He was absurdly cautious.
"Got to look out for myself, things ain't cool this past week."
I picked up the turd, which was a brown-paper cigarette, and went back to Terry, and off we went to the hotel room to get high.
Nothing happened.
It was Bull Durham tobacco.
I wished I was wiser with my money.
Terry and I had to decide absolutely and once and for all what to do.
We decided to hitch to New York with our remaining money.
She picked up five dollars from her sister that night. We had about thirteen or less.
So before the daily room rent was due again we packed up and took off on a red car to Arcadia, California, where Santa Anita racetrack is located under snow-capped mountains.
It was night.
We were pointed toward the American continent.
Holding hands, we walked several miles down the road to get out of the populated district. It was a Saturday night.
We stood under a roadlamp, thumbing, when suddenly cars full of young kids roared by with streamers flying.
"Yaah!
Yaah! we won! we won!" they all shouted.
Then they yoohooed us and got great glee out of seeing a guy and a girl on the road.
Dozens of such cars passed, full of young faces and "throaty young voices," as the saying goes.
I hated every one of them.
Who did they think they were, yaahing at somebody on the road just because they were little high-school punks and their parents carved the roast beef on Sunday afternoons?
Who did they think they were, making fun of a girl reduced to poor circumstances with a man who wanted to belove?
We were minding our own business.
And we didn't get a blessed ride.
We had to walk back to town, and worst of all we needed coffee and had the misfortune of going into the only place open, which was a high-school soda fountain, and all the kids were there and remembered us.
Now they saw that Terry was Mexican, a Pachuco wildcat; and that her boy was worse than that.
With her pretty nose in the air she cut out of there and we wandered together in the dark up along the ditches of the highways.
I carried the bags.
We were breathing fogs in the cold night air.
I finally decided to hide from the world one more night with her, and the morning be damned.
We went into a motel court and bought a comfortable little suite for about four dollars – shower, bathtowels, wall radio, and all.
We held each other tight.
We had long, serious talks and took baths and discussed things with the light on and then with the light out.
Something was being proved, I was convincing her of something, which she accepted, and we concluded the pact in the dark, breathless, then pleased, like little lambs.
In the morning we boldly struck out on our new plan.
We were going to take a bus to Bakersfield and work picking grapes. After a few weeks of that we were headed for New York in the proper way, by bus.
It was a wonderful afternoon, riding up to Bakersfield with Terry: we sat back, relaxed, talked, saw the countryside roll by, and didn't worry about a thing.
We arrived in Bakersfield in late afternoon.
The plan was to hit every fruit wholesaler in town.
Terry said we could live in tents on the job.
The thought of living in a tent and picking grapes in the cool California mornings hit me right.
But there were no jobs to be had, and much confusion, with everybody giving us innumerable tips, and no job materialized.
Nevertheless we ate a Chinese dinner and set out with reinforced bodies.
We went across the SP tracks to Mexican town.
Terry jabbered with her brethren, asking for jobs.
It was night now, and the little Mextown street was one blazing bulb of lights: movie marquees, fruit stands, penny arcades, five-and-tens, and hundreds of rickety trucks and mud-spattered jalopies, parked.
Whole Mexican fruit-picking families wandered around eating popcorn.
Terry talked to everybody.
I was beginning to despair.
What I needed – what Terry needed, too – was a drink, so we bought a quart of California port for thirty-five cents and went to the railroad yards to drink.
We found a place where hobos had drawn up crates to sit over fires.