We were somewhere near Barstow[1], in the desert, when the drugs began to take hold[2]. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit dizzy; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, flying around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas[3]. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn[4] animals?”
Then all was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest to speed up the tanning process.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with sunglasses.
“Never mind[5],” I said. “It's your turn to drive.”
I hit the brakes and pulled the Great Red Shark[6] over to the side of the highway. No point mentioning[7]those bats, I thought. Soon the poor bastard will see them himself.
It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred miles to go. Difficult miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted[8]. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would ride it out[9]. Press-registration for the fabulous Mint 400[10] had already started, and we had to be there by four to get our sound-proof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had paid for the reservations and this huge red Chevy[11] convertible we rented… and I was, after all, a professional journalist, so I had to cover the story, for good or ill[12].
The sporting-editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of our car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a galaxy of uppers and downers, and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser[13], a pint of ether, and two dozen amyls.[14] All this had been collected the night before. Driving all over Los Angeles[15], we picked up everything we could get our hands on. It's not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into a serious drug collection, you go as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man on ether. And I knew we’d get into that stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station. We had tried almost everything else, and now – yes, it was time for ether. And then do the next hundred miles in a horrible stupor. The only way to stay focused on ether is to do a lot of amyls – not all at once, but regularly, just enough to drive at ninety miles an hour through Barstow.
“Man, this is the way to travel,” said my attorney. He turned the volume up on the radio, humming along.
I could hardly hear the radio because I turned our tape recorder all the way up on “Sympathy for the Devil”[16]. That was the only tape we had, so we played it over and over again[17], along with the radio and also to keep our rhythm on the road. A constant speed, for some reason, seemed important at the time. Indeed, on a trip like this, one must be careful to avoid acceleration that draws blood to the back of the brain.
* * *
My attorney saw the hitchhiker long before I did.
“Let’s give this boy a lift,” he said, and before I could argue, he stopped, and this poor kid was running up to the car with a big grin on his face, saying, “Damn![18] I never rode in a convertible before!”
“Is that so?” I said. “Well, I guess you’re ready then, eh?”
The kid nodded as we roared off.
“We’re your friends,” said my attorney. “We’re not like the others.”
Oh Christ, I thought, he’s already high[19].
“No more of that talk,” I said sharply. “Or I’ll put the leeches on you.”
He grinned, seeming to understand. Luckily, the noise in the car was so awful – with the wind and the radio and the tape recorder – that the kid in the back seat couldn’t hear a word we were saying. Or could he?
How long can we maintain?[20] I wondered. How long before one of us starts jumping at this boy? What will he think then when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge rays coming down on the car? Well, we’ll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere. Because we can’t let him go. He’ll report us at once to some Nazi, and they’ll track us down[21].
Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? I glanced at my attorney, but he was watching the road, driving our Great Red Shark at a hundred and ten or so. There was no sound from the back seat. Maybe I’d better have a chat with this boy, I thought. Maybe if I explain things, he’ll relax. Of course. I turned around in the seat and gave him a fine big smile.
“By the way,” I said. “There’s one thing you should probably understand.”
He stared at me, not blinking.
“Can you hear me?” I yelled.
He nodded.
“That’s good,” I said. “Because I want you to know that we’re on our way to Las Vegas to find the American Dream
