Read Online Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins - Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Robbins
Ads: Link
cowgirl.
On a dead run, olives bouncing out of her jacket, she reached the corner where Hull Street was intersected by U.S. Route 1—in 1960 still the principal north-south interstate highway.
By the time she got her arm in the air, the light had changed and the first car, a boatish, blue Lincoln with Jersey plates, was already passing. For a second, it appeared as if she were late, as if the driver had missed her gesture. But no, some aspect of it—a glint of neon on the nail, perhaps—snagged the hem of his vision. He glanced back in time to see the entire appendage, immense, scrubbed, lubricated, zeppelinlike, looking as fresh and newborn as an egg, invoking a strange interplay between the joyful and the ominous, as it swam at eye-level past his opposite rear window.
He braked.
What else could he do?
“Going north?” asked Sissy for openers as the door swung toward her like a slab of candied sky. Were it any other direction she wouldn't have cared.
“You bet your raggedy white ass I am,” said the driver, grinning sardonically. He was black-skinned and beret-topped, and it was difficult to ascertain which there were the more of, saxophones in his back seat or gold teeth in his mouth. Sissy hesitated. But what the hell? In imitation of the Wonder Bread, she said to herself, “This is it; what is there to lose?” She boarded.
Actually, there was a fine style about the driver, about the tingle of treasure when he grinned, about the billow of marijuana smoke in which he sat (how different from the celebrated smokes of Richmond!); about the gardenia in his lapel and the flask by his side, about the degree to which his cameoed fingers turned up the volume on the radio, about the speed at which he made that big Lincoln rocket out of the tobacco slums, forever and forever, bearing Sissy Hankshaw up to the heights.
And Sissy Hankshaw, knees knocking with thrill and fear, and not knowing what else to do, reached into her scrawny coat and offered the black man a slice of cheese.
COWGIRL INTERLUDE (CHUCK WAGON)
Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy. To smoke a cigar is to end a long separation; to burn down a police station is to hold homecoming for billions of happy molecules.
Beside a marshy lake in an obscure sector of the Dakotas, a campfire was smiling its head off. Around it, however, there arose from a group of cowgirls several flares of discontent. Some of the girls were complaining that their stew was tasteless and bland.
“This stew is bland,” said one girl.
“It's like milk from a sick cow,” said another.
Debbie, on cook duty that day, was defensive. “But spices aren't good for you,” she said. “Spices burn the tummy and inflame the senses,” she went on, using two metaphors improperly inspired by the fire.
The dissatisfied diners scoffed, and because little Debbie looked so near to tears, Bonanza Jellybean spoke in her behalf. “It's a well-known fact,” said Jelly, “that the reason India is overpopulated is because curry powder is an aphrodisiac.”
Delores del Ruby flicked an ember out of the reunion with a sharp crack of her whip. “Bullshit,” said Delores. “There isn't but one aphrodisiac in the world.
“And that's strange stuff.”
15.
"HITCHHIKING IS NOT A SPORT. It is not an art. It certainly isn't work, for it requires no particular ability nor does it produce anything of value. It's an adventure, I suppose, but a shallow, ignoble adventure. Hitchhiking is parasitic, no more than a reckless panhandling, as far as I can see."
Those were the words of Julian Gitche, spoken in exasperation to Sissy Hankshaw. Sissy did not bother to answer Julian's charges, and the author, who is ambivalent about the whole matter of hitchhiking, certainly is not going to answer them for her.
From Whitman to Steinbeck to Kerouac, and beyond to the restless broods of the seventies, the
On a dead run, olives bouncing out of her jacket, she reached the corner where Hull Street was intersected by U.S. Route 1—in 1960 still the principal north-south interstate highway.
By the time she got her arm in the air, the light had changed and the first car, a boatish, blue Lincoln with Jersey plates, was already passing. For a second, it appeared as if she were late, as if the driver had missed her gesture. But no, some aspect of it—a glint of neon on the nail, perhaps—snagged the hem of his vision. He glanced back in time to see the entire appendage, immense, scrubbed, lubricated, zeppelinlike, looking as fresh and newborn as an egg, invoking a strange interplay between the joyful and the ominous, as it swam at eye-level past his opposite rear window.
He braked.
What else could he do?
“Going north?” asked Sissy for openers as the door swung toward her like a slab of candied sky. Were it any other direction she wouldn't have cared.
“You bet your raggedy white ass I am,” said the driver, grinning sardonically. He was black-skinned and beret-topped, and it was difficult to ascertain which there were the more of, saxophones in his back seat or gold teeth in his mouth. Sissy hesitated. But what the hell? In imitation of the Wonder Bread, she said to herself, “This is it; what is there to lose?” She boarded.
Actually, there was a fine style about the driver, about the tingle of treasure when he grinned, about the billow of marijuana smoke in which he sat (how different from the celebrated smokes of Richmond!); about the gardenia in his lapel and the flask by his side, about the degree to which his cameoed fingers turned up the volume on the radio, about the speed at which he made that big Lincoln rocket out of the tobacco slums, forever and forever, bearing Sissy Hankshaw up to the heights.
And Sissy Hankshaw, knees knocking with thrill and fear, and not knowing what else to do, reached into her scrawny coat and offered the black man a slice of cheese.
COWGIRL INTERLUDE (CHUCK WAGON)
Fire is the reuniting of matter with oxygen. If one bears that in mind, every blaze may be seen as a reunion, an occasion of chemical joy. To smoke a cigar is to end a long separation; to burn down a police station is to hold homecoming for billions of happy molecules.
Beside a marshy lake in an obscure sector of the Dakotas, a campfire was smiling its head off. Around it, however, there arose from a group of cowgirls several flares of discontent. Some of the girls were complaining that their stew was tasteless and bland.
“This stew is bland,” said one girl.
“It's like milk from a sick cow,” said another.
Debbie, on cook duty that day, was defensive. “But spices aren't good for you,” she said. “Spices burn the tummy and inflame the senses,” she went on, using two metaphors improperly inspired by the fire.
The dissatisfied diners scoffed, and because little Debbie looked so near to tears, Bonanza Jellybean spoke in her behalf. “It's a well-known fact,” said Jelly, “that the reason India is overpopulated is because curry powder is an aphrodisiac.”
Delores del Ruby flicked an ember out of the reunion with a sharp crack of her whip. “Bullshit,” said Delores. “There isn't but one aphrodisiac in the world.
“And that's strange stuff.”
15.
"HITCHHIKING IS NOT A SPORT. It is not an art. It certainly isn't work, for it requires no particular ability nor does it produce anything of value. It's an adventure, I suppose, but a shallow, ignoble adventure. Hitchhiking is parasitic, no more than a reckless panhandling, as far as I can see."
Those were the words of Julian Gitche, spoken in exasperation to Sissy Hankshaw. Sissy did not bother to answer Julian's charges, and the author, who is ambivalent about the whole matter of hitchhiking, certainly is not going to answer them for her.
From Whitman to Steinbeck to Kerouac, and beyond to the restless broods of the seventies, the
Similar Books
