GOIN WEST

Dex, the narrator, has grown up living under a bridge with his Gramaw, who refuses to be placed in a “warehouse” for elders, foraging for and shoplifting food. The public prosecutor who argues for his incarceration describes him as “intelligent, clever, resourceful, homeless all his life, father unknown, mother deceased …” He hears diseased and believes she is still alive.



He’s well-adjusted to life in the detention facility tasked with the maintenance of the Missouri side of a bridge across the Mississippi. He has found friends, takes pride in his work painting the higher reaches of the structure and meets adversity with courage and wit. He has had little exposure to media and is barely acquainted with politics.



Jam (Jameel), his best friend, who has the bunk beneath him, grew up in public housing in St. Louis and is better educated, more widely experienced and knowledgeable. His mother has succumbed to methamphetamine abuse, and he had been supporting himself and two younger sisters by lifting wallets and snatching purses. An alpha male who has fought for dominance, he’s protective of his three roommates. After Dex’s encyclopedia is confiscated, Jam encourages him to write about their experience in his free time.



Jimmy (Jumbo to other inmates), the third inmate in their crowded four-man “cubby,” a converted utility closet, is the abused son of a prostitute who died of an overdose of heroin. The largest of the inmates, he’s strong but timid until Jam teaches him to be more assertive.



Donjo (Donald Joseph), the newest arrival, is a “klepto” raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian home with a tyrannical father. He’s handsome, amiable, generous and remarkably ignorant. When dominant toughs try to rape him, the four prevail in a brawl and their bond grows stronger.



A major flood gives them an opportunity to escape down the Mississippi to Arkansas where they find Mrs. Grimes, a retired school teacher, who feeds, clothes and pays them to paint her house, then takes them to Little Rock, where she enlists Jonas, a former student, to take them to Tulsa in his cattle trailer. He has had “too much meth and moonshine” but prevails in an argument with a highway patrolman.



Southwest of Tulsa they are enlisted by a travelling evangelist who promises to pay them to help pump up enthusiasm in his tent revival. Donjo, the star of the show, is the only one who makes money, as he usually does.



Working their way southwest they’re picked up by two very attractive young women in a luxurious travel trailer, interviewed on camera, wined and dined. Donjo, despite resistance, is seduced by Cherisse. Dex is more willingly and has his first shared sexual experience with Angelina.



They find themselves unwelcome in Oklahoma City, get cleaned up in a grubby rent-by-hour motel and hitch a ride on west in a battered old van with a juiced-up heavy metal fan.



The van has a blowout and careens off the road east of Amarillo, but they’re soon picked up by Mr. Kleinfeld, a senile farmer who hires them to harvest what remains of his meager cotton crop after a freak rain and hail storm. The work is difficult and painful, but the farmer’s daughter Sis feeds them well, does her best to make them comfortable and takes them to Sunday services in a homely little church, a new experience for all but Donjo.



In Amarillo Burk enlists their help shoring up the bank of a huge reservoir of rotting hog feces that threatens to burst and pollute the nearby Palo Duro River. He treats them with respect and affection, pays them well, then abandons them.



They press on and in New Mexico a wealthy benefactor, Ned, impressed with Donjo’s amiability and altruism, takes them to his luxurious mountain retreat in Colorado. He hires a tutor, Nathan, and with his help and a word processor Dex recounts their adventures.



Jam grows restless and Dex joins him for further exploration in California. Jam finds a girlfriend with a toddler son he dotes on in Oakland, and Dex finds a spon