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Mexico; it ll
take us days and days. I looked over the map: a total of over a thousand
miles, mostly
Texas, to the border at Laredo, and then another 767 miles through all Mexico
to the
great city near the cracked Isthmus and Oaxacan heights. I couldn t imagine
this trip. It
was the most fabulous of all. It was no longer east-west, but magic south. We
saw a
vision of the entire Western Hemisphere rockribbing clear down to Tierra del
Fuego and
us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and otherworlds.
Man, this will
finally take us to IT! said Dean with definite faith. He tapped my arm.
Just wait and
see. Hoo! Wheel
I went with Shephard to conclude the last of his Denver business, and met his
poor
grandfather, who stood in the door of the house, saying, Stan Stan Stan.
What is it, Granpaw?
Don t go.
Oh, it s settled, I have to go now; why do you have to do that? The old man
had gray
hair and large almond eyes and a tense, mad neck.
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Stan, he simply said, don t go. Don t make your old grandfather cry. Don t
leave me
alone again. It broke my heart to see all this.
Dean, said the old man, addressing me, don t take my Stan away from me. I
used to
take him to the park when he was a little boy and explain the swans to him.
Then his little
sister drowned in the same pond. I don t want you to take my boy away.
No, said Stan, we re leaving now. Good-by. He struggled with his grips.
His grandfather took him by the arm. Stan, Stan, Stan, don t go, don t go,
don t go.
We fled with our heads bowed, and the old man still stood in the doorway of
his Denver
side-street cottage with the beads hanging in the doors and the overstaffed
furniture in the
parlor. He was as white as a sheet. He was still calling Stan. There was
something
paralyzed about his movements, and he did nothing about leaving the doorway,
but just
stood in it, muttering, Stan, and Don t go, and looking after us
anxiously as we
rounded the corner.
God, Shep, I don t know what to say.
Never mind! Stan moaned. He s always been like that.
We met Stan s mother at the bank, where she was drawing money for him. She
was a
lovely white-haired woman, still very young in appearance. She and her son
stood on the
marble floor of the bank, whispering. Stan was wearing a levi outfit, jacket
and all, and
looked like a man going to Mexico sureenough. This was his tender existence
in Denver,
and he was going off with the naming tyro Dean. Dean came popping around the
corner
and met us just on time. Mrs. Shephard insisted on buying us all a cup of
coffee.
Take care of my Stan, she said. No telling what things might happen in
that country.
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We ll all watch over each other, I said. Stan and his mother strolled on
ahead, and I
walked in back with crazy Dean; he was telling me about the inscriptions
carved on toilet
walls in the East and in the West.
They re entirely different; in the East they make cracks and corny jokes and
obvious
references, scatological bits of data and drawings; in the West they just
write their names,
Red O Hara, Blufftown Montana, came by here, date, real solemn, like, say, Ed
Dunkel,
the reason being the enormous loneliness that differs just a shade and cut
hair as you
move across the Mississippi. Well, there was a lonely guy in front of us,
for Shephard s
mother was a lovely mother and she hated to see her son go but knew he had to
go. I saw
he was fleeing his grandfather. Here were the three of us Dean looking for
his father,
mine dead, Stan fleeing his old one, and going off into the night together.
He kissed his
mother in the rushing crowds of 17th and she got in a cab and waved at us.
Good-by,
good-by.
We got in the car at Babe s and said good-by to her. Tim was riding with us
to his house
outside town. Babe was beautiful that day; her hair was long and blond and
Swedish, her
freckles showed in the sun. She looked exactly like the little girl she had
been. There was
a mist in her eyes. She might join us later with Tim but she didn t. Good-by,
good-by.
We roared off. We left Tim in his yard on the Plains outside town and I
looked back to
watch Tim Gray recede on the plain. That strange guy stood there for a full
two minutes
watching us go away and thinking God knows what sorrowful thoughts. He grew
smaller
and smaller, and still he stood motionless with one hand on a washline, like
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a captain, and
I was twisted around to see more of Tim Gray till there was nothing but a
growing
absence in space, and the space was the eastward view toward Kansas that led
all the way
back to my home in Atlantis.
Now we pointed our rattly snout south and headed for Castle Rock, Colorado,
as the sun
turned red and the rock of the mountains to the west looked like a Brooklyn
brewery in
November dusks. Far up in the purple shades of the rock there was someone
walking,
walking, but we could not see; maybe that old man with the white hair I had
sensed years
ago up in the peaks. Zacatecan Jack. But he was coming closer to me, if only
ever just
behind. And Denver receded back of us like the city of salt, her smokes
breaking up in
the air and dissolving to our sight.
4
It was May. And how can homely afternoons in Colorado with its farms and
irrigation
ditches and shady dells the places where little boys go swimming produce a
bug like
the bug that bit Stan Shephard? He had his arm draped over the broken door
and was
riding along and talking happily when suddenly a bug flew into his arm and
embedded a
long stinger in it that made him howl. It had come out of an American
afternoon. He
yanked and slapped at his arm and dug out the stinger, and in a few minutes
his arm had
begun to swell and hurt. Dean and I couldn t figure what it was. The thing
was to wait
and see if the swelling went down. Here we were, heading for unknown southern
lands,
and barely three miles out of hometown, poor old hometown of childhood, a
strange
feverish exotic bug rose from secret corruptions and sent fear into our
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hearts. What is
it?
I ve never known of a bug around here that can make a swelling like that.
Damn! It made the trip seem sinister and doomed. We drove on. Stan s arm
got worse.
We d stop at the first hospital and have him get a shot of penicillin. We
passed Castle
Rock, came to Colorado Springs at dark. The great shadow of Pike s Peak
loomed to our
right. We bowled down the Pueblo highway. I ve hitched thousands and
thousands of
times on this road, said Dean. I hid behind that exact wire fence there one
night when I
suddenly took fright for no reason whatever.
We all decided to tell our stories, but one by one, and Stan was first.
We ve got a long
way to go, preambled Dean, and so you must take every indulgence and deal
with
every single detail you can bring to mind and still h won t all be told.
Easy, easy, he
cautioned Stan, who began telling his story, you ve got to relax too. Stan
swung into
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