We bounced along over Main Street at ten miles an hour, taking everything in.
A group of girls walked directly in front of us.
As we bounced by, one of them said,
"Where you going, man?"
I turned to Dean, amazed.
"Did you hear what she said?"
Dean was so astounded he kept on driving slowly and saying,
"Yes, I heard what she said, I certainly damn well did, oh me, oh my, I don't know what to do I'm so excited and sweetened in this morning world.
We've finally got to heaven.
It-couldn't be cooler, it couldn't be grander, it couldn't be anything."
"Well, let's go back and pick em up!" I said.
"Yes," said Dean and drove right on at five miles an hour.
He was knocked out, he didn't have to do the usual things he-would have done in America.
"There's millions of them all along the road!" he said.
Nevertheless he U-turned and came by the girls again.
They were headed for work in the fields;, they smiled at us.
Dean stared at them with rocky eyes.
"Damn," he said under his breath.
"Oh! This is too great to be true.
Gurls, gurls.
And particularly right now in my stage and condition, Sal, I am digging the interiors of these homes as we pass them – these gone doorways and you look inside and see beds of straw and little brown kids sleeping and stirring to wake, their thoughts congealing from the empty mind of sleep, their selves rising, and the mothers cooking up breakfast in iron pots, and dig them shutters they have for windows and the old men, the old men are so cool and grand and not bothered by anything.
There's no suspicion here, nothing like that.
Everybody's cool, everybody looks at you with such straight brown eyes and they don't say anything, just look, and in that look all of the human qualities are soft and subdued and still there.
Dig all the foolish stories you read about Mexico and the sleeping gringo and all that crap) – and crap about greasers and so on – and all it is, people here are straight and kind and don't put down any bull.
I'm so amazed by this."
Schooled in the raw road night, Dean was come into the world to see it.
He bent over the wheel and looked both ways and rolled along slowly.
We stopped for gas the other side of Sabinas Hidalgo.
Here a congregation of local straw-hatted ranchers with handlebar mustaches growled and joked in front of antique gas-pumps.
Across the fields an old man plodded with a burro in front of his switch stick.
The sun rose pure on pure and ancient activities of human life.
Now we resumed the road to Monterrey.
The great mountains rose snow-capped before us; we bowled right for them.
A gap widened and wound up a pass and we went with it.
In a matter of minutes we were out of the mesquite desert and climbing among cool airs in a road with a stone wall along the precipice side and great whitewashed names of presidents on the cliff sides – ALEMAN!
We met nobody on this high road.
It wound among the clouds and took us to the great plateau on top.
Across this plateau the big manufacturing town of Monterrey sent smoke to the blue skies with their enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece.
Entering Monterrey was like entering Detroit, among great long walls of factories, except for the burros that sunned in the grass before them and the sight of thick city adobe neighborhoods with thousands of shifty hipsters hanging around doorways and whores looking out of windows and strange shops that might have sold anything and narrow sidewalks crowded with Hongkong-like humanity.
"Yow!" yelled Dean.
"And all in that sun.
Have you dug this Mexican sun, Sal?
It makes you high.
Whoo!
I want to get on and on – this road drives me!!"
We mentioned stopping in the excitements of Monterrey, but Dean wanted to make extra-special time to get to Mexico City, and besides he knew the road would get more interesting, especially ahead, always ahead.
He drove like a fiend and never rested.
Stan and I were completely bushed and gave it up and had to sleep.
I looked up outside Monterrey and saw enormous weird twin peaks beyond Old Monterrey, beyond where the outlaws went.
Montemorelos was ahead, a descent again to hotter altitudes.