Sal and his companions visit Old Bull Lee and leave New Orleans in an episode that sets the stillness of a crowded household against the momentum of the road. The visit gives Sal a brief reunion with an old teacher and places Dean Moriarty’s increasingly disruptive energy in a domestic setting; it ends when the group departs for California after a dispute over money, leaving the temporary refuge—and its strained relationships—behind.

Arrival and the household

After four years apart, Sal reunites with Jane Lee, who had once lived with him and his wife in New York. Jane is now dependent on benzedrine and has been left with a limp after contracting polio in New Orleans. Dean and the others emerge from the car and settle into the house, where Galatea Dunkel confronts Dean about what he has done to her. Dean pays her little attention and immediately asks about food, setting the tone for a visit in which the travelers’ needs repeatedly intrude on the household.

Old Bull Lee returns to find his home occupied by the group, but greets Sal warmly. He lives there with Jane and their two children, Dodie and Ray. His family’s circumstances are precarious: his weekly allowance is largely consumed by his drug habit, while Jane also spends money on benzedrine; the children appear to eat very little. The house is at once a family home, a gathering place, and Old Bull’s workroom, where he teaches and pursues his lifelong study of what he calls the facts of life.

Old Bull’s questions and warnings

Old Bull asks Dean to explain why he is crossing the country. Dean can only offer a vague reply. He asks Sal why he is going to the Coast, and Sal says he plans to stay only a few days before returning to school. Old Bull also asks what sort of person Ed Dunkel is, but the group has no clear answer. His questions expose how little direction or reliable knowledge the travelers can give about their own plans and companions.

Old Bull later warns Sal against going to California with Dean. He believes Dean is deteriorating and predicts that the journey will end badly; he offers Sal the alternative of staying in New Orleans with him. Sal does not take the offer. The warning gives the household visit a consequential choice: Old Bull represents the possibility of staying put, while Dean’s pull and the unfinished journey keep Sal moving.

A household unsettled

The visitors’ disorder becomes visible in the rooms they occupy. The front room where Dean and Marylou sleep is littered with stains and empty benzedrine tubes, and its condition interferes with Old Bull’s attempt to work on shelves. Jane is driven to distraction by the continual activity. In this house, the companions’ restless habits are not an abstract freedom: they take up space, unsettle a family routine, and leave other people to bear the inconvenience.

During a day in New Orleans, Dean turns the group’s attention to freight trains. He, Sal, and Ed run across the tracks and board a train at several points, riding it for half a mile toward the piers while Marylou and Galatea wait in the car. Dean shows Sal how to get off a moving train and recalls having used the same method on an earlier journey. The excursion gives the road’s improvised mobility a different form, but its cost is immediate: the group returns an hour late, and the women are angry.

Ed and Galatea decide to get a room in New Orleans and stay to work. Old Bull accepts their decision and is tired of the larger group. Sal and the remaining travelers are waiting for his next veterans’ check, which his aunt is forwarding; when it arrives, they can leave. Sal is reluctant to depart so quickly from Old Bull’s house, but Dean is ready to go, and the departure proceeds on Dean’s timetable.

Farewell and departure

The travelers’ goodbye takes place at dusk, with Jane, the children, Old Bull, Ed, and Galatea gathered outside. At the last moment, Dean asks Old Bull to lend him money, and Old Bull refuses. The disagreement connects the immediate parting to an older grievance dating back to Texas. The narrator recognizes Dean’s knack for alienating people, while Dean responds with manic talk rather than repairing the breach. The car pulls away with Dean, Sal, and Marylou aboard.

Their route out of New Orleans passes back through Algiers by ferry, then along Canal Street and west toward Baton Rouge. They cross the Mississippi at Port Allen and continue across Louisiana toward the Sabine. The movement resumes at once: after leaving the crowded house and its unresolved tensions, the travelers return to the road, where their limited supplies and money shape the journey as surely as Dean’s insistence on going ahead.

Significance in the journey

The visit makes the cost of Dean’s momentum legible through its effects on others. Old Bull’s home offers Sal welcome, conversation, and the possibility of remaining in one place, yet the group’s presence strains the household, and Dean’s refusal to pause or explain himself turns refuge into another short stop. Sal’s reluctance at departure does not change the outcome: he leaves with Dean and Marylou, and the episode closes not with reconciliation but with another westward drive. New Orleans thus marks both a moment of hospitality and the failure of that hospitality to interrupt the companions’ cycle of arrival, disruption, and departure.