Lonesome Traveler. Jack Kerouac
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way down the West Coast to Mexico City.— I’d met Enrique and his kid brother Gerardo while the passengers were stretching their legs at desert huts in the Sonora desert where big fat Indian ladies served hot tortillas and meat off stone stoves and as you stood there waiting for your sandwich the little pigs grazed lovingly against your legs.— Enrique was a great sweet kid with black hair and black eyes who was making this epic journey all the way to Vera Cruz two thousand miles away on the Gulf of Mexico with his kid brother for some reason I never found out—all he let me know was that inside his home made wooden radio set was hidden about a half a pound of strong dark green marijuana with the moss still in it and long black hairs in it, the sign of good pot.— We immediately started blasting among the cacti in the back of the desert waystations, squatting there in the hot sun laughing, as Gerardo watched (he was only 18 and wasnt allowed to smoke by his older brother)—“Is why? because marijuana is bad for the eye and bad for la ley” (bad for the eyesight and bad for the law)—“But jew!” pointing at me (Mexican saying “you”), “and me!” pointing at himself, “we alright.” He undertook to be my guide in the great trip through the continental spaces of Mexico—he spoke some English and tried to explain to me the epic grandeur of his land and I certainly agreed with him.— “See?” he’d say pointing at distant mountain ranges. “Mehico!”
The bus was an old high thin affair with wooden benches, as I say, and passengers in shawls and straw hats got on with their goats or pigs or chickens while kids rode on the roof or hung on singing and screaming from the tailgate.— We bounced and bounced over that one thousand mile dirt road and when we came to rivers the driver just plowed through the shallow water, washing off the dust, and bounced on.— Strange towns like Navajoa where I took a walk by myself and saw, in the market outdoor affair, a butcher standing in front of a pile of lousy beef for sale, flies swarming all over it while mangy skinny fellaheen dogs scrounged around under the table—and towns like Los Mochis (The Flies) where we sat drinking Orange Crush like grandees at sticky little tables, where the day’s headline in the Los Mochis newspaper told of a midnight gun duel between the Chief of Police and the Mayor—it was all over town, some excitement in the white alleys—both of them with revolvers on their hips, bang, blam, right in the muddy street outside the cantina.— Now we were in a town further south in Sinaloa and had gotten off the old bus at midnight to walk single file through the slums and past the bars (“Ees no good you and me and Gerardo go into cantina, ees bad for la ley” said Enrique) and then, Gerardo carrying my seabag on his back like a true friend and brother, we crossed a great empty plaza of dirt and came to a bunch of stick huts forming a little village not far from the soft starlit surf, and there we knocked on the door of that mustachio’d wild man with the opium and were admitted to his candlelit kitchen where he and his witchdoctor goatee Estrando were sprinkling red pinches of pure opium into huge cigarettes of marijuana the size of a cigar.
The host allowed us to sleep the night in the little grass hut nearby—this hermitage belonged to Estrando, who was very kind to let us sleep there—he showed us in by candlelight, removed his only belongings which consisted of his opium stash under the pallet on the sod where he slept, and crept off to sleep somewhere else.— We had only one blanket and tossed to see who would have to sleep in the middle: it was the kid Gerardo, who didnt complain.— In the morning I got up and peeked out through the sticks: it was a drowsy sweet little grass hut village with lovely brown maids carrying jugs of water from the main well on their shoulders—smoke of tortillas rose among the trees—dogs barked, children played, and as I say our host was up and splitting twigs with a spear by throwing the spear to the ground neatly parting the twigs (or thin boughs) clean in half, an amazing sight.— And when I wanted to go to the John I was directed to an ancient stone seat which overlorded the entire village like some king’s throne and there I had to sit in full sight of everybody, it was completely in the open—mothers passing by smiled politely, children stared with fingers in mouth, young girls hummed at their work.
