He’d sworn off even beer, and the ceaseless drumming and swaying infiltrated him like a sickness. He wrote Scottie and Ober and Max, read and smoked and slept. At breakfast Palm Springs shimmered like a mirage. After the salt wastes of the desert the Sierras were a welcome respite, the crawling ascent up the grade, then the headlong rush through the dusty ranches and orange groves and garden suburbs with their Okie motor courts and endless rows of stucco bungalows. As they breached the city limits, an eastbound freight blew past, clattering, rocking the car, and then they were racing along the dense, peopled streets of L.A., the horn calling a warning at every crossing. He was searching the skyline for the ivory trophy of city hall when, abruptly, as if they’d lost power, they slowed and coasted into the switchyard, clanking past the stilled freights and shuttling donkey engines and into the dark shed of the station, slipping by amber caution lights and soot-caked pillars, until, with a final, grinding squeal, they lurched to a stop.
