At one point I moaned about life's troubles – how poor my family was, how much I wanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter.
"Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in.
The thing is not to get hung-up.
My head rings!" he cried, clasping his head.
He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes – that furious, ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails.
"Since Denver, Sal, a lot of things – Oh, the things – I've thought and thought.
I used to be in reform school all the time, I was a young punk, asserting myself – stealing cars a psychological expression of my position, hincty to show.
All my jail-problems are pretty straight now.
As far as I know I shall never be in jail again.
The rest is not my fault."
We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars in the road.
"Think of it," said Dean.
"One day he'll put a stone through a man's windshield and the man will crash and die – all on account of that little kid.
You see what I mean?
God exists without qualms.
As we roll along this way 1 am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us – that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel" (I hated to drive and drove carefully) – "the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep.
Furthermore we know America, we're at home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it's the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do.
We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side."
There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear.
He used the word "pure" a great deal.
I had never dreamed Dean would become a mystic.
These were the first days of his mysticism, which would lead to the strange, ragged W. C. Fields saintliness of his later days.
Even my aunt listened to him with a curious half-ear as we roared back north to New York that same night with the furniture in the back.
Now that my aunt was in the car, Dean settled down to talking about his worklife in San Francisco.
We went over every single detail of what a brakeman has to do, demonstrating every time we passed yards, and at one point he even jumped out of the car to show me how a brakeman gives a highball at a meet at a siding.
My aunt retired to the back seat and went to sleep.
In Washington at four A.M. Dean again called Camille collect in Frisco.
Shortly after this, as we pulled out of Washington, a cruising car overtook us with siren going and we had a speeding ticket in spite of the fact that we were going about thirty.
It was the California license plate that did it.
"You guys think you can rush through here as fast as you want just because you come from California?" said the cop.
I went with Dean to the sergeant's desk and we tried to explain to the police that we had no money.
They said Dean would have to spend the night in jail if we didn't round up the money.
Of course my aunt had it, fifteen dollars; she had twenty in all, and it was going to be just fine.
And in fact while we were arguing with the cops one of them went out to peek at my aunt, who sat wrapped in the back of the car.
She saw him.
"Don't worry, I'm not a gun moll.
If you want to come and search the car, go right ahead.
I'm going home with my nephew, and this furniture isn't stolen; it's my niece's, she just had a baby and she's moving to her new house."
This flabbergasted Sherlock and he went back in the station house.
My aunt had to pay the fine for Dean or we'd be stuck in Washington; I had no license.
He promised to pay it back, and he actually did, exactly a year and a half later and to my aunt's pleased surprise.
My aunt – a respectable woman hung-up in this sad world, and well she knew the world.
She told us about the cop.
"He was hiding behind the tree, trying to see what I looked like.
I told him – I told him to search the car if he wanted.
I've nothing to be ashamed of."
She knew Dean had something to be ashamed of, and me too, by virtue of my being with Dean, and Dean and I accepted this sadly.
My aunt once said the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
But Dean knew this; he'd mentioned it many times.
"I've pleaded and pleaded with Marylou for a peaceful sweet understanding of pure love between us forever with all hassles thrown out – she understands; her mind is bent on something else – she's after me; she won't understand how much I love her, she's knitting my doom."