October 13, 2020.

Fait Accompli, Chapter Two.

My gal's name is Annie Xiu and she lives catty-corner off Commercial Street and Grant and she owns a car. She comes from money but hasn't had as much since 1906 when the city burned up.

I ask to take her car to Nevada and she says no. And calls me a lousy bum and a no-good louse and says last time she saw me she told me to climb onto the roof of the Shell Building and take a long walk. I remember a little of the night she's describing, and start to feel the feeling I always get in my stomach when I start to remember things like this, like a dog's kicking me from the inside.

I leave Annie's apartment and go buy the meatball sandwich the Polish signmaker told me about, and it's pretty O.K., but I can't enjoy it.

I pack the necessaries for a week and buy a rail ticket that takes me across the border to Fernley. I fall asleep most of the way. The Sheriff there is a damp eyed Irishman I knew from back in my Army days. His name is Dinnick and I ask him how about he tells me about where I'm headed and how he's doing these days since taking up Sheriffing.

He tells me Sheriffing is fine and Fernley's been good to him especially since the transcontinental highway came through, although the markets last year had hurt Fernley just like it hurt everybody, he supposes, although it seems like it hurt Fernley a little less since they're on the transcontinental highway and the Southern Pacific line and people around here don't trust the banks anyhow, so most of the money didn't disappear, although it probably got a little better hidden because people have been being mighty protective about what they have and don't have since strangers roll through town on their way to California or heading back East, and they have had some fights and even a few killings, which he was able to clean up O.K. but he doesn't know how the next few years are going to shake out but he supposes neither does anybody.

I point to the place I'm going to on the map. He says it's in the Mojave and I say I know. He asks if I've ever done any desert-hiking and I ask can't I take a car there and he says no. I can take a car to there (he points at a little smudge on the map) but after that it's a ten, eleven mile hike to there (he points to where I'm going).

This makes me want to throw up just thinking about it. This makes me want to lay down on the floor of the room and die. I curse the University men. I curse Dinnick for telling me. I curse the sun and the moon. I haven't walked ten miles in ten months. I'm soft and fat and lazy and full of bad humor, and now I am going to get fried to a red button and crisp from dehydration and my skeleton will crumble into the hot sand and I will be forgotten for today and endless tomorrows.

I get over it and we figure out a way together for me to get there. He gives me advice. I write it down in my notebook. He gives me a good pair of boots and a water flask and a funny looking floppy hat, and I give him a sawbuck as insurance that I'll bring them back.

I regret giving him the sawbuck but with the money the University men gave me up front I can afford it. I'm just tight. I say good-bye and he says good-luck.

I hitch down to Tonopah with a truck carrying jarred fruit in bales of straw, sharing half a bottle of gin with the driver - the dry air already leeching the breath out of my lungs - and I hitch the rest of the way with a farmer (of what? I think, looking out over the barren arid plains) to the smudge on the map (which I find out is called Dinnerset) for the rest of the gin.

I congratulate myself on packing four bottles, which at the time I considered might be excessive.

By the time I get to Dinnerset it is already the freezing night of the desert and I am blind with sleep. I ask around and find a room someone is willing to rent to me for the night. As I lay down I realize I am so tired I cannot remember the name of who rented me the room, nor their face.

Before falling asleep, I take my notebook and I write down the price of the train ticket, the room, the bottle of gin, so as to later expense the University men. After an hour of fitful sleep, I rise, and add the price of the meatball sandwich.

The slumber I then sink into is of the deepest wells from which I have ever supped.