Page:Big Sur (1963).djvu/173

RV 163 (BIG SUR163) As we eat Dave announces that he and I are sick from too much drinking and by God we’re going to reform and see to it that we shape up, then he launches into stories as usual, ending in a talkative ordinary supper that I think will sorta straighten me out at first but after supper I feel even worse, “That fish has all the death of otters and mouses and snakes right in it or something” I’m thinking—Billie is quietly washing the dishes without complaint, Dave is gladly smoking after-dinner cigarettes on the porch, but here I am again mooning by the creek hiding from all of them each five minutes tho I cant understand what makes me do it—I HAVE to get out of there—But I have no right to STAY AWAY—So I keep coming back but it’s all an insane revolving automatic directionless circle of anxiety, back and forth, around and around, till they’re really by now so perturbed by my increasing silent departures and creepy returns they’re all sitting without a word by the stove but now their heads are together and they’re whispering—From the woods I see those three shadowy heads whispering me by the stove—What’s Dave saying?—And why do they look like they’re plotting something further?—Can it be it was all arranged by Dave Wain via Cody that I would meet Billie and be driven mad and now they’ve got me alone in the woods and are going to give me final poisons tonight that will utterly remove all my control so that in the morning I’ll have to go to a hospital forever and never write another line?—Dave Wain is jealous because I wrote 10 novels?—Billie has been assigned by Cody to get me to marry her so he’ll get all my money? Romana is a member of the expert poisoning society (I've heard her mention tree spirits already, earlier in the car, and she’s sung some strange songs the night before)—The three of them, Dave Wain in fact the chief conspirator because I know he does have amphetomine on his person and the needles in a little box, just one injection of a tomato, or of a portion of fish, or drops into a bottle of wine, and