Big Sur/Chapter 18
It’s as familiar as an old face in an old photograph as tho I’m gone a million years from all that sun shaded brush on rocks and that heartless blue of the sea washing white on yellow sand, those rills of yellow arroyo running down mighty cliff shoulders, those distant blue meadows, that whole ponderous groaning upheaval so strange to see after the last several days of just looking at little faces and mouths of people—As tho nature had a Gargantuan leprous face of its own with broad nostrils and huge bags under its eyes and a mouth big enough to swallow five thousand jeepster stationwagons and ten thousand Dave Wains and Cody Pomerays without a sigh of reminiscence or regret—There it is, every sad contour of my valley, the gaps, the Mien Mo cap-top mountain again, the dreaming woods below our high shelved road, suddenly indeed the sight of poor Alf again far way grazing in the mid afternoon by the corral fence—And there’s the creek bouncing along as tho nothing had ever happened elsewhere and even in the daytime somehow dark and hungry looking in its deeper tangled grass.
Cody’s never seen this country before altho he’s an old Californian by now, I can see he’s very impressed and even glad he’s come out on a little jaunt with the boys and with me and is seeing a grand sight—He’s like a little boy again now for the first time in years because he’s like let out of school, no job, the bills paid, nothing to do but gratefully amuse me, his eyes are shining—In fact ever since he’s come out of San Quentin there’s been something hauntedly boyish about him as tho prison walls had taken all the adult dark tenseness out of him—In fact every evening after supper in the cell he shared with the quiet gunman he’d bent his serious head to a daily letter or at least every-other-day letter full of philosophical and religious musings to his mistress Billie—nd when you're in bed in jail after lights out and you're not sleepy there’s ample time to just remember the world and indeed savor its sweetness if any (altho it’s always sweet to remember it in jail tho harder in prison, as Genêt shows) with the result that he’d not only come to a chastisement of his bashing bitternesses (and of course it’s always good to get away from alcohol and excessive smoking for two years) (and all that regular sleep) he was just like a kid again, but as I say that haunting kidlikeness I think all ex cons seem to have when they’ve just come out—In seeking to severely penalize criminals society by putting the criminals away behind safe walls actually provide them with the means of greater strength for future atrocities glorious and otherwise—“Well I’ll be damned” he keeps saying as he sees those bluffs and cliffs and hanging vines and dead trees, “you mean to tell me you ben alone here for three weeks, why I wouldnt dare that . . . must be awful at night . . . looka that old mule down there . . . man, dig the redwood country way back in . . . reminds me of old Colorady b’god when I used to steal a car every day and drive out to hills like this with a fresh little high school sumptin”—“Yum Yum,” says Dave Wain emphatically turning that big goofy look to us from his driving wheel with his big mad feverish shining eyes full of yumyum and yabyum too—“S‘matter with your boys not making extensive plans to bring a bevy of schoolgirls down here to wile away our conversation pieces thar” says Cody real relaxed and talking sadly.
Behind us the Monsanto jeepster follows doggedly—Passing thru Monterey Monsanto has already called Pat McLear, staying for the summer with wife and kid in Santa Cruz, McLear with his own jeepster is following us a few miles down the highway—It’s a big Big Sur day.
We wheel downhill to cross the creek and at the corral fence I proudly get out to officially open the gate and let the cars through—We go bumping down the two-rutted lane to the cabin and park—My heart sinks to see the cabin.
To see the cabin so sad and almost human waiting there for me as if forever, to hear my little neat gurgling creek resuming its song just for me, to see the very same bluejays still waiting in the tree for me and maybe mad at me now they see I'm back because I havent been there to lay out their Cheerios along the porch rail every blessed morning—And in fact first thing I do is rush inside and get them some food and lay it out—But so many people around now they’re afraid to try it.
Monsanto all decked out in his old clothes and looking forward to a wine and talkfest weekend in his pleasant cabin takes the big sweet axe down from the wall nails and goes out and starts hammering at a huge log—In fact it’s really a half of a tree that fell there years ago and’s been hammered at intermittently but now he’s bound he’s going to crack it in half and again in half so we can then start splitting it down the middle for huge bonfire type logs—Meanwhile little Arthur Ma who never goes anywhere without his drawing paper and his Yellowjack felt tip pencils is already seated in my chair on the porch (wearing my hat now too) drawing one of his interminable pictures, he’ll do 25 a day and 25 the next day too—He’ll talk and go on drawing—He has felt tips of all colors, red, blue, yellow, green, black, he draws marvelous subconscious glurbs and can also do excellent objective scenes or anything he wants on to cartoons—Dave is taking my rucksack and his rucksack out of Willie and throwing them into the cabin, Ben Fagan is wandering around near the creek puffing on his pipe with a happy bhikku smile, Ron Blake is unpacking the steaks we bought enroute in Monterey and I’m already flicking the plastics off the top of bottles with that expert twitch and twist you only get to learn after years of winoing in alleys east and west.
Still the same, the fog is blowing over the walls of the canyon obscuring the sun but the sun keeps fighting back—The inside of the cabin with the fire finally going is still the dear lovable abode now as sharp in my mind as I look at it as an unusually well focused snapshot—The sprig of ferns still stands in a glass of water, the books are there, the neat groceries ranged along the wall shelves—I feel excited to be with the gang but there’s a hidden sadness too and which is expressed later by Monsanto when he says “This is the kind of place where a person should really be alone, you know? when you bring a big gang here it somehow desecrates it not that I’m referring to us or anybody in particular? there’s such a sad sweetness to those trees as tho yells shouldnt insult them or conversation only”—Which is just the way I feel too.
In a gang we all go down the path towards the sea, passing underneath “That sonofabitch bridge” Cody calls it looking up with horror—“That thing’s enough to scare anybody away”—But worst of all for an old driver like Cody, and Dave too, is to see that upended old chassis in the sand, they spend a half hour poking around the wreckage and shaking their heads—We kick around the beach awhile and decide to come back at night with bottles and flashlights and build a huge bonfire, now it’s time to get back to the cabin and cook those steaks and have a ball, and there’s McLear’s jeep already arrived and parked and there’s McLear himself and that beautiful blonde wife of his in her tight blue jeans that makes Dave say “Yum yum” and Cody just say “Yes, that’s right, yes, that’s right, ah hum honey, yes.”