Introduction

Each new chapter of this work in progress will be

found appended to the end of the post next down.

Badman Memoir

Just as I approached U. S. Customs at the Texas border between McAllen and Reynosa, some of the last good sense remaining to me was trying to kick in. I reached into my shirt pocket for that tiny item of contraband given me by a recently made pal in Laredo. And looking at it there in my hand, it seemed such a shame to just drop it in the Rio Grande, throwing good medicine after a bad trip to a fish. So, with a mind to assure my passage to the other side, safe and unmolested, I popped it to my tongue, let it lay there to dissolve and made my way further across from one world to another, the more enchanted with every step over that border of café con leche colored river between the United States and Mexico.

Yes, I was on the lam, but exactly from what it seems hard to say. It was not from the crime of killing a man, but from passions raging that often enough have driven a man's hand to that, had he not hit it for the road to make his getaway--first of all, from himself. 

Sure! Other people find a way to get over it--so why go high-tailing it to Mexico? You just exert the discipline to stay away from the thing. Sure you do. Easy as that. Bloody Hell. Nothing to it--right? Baloney. Not in my case. No, I couldn't leave it alone--and if you'll permit me the use of a couple cliches: not on my life; try as I might. Did I try? Sure. Who doesn't? 

But then you look down upon the hands and arms that are empty of her; around you at the vacuous, echoing space that no longer contains her: it's like returning to an apartment that has been broken into and entered, ransacked, robbed of all one's most precious possessions: my very most favorite, most highly collectible valuable: my wife. And someone else had come by stealth in the night to collect her--a man who had feigned to be among the best of my friends. 

You feel of a mind not to stand for it. And yet you know you have no standing not to stand for it, since it is of her own accord she has been stolen--and then what you can't stand is the sense of impotence come of that. Good term "impotent rage"; lots of sage wisdom in our good ol' figures of speech, some of our cliches, and I'd be the last to think of turning up my nose at the least of them . . . 

The gods knew how I tried, but the suppurating wound that came of my separation from her, and the torturing knowledge of just who held the knife, to be still twisting it in deeper--well . . . 

The first agony arose from the heart, the second was in the throat, like something you were gagging on, something to be spit out with a blaze of blasting flame. 

And there was another torment worse than both; it burned above the eye, searing upward over the brow, to burrow under the scalp, there to sting like a salt scorched gash to enhance each lick of recrimination's lash, or maybe it was more like an infected, gangrenous wound got in battle, the one being fought between thoughts that tell you to stop thinking about it, and those which were opposed, refusing to cease or come to the least retreat. A war in your head, on that bloody battleground become of a mind caught between a will toward dignity, and the demands of pride. That was the wrack of pain that had me going forth to confrontation . . . 

The day before I bought the car, and packed it, I'd gone and got some of my money from the bank, leaving the bulk of it to her--on that day, I'd found myself at the apartment of this betrayer and his wife, and their little three year old blondie of a wee girl tot. There I'd come to make my assault, with such a fury of indictments flaming out my mouth, that it sent him running from his own apartment, leaving me there with his wife and child, blowing some smoke of apologetic words, choking back the sparks, like a good and repentant dragon. 

Only the day previous, that traitor and his wife had been over to the apartment of my wife, where that sweet blonde mama of his had seen fit to be carrying on in quite the same fashion as I would perform the next day at their place. Here she stood, as a pert little tea-kettle in full scream, taking out her ire at this adultery in flagrante delicto, savagely kicking at toys scattered on the floor belonging to my wife's baby girl. Though I could not bring myself to believe that darling little thing down on the floor chasing after a stuffed pink bear in flight was any issue of mine, having every reason in the world short of a blood test to strongly suspect otherwise--the feeling that she should have been mine, lent me a sense of protective proprietorship over her, which caused this incident, this invasion of violence to come down into my glowing blast furnace for a brain like that last ladle of molten steel it was not built to take without tipping on its pivots to flood the world I knew with a glowing torrent of molten rage. 

Bad enough the way it should affect his own wife and baby girl, the marriage my wife once had with me, but to see it spill over on to this innocent little ersatz daughter of mine that I could not own but cared for--how that did bring me charging in upon him with my hands raised as claws, that howl shaking me head to foot, rising to the roar that said, "If you go anywhere near her or that little baby girl again, I'll kill you!" And just as he was turning away from that to begin his retreat, "Oh, yes, I will! I'll murder ya, you bastard!" 

