The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [65]
“It don’t come through El Centro.”
I was surprised at my stupidity.
“Only freight you can catch goes through Mexico, then Yuma, but they’ll find you and kick you out and you’ll wind up in a Mexican calaboose boy.”
“I’ve had enough of Mexico. Thanks.” So I went to the big intersection in town with the cars turning for the eastward run to Yuma and started thumbing. I had no luck for an hour. Suddenly a big truck pulled up to the side; the driver got out and fiddled with his suitcase. “You goin on East?” I asked.
“Soon as I spend a little time in Mexicali. You know anything about Mexico?”
“Lived there for years.” He looked me over. He was a good old joe, fat, happy, middlewestern. He liked me.
“How about showin me around Mexicali tonight then I’ll drive you to Tucson.”
“Great!” We got in the truck and went right back to Mexicali on the road I’d just covered in the bus. But it was worth it to get clear to Tucson. We parked the truck in Calexico, which was quiet now, at eleven, and went over into Mexicali and I took him away from tourist-trap honkytonks and led him to the good old saloons of real Mexico where there were girls at a peso a dance and raw tequila and lots of fun. It was a big night, he danced and enjoyed himself, had his picture taken with a senorita and drank about twenty shots of tequila. Somewhere during the night we hooked up with a colored guy who was some kind of queer but was awfully funny and led us to a whorehouse and then as we were coming out a Mexican cop relieved him of his snapknife.
“That’s my third knife this month those bastards stole from me,” he said.
In the morning Beaudry (the driver) and I got back to the truck bleary eyes and hungover and he wasted no time and drove right straight to Yuma, not going back to El Centro, but on the excellent no-traffic Highway 98 straight a hundred miles after hitting 80 at Gray Wells. Soon we were in fact coming into Tucson. We’d eaten a slight lunch outside Yuma and now he said he was hungry for a good steak. “Only thing is these truck stops ain’t got big enough steaks to suit me.”
“Well you just park your truck up one of these Tucson supermarkets on the highway and I’ll buy a two-inch thick T-bone and we’ll stop in the desert and I’ll light a fire and broil you the greatest steak of your life.” He didn’t really believe it but I did it. Outside the lights of Tucson in a flaming red dusk over the desert, he stopped and I lit a fire with mesquite branches, adding bigger branches and logs later, as it got dark, and when the coals were hot I tried to hold the steak over them with a spit but the spit burned so I just fried the huge steaks in their own fat in my lovely new potpan cover and handed him my jackknife and he went to it and said “Hm, om, wow, that is the best steak I ever et.”
I’d also bought milk and we had just steak and milk, a great protein feast, squatting there in the sand as highway cars zipped by our little red fire. “Where’d you learn to do all these funny things?” he laughed. “And you know I say funny but there’s sumpthin so durned sensible about ’em. Here I am killin myself drivin this rig back and forth from Ohio to L.A. and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you’re the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who’s smart, you or me?” And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn’t enjoy any of it because he really wasn’t free. It was sadly true. It didn’t mean I was a better man than he was, however, he was a great man and I liked him and he liked me and said “Well I’ll tell you, supposin I drive you all the way to Ohio.”
“Wow, great!