A
siren?
It's a
highway patrolman, which immediately seems like the funniest thing in
the history of the world.
Smoke is pouring out of the woods and they are all sailing through
leaf explosions in the sky, but the cop is bugged about this
freaking bus.
The
cop yanks the bus over to the side and he starts going through a kind of
traffic-safety inspection of the big gross bus, while more and more of the smoke is billowing out of the woods.
Man, the
license plate is on wrong and there's no light over the license plate and this turn signal looks bad and how about the brakes, let's see that hand brake there.
Cassady,
the driver, is already into a long
monologue for the guy, only he is throwing in all kinds of sirs:
"Well, yes sir, this is a
Hammond bi-valve serrated brake, you understand sir, had it put on in a truck ro-de-o in
Springfield, Oregon, had to back through a slalom course of
baby's bottles and
yellow nappies, in the
existential culmination of
Oregon, lots of
outhouse freaks up there, you understand, sir, a punctual sort of a state sir, yes sir, holds to
28,000 pounds, 28,000 pounds, you just look right here, sir, tested by a pure-blooded
Shell Station attendant in
Springfield, Oregon, winter of
'62, his
gumball boots never froze, you understand sir, 28,000 pounds hold right here - "
Whereupon he yanks back on the hand-brake as if it's attached to something, which it isn't, it is just dangling there, and jams his foot on the regular brake, and the bus shudders as if the hand brake has
a hell of a bite, but the cop is thoroughly befuddled now, anyway, because Cassady's monologue has confused him, for one thing, and what the hell are these...people doing.
By this time
everybody is
off the bus rolling in the brown grass by the shoulder, laughing, giggling, yahooing,
zonked to the skies on
acid, because, mon, the woods are burning, the whole world is on fire, and a Cassady monologue on automotive safety is rising up from out of his throat like
weenie smoke, as if the
great god Speed were frying in his innards, and the cop, representative of the people of
California in this total freaking situation, is all hung up on a hand brake that doesn't exist in the first place.
And the cop, all he can see is a bunch of crazies in
screaming orange and green costumes,
masks,
boys and girls,
men and women, twelve or fourteen of them, lying in the grass and making hideously crazy sounds -
christ almighty, why the hell does he have to contend with ... So he wheels around and says, "What are you, uh - show people?"
"That's right, officer,"
Kesey says.
"We're show people. It's been
a long row to hoe, I can tell you, and it's gonna be a long row to hoe, but that's the business."
"Well, " says the cop, "you fix up those things and..." He starts backing off toward his car, cutting one last look at the crazies. "...And watch it next time..." And he guns on off. ~
Tom Wolfe