I'd had no plan of saying that. Kind of scary how involuntary a thing like that can be. I'd been on my way over to his place before even knowing I'd started. And later, I was shocked, astonished with myself to think I'd done it. Then, finding time to think it over that evening as I packed my things, this was done knowing that perhaps I would be capable of doing such violence--having been able to make such a threat in the first place; so how much further did it go from there to carrying it out? Well, I had to get out. There was but one thing I knew, and that was it: hit the road.

II

--

This was not my first foray south of the border; that had come some three weeks previous, crossing further west into Nuevo Laredo, where this mad tryst with Mexico for a mistress--or my new wife--had got started in a little cantina on the U.S. side just a few blocks from the Rio.

There I sat over four shots of tequila, a green bottle of lemon/lime soda for a chaser; hair to my shoulders, full beard, my raiment the universal uniform of the road; blue oxford work shirt, jeans and western boots: no backpack--not my style. The car I'd bought only two weeks before was sitting in a Jacksonville, Florida junkyard, having begun its demise somewhere along the causeway between Key West and Key Largo. But that was cool, the little 70 dollar junk-bucket on wheels had served its purpose: I had now discovered just what I needed to know about southern winter weather, so far south as you can go in the U.S.

I found that it suited me fine, and now I wanted to see how much nicer it could get even further south; that's how I wound up at the starting gate to this venture in Laredo, not all that far from the southernmost point of the Texas star, where late January surely feels like "spring"; a time when migratory birds from the north are filling the trees like some noisy form of exotic feathered fruit, along with oranges, pomelo, and pink Texas grapefruit, ripe for the plucking along highway and boulevard--what a far itinerant sparrow's cry from the winter barrens of ice and snow, both they and I had fled, taking such long flight to arrive at so warm and cozy a roost as this.

How I did bloody well adore the sound of that Ranchera music coming from the late 50s vintage jukebox over my shoulder at the corner by the window; so soothing a balm as that was to the said stinging lesion at my brow, Hades Gate on its creaky hinges up there, swung ever open through scalp and skull to my own cerebral black hole that had been sucking, swallowing, gobbling every beam of light, draining every chance for a merry moment from my life: and here was respite in those sweetly plaintive 'norteno cojunto' ballads, and the tequila of course, and a fragrance in that deep southern air that portends with the million voiced bird-song a dawn of spring in the dead of winter.

III 

--

But just as to why I was sitting there in that gringo cantina of Laredo rather than drinking in the real Mexico with the real tequila across the Rio in a cantina of Nuevo Laredo--well, that is quite a comical and ridiculous matter to reveal. So I must confess, as to the trepidation that had me notably vibrating all the glass on my tile-topped table; ashtray, shot glasses, Seven-UP: for indeed, my knee was propped against a table leg, by the lifted heel of a boot held unsteadily off the floor, as all the while I ruminated over the exotic prospect of making this crossing which the very air from open door and window whispered for me to take, beckoning with every sweet scent of ten thousand toasting tortillas wafted over the Rio Grande and down from blades of a ceiling fan squeaking overhead. 

In truth, there was a certain dread concern over a chance of being stopped by customs on the U.S. side in the event that a bench warrant had issued forth, demanding my presence in a certain small town of Louisiana, to show up in court, some four or five days previous, to face a judge on the charge of my having been "drunk and disorderly." 

Well, let me humbly confess that I had been quite gloriously drunk, somewhat disorderly, yes, and did show up that morning for court; walked right in there, and sat down to await being called, when something of a 'panic attack' came upon me, at the brunt of questions reverberating round within my cranium like, "What if they send you off to a goddam chain-gang?"

And, sure as they still had them going in full swing of a sledge on the rock of that year, I had to ask: "Would you ever be free again; come out in one piece, let alone still alive?" Look what happened to Paul Muni, in "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang"! Or Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke," when he got clipped for essentially the same thing--but for the parking meters I had *not* vandalized. Well, Luke's hair was short, mine was long, so they could easily charge me with a similar act of vandalism on grounds of creating an eye-sore by no more than walking around the state of Louisiana like that. There was no chance for fooling myself: you don't sit, as of 1970, in a country courtroom of the Deep South, like you came in from the chorus of the Broadway musical, "Hair," and expect to be treated as a celebrity. 

