Page 27

By Jack Joseph Smith

"Take your suit off to fight or ride Gibbons?" He wore levis, football black shirts that were white, unlaced shoes, and whatever black or blue he could get in a jacket. "Ya! must have lost something Gibbons the way you like your chin on your shoulder." (There is alot to pause about) But when Gibbons thought about the glory he was leaving he had to have action. "You shine that chevy up John, he he, as in laughter? He he." "Made it on my own Gibbon" John was black too and good looking. Thin. Shoulders and bones. All the songs. To go where you haven't been either. Streight chicle. (John's married for Christ's sake) The young that never hear that corner loafing is hard are the ones that do it. "For christ's sake," Gibbons thought. "I'm going to Notre Dame and all the world loves me. Their is no kid Christ." John was near the door of his black chevy. John held his mouth like a ribbon. "I got whiskey Gibbon, and isn't it a mortal sin if you think it, and a venual one if you don't? Let's face it. Together we're a piece of ass." "Yeah jagg off, I'll step in." And the motor hummed up. A few miles down the road there was a pole waiting in space like an ant. The presence of nothing grew as Gibbons laugh became abandon. There can never be enough wind when one is landlocked. "Alleghany County Gibbon!" "Yeah, we'll take them off." No matter what the air was sweet mostly because the brick laid out the hills into the levels of the rich.

Original Scan

Page 27

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page pushes the draft into rough male banter, car culture, bravado, and the uneasy freedom of leaving one place for another.

The language is abrasive on purpose. Underneath the swagger, the page is really about mobility, status, and the hunger to become larger than the immediate town. The corrected transcript makes the car scene and the Alleghany County motion read more cleanly.

Claude

Marked III as a section, the prose turns to rough male banter and motion. Gibbons in levis and 'football / black / shirts that were white' rides with John, who 'was black too and good looking,' the two trading swagger about leaving and arriving ('To go where you haven't been either'). The boy's grandiosity flares - 'I'm going to Notre Dame and all / the world loves me. Their is no kid Christ' - while John offers whiskey wrapped in catechism, 'a mortal sin if you think / it, and a venual one if you don't.' They head out toward 'Alleghany County,' a pole 'waiting in space like an ant,' the closing meditation that 'There can / never be enough wind when one is landlocked' tying the bravado to a real hunger for escape. Source spellings ('Streight chicle,' 'venual,' 'Alleghany') are kept.