He bought cigarettes.
He had become absolutely mad in his movements; he seemed to be doing everything at the same time.
It was. a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying
"Am," and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking.
It was very cold in Testament; they'd had an unseasonable snow.
He stood in the long bleak main street that runs along-the railroad, clad in nothing but a T-shirt and low-hanging pants with the belt unbuckled, as though he was about to take them off.
He came sticking his head in to talk to Marylou; he backed away, fluttering his hands before her.
"Oh yes, I know!
I know you, I know you, darling!"
His laugh was. maniacal; it started low and ended high, exactly like the laugh of a radio maniac, only faster and more like a titter.
Then he kept reverting to businesslike tones.
There was no purpose in our coming downtown, but he found purposes.
He made us all hustle, Marylou for the lunch groceries, me for a paper to dig the weather report, Ed for cigars.
Dean loved to smoke cigars.
He smoked one over the paper and talked.
"Ah, our holy American slopjaws in Washington are planning further inconveniences – ah-hem! – aw – hup! hup!"
And he leaped off and rushed to see a colored girl that just then passed outside the station.
"Dig her," he said, standing with limp finger pointed, fingering himself with a goofy smile, "that little gone black lovely.
Ah!
Hmm!"
We got in the car and flew back to my brother's house.
I had been spending a quiet Christmas in the country, as I realized when we got back into the house and I saw the Christmas tree, the presents, and smelled the roasting turkey and listened to the talk of the relatives, but now the bug was on me again, and the bug's name was Dean Moriarty and 1 was off on another spurt around the road.
2
We packed my brother's furniture in back of the car and took off at dark, promising to be back in thirty hours – thirty hours for a thousand miles north and south.
But that's the way Dean wanted it.
It was a tough trip, and none of us noticed it; the heater was not working and consequently the windshield developed fog and ice; Dean kept reaching out while driving seventy to wipe it with a rag and make a hole to see the road.
"Ah, holy hole!"
In the spacious Hudson we had plenty of room for all four of us to sit up front.
A blanket covered our laps.
The radio was not working.
It was a brand-new car bought five days ago, and already it was broken.
There was only one installment paid on it, too.
Off we went, north to Washington, on 301, a straight two-lane highway without much traffic.
And Dean talked, no one else talked.
He gestured furiously, he leaned as far as me sometimes to make a point, sometimes he had no hands on the wheel and yet the car went as straight as an arrow, not for once deviating from the white line in the middle of the road that unwound, kissing our left front tire.
It was a completely meaningless set of circumstances that made Dean come, and similarly I went off with him for no reason.
In New York I had been attending school and romancing around with a girl called Lucille, a beautiful Italian honey-haired darling that I actually wanted to marry.
All these years I was looking for the woman I wanted to marry.
I couldn't meet a girl without saying to myself, What kind of wife would she make?
I told Dean and Marylou about Lucille.
Marylou wanted to know all about Lucille, she wanted to meet her.
We zoomed through Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, and up to Philadelphia on a winding country road and talked.
"I want to marry a girl," I told them, "so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old.
This can't go on all the time – all this franticness and jumping around.
We've got to go someplace, find something."
"Ah now, man," said Dean, "I've been digging you for years about the home and marriage and all those fine wonderful things about your soul."
It was a sad night; it was also a merry night.
In Philadelphia we went into a lunchcart and ate hamburgers with our last food dollar.
The counterman – it was three A.M. – heard us talk about money and offered to give us the hamburgers free, plus more coffee, if we all pitched in and washed dishes in the back because his regular man hadn't shown up.
We jumped to it.