I decided I knew better than to just keep sitting there looking upon the heights of that judicial bench, staring through that banister which must surely open its gate to an unfathomable Hell for me, so I quietly stood up, and casually as I could, turned and walked out. 

IV

--

I thought better of heading for the Greyhound depot, one of the first places they'd look once the warrant went out; or the wanted poster went up, featuring the mug shot taken the night before--depending on how proud they might be to display the cut above my brow they'd granted me gratis, no extra charge, at brunt of a fist upon my request I be allowed to post bail. Took them three hours to get around to allowing me that. Fortunately, I was still so drunk during the interim, that by the time they did come to roust me--why! For the life of me, I cannot provide the least part of a description of the drunk tank in that town, how it may have been furnished, whether there were any little complimentary bars of soap, a "Sanitized" strip on the toilet; my one memory is of deep shadows in a near blackness and a certain notable throbbing in the hollow of one eye. 

Hitching a ride on the highway was ruled out for a decidedly bad choice, leaving but one option with a semblance of sense: I made inquiry with a friendly looking, elderly black fellow having himself a smoke out front of a barber shop, and having thus gained directions, I bid him 'top of the day' and headed on down toward the town's rail-yard, with the intention in mind of hopping a freight south to New Orleans. 

Too bad I'd then lost track of my travelling and drinking companion, that mellow-voiced, pint-size Robert Mitchum sounding tramp in a trench coat (bear with me--things far more bizarre and unlikely were very soon to make themselves known for real) whose acquaintance I'd made over coffee and croissants in a Nashville bus depot; a man whose penchant it was to be travelling the South withersoever the wind might make sail of his tan coat-tails and blow him, whether by hook of thumb on the highway or hand to the ladder of a boxcar. Did I want to save some money? 

Well, sure! "Then follow me." So he did say, and the only luggage the man bore was a wallet in his jeans, plus a Marine Band harmonica in the pocket of his coat, and soon there were the two of us, riding high atop a heap of coal in a hopper car out of Nashville--and as the song goes, trite as it may seem (or not) he blew us nearly 'all the way to New Orleans.' 

It was this fine chap, who by dint of what he could do, armed with that chrome clad music in his coat, the rhythm he had in the shuffle and tap of his shoes--well that amounted also to a talent for cadging drinks in a saloon; how I got so roaring drunk down there in that little town of north-central Louisiana: and as we stepped from that bar when it closed; arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, singing some Bob Dylan song loud enough to wake the town--what was it, *The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll*? *Chimes of Freedom*? *Oxford Town*? It was a Western Union singing telegram to the closest cop on patrol, what it was; how they found me in full howl, staggering down the center of the street, while my pal 'Mitch' had been strolling along the sidewalk beside, pleading with me to get some damned sense--did I forget this was the South, for the god's sake, and . . . 

"If you're lookin' to get silly, 

You better go back to from where you came; 

Because the cops don't need you, 

And man they expect the same . . ."* 

*Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues 

V 

-- 

Down at the railroad on the switchyard, I got lucky. Finding no one there to challenge my presence, I was walking a platform beside an old clapboard station building, gone for some years to sun rot and ruin, a structure of our fast fading but noble past as must once have housed a telegrapher's office; counter and scales for an agent of the Railway Express with his bags of mail to be hooked by a passing train, otherwise a shelter from the weather with stove, a pot of hot coffee for switchmen, brakemen, conductors and engineers while they waited for a steam locomotive to take on water or coal, and there beside these musty remains of those mighty days, I paused to take notice of a slate posted, with a schedule for arrivals and departures of this day. Didn't take but a few moments to decipher from the abbreviations chalked up that a train called the . . . something perfectly lovely like . . . "Dixie Whistler" was already in the yard to be 'made up' and due to depart at 2:30 that afternoon. 

Having no idea which line of cars standing idle on some four or five tracks was to be my ride, I opted for the one that looked longest and leapt up from the cinder bed through the closest open boxcar door. After a look around, to be assured there were no other guests already checked in to the accommodations, I took advantage of the vacancy; found a comfortable spot in the darkest corner, lay down on one of the complimentary sheets of cardboard scattered round, stretched out my legs, rested my head on folded arms and zoned out. 

