CHAPTER 7
Harris continued, "After meeting with Mitchum, Bob was anxious for us to get started for California. We went back to our roachy abode and packed. We each had one backpack; that's all the belongings we had. We had a little money from our pay from our one line acting job--very little, and Bob still had some of the money his mother had sent us. We were determined to hold onto it as long as possible, so no bus ticket, uh uh, we'd hitchhike." He grinned wryly. "What innocents we were."

"Joe, a guy who had been helping out backstage said he was leaving for Shreveport Louisiana and said he could take us that far. That's not exactly the direction we wanted to go, but at least we'd be on the road. So he picks us up in front of the dreary apartment building we had vacated. He drove up in a Chevy Bel Aire that was belching smoke and looked as if it had been wrecked. I had a twinge of unease, but we got in, all squeezed into the front seat. Joe took an ambling southwesterly route, over some one lane roads through the backroads of places I hoped never to see again.

I noticed the furthur south we got, the more abberant Joe's behavior became. We had taken to one of us sleeping in the smelly back seat while one stayed up front in the passenger seat. Joe would talk to himself, and I heard him saying to another guy at a gas pump in Tennessee he was "hauling fags." Bob said Joe had tried to feel him up and got angry when Bob moved his hand. More ominously, Bob had seen a gun stashed under the front seat of the car.We made plans to get away from Joe as soon as possible. When Joe stopped in Arkansas, we took off. We saw a Trailways bus station near the gas station and hurried in.

Agitated, we told the ticket agent we were afraid of a guy coming to look for us. This guy, bless him, said 'quick, get behind the counter here.' We scrunched down as tight as we could behind the counter.A couple of minutes later we hear Joe stomp in and say he was looking for two guys. The manager said 'Two tall guys? Faggy looking?' Under the counter we were thinking, "My God, he's gonna give us up." Joe says 'Yeah.' The manager says "I saw 'em pass by the door, going up towards the highway, probably."

Joe stomps out, and the manager tells us "You boys better get a ticket for the bus going to El Paso. Get as far away from that redreck as you can. He had a Klan emblem tattooed on his arm--they don't just hang niggers around here."
Harris paused. "Why do some people help you out? A complete stranger, that ticket agent might have saved our lives. We bought tickets to El Paso, and got on that bus fast. And the agent slipped me $5.00, saying "I wish I could help you boys out more but that's all I've got."
We were on our way west at last.

susil