Chapter 4

By the time Elaine arrived at the barge she had made up her mind. It was unthinkable to leave Brenda in Warren Lasswell's hands, so she had to follow them to Mexico and try to get Brenda away from him. That wasn't going to be easy because Brenda didn't want to get away. Warren had her hooked by his oily promises of fame and by the needle as well.

Elaine felt alone and lost as she walked along the plank, gazing into the dirty water. Brenda had slapped her. She had turned away from her and gone off with a sick beast like Warren Lasswell.

If she had known it would turn out like this, maybe she wouldn't have been so eager to come to California. She might have been more sympathetic of her mother's fears. This wasn't the way she had planned and dreamed about it. But how could she know that Brenda had this fatal weakness in her nature?

A wave caught the barge and shifted it beneath her feet, causing her to stumble. She steadied herself against the door and went through. Lola was sitting alone at the table smoking a cigarette and staring into an empty coffee cup.

"Where's Stew?" Elaine asked.

"He left. Wanted to comb the beach for wood."

Elaine sat down at the table and sighed.

"Brenda's gone to Mexico."

"Mexico?"

"She ran off with Warren to San Miguel," Elaine said with a trace of scorn. "She's going to paint masterpieces for her show in New York."

Lola gave her a wide-eyed stare with her smoky gray eyes. Her mouth was open until she closed it. She picked her nose and giggled.

"He's really got her hung up."

"In more ways than one," Elaine said sadly.

"She's shooting it up with the needle?"

"She's hooked bad."

"That's what comes from hanging around with creepy types," Lola said, shrugging her thin shoulders inside the big shirt she was still wearing like a tent.

"I can't let him do this to her," Elaine said. "I'm got to go after them."

"To Mexico?" Lola gave her a crazy stare. "Have you flipped your lid?"

"I have to go."

"Why, girl, that's way over the hill. What are yon going to use for money?"

"I've got a few dollars."

"Enough for a bus ticket?"

"I'll hitchhike."

Lola shrugged and pushed out her Up. "Sounds like a hangar."

"Why don't you come with me?" Elaine said. "I don't want to go alone."

"And leave Stew?"

"He's not the only man in the world."

"That's a happy fact." She puffed out her lips. "But what about our stuff? We can't carry it all."

"Stew will take care of it for us."

Lola shoved away a stack of dirty plates and put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin. She got a faraway look in her eyes. She thought for a while and made funny noises with her mouth.

"Man, what a kick," she said at last, snapping her fingers. "When do we leave?"

"Right now."

"I'll buy it."

"All right. Now we have to think about money," Elaine said, getting up impatiently. "How much do you have?"

"I'm busted. I gave Stew my last buck last night far a bottle of wine. How about the kitty?"

Elaine took a jar down from the shelf and dumped it on the table. There was one folded dollar bill and a handful of coins. She counted them as she slid them into her palm.

"Four dollars and a few pennies. I've got another five bucks in my kick."

"That's not much," Lola said, brushing back a straggle of yellow hair. "I hear it gets awful hungry down there in Mexico."

"Well have to get more."

"Yeah, but tell me where."

"Sell something."

"What we've got-nobody's buying."

"All right," Elaine said. "Then well go back to Warren's house. He should have plenty to sell."

"He might not take kindly to that"

"Who cares?"

"I don't...."

As fast as they pulled out, he didn't take time to lock up the house. If he did, then we'll find a way in."

"Let's go-"

Lola jumped up. The big shirt flapped about her bare knees. She pulled the shirt over her head and ran naked to the box where she kept her clothes. She climbed into a skin-tight pair of jeans and pulled on a heavy blue T-shirt.

Elaine drug two suitcases from under the bunk and threw them open on the mattress. She packed some clothes into one of the suitcases. Lola packed the other.

"Are we going to rug these things clear up the hill to Warren's place?"

"Well get them later," Elaine said.

"Don't forget-we've got to leave a note for Stew. He can store the rest of our stuff at his pad."

Elaine was impatient to be going. She lit a cigarette and went onto the deck while Lola finished packing. When Lola came out they headed up the hill at a fast walk.

It was almost noon. The sun was high overhead and it had burned through the last of the fog, and now it was pouring down on Elaine's bare head.

Lola ignored the sun and started a crazy dance in the street, whirling and throwing out her arms. Her hair fell down like dirty yellow strings on her grinning face.

"Whee-" she shouted at the sky. "I'm glad you got on this Mexico kick. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Listen, I hear that San Miguel is a swinging place. Stew's buddy was there for a year. He said there's tequila running in the streets. Just like the promised land...."

