Les seuls gens qui existent pour moi sont les déments, ceux qui ont la démence de vivre, de discourir, d'etre sauvés, qui veulent jouir de tout dans un seul instant, ceux qui ne savent pas bâiller ni sortir un lieu commun.
Jack KEROUAC


Day 4

am

pm

Rides = 4
Arrival = Rimouski, Qc
km travelled = 314
$ spent = $4.51 (1 hot-dog, fries, hot chicken)
Time passed on the road = 11 am to 10 pm
km walked = 10







I left Caraquet around 11 am. After a short wait I got a lift to Bathurst and then to Campbelton with an elderly couple. They were pretty neat. They kept looking at each other with cute smiles while tapping each others thighs. Maybe they felt they were on a summer vacation with their grandson in the back seat. As we arrived in Campbellton, they wished me the best of luck and told me to be careful. I walked through the city towards the Inter-Provincial J. C. Van Horne Bridge which crosses the Bay des Chaleurs to Pointe-à-la-Croix, Québec. There I got a lift from Pierre who had already given me a ride earlier in the spring on a previous trip to Montréal. Pierre is a good guy, easy going but with his share of problems. I assured him that I would not say anything to anybody about his life situation•. I gave him my book, On the Road by Jack Kerouac . I felt that Pierre and Jack were somehow sharing the same dreams and demons. We drove along the beautiful Matapedia River. The famous salmon river, the train tracks and route 132 run in parallel. We stopped at every lookout to drink beers. With each stop, Pierre and I were getting more sensitive to the natural beauty of the region. Pierre was from Val-Brillant - literal translation: Brilliant Valley, and that is where we went our separate ways. The night was falling and Brillant Valley was getting darker. After few minutes I got a lift to Sayabec and then another one to Rimouski with a guy who worked for the Agriculture Ministry in St-Hyacinthe. My first thought upon arriving in Rimouski was to find the train station and spend the night on a bench. This did not work as smoothly as planned.

- Hey you, said the Clerk, do you have a ticket?
- No I don't. I said, pushing my sweater under my head, I'm waiting.
- What are you waiting for?
- ..I'm waiting.. for the morning...

This was the wrong thing to say. The Clerk was standing pretty tall and his voice got very loud with the echo of the station.

- Get out of here, VIA doesn't need punks like you in its stations, come on move, outttTTTTTT, take your stuff and get the hell out of here.....you little scum bag...

and so forth

Outside. I walked away from the train station to a park that I saw earlier. As soon as I found another bench-bed it started to rain. I dragged myself over to the cement pad of a picnic shelter. This was a better place, almost like a home away from home, until the mosquitoes and the black flies zeroed in on me. They won. That was a battle I could not fight. I walked around trying to find indoor sleeping accommodations. I even visited some roof tops. The most striking one was perhaps the Hotel St-Louis. There was a huge flashing neon sign on the roof of this 7 story building. I found a cubby hole where I could spent the night sheltered from the rain but after looking at the street from up there I felt uneasy and a bit scared. What if I am a sleepwalker and start to walk in the middle of the night? I ended up taking a room at the Youth Hostel. There I met a guy who introduced himself to me as Jacques, A.K.A. Arsène Lupin * from Causapscal. (* Lupin is a character created by French Author Maurice Leblanc late in the 19th century with the A.K.A of the Gentleman Cambrioleur - the 'gentleman burglar' is as famous as Sherlock Holmes) Jacques-Arsène talks a mile a minute and sounds as if he has a potato in his mouth. He is 26 years old, wets his bed, and says that he jerks off since his divorce two years ago. After few hundreds miles of words and insights, the hostel attendant called for lights off.

The dormitory is quiet. No one is shaking.



- Daniel


• There are no details about his 'situation' in the journal and I don't remember anything about it - so Pierre's secrets are safe. (June 30 2004)






mister
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