The cop rummaged through our back trunk.
All the papers were straight.
"Only checking up," he said with a broad smile.
"You can go on now.
Benson ain't a bad town actually; you might enjoy it if you had breakfast here."
"Yes yes yes," said Dean, paying absolutely no attention to him, and drove off.
We all sighed with relief.
The police are suspicious when gangs of youngsters come by in new cars without a cent in their pockets and have to pawn watches.
"Oh, they're always interfering," said Dean, "but he was a much better cop than that rat in Virginia.
They try to make headline arrests; they think every car going by is some big Chicago gang.
They ain't got nothin else to do."
We drove on to Tucson.
Tucson is situated in beautiful mesquite riverbed country, overlooked by the snowy Catalina range.
The city was one big construction job; the people transient, wild, ambitious, busy, gay; washlines, trailers; bustling downtown streets with banners; altogether very Californian.
Fort Lowell Road, out where Hingham lived, wound along lovely riverbed trees in the flat desert.
We saw Hingham himself brooding in the yard.
He was a writer; he had come to Arizona to work on his book in peace.
He was a tall, gangly, shy satirist who mumbled to you with his head turned away and always said funny things.
His wife and baby were with him in the dobe house, a small one that his Indian stepfather had built.
His mother lived across the yard in her own house.
She was an excited American woman who loved pottery, beads, and books.
Hingham had heard of Dean through letters from New York.
We came down on him like a cloud, every one of us hungry, even Alfred, the crippled hitchhiker.
Hingham was wearing an old sweater and smoking a pipe in the keen desert air.
His mother came out and invited us into her kitchen to eat.
We cooked noodles in a great pot.
Then we all drove to a crossroads liquor store, where Hingham cashed a check for five dollars and handed me the money.
There was a brief good-by.
"It certainly was pleasant," said Hingham, looking away.
Beyond some trees, across the sand, a great neon sign of a roadhouse glowed red.
Hingham always went there for a beer when he was tired of writing.
He was very lonely, he wanted to get back to New York.
It was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned.
Where go? what do? what for? – sleep.
But this foolish gang was bending onward.
9
Outside Tucson we saw another hitchhiker in the dark road.
This was an Okie from Bakersfield, California, who put down his story.
"Hot damn, I left Bakersfield with the travel-bureau car and left my gui-tar in the trunk of another one and they never showed up – guitar and cowboy duds; you see, I'm a moo-sician, I was headed for Arizona to play with Johnny Mackaw's Sagebrush Boys.
Well, hell, here I am in Arizona, broke, and m'gui-tar's been stoled.
You boys drive me back to Bakersfield and I'll get the money from my brother.
How much you want?"
We wanted just enough gas to make Frisco from Bakersfield, about three dollars.
Now we were five in the car.
"Evenin, ma'am," he said, tipping his hat to Marylou, and we were off.
In the middle of the night we overtopped the lights of Palm Springs from a mountain road.
At dawn, in snowy passes, we labored toward the town of Mojave, which was the entryway to the great Tehachapi Pass.
The Okie woke up and told funny stories; sweet little Alfred sat smiling.
Okie told us he knew a man who forgave his wife for shooting him and got her out of prison, only to be shot a second time.
We were passing the women's prison when he told it.