Free The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac Page A

of dust into their faces. Bill sat on his suitcase while Wesley stood impassively selecting cars with his experienced eye and raising a thumb to them. Their first ride was no longer than a mile, but they were dropped at an advantageous point on the Boston Post Road.
    The sun was so hot Bill suggested a respite; they went to a filling station and drank four bottles of Coca-Cola. Bill went behind to the washroom. From there he could see a field and a fringe of shrub steaming in the July sun. He was on his way! . . . New fields, new roads, new hills were in store for him—and his destinations was the seacoast of old New England. What was the strange new sensation lurked in his heart, a fiery tingle to move on and discover anew the broad secrets of the world? He felt like a boy again . . . perhaps, too, he was acting a bit silly about the whole thing.

    Back on the hot flank of the road, where the tar steamed its black fragrance, they hitched a ride almost immediately. The driver was a New York florist en route to his greenhouse near Portchester, N.Y. He talked volubly, a good-natured Jewish merchant with a flair for humility and humor: “A couple of wandering Jews!” he called them, smiling with a sly gleam in his pale blue eyes. He dropped them off a mile beyond his destinations on the New York-Connecticut state line.
    Bill and Wesley stood beside a rocky bed which had been cut neatly at the side of the highway. In the shimmering distance, Connecticut’s flat meadows stretched a pale green mat for sleeping trees.
    Wesley took off his coat and hung it to a shoulder while Bill pushed his hat down over his eyes. They took turns sitting on the suitcase while the other leaned on the cliffside, proffering a lazy thumb. Great trucks labored up the hill, leaving behind a dancing shimmer of gasoline fumes.
    â€œNext to the smell of salt water,” drawled Wesley with a grassblade in his mouth, “I’ll take the smell of a highway.” He spat quietly with his lips. “Gasoline, tires, tar, and shrubbery,” added Bill lazily. “Whitman’s song of the open road, modern version.” They sunned quietly, without comment, in the sudden stillness. Down the
road, a truck was shifting into second gear to start its uphill travails.
    â€œWatch this,” said Wesley. “Pick up your suitcase and follow me.”
    As the truck approached, now in first gear, Wesley waved at the driver and made as if to run alongside the slowly toiling behemoth. The driver, a colorful bandana around his neck, waved a hand in acknowledgement. Wesley tore the suitcase from Bill’s hand and shouted: “Come on!” He dashed up to the truck and leaped onto the running board, shoving the suitcase into the cab and holding the door open, balanced on one foot, for Bill. The latter hung on to his hat and ran after the truck; Wesley gave him [a] hand as he plunged into the cab.
    â€œWhoo!” cried Bill, taking off his hat. “That was a neat bit of Doug Fairbanks dash!” Wesley swung in beside him and slammed the door to.
    â€œThat’ll melt the fat off!” roared the truck driver. “Hot as a sonofabitch, ain’t it?” His laughter bellowed above the thunder of the motor.
    They roared and careened all the way to New Haven, traveling at a furious pace downhill and crawling with a mounting whine uphill. When the driver dropped them off at the Yale University green, the sunlight had softened to a pale orange.

    â€œDon’t take any wooden nickels!” counseled the truck driver, bellowing above the crash of his gears as he left them in his thunderous wake.
    â€œWhat now?” asked Everhart. They were standing on a broad pavement swarming with shoppers bearing packages, men in shirtsleeves en route from work, sauntering Yale summer students, newsboys, and business men. The street was a tangle of autos, buses, and clanging trolleys. The Green was a pageant of