But hey, look down there in the night thar, hup, hup, a buncha old bums by a fire by the rail, damn me."
He almost slowed down.
"You see, I never know whether my father's there or not."
There were some figures by the tracks, reeling in front of a woodfire.
"I never know whether to ask.
He might be anywhere."
We drove on.
Somewhere behind us or in front of us in the huge night his father lay drunk under a bush, and no doubt about it – spittle on his chin, water on his pants, molasses in his ears, scabs on his nose, maybe blood in his hair and the moon shining down on him.
I took Dean's arm.
"Ah, man, we're sure going home now."
New York was going to be his permanent home for the first time.
He jiggled all over; he couldn't wait.
"And think, Sal, when we get to Pennsy we'll start hearing that gone Eastern bop on the disk jockeys.
Geeyah, roll, old boat, roll!"
The magnificent car made the wind roar; it made the plains unfold like a roll of paper; it cast hot tar from itself with deference – an imperial boat.
I opened my eyes to a fanning dawn; we were hurling up to it.
Dean's rocky dogged face as ever bent over the dashlight with a bony purpose of its own.
"What are you thinking, Pops?"
"Ah-ha, ah-ha, same old thing, y'know – gurls gurls gurls."
I went to sleep and woke up to the dry, hot atmosphere of July Sunday morning in Iowa, and still Dean was driving and driving and had not slackened his speed; he took the curvy corndales of Iowa at a minimum of eighty and the straightaway 110 as usual, unless both-ways traffic forced him to fall in line at a crawling and miserable sixty.
When there was a chance he shot ahead and passed cars by the half-dozen and left them behind in a cloud of dust.
A mad guy in a brand-new Buick saw all this on the road and decided to race us.
When Dean was just about to pass a passel the guy shot by us without warning and howled and tooted his horn and flashed the tail lights for challenge.
We took off after him like a big bird.
"Now wait," laughed Dean,
"I'm going to tease that sonofabitch for a dozen miles or so.
Watch."
He let the Buick go way ahead and then accelerated and caught up with it most impolitely.
Mad Buick went out of his mind; he gunned up to a hundred.
We had a chance to see who he was.
He seemed to be some kind of Chicago hipster traveling with a woman old enough to be – and probably actually was – his mother.
God knows if she was complaining, but he raced.
His hair was dark and wild, an Italian from old Chi; he wore a sports shirt.
Maybe there was an idea in his mind that we were a new gang from LA invading Chicago, maybe some of Mickey Cohen's men, because the limousine looked every bit the part and the license plates were California.
Mainly it was just road kicks.
He took terrible chances to stay ahead of us; he passed cars on curves and barely got back in line as a truck wobbled into view and loomed up huge.
Eighty miles of Iowa we unreeled in this fashion, and the race was so interesting that I had no opportunity to be frightened.
Then the mad guy gave up, pulled up at a gas station, probably on orders from the old lady, and as we roared by he waved gleefully.
On we sped, Dean barechested, I with my feet on the dashboard, and the college boys sleeping in the back.
We stopped to eat breakfast at a diner run by a white-haired lady who gave us extra-large portions of potatoes as church-bells rang in the nearby town.
Then off again.
"Dean, don't drive so fast in the daytime."
"Don't worry, man, I know what I'm doing."
I began to flinch.
Dean came up on lines of cars like the Angel of Terror.
He almost rammed them along as he looked for an opening.
He teased their bumpers, he eased and pushed and craned around to see the curve, then the huge car leaped to his touch and passed, and always by a hair we made it back to our side as other lines filed by in the opposite direction and I shuddered.
I couldn't take it any more.
It is only seldom that you find a long Nebraskan straightaway in Iowa, and when we finally hit one Dean made his usual no and I saw flashing by outside several scenes that I remembered from 1947 – a long stretch where Eddie and I had been stranded two hours.
All that old road of the past unreeling dizzily as if the cup of life had been overturned and everything gone mad.