distance, bringing me to my feet. "There's a train line here?" I asked. Smitty and Chuck shrugged, Jed spoke. "Evil. It's an evil train."

  I just put my hands on my hips and laughed. "Damn, I've seen gods and suicides and ghosts and bug-faced businessmen, all in the past two days, but an evil train? Sounds like a pulp story! What makes a train evil?"

  "It comes late," Chuck said with a thin-lipped smile. He shared a look with Smitty.

  Jed explained: "Evil freight. Evil passengers. San Santo doesn't have four bars because we're drinking inside; they're bars for evil to wet its lips as it passes through our town. Except for Secrets. That's for queens." I clenched my teeth and fists at that. Jed was taunting me or just wanted a punch in the face, which I was just as happy to give him. Something about San Santo was tainting even the tramps; these weren't holy fools, they were flies circling the rot, looking for jack-meat to nibble on. But Smitty told me to relax and that the rail was actually a new line, an industrial and military line for transporting classified who-knows-whats. It's the hobo preachers and hoodoo Negroes who think the line is haunted. He rode the rails just fine though, a number of times, all the way up to Oregon. It's where he met Chuck too, and they were just relaxing in San Santo 'til the old itch returned, then they'd be heading down to Texas to work on some shrimp boats. It was a traveler's invitation--I'm heading this way, taking this route and I'm sure there's enough work and girls and secret pocketfuls of shrimp to cook over open fires or in old tin cans full of salt water for you too. It was a temptation, it was designed to be one. Hollywood-extra scholars of the bottle and paperback philosophy, attempting to distract me from my mission. Even the four bars of San Santo; normally I would have spent four days in this dustbowl, just to get my full of each establishment. It was time to go. I walked off and out of the little camp behind the town, towards the echo of the train whistle.

  Whoever slapped San Santo up overnight must have also done the location scouting for the rail line, as it was atop a horrible towering ridge. The locomotive must have looked great as it chugged up the track, slicing the setting sun in half behind it each evening, but laying the rails and keeping the cars from tumbling into the valley I was walking through must have been murder. I had to pull myself up the ridge, kicking footholds in the loose dirt and scrambling for brush and roots as I went. The top of the ridge was just barely wide enough for the tracks, and the ground was cracked where the spikes had been planted. There was only one place to hide on the ridge, an out-of-place boulder just tall enough for a man to curl up behind in the little bit of shade it made, so I walked over, curled up and tried to meditate.

  The land around me was strangely empty. I had walked just out of site of San Santo (except for the water tower, which just read TO from this vantage point). The tracks snaked off into a wooded area into the south and up the ridge to a tight turn out of my field of vision to the north. The other side of the ridge was a valley just like the one I had walked across, sans San Santo. The air was too still and even the bugs were having a siesta. I pulled the canteen from my rucksack, set the sack itself up like a pillow held up against the rock by my head, took a swig of warm water and waited for a train or some clouds to roll in from the ocean.

  The train was incredibly well appointed. I was waved into a Pullman car with wooden molding, red carpets and wide screened windows to let summer breezes in while keeping grit and flies out. The porter, a smiling shuffling Negro (I was reminded of the Charlie Parker ghost, but this fellow had no soul at all, he was a clockwork black servant) brought me to a little table with a white tablecloth and poured me a tall glass of lemonade from a tin pitcher. We were off, and smoothly. The ridge and the woods rolled past without even a jerk and chug from the car. The lemonade was good but a little tart, like a thimbleful of bitters had been sneaked into the mix. A dessert tray was rolled out: spongy angelfood cake topped with strawberries, dark puddings, an éclair I took; it was surprisingly cool on the teeth. I drank more lemonade, ready for a sour protest after the hoboes éclair, but it was just as tasty as the first swallow. There weren't even any chocolate fingerprint stains on my fingers or my canteen; it was still cool on my forehead and the sun had dipped down behind the boulder. It got cold quickly--

  Northport's cold at night, especially at the Long Island Railroad train station. The parking lot was empty except for great white lights spotlighting the spaces like a very boring Off Broadway play just about to start. After the evening commute, after everyone locks themselves up in either their homes or in noisy Gunther's, only the lowly and the lonely hang around the station. Even the stationmaster locks up the waiting room and goes home at 8 p.m. I waited on the platform for a long time, chilly and wrapped up in myself; I leaned against the steel steps leading to the overpass from one track to the other, but the bars were too frigid. A scooter ripped down the street behind me, then across the parking lot, drawing a wild crazy eight of exhaust and teenage whooping. I turned to the east, as if I could see if the train was finally pulling out of Port Jefferson station ten towns away. The gray of the platform was clean, not even a pebble to kick onto the tracks. I waited--

