My new friends invited me to their so-called “pad” for dinner. Of course I had already had dinner at our usual time (6:00 PM), but I was now ravenously hungry, I could have gnawed on one of the logs in the fire, I could have leaped back into the surf and swam under water with my mouth open, devouring seaweed and small fishes; in short I said, “Sure. Thanks.”

We walked town ward. How merry it was to walk along the sand in this new exuberant (if slightly reminiscent of my previous psychotic fugues) state. I felt like some silly large dog, prancing ahead of and around some new-found human friends. They seemed so much more interesting than the dull people I had met and invariably not befriended (or been befriended by) all my pathetic life.

They lived above a jewelry shop on Jackson Street. An apartment hung with tapestries and beads, with candles in Chianti bottles and bamboo rugs and lots of oriental cushions and pillows on the floor.

Elektra and Fairchild set to work making spaghetti in the kitchen that was open to the small living room. Rocket Man put a record album on. It was a very strange sort of saxophone jazz.

“You dig coal train, man?” said Gypsy Dave.

“Coal train?” I asked.

“Yeah. Train, man.”

“Train?”

“Yeah, John, coal train.”

Now I was totally confused. Why was he calling me John?

I was speechless. The strange saxophone wailed.

“I think he digs the train,” said Rocket Man, coming over to where we were sitting on the floor by a short wooden table. He sat down, smiling maniacally. “Doncha, Arnold. You dig the train, man.”

“Well, of course I do,” I said. “The train, after all, has really been my, my whole life.”

“Your whole life?” said Gypsy Dave. He was rolling another “joint” on a record album cover. It was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, whoever he is. “That is really heavy,” he said. “I mean, I dig the train, and the bird too, and you know, a lot of cats, but I wouldn’t say that they’re my life. But the train means that much to you.”

“Well, it wasn’t really voluntary,” I said.

“No, man,” said Gypsy Dave. “It wouldn’t be voluntary. But that’s the beauty of it. It just, like, takes over you. And that’s beautiful man. Wait, listen, now miles is coming in.”

“Miles?”

Gypsy Dave held a finger in the air. I could understand now. Me leaning out from the cab of a hurtling locomotive, staring ahead, watching the myriad storming miles coming in, always coming and speeding by underneath the train’s wheels. All those miles coming in for all those years, how many thousands, perhaps millions of miles, coming in…

“Miles,” I said.

“Miles,” said Rocket Man. “He digs miles, too.”

“Coming in,” I said.

Gypsy Dave handed me the now-rolled “reefer”, and I lit it with my lighter. A muted trumpet wailed sadly but wisely, and for a while we stopped speaking and just listened.