On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [111]
their tops before a screaming audience that gave the record fantastic frenzied volume. The Southern folk looked at one another and shook their heads in awe. “What kind of friends does Jack have anyway?” they said to my sister. She was stumped for an answer. Southerners don’t like madness the least bit, not Neal’s kind. He paid absolutely no attention to them. The madness of Neal had bloomed into a weird flower. I didn’t realize this till he and I and Louanne and Hinkle left the house for a brief spin in the Hudson, when for the first time we were alone and could talk about anything we wanted. Neal grabbed the wheel, shifted to second, mused a minute rolling, suddenly seemed to decide something and shot the car full-jet down the road in a fury of decision. “Allright now Children,” he said rubbing his nose and bending down to feel the emergency and pulling cigarettes out of the compartment and swaying back and forth as he did these things and drove “the time has come for us to decide what we’re going to do for the next week. Crucial, crucial. Ahem!” He dodged a mule wagon; in it sat an old Negro plodding along. “Yes!” yelled Neal. “Yes! Dig him! Now consider his soul---stop awhile and consider,” and he slowed down the car for all of us to turn and look at the old jazzbo moaning along. “Oh yes, dig him sweet, now there’s thoughts in that mind that I would give my last arm to know; go climb in there and find out just what he’s poorass pondering about this year’s turnip greens and ham. Jack you don’t know it but I once lived with a farmer in Arkansas for a whole year, when I was eleven, I had awful chores, I had to skin a dead horse once, I haven’t been to Arkansas since Xmas 1943, exactly 6 years ago, when Ben Gowen and I were chased by a man with a gun who owned the gun we were trying to steal; I say all this to show you that of the South I can speak…I have known…I mean man I dig the south, I know it in and out----I’ve dug your letters to me about it. Oh yes, oh yes,” he said trailing off and stopping altogether, and suddenly jumping back to seventy and hunching over the wheel to go. He stared doggedly ahead. Louanne was smiling serenely. This was the new and complete Neal, grown to maturity. I could see that Louanne and Hinkle had been digging up these past several days with amazed love. I said to myself “My God he’s changed.” Fury spat out of his eyes when he told of things he hated; great glows of joy replaced this when he suddenly got happy; every muscle twitched to live and go. “Oh man the things I could tell you” he said poking me “Oh man we must absolutely find the time.. What has happened to Allen. We all get to see Allen darlings, first thing tomorrow. Now Louanne we’re getting some bread and meat to make a lunch for New York. How much money do you have Jack? We’ll put everything in the back seat, Mrs. K’s furniture, and all of us will sit up front cuddly and close and tell stories as we zoom to New York. Louanne honeycunt you sit next to me, Jack next, then Al at the window, big Al to cut off drafts whereby he comes into using the robe this time…And then we’ll go off to sweet life cause now is the time and WE ALL KNOW TIME!” He rubbed his jaw furiously, he swung the car and passed three trucks, he roared into downtown Rocky Mountain looking in every direction and seeing everything in an arc of 180 degrees around his eyeballs without moving his head. Bang, he found a parkingspace in no time and we were parked. He leaped out of the car. Furiously he hustled into the railroad station; we followed sheepishly. He bought cigarettes. He had become absolutely mad in his movements: he seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was all a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways, jerky vigorous hands, quick walking, sitting, crossing of the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing of the hands, rubbing his balls, hitching his pants, looking up and saying “Am” and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was poking me in the ribs and talking, talking. It was very cold in Rocky Mt.; they’d had