With a start, I awoke some few hours later to find my Dixie Whistler on the move, clanging, rumbling, clicking along already at a fair clip over the joints of rails--in the wrong direction, headed north. This was no good; I jumped to my feet, and that's when I knew that my train was not going anywhere--it was the next one over. Soon as the odd, sudden nausea that comes of such an optical illusion had passed, I leapt to the door and out to the ground but quick, with a determination to find out just how fast a man in a world of trouble might be spurred to make his sprint for a southbound train and his getaway. 

As any seasoned railroad tramp will tell you, if there's one thing you don't want to do during process of hopping a freight, it's to risk latching on to the ladder of a car passing you half again so fast as you can run to catch up. But what did I know? With the train continually picking up speed, there was nothing for it but to reach on the run for the next upcoming ladder. I grabbed, clamped my grip, and felt a slam to my shoulder that nearly had my arm wrenched out of its socket. 

Though I managed to keep hold, my feet had been thrown behind me off the railroad bed to the threat of being swept inward toward those whirring wheels so close below. I dared not let go, I had to make this good. I forced my legs to obey, retracting them at the knees which swung me straight up to our ever so dear center of earth's gravity, to slowly rotate till I was face on to the ladder. With a quick step downward onto the fleeting road bed, I got the needed lift upward to clap my other hand on, next rung up. But just as to how many tries that took to get both boots planted on the bottom rung, my memory is too merciful to recall. 

The pain radiating up and down from that right shoulder was a piece of art in the way of bad luck, but it appeared I had jumped lucky nonetheless in having taken hold of the right ladder, that of a hopper, which unlike a box or cattle car affords a rider the opportunity to climb off the ladder into the framework, and move through the girders from one side of the train to the other, or stay in the space between cars, whichever may afford the best protection from a cold February wind.

And that afternoon waned toward dusk with the slow, sad sinking of the sun, while those long, keening complaints of the diesel horn at every bend and crossing became herald to the rising of a cold, blue and lonely Louisiana winter moon.

VI

--

Just as I'd released the lever on the cigarette machine and bent to pick up my 'Luckies', somebody with a shaggy kind of overly shortish Beatle-haircut-with-inhibitions came in the door. I could tell this was a neophyte Dixie hippie by the conspiratorial look that met my eye, howsoever narrowly constrained by a squint of what might be perceived as---suppressed envy (flattery) for that majestic growth of hair at my shoulders, most especially as it lay now with its flat-black 'rinse' of railroad diesel grease and coal dust. Sure. Standing in his tennis shoes I would have been jealous too. 

A ring at the cash register, a rattle of coin, the following snap of a bill retainer in the drawer as he slammed it shut pretty much said it all--until looking up from opening my cigarettes, I tapped one out in offer from the pack. He took that, presenting me with a light in return, and as I tilted my face to the flame, I felt like I was seeing this guy on the other side of a time warp, where he stood, still, in 1966 with 4 years yet to go to full emancipation, as I fancied to enjoy it. So, this is New Orleans, I thought, the one city in the U.S.A. with the unspeakable effrontery to steal the joint right out the face of the Grateful Dead--but it was heartening to encounter this Southern Brother in the Power of the Flower (and the Pot), standing before me as the hippie epitome of the "Big Easy" with that red handkerchief head-band he had on, the army fatigue jacket and tie-dyed tank top it only partly concealed. "Righteous!" I said, my gaze shifting back to the guy's face from the pin-up girl in raised skirt on a five years out of date, 1965 calendar. "Heh! Some sight for sore eyes," I was moved to add. 

"Hoo! Don't she?"

"Don't she--what?" So much for compliments to a Southern Man's red bandanna headband. 

"Come down off'n dat wall too much, she don't. Usually stay right up dere like dat." He blew a cloud of smoke up her skirt. "Good t'ing, too. Or I wouldn't get no work done roun' dis place." 

"Say," I said. "You got a roadmap I can take a look at?" 

He pointed past the door toward the wall around from his desk. But before I got halfway there, he had one in hand passing it over. "Have dat one," he said. "Compliments o' Conoco. And Power to da Peoples." 

I took it. "My man," I said, and beginning to open it, I took a few steps toward better light under a buzzing neon tube posted over the plate glass front window. 

"Dat one for Miss-a-sip, Loozey-Anna 'n Texas. Take you most anywhere you wanna go, but prolly ought not in dis country." 

"Way you talk," I said, looking over my shoulder, "reminds me a lot of a Cajun fella I once knew in Minnesota." 

