"Look out.
We better not stop in this here country."
At one point we got stuck at a crossroads and stopped the car anyway.
Dean turned off the headlamps.
We were surrounded by a great forest of viny trees in which we could almost hear the slither of a million copperheads.
The only thing we could see was the red ampere button on the Hudson dashboard.
Marylou squealed with fright.
We began laughing maniac laughs to her.
We were scared too.
We wanted to get out of this mansion of the snake, this mireful drooping dark, and zoom on back to familiar American ground and cowtowns.
There was a smell of oil and dead water in the air.
This was a manuscript of the night we couldn't read.
An owl hooted.
We took a chance on one of the dirt roads, and pretty soon we were crossing the evil old Sabine River that is responsible for all these swamps.
With amazement we saw great structures of light ahead of us.
"Texas!
It's Texas!
Beaumont oil town!"
Huge oil tanks and refineries loomed like cities in the oily fragrant air.
"I'm glad we got out of there," said Marylou.
"Let's play some more mystery programs now."
We zoomed through Beaumont, over the Trinity River at Liberty, and straight for Houston.
Now Dean got talking about his Houston days in 1947.
"Hassel!
That mad Hassel!
I look for him everywhere I go and I never find him.
He used to get us so hung-up in Texas here.
We'd drive in with Bull for groceries and Hassel'd disappear.
We'd have to go looking for him in every shooting gallery in town." We were entering Houston.
"We had to look for him in this spade part of town most of the time.
Man, he'd be blasting with every mad cat he could find.
One night we lost him and took a hotel room.
We were supposed to bring ice back to Jane because her food was rotting.
It took us two days to find Hassel.
I got hung-up myself – 1 gunned shopping women in the afternoon, right here, downtown, supermarkets" – we flashed by in the empty night – "and found a real gone dumb girl who was out of her mind and just wandering, trying to steal an orange.
She was from Wyoming.
Her beautiful body was matched only by her idiot mind.
I found her babbling and took her back to the room.
Bull was drunk trying to get this young Mexican kid drunk.
Carlo was writing poetry on heroin.
Hassel didn't show up till midnight at the jeep.
We found him sleeping in the back seat.
The ice was all melted. Hassel said he took about five sleeping pills.
Man, if my memory could only serve me right the way my mind works I could tell you every detail of the things we did.
Ah, but we know time.
Everything takes care of itself.
I could close my eyes and this old car would take care of itself."
In the empty Houston streets of four o'clock in the morning a motorcycle kid suddenly roared through, all bespangled and bedecked with glittering buttons, visor, slick black jacket, a Texas poet of the night, girl gripped on his back like a papoose, hair flying, onward-going, singing,
"Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas – and sometimes Kansas City – and sometimes old Antone, ah-haaaaa!"
They pinpointed out of sight.