“When are you shipping out again, Mike?” Phillip asked.
“Why,” I said, “in a couple of weeks, I guess.”
“The shit you are,” Janie said.
“Well,” Phillip said as we crossed the Square, “I’ve been thinking about shipping out myself. You know I have seaman’s papers, but I never have shipped out. What would I have to do to get a ship?”
I gave him all the details briefly.
Phillip nodded in a satisfied way. “I’m going to do it,” he said. “And is there any chance of our getting on the same boat?”
“Why yes,” I said. “You suddenly decided all this? And what would your uncle say?”
“He’ll be all for it. Glad to see me do a patriotic turn and all that. And glad to get rid of me for a while.”
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks © 2008 by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press.
