On the Road

After walking through Oakland, Sal hitches a ride to Bakersfield. Unable to find another ride, he takes a bus to Los Angeles. He notices a pretty Mexican girl sitting near him on the bus. After he finally works up the courage to talk to her, he learns that her name is Terry. Sal and Terry tell each other their life stories—she has an abusive husband and a child, and she is on her way to visit her sister in Los Angeles—and agree to spend time together in Los Angeles. As they arrive in the city and eat breakfast, however, Sal begins to get “foolish paranoiac visions” (50) that Terry is trying to hustle him. They get a hotel room together, but he feels increasingly nervous. His strange behavior makes Terry suspicious, leading her to believe that Sal is a pimp who is trying to recruit her. Sal is unable to console her and becomes angry. Eventually, they trust each other again. They have sex and then fall asleep in the hotel room.  

Sal stays with Terry for more than two weeks as they plan to travel to New York together. Though he starts to see a future for them, he knows that he only has $20. Their attempts to earn money in San Francisco fail, so they turn to hitchhiking. They ride to Bakersfield, where they pick grapes for a small amount of money. Terry asks people in the local Mexican community about work, but they tell her that none is available. She recommends that Sal come with her to Sabinal, Mexico, where she’s from, and says they can live together in a garage belonging to her brother. Sal agrees. There, he meets Ricky, Terry’s cheerful brother, and their friend Ponzo. He also meets Terry’s seven-year-old son, Johnny. After a night drinking with Ricky and Ponzo, Sal stays in a tent with Terry and Johnny. They convince themselves that tomorrow will be better and that they’ll find a job.

Sal travels to the nearby cotton fields and vineyards with Terry and Johnny. They rent a cheap tent while Sal picks cotton in the fields. He’s not particularly good at the job and lags behind the other workers. Sal relies on Terry and Johnny to help him, earning about enough to buy food for the family he seems to have acquired. He settles into this unfamiliar role for a while, acting out the positions of husband and father as well as cotton laborer. Though the days are long and hard, the evenings are peaceful. However, the evenings are also cold, so they cannot stay. Terry returns to her family home with Johnny while Sal stays in a nearby barn. Though she still visits him, he begins to feel the urge to travel back east. Sal hits the road again and bids farewell to a resigned Terry. For all her insistence that she will visit him in New York, they both know that this isn’t true. Sal hitchhikes to Los Angeles and then buys a bus ticket to Pittsburgh, which is as far as his meagre amount of money will take him. 

Sal stares out the bus window, feeling a strange sense of longing. He meets another girl while traveling. She buys him a few meals and they kiss a few times, but she gets off in Ohio. Sal arrives in Pittsburgh with no money. He must hitchhike again. One day, while walking along a mountain road, he meets a senile old homeless man whose nickname is the Ghost of Susquehanna. The encounter reminds Sal that the eastern part of America has strange, unexplored parts just as the western part does. Passing a roadhouse, he hears saxophone music that makes him realize how exhausted, hungry, and lonely he is. He tries to sleep in a train station, but the guards kick him out in the morning. Finally, Sal catches a ride with a salesman. The man sells plumbing fixtures and insists to Sal that “controlled starvation” (62) is the only way to stay healthy. The man eventually relents; he notices that Sal is starving, so he offers him some food. Sal greedily eats the buttered bread while the salesman speaks to a customer. Sal finds the entire situation absurd, so he cannot help but laugh.

The salesman drops Sal off in New York and being back in the city invigorates him. He panhandles for change for the bus fare to his aunt’s house, noticing that many passing people treat him with suspicion and contempt. Sal finally returns to his aunt’s home, where he ravenously eats his way through her refrigerator while his aunt stares at his thin, frail body. She tells Sal that Dean was in New York but left for San Francisco just two days before, where he’s staying in an apartment with Camille. Sal regrets that he missed his friend.