  The opportunity presented itself. On the ridge, the train had to take it slow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw car after car and then finally a flatbed. I kept my shoulder to the boulder and spun off of it, ran a great five strides and leaped up, landing expertly between two tarpaulin. Two other riders were nestled in the tarps, one of them toothless and friendly enough to produce a flask instantly. On the edge of the bed, one fellow yelped and staggered as he tried to piss into the wind and got a mouthful of his own juice. But even he walked back to the tarps on wobbly sailor legs and helloed me, his hand wiping and wringing out his beard. Jittery, expansive, like a bag of giggling wind, I felt good to be traveling again--

  I snapped to, faded and dreamed again of another train. A spasm, my body shrieking and giggling "TRAIN!" at my mind's tired phantasm, and I woke again to nothing but absence and ant
icipation. I stretched over the top of the rock like a tired lizard and drifted again, eyes crossed, on the nod. My nerves were all jangled; I needed a calmative, preferably something with a bit more kick than 80 proof. The boulder reminded me of that terrible island, dead Cthulhu stretched and sleeping on black glass slabs, but I was too tired to move. I hadn't slept in days, I remembered, not since I was in Marie's blessed arms. I licked my lips, so dry, and dreamt of locomotives and tunnels. Thirsty, damn thirsty, I wanted to drink civilization. The world flickered into existence now and again, always between dreamland rail stops, always to the excited poking and shaking of goblin Pullman porters.

  My canteen was on the ground, empty, the little stain of water in the dirt already mostly evaporated. No train yet, at least I hoped, so I went to the track and put my palm upon it. No vibrations, no real heat, no fresh cracks wrinkling the loose ground around the spikes. I slept through the day (the moon was low and huge like a thumb) but I didn't sleep through the train at least. More waiting, this time walking waiting, up to either end of the ridge. I pissed into San Santo's valley and felt thirsty again. I hoped at least that the hoboes I'd meet would be as friendly as the dream forms I'd slept through.

  It was light enough to write, but who'd believe it? I could taste San Francisco (salty and sweet, I was getting thirstier). I loved it; I even loved that horrible old job I had, guarding drunken sailors ready to ship out. It was only a few weeks in a shack with a friend and his wife, a few weeks of strolling around with an unloaded gun, of writing up a Hollywood melodrama to be delivered right to Fatty Arbuckle's nephew in exchange for a burlap sack full of gold. I didn't get the gold, of course. I don't even think I got the carbons of the screenplay after the great shack revolt, which ended with me ducking my own typewriter and a shrieking bottle of Jack Daniel's and then retreating to North Beach. I could write about that; heck, I did write about it (mostly, with nip and tucks and some work on a smoothing lathe, but as far as the kids knew, I just poured life out onto the page), but R'lyeh isn't the most literate of topics. Hollywood, maybe. Extras dappled with corn syrup blood, writhing and bowing before a giant glowing brain on puppet strings. Tainted pictures for a tainted world.

  The train finally came, it really finally came and yes it did slow down on the ridge and there was a flat bed covered in tarps and I did leap up on it, but I was alone and cold now. The bed rocked like a ship in high waves as we rattled over the tracks and shot into the woods. I couldn't see what was under the tarp, but whatever it was, was mostly loose and had some give, so I shouldered and nudged my way into a little crevice and made like dead weight.

  The trees fell away, and the huge sky was empty and splashed with moon. No clouds, but only three or four stars, bright and wise like Memere. I thought of her, back in New York, clipping coupons and sweeping the floor and petting the kitten. All the bones in my skull rattled; I cupped my hands up to my ears to protect them (my ears, my poor knuckles were on their own) from the whipping wind, so I could hear myself think. Why was I out here, why was I looking for Neal? I couldn't even figure it out why I wanted to go to Frisco, except that there would be alcohol there. I never should have left my poor mother again, I should have stayed on my couch and let those dharma bums come rapping on my bay windows while I was mixing some mayonnaise in my tuna fish. No, not even that. I should have gotten a job: I could teach school, coach some football maybe, or get a desk job with Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Not a wanderer, but a commuter, that's what I should have been. Northport at 6:36 a.m. with the others, in their trenchcoats and hats, blowing on steaming deli coffee so they--so we--could sip without screaming.

  I'd stand all the way to Jamaica Station, then finally settle into a seat and snooze 'til we rolled into Penn Station. Then up the escalators, across a bunch of crowded scary streets, with newspaper vendors and doughnut men all for me, then workworkworkwork but easy work with pencils and frowns rather than sinew and bread-and-beer-fueled sweat. Forty hours for fifty weeks for forty years shuttling across turd island, but the kids would save me, they'd inspire me, they'd make me immortal as the stars. Little Jacques and Jan, Sunday dinner of pasta and bottled wine--I'd never drink from a box or a wrinkled bag again.

