Dawn is most horrible of all with the owls suddenly calling back and forth in the misty moon haunt—And even worse than dawn is morning, the bright sun only GLARING in on my pain, making it all brighter, hotter, more maddening, more nervewracking—I even go roaming up and down the valley in the bright Sunday morning sunshine with bag under arm looking hopelessly for some spot to sleep in—As soon as I find a spot of grass by the path I realize I cant lie down there because the tourists might walk by and see me—As soon as I find a glade near the creek I realize it’s too sinister there, like Hemingway’s darker part of the swamp where “the fishing would be more tragic” somehow—All the haunts and glades having certain special evil forces concentrated there and driving me away—So haunted I go wandering up and down the canyon crying with that bag under my arm: “What on earth’s happened to me? and how can earth be like that?”
Am I not a human being and have done my best as well as anybody else? never really trying to hurt anybody or half-hearted cursing Heaven?—The words I’d studied all my life have suddenly gotten to me in all their serious and definite deathliness, never more I be a “happy poet” “Singing” “about death” and allied romantic matters, “Go thou crumb of dust you with your silt of a billion years, here’s a billion pieces of silt for you, shake that out of your shaker”—And all the green nature of the canyon now waving in the morning sun looking like a cruel idiot convocation.
Coming back to the sleepers and staring at them wild eyed like my brother’d once stared at me in the dark over my crib, staring at them not only enviously but lonely inhuman isolation from their simple sleeping minds—“But they all look dead!” I’m carking in my canyon, “Sleep is death, everything is death!”
The horrible climax coming when the others finally get up and pook about making a troubled breakfast, and I’ve told Dave I cant possibly stay here another minute, he must drive us all back to town, “Okay but I sure wish we could stay a week like Romana wants to do,”—“Well you drive me and come back”—“Well I dunno if Monsanta would like that we’ve already dirtied up the place aplenty, in fact we’ve got to dig a garbage pit and get rid of the junk”—Billie offers to dig the garbage pit but does so by digging a neat tiny coffinshaped grave instead of just a garbage hole—Even Dave Wain blinks to see it—It’s exactly the size fit for putting a little dead Elliott in it, Dave is thinking the same thing I am I can tell by a glance he gives me—We’ve all read Freud sufficiently to understand something there—Besides little Elliott’s been crying all morning and has had two beatings both of them ending up crying and Billie saying she cant stand it any more she’s going to kill herself—
And Romana too notices it, the perfect 4 foot by 3 foot neatly sided grave like you’re ready to sink a little box in it—Horrifying me so much I take the shovel and go down to dump junk into it and mess up the neat pattern somehow but little Elliott starts screaming and grabs the shovel and refuses I go near the hole—So Billie herself goes and starts filling the garbage in but then looks at me significantly (I’m sure sometimes she really did aspire to make me crazy) “Do you want to finish the job yourself?”—“What do you mean?”—“Cover the earth on, do the honors?”—“What do you mean do the honors!”—“Well I said I’d dig the garbage pit and I’ve done that, aint you supposed to do the rest?”—Dave Wain is watching fascinated, there’s something screwy he sees there too, something cold and frightening—“Well okay” I say, “I’ll dump the earth over it and tamp it down” but I go down to do this Elliott is screaming “NO no no no no!” (“My God, the fishes’ bones are in that grave” I realize too)—“What’s the matter he wont let me go near that hole! why did you make it look like a grave?” I finally yell—But Billie is only smiling quietly and steadily at me, over the grave, shovel in hand, the kid weeping tugging the shovel, rushing up to block my way, trying to shove me back with his little hands—I cant understand any of it—He’s screaming as I grab the shovel as tho I’m about to bury Billie in there or something or himself maybe—“What’s the matter with this kid is he a cretin?” I yell.
With the same quiet steady smile Billie says “Oh you’re so fucking neurotic!”
I simply get mad and dump earth over the garbage and tromp it all down and say “The hell with all this madness!”
I get mad and stomp up on the porch and throw myself in the canvas chair and close my eyes—Dave Wain says he’s going down the road to investigate the canyon a bit and when he comes back the girls will have finished packing and we’ll all leave—Dave goes off, the girls clean up and sweep, the little kid is sleeping and suddenly hopelessly and completely finished I sit there in the hot sun and close my eyes: and there’s the golden swarming peace of Heaven in my eyelids—It comes with a sure hand a soft blessing as big as it is beneficent, i.e. endless—I’ve fallen asleep.
I've fallen asleep in a strange way, with my hands clasped behind my head thinking I’m just going to sit there and think, but I’m sleeping like that, and when I wake up just one short minute later I realize the two girls are both sitting behind me in absolute silence—When I’d sat down they were sweeping, but now they were squatting behind my back, facing each other, not a word—I turn and see them there—Blessed relief has come to me from just that minute—Everything has washed away—I’m perfectly normal again—Dave Wain is down the road looking at fields and flowers—I’m sitting smiling in the sun, the birds sing again, all’s well again.
I still cant understand it.
Most of all I cant understand the miraculousness of the silence of the girls and the sleeping boy and the silence of Dave Wain in the fields—Just a golden wash of goodness has spread over all and over all my body and mind—All the dark torture is a memory—I know now I can get out of there, we’ll drive back to the City, I’ll take Billie home, I’ll say goodbye to her properly, she wont commit no suicide or do anything wrong, she’ll forget me, her life’ll go on, Romana’s life will go on, old Dave will manage somehow, I’ll forgive them and explain everything (as I’m doing now)—And Cody, and George Baso, and ravened McLear and perfect starry Fagan, they’ll all pass through one way or the other—I’ll stay with Monsanto at his home a few days and he’ll smile and show me how to be happy awhile, we’ll drink dry wine instead of sweet and have quiet evenings in his home—Arthur Ma will come to quietly draw pictures at my side—Monsanto will say “That’s all there is to it, take it easy, everything’s okay, dont take things too serious, it’s bad enough as it is without you going the deep end over imaginary conceptions just like you always said yourself”—I’ll get my ticket and say goodbye on a flower day and leave all San Francisco behind and go back home across autumn America and it’ll all be like it was in the beginning—Simple golden eternity blessing all—Nothing ever happened—Not even this—St. Carolyn by the Sea will go on being golden one way or the other—The little boy will grow up and be a great man—There’ll be farewells and smiles—My mother’ll be waiting for me glad—The corner of the yard where Tyke is buried will be a new and fragrant shrine making my home more homelike somehow—On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars—Something good will come out of all things yet—And it will be golden and eternal just like that—There’s no need to say another word.