Page 13
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A scan-verified prose page moves from Bash and O'Neill's stairway assault and escape into the crowded avenue, the Pacific Coast highway, Santa Monica Canyon, and a handwritten beach image of bathing suits, sand, and peace signs.
The corrected transcript clarifies the page's pivot from threat to coastal spectacle. Violence and money give way to freeway, beach, and crowd imagery, but the handwritten ending keeps the scene unsettled by turning the beach into a field of signs and surfaces.
A continuation of Bash's coast-highway arrival that braids violence into the scenery. As he walks 'head up along the highway', 'his hand grip- / ing his suitcase', a remembered or simultaneous assault flares: his friend O'Neill, 'Like the astrological crab sign', goes 'up the dark extend- / ing heights of the stairway grabbing the Malatto with their / sixteen hundred dollars worth of travelers checks'. The 'two assailants' vanish but their 'shreaks / of hatred in defeat still rang through the stairwells'. The page then opens out to the beach below 'the Santa Monica Caynon', 'bathing suits spread / infinitely', and a handwritten coda noticing 'peace signs in red / as well black paint printed wildly across'. Source spellings ('griping', 'decended', 'Malatto', 'shreaks', 'Caynon') are preserved. Provisional in its handwritten lower margin, where low-confidence phrasing was kept conservative.