–I saw Japhy loping along in that curious long stride of the mountain-climber, with
a small knapsack on his back filled with books and toothbrushes and whatnot which was his small “goin-to-the-city” knapsack as apart from his big full rucksack complete with sleeping bag, poncho, and cookpots. He wore a little goatee, strangely Oriental-looking with his somewhat slanted green eyes, but he didn’t look like a Bohemian at all, and was far from being a Bohemian (a hanger-onner around the arts). He was wiry, suntanned, vigorous, open, all howdies and glad talk and even yelling hello to bums on the street and
when asked a question answered right off the bat from the top or bottom of his mind I don’t know which and always in a sprightly sparkling way.
“Where did you meet Ray Smith?” they asked him when we walked into The Place, the favorite bar of the hepcats around the Beach.
“Oh I always meet my Bodhisattvas in the street!” he yelled, and ordered beers.
…
Japhy was in rough workingman’s clothes he’d bought secondhand in Goodwill stores to serve him on mountain climbs and hikes and for sitting in the open at night, for campfires, for hitchhiking up and down the Coast. In fact in his little knapsack he also had a funny green alpine cap that he wore when he got to the foot of a mountain, usually with a yodel, before starting to tromp up a few thousand feet. He wore mountainclimbing boots, expensive ones, his pride and joy, Italian make, in which he clomped around over the sawdust floor of the bar like an oldtime lumberjack. Japhy wasn’t big, just about five foot seven, but strong and wiry and fast and muscular. His face was a mask of woeful bone, but his twinkled like the eyes of old giggling sages of China, over that little goatee, to offset the rough look of his handsome face. His teeth were a little brown, from early backwoods neglect, but you never noticed that and he opened his mouth wide to guffaw at jokes. Sometimes he’d quiet down and just stare sadly at the floor, like a man whittling. He was merry at times. He showed great sympathetic interest in me and in the story about the little Saint Teresa bum and the stories I told him about my own experiences hopping freights or hitchhiking or hiking in woods.
…
“What’s these signs mean?”
“These signs mean that Han Shan came down from the mountain after many years roaming around up there, to see his folks in town, says, ‘Till recently I stayed at Cold Mountain, et cetera, yesterday I called on friends and family, more than half had gone to the Yellow Springs,’ that means death, the Yellow Springs, ‘now morning I face my lone shadow, I can’t study with both eyes full of tears.’”
“That’s like you too, Japhy, studying with eyes full of tears.”
“My eyes aren’t full of tears!”
“Aren’t they going to be after a long long time?”
“They certainly will, Ray… and look here…”
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