Ask the Dust (The Saga of Arturo Bandini #3)

by John Fante

The uprooted ones, the empty sad folks, the old and the young folks, the folks from back home. These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged.

but every morning you’ll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you’ll never have, but you’ll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.

As for the folks back home, you can lie to them, because they hate the truth anyway, they won’t have it, because soon or late they want to come out to paradise, too. You can’t fool the folks back home, boys. They know what Southern California’s like. After all they read the papers, they look at the picture magazine glutting the newsstands of every corner in America. They’ve seen pictures of the movie stars’ homes. You can’t tell them anything about California.

Well, how sad, how tragic. And now you work down here in a Fifth Street dive, and your name is Evelyn, poor Evelyn, and the folks are out here too, and you have the cutest sister, not like the tramps you meet down here,

The desert was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness.

This was the life for a man, to wander and stop and then go on, ever following the white line along the rambling coast, a time to relax at the wheel, light another cigaret, and grope stupidly for the meanings in that perplexing desert sky.

Faces with the blood drained away, tight faces, worried, lost. Faces like flowers torn from their roots and stuffed into a pretty vase, the colors draining fast. I had to get away from that town.

You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.