"Go on? Hoo! They ain't no such livin' thing as no Yankee Coonasses. An' sho' can't be none in no Minnesota. Why, don't you know dat way too close to Canadee for the skins on us? Or maybe you ain't heard 'bout all dat?" 

I showed him the map. "Mind if I flatten this out on your counter, there?" 

"Go right on ahead." He moved the credit card machine over. 

I said, "Oh yeah, my Cajun friend up there told me all about that, how you-all had got in a bad fix with the British, had to come by ship all the way down here to French Louisiana . . ." 

"Y'all." 

"Huh?" 

"Can't say, 'you-all', man. You want folks here ta t'ink ya might be from Canadee?" 

"No!" 

"Well den, you got to say *y'all*." 

"Ya-all." 

"Non, non, non! It's *y'all*. Like, one word. Try 'gain." 

"Y'all!" 

"Dere you go. Dat ought to keep you safe, where you goin'--for a while." 

I was noticing how Interstate 10 runs from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and on across to Beaumont, Texas . I asked him, "What part of Louisiana you from?" 

"Looooozey-Anna.." 

"Loooosey-Anna." 

"Dere you go. Ah kin turn you to a Coonass yet; no time flat, Bro." 

"Where from?" 

"Right here." 

"So if I want to get to Baton Rouge from right here, how far is that?" 

"You want to git from right here--to Baton Rouge?" He gave it the French pronunciation. 

"Right." 

"Man, you may have a problem." 

"Huh?" He came out from around the counter and said: 

"Wait a minute." He went across to the door and looked out, up and down both ways; turned around and came back saying, "Nope. It's still right here." He went back behind the counter. 

"What's still right here?" 

"Baton Rouge, man. It's right out there, as usual." 

"This is Baton Rouge?" 

"Where I'm from, and always been. So, technically, on account of how I ain't never left it, I ain't never been from it, yet, " He paused in thought, then said, "Last time I checked. Wait a minute. I'll go look again." Before he could get started, I said: 

"No, don't trouble yourself, Bro. I have a mind to believe what you say." 

"Alright. But I axed: where did you t'ink 'right here' is?" 

"Thought this was New Orleans." 

"But how could that happen? Somebody hit you in the head down on Bourbon Street, and drag you on off over to here?" 

"Damn!" I said. "Must be that freight I was on just rolled right on through New Orleans and didn't stop till it got right here--at Baton Rouge!" I said it real good, with long 'o' and barely a nasal stopped 'n' on 'Baton'. "I thought this was New Orleans, right here." 

"Aw-lins." 

"Ah-leens?" 

"Aw-lins, Man. New Aw-lins." 

"Yeah. New Aw-lins."

"Now you talkin'."  

I saw that Interstate 10 runs through Beaumont to Houston, and on to San Antonio, where I could visit the Alamo before continuing south to Laredo on I-35.  "So," I said to the man, "If I wanted to hitch a ride from here to Beaumont, which direction I got to go to get to I-10?"

He pointed straight over my shoulder, "About 60 feet that-away."

"Hot damn!" said I, pocketing the "Moon Pie" I'd just scooped up from a vending machine; I thanked him, bid goodnight and headed on my way toward Texas.

VII
--

Things started to get weird, hitching out of Baton Rouge--and those 'things', would stay weird all the rest of the night. Seems I must have walked quite a distance after lighting out from that filling station because I was quite well beyond the outskirts of the city when that old Cadillac El Dorado, early 60s vintage, pulled over, looking like something in the suspension on the passenger side was out of commission, the way it was lilting, how it rocked toward the side of the road as it slowed to a stop. The back door was already open as the car came upon me in reverse. 

"Git in, man. Git in! Damn, it cold out here tonight." So said this portly gent in a black shirt showing a shiny medallion at his unbuttoned upper chest; he'd stepped out from the backseat to usher me in. Didn't take but a few seconds of breathing the air in there as the car lurched back out on the road, to recognize that all four of these men, the two up front and the two either side of me were drunk. 

Seemed I'd stepped into that infernal "outer darkness" of which the Bible speaks where there is aught but "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth", a real bedlam on wheels, what it was--even though the 'weeping' sounded more like squeals of laughter, and the wailing was some sad country song the guy on the passenger side up front was trying to sing. The driver started talking to me via the rear view mirror, screeching above the din to ask, "Say, man! I jus' looooove that long, long, lovely long, hey-ah you got. Is you a real hippie?" He gave me no chance to answer before he was shouting over the song from the guy beside him, and reaching over to shake him by the shoulder. "Goldie, baby! This got to be the first, real bona-fide, sho' 'nuff hippie we seen yet, roun' here. Am I right?"

