And the sleep is delicious under stars, even if the ground is humpy you adjust your limbs to it, and you feel the earth-damp but it only lulls you to sleep, it’s the Palaeolithic Indian in all of us—The Cro-Magnon or Grimaldi Man, who slept on the ground, naturally, and often in the open, and looked at the stars on his back and tried to calculate the dipankara number of them, or the hoodoo oolagoo mystery of them blearing there—No doubt he asked “Why?” “Why, name?”—Lonely lips of Palaeolithic men under the stars, the nomad night—the crackle of his campfire—
Aye, and the zing of his bow—
Cupid Bow me, I just sleep there, tight—When I wake up it’s dawn, and gray, and frosty, and I just burrow under and sleep on—In the house Raphael is having another sleeping experience, Cody another, Evelyn another, the three children another, even the doggy another—It will all dawn on tender paradise, though.
101
I wake up to the delicious little voices of two little girls and a little boy, “Wake up Jack, breakfast is ready.” They sorta chant “breakfast is ready” because they’ve been told to but then they explore around my bushes a minute then leave and I get up and leave my pack right there in the straw grass of Autumn and go into the house to wash up—Raphael is up brooding at the corner chair—Evelyn is all radiant blonde in the morning. We grin at each other and talk—She’ll say “Why didn’t you sleep in the kitchen couch?” and I’ll say “O I love to sleep out in that yard, I always get such good dreams”—She says “Well it’s nice to have people who have good dreams nowadays.” She brings me my coffee.
“Raphael what are you brooding about?”
“I’m brooding about your good dreams,” he says absently gnawing his fingernail.
Cody is all a-bustle in the bedroom jumping around changing the Television set and lighting cigarettes and running to the toilet to do his morning toilet between programs and scenes—“Oh isnt she darling?” he’ll say as a woman comes on to advertise soap, and from the kitchen Evelyn will hear him and say something, “She must be an old hag.”
“Hag, shmag,” ’ll say Cody, “I’ll let her climb into my bed any tam.”—“Oh poo,” she’ll say, and let it go at that.
All day long nobody likes Raphael, he gets hungry and asks me for food, I ask Evelyn for some jelly sandwiches, which I make—The children and I go off on a magic walk through the little Kingdom of The Cats—it’s all prune trees, that I eat out of, and we go through roads and fields to a magic tree with a magic little hut under it built by a boy—
“What does he do in there I say?”
“Oh,” says Emily, 9, “he just sits and sings.”
“What does he sing?”
“Anything he likes.”
“And,” says Gaby, 7, “he is a very nice boy. You should see him. He’s very funny.”
“Yes, tee hee, he’s very funny,” says Emily.
“He is very funny!” says Timmy, 5, and so low to the ground down there holding my hand I’d forgot all about him—All of a sudden I’m wandering around in desolation with little angels—
“We’ll take the secret trail.”
“The short trail.”
“Tell us a story.”
“Nah.”
“Where does this path lead?”
“It leads to the Kings,” I say.
“Kings? Humph.”
“Trapdoors and ooboons,” I say.
“O Emily,” announces Gaby, “isnt Jack funny?”
“He sure is,” almost sighs Emily, dead serious.
Timmy says: “I have fun with my hands,” and he shows us mystic mudra birds—
“And there’s a bird singing in the tree,” I advise them.
“Oh I hear him,” says Emily—“I’m going to explore further.”
“Well dont get lost.”
“I am the giant in the tree,” says Timmy climbing the tree.
“Hang on tight,” I say.
I sit down and meditate and relax—All’s well—the sun is warm through the branches—
“I am real high,” says Timmy, higher.
“You sure are.”
We walk back and on the road a dog comes up and rubs Emily’s leg and she says “O, he is just like a person.”
“He is a person,” I say (“more or less”).
We come back to the house, eating prunes, all glad.
“Evelyn,” I say, “it’s wonderful when you have three children I cant tell the difference between one or the other—they’re all uniformly sweet.”
