The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [50]
“What’s the difference the moon’s shining, we can even sleep.”
“No, we’ve got to get down to that car tonight.”
“Well let’s stop a minute here. My legs can’t take it.”
“Okay, only a minute.”
But they never rested long enough to suit me and it seemed to me they were getting hysterical. I even began to curse them and at one point I even gave Japhy hell: “What’s the sense of killing yourself like this, you call this fun? Phooey.” (Your ideas are a crock, I added to myself.) A little weariness’ll change a lot of things. Eternities of moonlight rock and thickets and boulders and ducks and that horrifying valley with the two rim walls and finally it seemed we were almost out of there, but nope, not quite yet, and my legs screaming to stop, and me cursing and smashing at twigs and throwing myself on the ground to rest a minute.
“Come on Ray, everything comes to an end.” In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I’ve long known. But I have joy. When we got to the alpine meadow I stretched out on my belly and drank water and enjoyed myself peacefully in silence while they talked and worried about getting down the rest of the trail in time.
“Ah don’t worry, it’s a beautiful night, you’ve driven yourself too hard. Drink some water and lie down here for about five even ten minutes, everything takes care of itself.” Now I was being the philosopher. In fact Japhy agreed with me and we rested peacefully. That good long rest assured my bones I could make it down to the lake okay. It was beautiful going down the trail. The moonlight poured through thick foliage and made dapples on the backs of Morley and Japhy as they walked in front of me. With our packs we got into a good rhythmic walk and enjoying going “Hup hup” as we came to switchbacks and swiveled around, always down, down, the pleasant downgoing swinging rhythm trail. And that roaring creek was a beauty by moonlight, those flashes of flying moon water, that snow white foam, those black-as-pitch trees, regular elfin paradises of shadow and moon. The air began to get warmer and nicer and in fact I thought I could begin to smell people again. We could smell the nice raunchy tide-smell of the lake water, and flowers, and softer dust of down below. Everything up there had smelled of ice and snow and heartless spine rock. Here there was the smell of sunheated wood, sunny dust resting in the moonlight, lake mud, flowers, straw, all those good things of the earth. The trail was fun coming down and yet at one point I was as tired as ever, more than in that endless valley of boulders, but you could see the lake lodge down below now, a sweet little lamp of light and so it didn’t matter. Morley and Japhy were talking a blue streak and all we had to do was roll on down to the car. In fact suddenly, as in a happy dream, with the suddenness of waking up from an endless nightmare and it’s all over, we were striding across the road and there were houses and there were automobiles parked under trees and Morley’s car was sitting right there.
“From what I can tell by feeling this air,” said Morley, leaning on the car as we slung our packs to the ground, “it mustn’t have froze at all last night, I went back and drained the crankcase for nothing.”
“Well maybe it did freeze.” Morley went over and got motor oil at the lodge store and they told him it hadn’t been freezing at all, but one of the warmest nights of the year.
“All that mad trouble for nothing,” I said. But we didn’t care. We were famished. I said “Let’s go to Bridgeport and go