Free Big Sur by Jack Kerouac Page B

bursting to explain everything to him, not even Big Sur but the past several years, but there’s no chance with everybody yakking—And in fact I can see in Cody’s eyes that he can see in my own eyes the regret we both feel that recently we havent had chances to talk whatever, like we used to do driving across America and back in the old road days, too many people now want to talk to us and tell us their stories, we’ve been hemmed in and surrounded and outnumbered—The circle’s closed in on the old heroes of the night—But he says “However you guys, come on down round ’bout one when the boss leaves and watch me work and keep me company awhile before you go back to the City”—I can see Dave Wain really loves him at once, and Stanley Popovich too who’s come along on this trip just to meet the fabled “Dean Moriarty”—The name I give Cody in “On the Road”—But O, it breaks my heart to see he’s lost his beloved job on the railroad and after all the seniority he’d piled up since 1948 and now is reduced to tire recapping and dreary parole visits—All for two sticks of wild loco weed that grows by itself in Texas because God wanted it—
    And there over the bookshelf is the old photo of me and Cody arm in arm in the early days on a sunny street—
    I rush to explain to Cody what happened the year before when his religious advisor at the prison had invited me to come to San Quentin to lecture the religious class—Dave Wain was supposed to drive me and wait outside the prison walls as I’d go in there alone, probably with a pepup nip bottle hidden in my coat (I hoped) and I’d be led by big guards to the lecture room of the prison and there would be sitting a hundred or so cons including Cody probably all proud in the front row—And I would begin by telling them I had been in jail myself once and that I had no right nevertheless to lecture them on religion—But they’re all lonely prisoners and dont care what I talk about—The whole thing arranged, in any case, and on the big morning I wake up instead dead drunk on a floor, it’s already noon and too late, Dave Wain is on the floor also, Willie’s parked outside to take us to Quentin for the lecture but it’s too late—But now Cody says “It’s alright old buddy I understand”—Altho our friend Irwin had done it, lectured there, but Irwin can do all sorta things like that being more social than I am and capable of going in there as he did and reading his wildest poems which set the prison yard humming with excitement tho I think he shouldna done it after all because I say just to show up for any reason except visiting inside a prison is still SIGNIFYING—And I tell this to Cody who ponders a chess problem and says “Drinkin again, hey?” (if there’s anything he hates is to see me drink).
    We help him push his Nash down the street, then drink awhile and talk with Evelyn a beautiful blonde woman that young Ron Blake wants and even Dave Wain wants but she’s got her mind on other things and taking care of the children who have to go to school and dancing classes in the morning and hardly gets a word in edgewise anyway as we all yak and yell like fools to impress her tho all she really wants is to be alone with me to talk about Cody and his latest soul.
    Which includes the fact of Billie Dabney his mistress who has threatened to take Cody away completely from Evelyn, as I’ll show later.
    So we do go out to the San Jose highway to watch Cody recap tires—There he is wearing goggles working like Vulcan at his forge, throwing tires all over the place with fantastic strength, the good ones high up on a pile, “This one’s no good” down on another, bing, bang, talking all the time a long fantastic lecture on tire recapping which has Dave Wain marvel with amazement—(“My God he can do