Cody and Raphael are yelling bets in the bedroom to the TV game—Evelyn and I sit in the parlor and have one of our long quiet talks about religion—“It’s all different words and phrases to express the same thing,” says Evelyn balancing sutras and readings in her hands—We always talk about God. She has resigned herself to Cody’s wildness because it’s as it should be—One day she even rejoiced in the opportunity to thank God when nasty children threw eggs in her window: “I was thanking Him for the opportunity to forgive.” She’s a very pretty little woman and a topnotch mother—She’s not concerned one way or the other, though, about anything in principle—She really has achieved that cold void truth we’re all yakking about, and in practice she displays warmth—what more you need? On the wall is the strange gold-lamé Christ she did at age 14, showing a squirt of blood coming out of His pierced side, very Medieval—and over the mantelpiece two good portraits of her daughters, simply painted—In the afternoon she comes out in her bathingsuit, blonde and like it’s lucky when you live in California, and takes sunbath, while I demonstrate swan dives and jack knifes to her and to the kids—Raphael watches the ball game, wont swim—Cody goes off to work—Comes back—It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon in the country. What’s to get excited?
“Very very quiet, children,” says Cody removing his brakeman clothes and getting in his bathrobe. “Supper, Maw.”… “Dont we ever get anything to eat around here?” he adds.
“Yeah,” says Raphael.
And Evelyn comes up with a beautiful tasty supper that we all eat in candlelight preceded by Cody and the children reciting a Little Lord’s Prayer about supper—“Bless the food we are about to eat”—It’s no longer than that, but they’ve got to recite it all together, while Evelyn watches, I close my eyes, and Raphael wonders—
“This is crazy, Pomeray,” he says finally—“And you really really truly believe in all this stuff?—Awright that’s a one way to do it—” Cody puts on Okie Revival Healers on Television and Raphael says “It’s bullshit!”
Cody refuses to agree—finally Cody prays a little with the Television audience where the healer asks for attention to pray, Raphael is out of his mind—And in the evening here comes a woman being interviewed for the $64,000 Question, and announces she’s a butcher in the Bronx and you see her simple serious face, maybe mincing a little, maybe not, and Evelyn and Cody agree and hold hands (at their end of the bed, on pillows, as Raphael sits Buddha at their feet and then me on the door with a beer). “Dont you see it’s just a simple sincere woman Christian,” says Evelyn, “just good oldfashioned folks—well-behaved Christians”—and Cody agrees “That’s it precisely, darling” and Raphael yells: “WHO WANTS TO HEAR HER, SHE KILLS PIGS!” And Cody and Evelyn are shocked out of their faces, both stare at Raphael wide-eyed, besides he’s said it so suddenly, and what he’s saying, they cant help seeing that it’s true but it’s got to be true, she kills pigs—
Now Raphael starts razzing Cody and feels much better—It turns into a funny night, we all get high on the moving programs we see, Rosemary Clooney singing so prettily, and Million Dollar Movies that we cant see because Cody’ll jump and click on the piece of a photographed sports game, then jump to a voice, a question, jump on, cowboys shooting toy guns in little dusty hills, then bang he hits a big worried face in a panel show or You Ask The Questions—
“How can we see the show?” yells Raphael and Evelyn all the same time—
“But it’s all one show, Cody know
s what he’s doing, he knows everything—Looka there Raphael, you’ll see.”
Then I go in the hall to investigate a sound (King Cody: “Go see what that is”) and it’s a big bearded Patriarch of Constantinople with a black suede jacket and glasses and Irwin Garden, emerging from the gloom of Russia beyond—It frights me to see it!—I jump back into the room, half out of scared and half telling Cody “Irwin is here”—Behind Irwin are Simon and Gia—Simon takes his clothes off and jumps in the moonlight swimmingpool, just like an ambulance driver of a Lost Generation cocktail party in 1923—I bring them out to the deck chairs by the moonlight shining pool to let Evelyn and Cody sleep—Gia is standing beside me, laughs, and walks off with her hands in her pockets, she’s wearing pants—for a minute I think she’s a boy—she slouches and smokes like a boy—one of the gang—Simon pushes her at me: “She loves ya, Jack, she loves ya.”
I put on Raphael’s dark glasses as we sit in the booth in a restaurant ten blocks down the highway—We order a whole pot of coffee, in the Silex—Simon piles dishes and toasts and cigarette butts in a tall dirty tier of Babel—The management is concerned, I tell Simon to stop “It’s high enough”—Irwin sings a little tune:
“Silent night
holy night”—
Smiling at Gia.