She laughed and danced and tossed her head like a crazy rag doll.

All at once Elaine caught the fever from Lola and it really did sound like a kick. She had begun to get fed up with the negative, too-bookish, too-far out talk of her friends in Sausalito and she wanted to get out where the air was clear and there would be new sights and sounds. New things to paint. New kicks, and new boys.

She wanted a taste of virility after the sick, sad jaundice of the bearded ones like Martin Dietrich. She had always wanted to bum across the country. It had been an old and impossible dream. Now she was glad she had a reason.

They arrived at Warren Lasswell's big house, which already had the peculiar look of emptiness. The door was locked, but Lola found a window that slid up. They crawled through it into a bedroom. Elaine pulled the window down and started searching through the drawers of the big dresser, but they were all empty.

Lola was in the kitchen taking food from the refrigerator and stuffing it into a sack. She pulled out a carton of import beer and dug around the built-ins until she found an opener.

"Why, the man was crazy to leave all this stuff."

"He can afford it."

"Listen, gal," Lola said excitedly. "Let's stay here for a few days and do nothing but eat I've never seen so much food."

She was chewing on a ham she had found, holding it in both hands by the butt end like a huge drumstick. Elaine realized that she was hungry too. She made a sandwich from beef and cheese that she found in the refrigerator and opened a bottle of beer.

"I'm going to find something we can sell," Elaine said.

She carried the sandwich and beer with her. She went through the drawers of a desk and found a transistor radio. She tucked it under her arm and kept searching, going from room to room until she covered the house.

Lola had picked up nothing but food. She was munching an apple and carrying a big paper sack.

Elaine had found a pair of binoculars and a Bulova wrist watch and an electric razor. She found a sack in the kitchen to carry them in. They went out the door, not bothering to lock it.

"I'll tell Stew in the note to come up and help himself," Lola said.

When they got back to the barge they packed all the canned food in the suitcases among their clothes. Elaine packed the things she had stolen, which she planned to sell later. It should provide them with money when they ran low.

They snapped the suitcases shut, and there was nothing else to do but go. They went across the tilting plank and onto the dock.

The day was warm and beautiful, a perfect time for setting out into the fearless unknown. Elaine wasn't afraid. Life would treat them gently. Though there was the sad, sobering thought that at the other end of the journey was Brenda, sick and needing help. But that would be solved in time.

Right now she was glad to be moving. She felt the fire of adventure in her blood.

Hitchhiking was new to both of them, but they decided very quickly that the traffic problem was too much to tackle and they would have to get across the bay and into the country before they could expect to find a ride going in the direction of Mexico.

They stopped at a filling station and picked up a map, and after studying it over they decided to buy a bus ticket to San Leandro.

There was a thirty minute wait in the Greyhound bus station, and then they were riding high across the Golden Gate, up and down Frisco hills and across the curving eight mile bridge to Oakland.

It was early afternoon when they got out at San Leandro, and they found that they were still on city streets. They rode a city bus to the edge of town and began holding up their thumbs.

In less than a minute they had their first ride. A car full of high school boys who made brakes squeal coming to a stop. They had to sit on laps in back, but they rode almost to Hayward with hands timorously touching their bottoms.

Then two old ladies stopped for them and drove them to the turnoff at Castro Valley, sniffing down their noses and plying them with veiled questions about their homes and mothers and why they were on the road.

They had to walk a mile to SO Highway and the suitcases got heavy as lead. The sun was still high in the sky and it bore down on them with summer intensity. At last Elaine dug through the suitcase and found a half slip which she tied around her head for a scarf.

They waited for a break in the traffic and dodged across the highway. Heading east, they started waving their thumbs at passing cars, hoping to make it to Modesto by nightfall. Though they hadn't any idea where they would sleep.

They got a ride with a man driving a dump truck full of gravel who kept slipping his hand onto Lola's knee. She got tired of pushing it off and left it there.

He had a pimply grin and he chewed a pink wad of bubble gum which he blew up and popped through his lips.

He kept asking them to wait for him in a tavern he would take them to until he got off work and they'd 'have a ball'.

"But, darling," Lola teased. "I'm an unkissed virgin, and my mother would be horrified if she knew...."

He let them off at a country road just outside of Dublin. Then in another minute they caught a ride in a big transport truck. They went bucking and rolling down the highway in the high cab while the burly driver's face grew flushed and he glanced at them from the side of his eye.

At Manteca he turned north, so they climbed down out of the cab. The sun was lower now, just above the rim of the mountains to the west.

