No towns, nothing, lost jungle, miles and miles, and down-going, getting hotter, the insects screaming louder, the vegetation growing higher, the smell ranker and hotter until we began to get used to it and like it.
"I'd just like to get naked and roll and roll in that jungle," said Dean.
"No, hell, man, that's what I'm going to do soon's I find a good spot."
And suddenly Limon appeared before us, a jungle town, a few brown lights, dark shadows, enormous skies overhead, and a cluster of men in front of a jumble of woodshacks – a tropical crossroads.
We stopped in the unimaginable softness.
It was as hot as the inside of a baker's oven on a June night in New Orleans.
All up and down the street whole families were sitting around in the dark, chatting; occasional girls came by, but extremely young and only curious to see what we looked like.
They were barefoot and dirty.
We leaned on the wooden porch of a broken-down general store with sacks of flour and fresh pineapple rotting with flies on the counter.
There was one oil lamp in here, and outside a few more brown lights, and the rest all black, black, black.
Now of course we were so tired we had to sleep at once and moved the car a few yards down a dirt road to the backside of town.
It was so incredibly hot it was impossible to sleep.
So Dean took a blanket and laid it out on the soft, hot sand in the road and flopped out.
Stan was stretched on the front seat of the Ford with both doors open for a draft, but there wasn't even the faintest puff of a wind.
I, in the back seat, suffered in a pool of sweat. I got out of the car and stood swaying in the blackness.
The whole town had instantly gone to bed; the only noise now was barking dogs.
How could I ever sleep?
Thousands of mosquitoes had already bitten all of us on chest and arms and ankles.
Then a bright idea came to me: I jumped up on the steel roof of the car and stretched out flat on my back.
Still there was no breeze, but the steel had an element of coolness in it and dried my back of sweat, clotting up thousands of dead bugs into cakes on my skin, and I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it.
Lying on the top of the car with my face to the black sky was like lying in a closed trunk on a summer night.
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.
The atmosphere and I became the same.
Soft infinitesimal showers of microscopic bugs fanned down on my face as I slept, and they were extremely pleasant and soothing.
The sky was starless, utterly unseen and heavy.
I could lie there all night long with my face exposed to the heavens, and it would do me no more harm than a velvet drape drawn over me.
The dead bugs mingled with my blood; the live mosquitoes exchanged further portions; I began to tingle all over and to smell of the rank, hot, and rotten jungle, all over from hair and face to feet and toes.
Of course I was barefoot.
To minimize the sweat I put on my bug-smeared T-shirt and lay back again.
A huddle of darkness on the blacker road showed where Dean was sleeping.
I could hear him snoring.
Stan was snoring too.
Occasionally a dim light flashed in town, and this was the sheriff making his rounds with a weak flashlight and mumbling to himself in the jungle night.
Then I saw his light jiggling toward us and heard his footfalls coming soft on the mats of sand and vegetation.
He stopped and flashed the car.
I sat up and looked at him.
In a quivering, almost querulous, and extremely tender voice he said,
"Dormiendo?" indicating Dean in the road.
I knew this meant "sleep."
"Si, dormiendo."
"Bueno, bueno" he said to himself and with reluctance and sadness turned away and went back to his lonely rounds.
Such lovely policemen God hath never wrought in America.
No suspicions, no fuss, no bother: he was the guardian of the sleeping town, period.
I went back to my bed of steel and stretched out with my arms spread.
I didn't even know if branches or open sky were directly above me, and it made no difference.
I opened my mouth to it and drew deep breaths of jungle atmosphere.
It was not air, never air, but the palpable and living emanation of trees and swamp.
I stayed awake.
Roosters began to crow the dawn across the brakes somewhere.
Still no air, no breeze, no dew, but the same Tropic of Cancer heaviness held us all pinned to earth, where we belonged and tingled.