The Truth Comes out (Sept. 23, 1972)

Original typed journal page typos, misspellings and all

Saturday, Sept. 23, 1972

The whole truth finally comes out!

Jimmy and Ginger kicked Alf out, making him fly back early from California.

This is the kind of thing we expected on this coast – Alf making a pig of himself as usual. Most people don’t let the clown in their houses these days. For when he comes, he has all the manners of a hungry pig, opening refrigerators, cabinets and drawers at will and taking what he wants.

But the California trip was different. You’d expect him to be on his best behavior. But Jimmy seemed to have sensed someone on as they raced westward.

I suppose Alf was looking to see Ginger again, looking to get even for that small incident that happened two years ago when Jimmy swept her out of his arms (Jimmy’s description, not Ginger’s).

In either case, there was still time for a few drinks, Alf stopping at red neck places for a six to go, Jimmy urging him on. There wasn’t time to fool around. Too much pain. Too many aches.

Although it isn’t quite clear what happened to Jimmy and Ginger in Parsippany it is clear that the trip was his way of making up.

And Alf nearly spoiled it. Not the racing west. Jimmy didn’t care all that much about what Alf did when he slept. Jimmy would just open his eyes long enough to see that they were still moving. He didn’t dare question how fast, just as long as they didn’t stop.

When they did, Jimmy made sure there were no fights, no taunting of the red necks. Alf, however, was not that much different from the rednecks themselves, a modern version of them, that’s all, but still had an incredible talent for rubbing people the wrong way. One word could mean disaster for both Alf and Jimmy.

“We crossed the country in record time,” Jimmy says, though the time wasn’t much shorter than the three days it took me and Louise to hitch across some years before.

(I almost asked if he had seen Louise along the route, knowing how fate gets queer sometimes and shoves people in each other’s way. But I assumed that if he saw Louise, he would have mentioned it.)

They got to San Francisco two days and twelve hours after they left New Jersey. Alf didn’t sleep and Jimmy in the end refused to let him drive.

Once there, however, things changed.

Alf reverted to is old self and almost immediately got drunk, dragging himself back to the house where Jimmy and Ginger were staying.

At one sober point, Alf actually walked into the room of a sick person there, sat on the edge of the bed and ate the sick person’s lunch, burped, then left again.

“It got so bad,” Jimmy confided from the passenger side of Frank’s car (when telling us this story yesterday), “that those people were about to toss me, Ginger and Alf out. So, I asked him to leave.”

Jimmy suggested Alf leave which is something entirely different. He said that there wouldn’t be any room in the car for the man (on the way back) and that Alf should fly home early.

Alf, dumbfounded, refused and Jimmy then said Alf would sleep in the street if he didn’t.

No one wanted the man in their house.

So, Alf flew home and hid in Rahway.

Jimmy left a week later and got himself and Ginger stuck in Nebraska where he and Ginger rediscovered their love.

There is something strange about being around this new and reformed Jimmy, something – well, unnerving, as if this new self was not to be trusted completely. (or if trusted, then done so with the utmost care and pre-planning and with the determination of what exactly is different about him and how it fits into our lives.

For much of this talk, Frank stayed silent, a moody, angry silence at the fate that kept him home, that kept him from another adventure.

I do believe Frank sees himself as Bilbo. If so, then he’s too much entitled, and (frustrated) at not being center stage.

Perhaps that’s it. A shift of emphasis. Frank slowing fading away as Jimmy grows.