noon, both of us sad and silent—“What’s the matter I wonder” I say out loud—She:—“Everything was alright last night when we slept in the bag together now you wont even hold my hand ... goddamit I’m going to kill myself!"—Because I’ve begun to realize in my soberness that this thing has come too far, that I dont love Billie, that I’m leading her on, that I made a mistake dragging everyone here, that I simply wanta go home now, I’m just plumb sick and tired just like Cody I guess of the whole nervewracking scene bad enough as it is always pivoting back to this poor haunted canyon which again gives me the willies as we walk under the bridge and come to those heartless breakers busting in on sand higher than earth and looking like the heartlessness of wisdom—Besides I suddenly notice as if for the first time the awful way the leaves of the canyon that have managed to be blown to the surf are all hesitantly advancing in gusts of wind then finally plunging into the surf, to be dispersed and belted and melted and taken off to sea—I turn around and notice how the wind is just harrying them off trees and into the sea, just hurrying them as it were to death—In my condition they look human trembling to that brink—Hastening, hastening—In that awful huge roar blast of autumn Sur wind.
Boom, clap, the waves are still talking but now I’m sick and tired of whatever they ever said or ever will say—Billie wants me to stroll with her down towards the caves but I dont want to get up from the sand where I’m sitting back to boulder—She goes alone— I suddenly remember James Joyce and stare at the waves realizing “All summer you were sitting here writing the so called sound of the waves not realizing how deadly serious our life and doom is, you fool, you happy kid with a pencil, dont you realize you’ve been using words as a happy game—all those marvelous skeptical things you wrote about graves and sea death it’s ALL TRUE YOU FOOL! Joyce is dead! The sea took him! it will take YOU!” and I look down the beach and there’s Billie wading in the treacherous
