On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [195]
in New York. This we did. There were crazy things written. The fiddle music roared in the Larimer street night. “Isn’t it fun?” yelled Brierly. In the men’s room Neal and I punched the door and tried to break it but it was an inch thick. I broke my middle finger and didn’t even realize it till the next day. We were fumingly drunk. Fifty glasses of beer sat on our table at one time. All you had to do was rush around and sip from each one. Canon City ex-cons reeled and gabbled with us. In the foyer outside the saloon old former prospectors sat dreaming over their canes under the tocking old clock. This fury had been known by them in greater days. This was the bar where Lucius Beebe came once a year in his private railroad champagne car that he parked in the railyard in back. It was mad. Everything swirled. There were scattered parties everywhere. There was even a party in a castle to which we all drove, except Neal who ran off elsewhere, and in this castle we sat at a great Knight’s table in the hall and shouted. There was a swimming pool and grottos outside. I had finally found the castle where the great snake of the world was about to rise up. Then in the late night it was just Neal and I and Frank Jeffries and Ed White and Al Hinkle and Jim Holmes in one car and everything ahead of us. We went to Mexican town, we went to Five points, we reeled around. Frank Jeffries was out of his mind with joy. He kept yelling “Sonofabitch! Hot-damn!” in a high squealing voice and slapping his knees. Neal was mad about him. He repeated everything Frank said and whood and wiped the sweat off his face. “Are we going to get our kicks Jack traveling down to Mexico with this cat Frank! Yes!” It was our last night in holy Denver, we made it big and wild. It all ended up in the basement by candlelight with wine and Austice creeping around upstairs in her nightgown with a flashlight. We even had a colored guy with us now, called himself Gomez. He floated around Five Points and didn’t give a damn. When we saw him Bill Tomson called out “Hey is your name Johnny?” Gomez just backed up and passed us once more and said, “Now will you repeat what you said?” “I said are you the guy they call Johnny?” Gomez floated back and tried again. “Does this look a little more like him because I’m trying my best to be Johnny but I just can’t find the way.” “Well man come on with us!” cried Neal and Gomez jumped in and we were off. We whispered frantically in the basement so as not to wake Austice and Jim upstairs and create confusion with the neighbors. At nine o’clock in the morning everybody had left except Neal and Jeffries who were still yakking and talking like maniacs. People got up to make breakfast and heard strange subterranean voices from next door saying “Yes! yes!” It never ended. Beverly cooked a big breakfast. The time was coming to goof along to Mexico. Neal took the car to the nearest station and had everything shipshape. It was a 37 Ford sedan with the rightside door unhinged and stuck on the frame. The rightside front seat was also broken and you sat there leaning back with your face to the tattered roof. “Just like Min n’ Bill” said Neal. “We’ll go coughing and bouncing down to Mexico, it’ll take us days and days!” I looked over the map. A total of nineteen hundred miles mostly Texas to Laredo, and then another 767 miles through all Mexico to the great city near the Isthmus. 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 Fuega and us flying down the curve of the world into other tropics and other worlds. “Man this will finally take us to IT!” said Neal with definite faith. He tapped my arm. “Just wait and see. Hoo! Whee!” I went with Jeffries concluding the last of his Denver business, and met his poor father who stood in the door of the house saying “Frank---Frank---Frank.” “What is it, Dad?” “Don’t go.” “Oh it’s settled, I have to go now; why do you have to do that Pa?” The old man had gray hair and