We began packing to get back on the bus and carry on to Mexico City but first I bought a quarter pound of marijuana but as soon as the deal was done in the hut a file of Mexican soldiers and a few seedy policemen came in with sad eyes.— I said to Enrique: “Hey, are we going to be arrested?” He said no, they just wanted some of the marijuana for themselves, free, and would let us go peaceably.— So Enrique cut them into about half of what we had and they squatted all around the hut and rolled joints on the ground.— I was so sick on an opium hangover I lay there staring at everybody feeling like I was about to be skewered, have my arms cut off, hung upsidedown on the cross and burned at the stake on that high stone John.— Boys brought me soup with hot peppers in it and everybody smiled as I sipped it, lying on my side—it burned into my throat, made me gasp, cough and sneeze, and instantly I felt better.
We got up and Gerardo again heaved my seabag to his back, Enrique hid the marijuana in his wooden radio, we shook hands with our host and the witchdoctor solemnly, shook hands seriously and solemnly with every one of the ten policemen and cop soldiers and off we went single file again in the hot sun towards the bus station in town.— “Now,” said Enrique patting the home made radio, “see, mir, we all set to get high.”
The sun was very hot and we were sweating—we came to a large beautiful church in the old Spanish Mission style and Enrique said: “We go in here now”—it amazed me to remember that we were all Catholics.— We went inside and Gerardo kneeled first, then Enrique and I kneed the pews and did the sign of the cross and he whispered in my ear “See? is cool in the chorch. Is good to get away from the sun a minuto”
At Mazatlan at dusk we stopped for awhile for a swim in our underwear in that magnificent surf and it was there, on the beach, with a big joint smoking in his hand where Enrique turned and pointed inland at the beautiful green fields of Mexico and said “See the three girls in the middle of the field far away?” and I looked and looked and only barely saw three dots in the middle of a distant pasture. “Three muchachas,” said Enrique. “Is mean: Mehico!”
He wanted me to go to Vera Cruz with him. “I am a shoemaker by trade. You stay home with the gurls while I work, mir? You write you interessa books and we get lots of gurls.”
I never saw him after Mexico City because I had no money absolutely and I had to stay on William Seward Burroughs’ couch. And Burroughs didnt want Enrique around: “You shouldnt hang around with these Mexicans, they’re all a bunch of con men.”
I still have the rabbit’s foot Enrique gave me when he left.
A FEW WEEKS LATER I go to see my first bullfight, which I must confess is a novillera, a novice fight, and not the real thing they show in the winter which is supposed to be so artistic. Inside it is a perfect round bowl with a neat circle of brown dirt being harrowed and raked by expert loving rakers like the man who rakes second base in Yankee Stadium only this is Bite-the-Dust Stadium.— When I sat down the bull had just come in and the orchestra was sitting down again.— Fine embroidered clothes tightly fitted to boys behind a fence.— Solemn they were, as a big beautiful shiny black bull rushed out gallumphing from a corner I hadnt looked, where he’d been apparently mooing for help, black nostrils and big white eyes and outspread horns, all chest no belly, stove polish thin legs seeking to drive the earth down with all that locomotive weight above—some people sniggered—bull galloped and flashed, you saw the riddled-up muscle holes in his perfect prize skin.— Matador stepped out and invited and the bull charged and slammed in, matador sneered his cape, let pass the horns by his loins a foot or two, got the bull revolved around by cape, and walked away like a Grandee—and stood his back to the dumb perfect bull who didnt charge like in “Blood & Sand” and lift Senor Grandee into the upper deck. Then business got underway. Out comes the old pirate horse with patch on eye, picador KNIGHT aboard with a lance, to come and dart a few slivers of steel in the bull’s shoulderblade who responds by trying to lift the horse but the horse is mailed (thank God)—a historical and crazy scene except suddenly you realize the picador has started the bull on his interminable bleeding. The blinding of the poor bull in mindless vertigo is continued by the brave bowlegged little dart man carrying two darts with ribbon, here he comes head-on at the bull, the bull head-on for him, wham, no head-on crash for the dart man has stung with dart and darted away before you can say boo (& I did