A western kinsman of the sun, Dean. Although my aunt warned me that he would get me into trouble, I could hear a new call and see a new horizon, and believe it at my young age; and a little bit of trouble or even Dean's eventual rejection of me as a buddy, putting me down, as he would later, on starving side roads and sickbeds--what did it matter? I was a young writer and I wanted to take off into the night.

Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.