Carlo Marx came, poetry under his arm, and sat in an easy chair, watching us with beady eyes.
For the first half-hour he refused to say anything; at any rate, he refused to commit himself.
He had quieted down since the Denver Doldrum days; the Dakar Doldrums had done it.
In Dakar, wearing a beard, he had wandered the back streets with little children who led him to a witch-doctor who told him his fortune.
He had snapshots of crazy streets with grass huts, the hip back-end of Dakar.
He said he almost jumped off the ship like Hart Crane on the way back.
Dean sat on the floor with a music box and listened with tremendous amazement at the little song it played,
"A Fine Romance" –
"Little tinkling whirling doodlebells.
Ah! Listen!
We'll all bend down together and look into the center of the music box till we learn about the secrets – tinklydoodle-bell, whee."
Ed Dunkel was also sitting on the floor; he had my drumsticks; he suddenly began beating a tiny beat to go with the music box, that we barely could hear.
Everybody held his breath to listen.
"Tick… tack… tick-tick… tack-tack."
Dean cupped a hand over his ear; his mouth hung open; he said,
"Ah!
Whee!"
Carlo watched this silly madness with slitted eyes.
Finally he slapped his knee and said,
"I have an announcement to make."
"Yes?
Yes?"
"What is the meaning of this voyage to New York?
What kind of sordid business are you on now?
I mean, man, whither goest thou?
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"
"Whither goest thou?" echoed Dean with his mouth open.
We sat and didn't know what to say; there was nothing to talk about any more.
The only thing to do was go.
Dean leaped up and said we were ready to go back to Virginia.
He took a shower, I cooked up a big platter of rice with all that was left in the house, Marylou sewed his socks, and we were ready to go.
Dean and Carlo and I zoomed into New York.
We promised to see Carlo in thirty hours, in time for New Year's Eve.
It was night.
We left him at Times Square and went back through the expensive tunnel and into New Jersey and on the road.
Taking turns at the wheel, Dean and I made Virginia in ten hours.
"Now this is the first time we've been alone and in a position to talk for years," said Dean.
And he talked all night.
As in a dream, we were zooming back through sleeping Washington and back in the Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daybreak, pulling up at my brother's door at eight A.M. And all this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed.
He was out of his mind with real belief.
"And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God.
We've passed through all forms.
You remember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me about Nietzsche.
You see how long ago?
Everything is fine, God exists, we know time.
Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong.
You can't make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking.
It's all this!"
He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true.
"And not only that but we both understand that I couldn't have time to explain why I know and you know God exists."