Raphael broods.
We go back to the house, where I’ll sleep in the grass, and they say goodbye to me at the driveway, Irwin saying “We’ll sit in the yard and have a farewell.”
“No,” I say, “if you’re gonna go go.”
Simon kisses me on the cheek like a brother—Raphael gives me his dark glasses as a gift, after I give him back the cross, which he still insisted I keep—It’s sad—I hope they dont see my weary goodbye face—the blear of time in our eyes—Irwin nods, that little simple friendly sad persuasive and encouraging nod, “Okay, we’ll see you in Mexico.”
“Goodbye Gia”—and I go to my yard and sit awhile smoking in a beach chair as they drive away—I stare into the swimmingpool like a college director, a movie director—like a Madonna in the bright water—surrealistic swimmingpool—then I look towards the kitchen door, the darkness there, and I see materialize fast a vision of a gang of dark men wearing silver rosaries and silver trinkets and crosses around their dark chests—it comes very fast then it goes.
How glittering are those shining things in the dark!
102
The next night after I’ve done kissing maw and the babies goodbye, Cody drives me to the San Jose railyards.
“Cody, I had a vision last night of a gang of dark men like Raphael and David D’Angeli and Irwin and me all standing in the gloom with glittering silver crucifixes and neck chains over our dark dingy breasts!—Cody, Christ will come again.”
“Why shuah,” he nods suavely, handling the brake apparatus, “S’why I say—”
We park by the yards and watch the smoky engine scene and the new thrumming diesels and the yard office with bright lights, where we’d worked together in our ragged brakeman days—I am very nervous and keep wanting to get out of the car and out to that track to catch the Ghost as she pulls out but he says “O man they’re only switchin now—wait till the engine’s tied on—you’ll see it, a great big four-unit sonumbitch’ll get you flyin down that Los Angeles no time but Jack be careful keep a good handhold and remember what I always told you boy we been buddies a long time in this lonesome world I love you more than ever and I dont want to lose you son—”
I have a half pint of whisky for my whistling trip on the flat, offer him a shot—“That’s a man’s business you’re going into now,” he says, seeing I drink whisky now instead of wine, and shakes his head—When he does swing the car out back of a string of deadhead passenger cars and sees me hoist on my old freight train jacket with the sleeves bulging over my hands and the doleful POW stain left on the armband from some Korean War pre-history (jacket bought in strange torn Indian stores in El Paso) he stares to see me out of my city uniform and in my night-hopping uniform—I wonder what he thinks of me—He’s all instructions and care. He wants me to hop on from the fireman’s side but I dont like the six or seven rails I have to cross to get to the main (where Ghost Zipper’ll be flipping)—“I might trip in that dark—let’s get on the engineer’s side.” We have oldtime arguments about railroad methods, his are long involved razorsharp Okie logics based on imaginary fears, mine are silly innocent green mistakes based on actual Canuck safety-measures—
“But on the engineer side man they’ll see you, that big spot’ll fall right on ya!”
“I’ll hide between the deadheads.”
“No—come inside.”
And like oldtime carstealing days there he is, a renowned employee of the company, sneaking into the empty cars, looking around whitefaced like a thief not to be seen, in absolute darkness—I refuse to haul my pack inside for nothing and stand between the cars and wait—He whispers from a dark window:
“KEEP OUT OF SIGHT WHATEVER YOU DO!”
Suddenly the herder’s across from us with his green lamp, giving the come-on sign, the engine’s blasted her BAW BAW hiball, and suddenly the big yellow glare is right on me and I back up against the bucklers shivering, Cody’s scared me—And instead of joining him in a shot of my whisky I’d abstained, boasting “Never drink on duty,” seriously meaning the duty of grabbing moving grabirons and heaving onto a difficult flatcar with heavy pack, if I’d have drank a shot I wouldnt now be shivering, shaking—The herder sees me, again Cody’s terrified whisper:
“KEEP OUT OF SIGHT!”
