According to Hinkle, Neal never said what the ultimate destination was, though he mentioned “maybe going back to Denver for a while.” Although Neal never stated as much, it seems what he was really after was reconnecting with Lu Anne. Because he had been working longer, Al would have unemployment compensation to live on; Neal would leave Carolyn with nothing to live on. Since they needed extra money for the road, Al asked his girlfriend Helen to come along. Helen agreed, so long as Al married her—which he did. In a travel bureau in San Francisco, they also picked up another rider to help with gas money, a sailor bound for Kansas. No one seems to have worried about the fact that, with his limited funds, Neal had chosen to add a radio to the car instead of a heater.
Tired of Neal’s smoking pot with Al, as well as his refusals to stop for food or rest, Helen began complaining quite vociferously. Neal solved that problem by dropping her off in Tucson. Having more scruples than Neal, Al at least gave her his railroad pass, and told her to ride to New Orleans, where she could stay with William Burroughs and his wife, Joan. Al promised they’d pick her up in a week. Then, in the middle of New Mexico, and much to the sailor’s chagrin, Neal turned the Hudson due north for Denver. The sailor quickly bailed out, and their new destination—after picking up a certain blonde female who was now wearing an engagement ring—became New York. Of course, there would be a slight detour to North Carolina to pick up Neal’s “blood brother,” as he had taken to calling Jack.
Lu Anne:
Neal was driving cross-country with Al Hinkle, and he came and got me in Denver. It wasn’t snowing in Denver yet when Neal came after me, so I always thought it was around Thanksgiving, but Al swears it was just before Christmas. In any case, we headed straight for Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to pick up Jack. It took us about six or seven days to get there.
Believe me, that trip across the country was a test of endurance for all of us. It was a grueling thing. I don’t remember if Jack wrote much about that or not. Again we had to drive with the windows down because of the frost—and whoever wasn’t driving, the other two had to sit pressed against each other. Just to keep warm we had to hug each other. I mean, we practically had to crawl inside each other, because it was cold, cold, that winter!8 And then, somewhere along the way, we slid off the road and landed in a damn ditch!
Neal got out, cussing of course. Any inconvenience, anything that disturbed the plan, drove him absolutely crazy. He ran off looking for help; and I don’t know where in the world he dug him up, but within a very short time here he came with a farmer and these two horses. And they pulled us out of the ditch. We might have set there for two days, because it really was out in the middle of nowhere.
So we went on our way, but it wasn’t long before we ran out of money for gas. I mean, we literally didn’t have any money. We ended up pawning everything we had except my diamond engagement ring and my watch.9 That money ran out too. The only way we could make it across the country was to keep picking up people, hitchhikers, and getting a couple of bucks from them. Or sometimes we pulled into a gas station, and Neal knew how to run the pump. He’d put in some gas and run it back to zero, put in some more and run it back to zero again, quick before the guy got out and could see what we were doing.
Another time, we picked up an old wino. He wasn’t really that old, but he seemed old to us at the time. He was probably in his forties. He told us he could get us some money for gas if Neal drove him home. So, of course, we went like two hundred miles out of our way and brought him home, and it turned out there was no money. That was when I went foraging in his room. It was the filthiest place I’ve ever been in. It was just a horror. And while Neal was out with this guy trying to find some money, Al and I found these old potatoes underneath the sink. They weren’t rotten, but they were old and soft, sprouted, and we found an old greasy frying pan to cook them in. He had a little two-burner stove, so I burnt the pan off to clean it as much as possible, and then I fried those damn potatoes. They tasted so good! The truth is, they were lousy. I probably couldn’t even stand them if somebody served them to me now, but you should have seen the three of us eating them. You would have thought it was a gourmet meal! Oh God, we were so hungry!
We didn’t get any money from the wino. That was the first and only time—except for myself—that I ever saw Neal use physical violence on anyone. Neal was not a violent person, and most of the time he didn’t get mad enough to use physical violence—except with me. And when Neal would hit me, that was simply emotion. I mean, that’s the way it was with us. It was either loving or fighting, one of the two, with us—especially at that age. But when the wino couldn’t come up with any money, Neal was livid. That was the one time he was mad enough to hurt someone, and he hit the guy. I know it shocked Al and I so much, because we knew that under normal circumstances Neal would never think of hitting another person.
Gabrielle Kerouac and Caroline Kerouac, at home, 1940s. (Courtesy of Paul Blake, Jr.)