Dean abandons Galatea Dunkel in Tucson

Dean abandons Galatea Dunkel in Tucson during a journey that turns a newly made marriage into an improvised means of financing travel. The episode reveals the human cost of Dean’s restless movement: Galatea’s money and company are useful on the road, but once she can no longer sustain the trip, he and Ed leave her behind. Her later effort to find Ed makes the abandonment more than a passing roadside departure, bringing its consequences into Sal’s account of the group’s continuing travels.

Background and the marriage

Ed Dunkel and Dean had both been laid off from railroad work during a lapse in seniority caused by a sharp reduction in crews. Ed had met Galatea, who was living in San Francisco on her savings. He and Dean decided to take her east and have her pay the expenses. Galatea would not go unless Ed married her, so Ed cajoled and pleaded, and Dean hurried around to obtain the necessary papers. The marriage was arranged in a few days, making Galatea’s condition the immediate hinge between the couple’s plans and their departure.

A few days before Christmas, the newly married Ed and Galatea set out from San Francisco with Dean, driving toward Los Angeles and the snowless southern route. The journey was organized around contributions from passengers as well as Galatea’s savings: in Los Angeles they took on a sailor for fifteen dollars’ worth of gas and a woman and her daughter for four dollars’ worth. The arrangement presents travel as a chain of negotiated costs, with passengers helping the car move onward and Galatea’s money covering the journey’s less divisible expenses.

The journey and abandonment

Galatea repeatedly complained that she was tired and wanted to sleep in a motel. Her requests mattered materially: Dean and Ed recognized that if they continued stopping this way, they would spend her money long before reaching Virginia. Twice she made them stop, and the motel stays consumed tens of dollars. By the time the party reached Tucson, Galatea was broke. The cause of the break is therefore both practical and personal: the trip’s pace and expenses collide with her need for rest, while the travelers’ plan depends on her remaining a source of money.

In Tucson, Dean and Ed slipped away from Galatea in a hotel lobby and resumed the journey alone, still accompanied by the sailor. The departure is narrated as an act undertaken without qualm, not as a separation negotiated with Galatea. The contrast between her insistence on motel stops and their return to the road sharpens the episode’s central reversal: the marriage that secured her participation does not secure her place in the party once her savings are exhausted.

Consequences and narrative significance

Galatea did not simply disappear from the journey. After being left in Tucson, she wired home for money and took a bus to New Orleans, determined to catch up with Ed because she loved him. Her arrival there becomes known to Sal through a telephone call from Old Bull Lee, who reports that Galatea has appeared at his house looking for her husband. When Sal speaks to her on the phone, she asks how Ed is and remains concerned for his happiness. Her persistence and concern stand in marked contrast to the ease with which Ed and Dean had left her behind.

Sal tells Galatea that Ed is traveling with him and Dean and that they may pick her up in New Orleans on their way west. The episode thus creates an obligation that follows the group beyond Tucson: the woman excluded from the car’s onward journey re-enters it through her own pursuit and through Sal’s promise. Its significance lies in the gap between the speed of the road narrative and the slower consequences borne by those the travelers abandon. Dean’s movement continues, but Galatea’s bus journey makes clear that the people left behind do not simply vanish when the car pulls away.