and the herder yells:
“Having trouble?” which then instantly I take either to mean, “money trouble so have to hop freights?” or “cop trouble so have to hide out of sight?” but I just liltingly yell but without thinking “Yeah—O kay?” and the herder instantly replies:
“T’s awright”
Then as the big train slowly turns into the main with ever blindinger glare I add and yell “I’ll catch her right here” to indicate to the herder I’m just a good old talkative simple boy not out to wreck open box doors and bash panels—Cody is a dead silent lump huddled in the dark coach window, for all I know down on the floor—
He’d told me “Jack be sure and wait till twenty cars go by because you dont wanta be too close up front that engyne when you go through those tunnels at Margarita you can suffocate from the diesel fumes” but as I wait for the twenty to pass I get scared as the momentum picks up, they lumber faster, I strike out from my hiding place as the sixth or seventh passes and wait for two more, heart pounding, make a few experimental taps at passing nightsteel rungs (O Lord of our fathers what a cold show is the show of things!) and finally I move up, trot, get level with a front grabiron, grab a hold, trot with it, fear, breathing, and haul up on board in one graceful easy nothing-to-it waking-from-a-dream laughable move and there I am standing on my flat waving back at forever invisible Cody somewhere there, wave many times to make sure he’s seen me make it and wave, and it’s goodbye old Cody …
—And all our fears were in vain, a dream, just like the Lord said—and that’s the way we’ll die—
It’s all night down the Coast I drink my whisky and sing to the stars, remembering previous lifetimes when I was a prisoner in dungeons and now I’m in the open air—down, down, as prophesied in my Desolation Song, through the tunnels of smoke, where red bandana to nose covers that, down to Obispo where I see cool Negro hoboes on the car next to mine calmly smoking cigarettes in the cabs of lashed trucks and right in front of everybody! Poor Cody! Poor me! To L.A., where, in the morning after washing with drip water from melting reefers and trudging into town, I finally buy a ticket and am the only passenger on the bus and as we pull out for Arizona and my desert sleep there and my coming Mexico, suddenly another bus is alongside us and I look and it’s twenty young men sitting among armed guards, on their way to prison, a prison bus, and two of them turn and see me and all I do is slowly lift my hand and slowly wave hello and look
away as they slowly smile—
Desolation Peak, what more do you want?
BOOK TWO
PASSING THROUGH
PART ONE
PASSING THROUGH MEXICO
1
And now, after the experience on top of the mountain where I was alone for two months without being questioned or looked at by any single human being I began a complete turnabout in my feelings about life—I now wanted a reproduction of that absolute peace in the world of society but secretly greedy too for some of the pleasures of society (such as shows, sex, comforts, fine foods & drink), no such things on a mountain—I knew now that my life was a search for peace as an artist, but not only as an artist—As a man of contemplations rather than too many actions, in the old Tao Chinese sense of “Do Nothing” (Wu Wei) which is a way of life in itself more beautiful than any, a kind of cloistral fervor in the midst of mad ranting action-seekers of this or any other “modern” world—
It was to prove that I was able to “do nothing” even in the midst of the most roisterous society that I had come down from the mountain in Washington State to San Francisco, as you saw, where I spent that week of drunken “carrasals” (as Cody once said) with the desolation angels, the poets and characters of the San Francisco Renaissance—A week and no more, after which (with a big hangover and some misgivings of course) I hopped that freight down to L.A. and headed for Old Mexico and a resumption of my solitude in a hovel in the city.
It’s easy enough to understand that as an artist I need solitude and a kind of “do-nothing” philosophy that does allow me to dream all day and work out chapters in forgotten reveries that emerge years later in story form—In this respect, it’s impossible, since it’s impossible for everybody to be artists, to recommend my way of life as a philosophy suitable for everyone else—In this respect I’m an oddball, like Rembrandt—Rembrandt could paint the busy burghers as they posed after lunch, but at midnight while they slept to rest for another day’s work, Old Rembrandt was up in his study putting on light touches of darkness to his canvases—The burghers didnt expect Rembrandt to be anything else but an artist and therefore they didnt go knocking on his door at midnight and ask: “Why do you live like this, Rembrandt? Why are you alone tonight? What are you dreaming about?” So they didnt expect Rembrandt to turn around and say to them: “You must live like I do, in the philosophy of solitude, there’s no other way.”