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where the other was at. Then Bob told Emmett about a place he'd been to, not too long before, and about what he saw there and how it looked. What impressed him most was the gravestones planted all around on top of this old-time, boot-hill cemetery. It wasn't the shape or age of the headstones or the way they were carved. It was the words that were chipped into their rough, flat surfaces that impressed him; not on account of their particular wisdom or peculiar wit, but because they were there at all. Bob wondered whether they were the last words of the persons buried beneath them.

Probably not, but it got them both talking about last lines they'd heard of some people saying--just before the little dirt road exploded into dust, and roaring up it and pulling onto and across the crabgrass toward the two of them was a pink Lincoln Continental convertible with the top down, two passengers, and Gregory Corso driving. The pink-lemonade topless limo skidded to a stop along the slick, dew grass, and America's number one "Gasoline" poet leaped out of the driver's seat and over the front door with a nearly empty pint of Swiss Colony wine splashing in his left hand and sticking forth his right to shake hello, saying, "How ya doin', Robere? Heard you were here, Emmett, 'n came down from the farm t' see you! This is my woman, Bel, 'n you both know Julius Orlovsky, right? What's happenin'?"

Bob was silent. Emmett mentioned that they'd been comparing famous last lines, when Gregory halted him. "Last lines, heh! Well I don' know about what anybody else has to say but me, see. An' I'm gonna tell you somethin'. I already got my last line stashed for when the time comes to use it! How's that for being prepared, huh?! An' I went to jail instead o' the Boy Scouts! You wanna know the way I want it to be? I'll tell you!

"I wanna be layin' in a bed, see, with all my friends around me. An' when I got just a little more time left, hardly none at all, I want one of my friends to lean over 'n ask me, 'Gregory, you lived your whole life, 'n now that it's almost over, Gregory, tell us. Tell us what it was like, Gregory.'

"That's when I props myself up on my elbows 'n look at all o' them waitin' to hear what I got to say, 'n that's when I tell 'em what it was like, boy. I tell 'em! I tell 'em! It was nowhere!"

Emmett enjoyed the country pleasures of Woodstock until the leaves began to turn and the air became crisp with autumn. He spent the kind of time with Bob that they both needed to get to know each other better. They went to listen to music together and [end page 478]