sissy.
just lucky i guess.
what about crazy horse?
going north?
american cheese. the king of road food.
i was a successful model once.
i was the yoni yum feminine-hygiene dew girl from 1965 to 1970, but got laid off.
yep.
i'm the best.
when i was younger, i hitchhiked one hundred and twenty-seven hours without stopping, without food or sleep, crossed the continent twice in six days, cooled my thumbs in both oceans and caught rides after midnight on unlighted highways.
as i developed, however, i grew more concerned with subtleties and nuances of style. time in terms of m.p.h. no longer interested me. i began to hitchhike in something akin to geological time: slow, ancient, vast. when i am really moving, stopping car after car after car, moving so freely, so clearly, so delicately that even the sex maniacs and the cops can only blink and let me pass, then i embody the rhythms of the universe. i am in a state of grace.
right off, i don't remember how old i was when i found out i was part indian. my mamma's family, a lot of them, had lived out west, in the dakotas, and one of them had married a squaw. siwash tribe. my pleasure in indianhood and my passion for car travel might be incongruous if not mutually exclusive.  after all, the first car that ever stopped for me had been named in honor of the great chief of the ottawa: pontiac.
new york city. it's still a helluva town.
tired.
a born freak can only go uphill.
i've always been proud of the way nature singled me out. it's the people who have been deformed by society i feel sorry for. i've been steady moving for eleven years and some months. maybe i should rest up for a spell, i'm not as young as i used to be.
does that mean you might have an assignment for me?
bonanza jellybean?
your ranch?
a job for me?
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if you don't want me to pose for him, why do you want me to meet him?
but countess.
why, yes, technically. jack kerouac and i came awfully close, but he was afraid of me, i think.
what makes you think this watercolorist and i would develop a romantic relationship?
well, okay. i'll try it. i don't see the point in it, but i'll try it. just for you. it's kind of silly, actually, me going out with an artist in new york city. however.
i've never ridden in a cab. the whole idea of paying for a ride makes my thumbs hurt.
i'm staying with the countess.
i don't.
well, no, i don't reside anywhere in particular. i just keep moving.
you might say that, although i don't think of it as traveling.
as moving.
no indian blankets.  no indian blankets.
where are the others?
yes, thanks.
this place is finer than the place i live!
so this is what it's like.  so this is what it's really like.
i'm cold.
it's not the air conditioner that's making me cold. nothing moves in here. not even your birds.
getting dressed. i've got to go.
i have to go, julian.
my thumbs hurt. i've made a mistake. i've been negligent. i haven't exercised. i have to hitchhike a little bit every day, no matter what. it's like a musician practicing his scales. when i don't practice, my timing gets off, my thumbs get stiff and sore.
i will hitch with you, out where tall birds wade in a lake named for my siwash kin. out where smokey the bear lay down his shovel to romp with more playful beasts. out where starlight has no enemies and the badland wind no friends. out where the boogie stops and the woogie begins.
no, i'm more of an indian the trio doesn't smile.
oh, i may and i may not. but seeing him is not my main objective out here.
yes i am.
yeah. i feel a bit hungry.
road food. how did you know?
bonanza jellybean.
er, you seem to know who i am, and maybe even what i am. thanks for the breakfast.
no, i'm afraid that part isn't true. jack was in awe of me and tracked me down. we spent a night talking and hugging in a corn field, but he was hardly my lover. besides, i always travel alone.
tell me about it.
about being a cowgirl. what's it all about? when you say the word you make it sound like it was painted in radium on the side of a pearl.
you're political, then?
really? the chink, huh? i've gathered that you sometimes speak with him. what else have you learned from the chink?
what is debbie's position?
you don't agree with debbie, then?
wait!
well, aren't you going to shake your whanger at me?
i'm a friend of bonanza jellybean's.
oh? well, there's been some trouble on the ranch. i came up here to get out of the way. it's so dark now i doubt if i could find my way back down. if you could help.
but i don't know how to polka.
so this is how jelly spends her visits to the chink.
what was that?
clockworks?
siwash, huh?
the clock people?
then if you are japanese, then why are you called the chink?
what do you believe in then?
if this be adultery, make the most of it.
i don't know anything about it.
brain damage? you mean he's going to be a vegetable?
but doctor.
oh, doctor! you've got to do it. you and nobody else should be allowed to take away my gift.
i just want to be normal, give me that old-fashioned normality. it was good enough for crazy horse and it's good enough for me.
that's jellybean!
howdy.
yes, but i want to be there. i want to see jellybean. i want to see the cranes.
so be it. it looks serious this time, though. all these guns.  are you actually prepared to kill and die for whooping cranes?
how did this business get started, anyhow? why are the birds nesting here?
you mean.
they're drugged.
no, i guess not.
but the peyote is obviously affecting their brains. it's made them break a migratory pattern that goes back thousands of years.
fear in wild animals is completely different from paranoia in people. in the wilderness ecosystem, fear is natural and necessary. it's merely a mechanism for maintaining life. if the cranes hadn't had a capacity for fear, they would have disappeared long ago and you'd be having to get loaded with common old everyday meadowlarks and mallards.
dr. robbins?
if i flinch when you say you love me, it's both our problems. my confusion becomes your confusion. students confuse teachers, patients confuse psychiatrists, lovers with confused hearts confuse lovers with clear hearts.
is everything getting worse?
the countess has come to our aid. the rubber rose ranch is officially deeded to all the cowgirls. and i have been asked to oversee the ranch. for $300 a week. and as it turns out, the countess is not going to be the vegetable the doctors thought he was.  here's a picture!
she had a one way-ticket to kansas city.
but that's an old story now.  i can't believe that you would leave the butte.
well, if the clock people give you any inside information on the end of the world, drop us a postcard.
how am i going to be the progenitor of a tribe when i'm living on an isolated ridgetop with delores?