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Show RFVER I didn't have the foggiest notion about how the raft could be made into a ski jump, but I assured them that it would make a swell ski jump, especially since it was available for a low, low price. Before the doctor left, lightened of $20, he was the new owner of the Phillip W. Pell. They invited us to go sailing on their friend's sloop, so we spent the afternoon drinking Dixie and Jax beer on a yacht on Lake Ponchatrain. Before we parted, the doctor told me he planned to put an eighty-horsepower outboard on the raft to push it forty miles across the lake to a bayou where the raft would enter its final incarnation as a ski jump. I advised him to pick a calm day and a stout escort and wished him lots of luck. That night we partied with the local reefer smugglers and got high for the first time in weeks. We traded adventure stories and tall tales of the Mississippi River and the Caribbean Sea. We spent out last night on the raft and in the morning we sold our outboard to a redneck for $30. With the help of Rosie's checkbook we took a cheap flight to California that evening. When at last the jet lifted off into the great dark sky, it hit me that the trip was over, it was all at an end. Tomorrow we would not wake up in our moveable bed above the river, we would not watch the river and move with it till the sun went down and sleep came again. During my first night in California I woke up twice to make sure that the raft was safely moored, but the river was as gone as yesterday. The trip had changed us in ways that would take a long time to know: our very bodies were thinner and harder, and I'd grown my first beard. I no longer looked into the future at becoming something, I just tried to be, but California now seemed like an alien land. It was hard getting used to cars, schools, highways, supermarkets, banks, kitchens, stereos, electricity, showers, roofs, and -107- |