They had been standing there less than a minute when a car coming from the south began applying brakes a quarter of a mile away and pulled off on the shoulder across the road from them. It was a rattletrap Ford with a dent in the side and a loose tailpipe that chattered while the motor idled. Three men sat crowded together in the front seat.

"Where you headed, girls?" the grinning driver called across to them.

"Mexico-" Lola yelled.

"Ycu don't say." The driver gave a crazy laugh. "We're headed for El Paso."

"You're going in the wrong direction," Elaine said. "We got to run up to Sacramento and get our clothes. Then we're headed back. Come on ... Lola looked at Elaine and made a silly face. "Why not?"

Elaine nodded. They grabbed the suitcases and ran across the road. By that time one of the men was in the back seat and another one was holding the front door open.

"In here, doll," he said to Lola.

Elaine climbed into the back and Lola got sandwiched in front between the driver and the other man. They wrestled with the two suitcases until they got them arranged on the floor, and then they took off.

It was a wild ride. The three men had a half-full fifth of Schenley's and they were passing it around. Lola took a drink. She gasped and giggled and handed the bottle back to Elaine, who also tilted it to her lips. She never refused a drink, and this stuff was better than the wine she usually had to drink because it was all she could afford.

They rolled down the highway with the Ford swinging loosely from side to side and the wind leaking through the cracked windows. They all drank, and Elaine began to feel the tiny pinpricks in her skin and the tingle of excitement. The whiskey was stronger than wine, and it slipped up on her.

The man sitting in the back seat with her drained the last shot from the bottle and leaned out the window to toss it in a looping arc at a big billboard. Then he slid over against her and put his arm around her waist.

He wasn't so bad that she disliked smooching with him a little. If she was sober it might have been different, but the whiskey glow had changed that.

They smooched a while and she fought his hands with mild protest. He was breathing like a winded horse. She shoved him away when he tried to unzip her jeans.

It was dusk with the glow of electric lights winking on in the towns and farms, and then it was dark all at once. They pulled up in the dark at a roadhouse and she could see the glow of Sacramento not very far away.

All of them piled out of the car and went inside where there was a haze of smoke and red neon tubes and the fanfare of a clamorous juke box.

They sat at a table while the men pinched her legs and poured down the drinks that were in front of them. And then they danced on a narrow space surrounded by tables and lighted by the rainbow glow of the big squawking box.

Back at the table the talk turned to where they were going to spend the night, and Elaine shook her head to clear away the cobwebs. She let her drink sit before her untouched.

"When are we leaving for FJ Paso?" she said to the man sitting across the table.

"Why do you gals want to go to El Paso?"

"I got a yen to see Texas," Lola said, blowing a fringe of yellow hair off her forehead.

"Oh, you're going to El Paso, Texas"

"Where the hell did you think we were going?"

"El Paso, Oregon."

"There ain't no such animal."

"Is that a fact?"

"I think we've been had, Elaine," Lola said with a star, licking her dry cracked lips.

"Well, baby, make the most of it ... one of the men said.

Elaine reached for the drink in front of her, and then she pulled back her hand. She was beginning to sober up. The next time Lola looked at her she made a signal with her eyes. Then she stood up, holding her stomach.

"I think I'm sick."

"I'll help you, honey."

Lola followed her to the John. As soon as they locked the door Lola laughed and fell with her back against the wall.

"Live and learn, eh, kid? Whata we do now-let them maul us all night for a place to sleep?"

"They're sorta creepy," Elaine said.

"Then let's blow."

"O.K."

There was a small window in back. They unhooked the screen and pushed it out. Then, standing on the stool lid, they wormed their way through and dropped to the ground.

At the car they grabbed their suitcases and took off running along the highway.

"We've got to grab a ride fast," Elaine said. "Before they come looking for us."

"I'll take care of that."

Lola ran out onto the highway and stood waving her arms at a pair of approaching headlights. The cry of brakes split the night. The car hunched up and slide to a stop. They ran up and pulled open the door.

Two boys sat in the front seat. It was a better car. It had a new smell to it. The driver looked back at them before he started up. He was mad.

"What are you trying to do, kill yourself? You crazy nut."

"Don't sweat it, hon," Lola said coolly. "Drive on, and don't spare the horses."

The other boy in the front seat turned around and looked them over while they rolled down the highway. He was slickly handsome with too much hair that duck-tailed on the back of his neck.

"Where you girls headed?"

"Mexico."

"Funny way to get there."

"Why? What direction are we going?"

"East." The guy put his chin on his arm and continued to stare. "We're going to Tahoe, girls. Gonna stop at a motel. We'll put you up for the night."

Lola giggled. Elaine leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. What the hell, she thought, we've got to sleep sometime.