"Yeah!" said the guy to my left. "You right."

"Sho' as shootin'," said Goldie.

The guy on my right, call him 'Blackie', gave me a nudge. "He axed you a question, din't he?"

"Is you is, or is you ain't a hippie?" repeated the driver.

"Nah," I said.  "I don't even know what that is. I just got a phobia against barbers."

"Aaaaagh!" screamed the driver. "That funny! He got what you call 'a phobia' against barbers. C'mon now, man. We nice guys, an' we won't hurt you, cuz we like hippies, even though we never met one till now."

"That right," said Blackie, nudging me again. "Go on, tell us all about it, Hippie. You been into that free love and drugs, an' what-all?"

Goldie was back to singing and the driver had to raise his voice high, "Yeah, baby! How 'bout it?  Hey, Goldie! We hip to all that too, ain't we?"

"Sho'!" said Goldie. "We is hip to that, but good. Prolly more wilder than any damn hippies would know about."

"Nah! Be nice Goldie!  What's our guest to think?"

Got another nudge. "Go on, now," said Blackie.

"Some," I said. "I've seen some of that."

The guy to my left sat forward a little, while turning ever so slowly to me. "So how come you don't just come right out and say if you're a hippie, 'stead o' running this game on us?"

"Take it easy on the guy, Clarence!" So shouted the driver. "Jus' sit back and let the man be. He'll tell us if he gets a mind to." Clarence did as recommended by the driver; heavily, not gladly falling back to the seat.

"Truth is," I said, "it's just not thought to be too hip for a person to go around calling himself a 'hippie' whether he may be one, or not."

"That so?" Asked Clarence.

"Must be," said the driver, "if he sayin' so."

"Don't know," said Clarence.

"I do!" said Goldie.

"Heeeeee-Hoo!" shrieked the driver. "Goldie say he do."

"Well, what you say, Goldie?" asked Blackie sitting forward a bit.

"What I say is, like, say I'm gay--okay?"

The driver shrieked with delight. "I'll say!"

"Ha! Me, too," said Blackie.

"All right," said Goldie. "So if I'm gay, am I going to be running all around from Hell to Texas just comin' right out and shoutin', 'Hey, ever'body, here's news: Gay is what I is."

"No!" said Blackie, "That be crazy.  That what you talkin' 'bout, Hippie? I mean when you talkin' 'bout what is 'cool' or not?"

"Pretty darn close," I said.

"There! Ya see?"  said Goldie.  "He ain't a hippie, and we ain't queer!"

Never heard such a shriek of glee as emitted from the driver just then, and soon fully the four of them were in hysterics; the car was weaving back and forth across the lanes, and that's when Blackie got his mitt clamped down on my thigh about halfway between knee and hip. He bent his head close to my ear and cooed, "You don't really smell all that fresh, but I think you're pretty damn cute, Hippie."

I grabbed his hand, took it up and planted it back down on his own leg.

"Aaw, come on, Hippie. I's jus' tryin' to be nice."

"Yeah, I know you are," I said, "but that's just not my thing, ya dig?"

"You like to do your own thing?" he asked.

"Well . . ."

"Why do that, if I can do your thing, for you?" With that his hand was back on my leg, and higher this time. I grabbed it again, slapped it down on him, and said:

"If you keep doin' that man, I'm going to get all up-tight."

"Hoo!" shouted Blackie. "All I wanted to do is bring him home and give him a good bath. He do smell like he just crawled out a coal chute!"

"Who?" asked the driver.

"Hippie!" says Blackie. "He just want to do his *own* thing."

"Then leave him the Christ alone, Blackie!"

"Hell no! He done hurt my feelin's.  I want him out of this car!"

"What?" Asked Goldie.

"The hell?" asked the driver.

"I'm a gittin' mad!"

On went the brakes, sending the Caddy into a skid, till it had swayed to a stop at the shoulder. The door was thrown open, and Blackie got out. Same with me. "On your way, Dirty Hairy!" shouted Blackie as he climbed back in--and before the door was closed, gravel was pelting me in the shins; then a squeal of rubber on the road as I watched them peel away into the night.