  They were in my mind, the slick green tentacles of the Sending, tearing up memories, feeding doubt and misery, prodding me to join the mass, the hive mind. Animals, humans are just animals, wheedling and baring their teeth for food, cringing from fear of the dark, setting up their clockwork sciences and groaning agricultural faiths, just to keep from looking down. I looked up at the sky, at the sacré bleu and was afraid. So massive, so empty, except for one thing. It. The Great Dreamer in The Dark did not fill the sky, It was the sky. The moon was gone, those few stars were gone--I couldn't feel the rhythm of the train anymore, or whatever had been poking me in the back from under the tarp; It was all I saw, all I experienced; It was the world and far beyond it. The atman, all that is, It is.

  I turned away. Memere, living in a faraway anthill, trudging about with the other drones, moving underground in pre-cut paths. But humans aren't ants, there's an order there, a serenity, a determination. People are worse in some ways, full of explosive passions ready to pop like cheap champagne, only a cross word away from fangs or just shitting themselves from the fear of it all. Memere, I couldn't even think of my own mother anymore--not without seeing her as the rutting sow she was, eating and sweating and fucking in the shit of the world, scratching at fleas, finally falling into the rot useless and dead. Animals! And to the Dreamer Of The Deep, dead Cthulhu risen again to bring the world under his sway, we were the fleas on Its back, the shit on Its heel. Jed was wrong, the train wasn't evil. It was that sky that was evil, the vault of heaven stretched over this great country just to mock us all. Hopes, dreams, poetry, the open road, the divine fool Neal, just specks of time and flesh. God damn the sky, God damn the depth of it. I cried deep salty tears, but that wasn't the only salt on my cheeks and tongue. The train was nearing the bay, finally. Sweet, sweet Frisco, Jack is back. The old crew of beat-pigs would surely gather around the pushole metropolis to pay tribute to me, the King Flea, Head Speck Of Flesh In Charge, Bard of the Reeking Shitheap.

  I rolled off the tarps before the train even stopped, and I wasn't the only one with that bright idea. The flatbed exploded into a flood of black, red-eyed rats--they tore through the tarpaulin and ran out past the train yard and into the streets, all wiry hair and hot muscle up to my ankles. I ran too. I wasn't sure where I was, what neighborhood. There were hills, crazy-painted houses, palms, empty streets and empty buzzing buses. My lungs were empty husks but I ran, and my hot tongue tasted of day-old beer. I veered right, then left, cutting across streets, legs pumped full of my dead blood. I couldn't see anything but starry lamppost lights for a long time. My feet slapped pavement like Gene Krupa.

  Nothing looked familiar until I finally hit the curving streets of North Beach. I ran past Larry's bookstore, didn't even care that it was still open, and barreled into Vesuvio's. The few patrons, all at the counter, turned to look at me. I'd been running for maybe forty minutes and was soaked in sweat, I probably looked like a junky who'd spent a week taking pissy showers and jumping out windows.

  I slowed down to a casual swagger of a walk and reached into my pocket, just in time to remember that I'd blown most of my money in San Santo.

  So I told them. "I'm Jack Kerouac, the famous Beat author, and everyone here has to buy me a round, or I'll die."

  Five rounds later, I was feeling a little better. Someone sent for Larry, someone sent for Allen, a few girls wormed their way into the booth and fitted themselves under my arms, all warm and alive. They were good girls too, moral and clean. I wiped my face with a towel and let the spirits settle me down. They told me later that I mumbled for a bit in some crazy holy roller language and then slept heavily. They even swept and closed around me, and left a Guiness for me to wake up to.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Neal. Neal is . . . Neal is the smile on Budd
ha's lips. Neal is not free. Neal is freedom. Running around and writing and loving and drinking and even sleeping. He's a man who can sleep the hell out of a day if chooses to. I'd watch him wile away an hour on a couch and I'd be the one who felt well-rested afterwards. Neal is truly free; it doesn't matter if he's doing time or doing shots, breaking rocks or making time. A childhood spent suckling the poison teat of the state in juvenile halls and reform schools did everything but reform him. The roar of a motorbike, that's Neal. The steam over soup on a cold winter's day, that's Neal. The ball-choked squeal of a maniac undergoing the shock treatment, and the wise old glare afterwards, that's Neal too. And walking away from it all afterwards, that's Neal too; every girl, every drug, every desert wind or smelly city block, the senses lie when they promise either agony or ecstasy, and Neal knows that too and in his starry wisdom he can just walk away from it all.

  It had been years since we criss-crossed the country, blessing it like an old woman making the sign three times on Sunday. I was just the midwife for this whole beatnik thing. Neal was both Madonna and Child. If there was anyone who could shake America by the shoulders, and wake it up to the threat it faced, it'd be Neal. He was a bodhisattva himself, I was sure of it then, the one man left who had something to teach me. Neal, sweet Neal who spent two years in prison for marihuana, Neal who had wife now and kids so I heard last night at the bar (or I heard something like that), the last thing you'd expect would be the first thing he'd do. Riding the rumble of the absurdity contraption, the good ol' U S of A, Neal was the one who could do that. All I had to do was find him.