by Jack Kerouac
“Well don’t yell my name!”—all the men in the loft, the players too, had started to shout at the top of their lungs—
“What’d the little boy do?”
“I dunno, I didn’t see him. Well—I told myself, this poor man, this poor child, like feathers in the wind—Sure—” looking on, making a face. “The poor father, we didn’t hear him talk, he didn’t say two words.”
“Oh he can talk!” cried Bull. “I’ve known him!”
“Gone? But they could’ve had the place!” cried Omer. “Dammit! Oh how hard life is! Well, we gotta find our road, time to go. Gimme the keys to the car, Leo.”
The little Negro had spent the day alone, looking at the others; the other two little boys had too, Ti Jean and Dean. The children hadn’t talked.
The wind ran in the street. Rolfe’s car was lost, gone, Bull saw this beyond the drapes. The drapes had the hollow scent of the surroundings. All the men buttoned up their coats more tightly as did the children seeing this. A wind came into the loft. Bull joined the dice game. “Canada,” he said, “it’s where the poppy dopple goose blows s-s-s-s—bring me home seven!” The dice hit seven; Bull picked them up to click them, stooping down to do so, puffing, almost exploding. You heard him talk, but you weren’t sure that he’d said what you thought he said. Leo his nephew watched him, he too was putting hands to knees and stooping down for the game. They were all tired, hair on their foreheads. The Chinese had lost all their teeth, did whatever they did; some were coming in to tell the others that supper was ready at home. You could see families sitting, indoors, eating with chopsticks, sitting in their chambers of eternity.
“We’re in Chinatown!” said Leo, he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Dammit we’re gonna have ourselves a feast in Chinatown before we go to Boston.”
“Me I’m going North,” said Bull.
“You’re coming to Boston with us.”
“No—I’m going to Butte Montana—to work—the Boston and Albany, the Boston & Maine—phooey—Am gonna try the Great Northern this winter, if they want an old rail like me—still—after all the years I spent my time sleeping in bottle beds of red neon hotels like those whore houses where you suddenly find yourself all jammed up with your pants halfway down so you can’t run—The law will get us, hand in pocket. Think about the three sets of eyes that watch the road tonight—” Bull was saying this over his hat, that he’d extended, from his forehead, straight out, a little curl of his messy hair climbing up his pate. Old Bull went over to the other side of the floor, picked up the old bum’s blanket and put it over his shoulders. “S’cold as a bastat!” he cried to himself, making a face, and walked on the floorboards thinking.
“We’re gonna go eat a good feed!—eh Omer, a good feed?” Omer was lost in the trunks of the car, gone.
All of a sudden the little Negro spoke to Ti Jean across the great room, and in such a normal way that the men, except for Bull, weren’t listening, “Hey Lil Boy, who was he that Lil boy with the sick old father? What was he doin lying there?”
“He was my blood brother.”
“Your blood brother? What was it he’d done?”
“He’d been poor, they came here in an old car and were waiting for Rolfe and Rolfe had left and when he came back he said, ‘No they’re not there the naked women’ and so they all kept their heads down, and decided to leave. My father was telling them to wait. Uncle Bull went over to see. They loaded their stuff in the car and Dean gave me the tennis ball, said ‘Okay’—and Rolfe looked at the engine one time, angry faced, and they went into the street and left for autumns at the tracks—from here to Arlington and Santa Anita and Fair Grounds Louisiana.”
Ti Jean saw everywhere in America great race tracks lost in the rain; there were crowds of men in gray raincoats, wet horses, jockeys bleak and bewildered in their colors with their little white legs spotted with mud and little drops in the face, piles of hay near the barn with gray boards where the Kentucky trainer sat talking to the young jockeys of Arkansas and Texas and New York who listened to learn—and you could see old Pomeray walking behind the barn looking for a job, little Dean looking everywhere.
“Ah’m from Nawth Ca lina my self,” said the little Pic with his funny voice, his speech seemingly coming from afar, as if from the other side of the valley. “We came, me and my brother, we—he came to get me in the middle of the night, from my aunt’s house—in Rocky Mount, yes—we had a house with windows, the grandfather hated me. My father was dead, ‘Pic,’ he’d say, ‘go live with your howling aunt.’ There were watermelons on the porch. The old man was blind. He tried to grab me. I wanted to go from grandfather into our little house in the middle of the log field—There were owls in the trees, on the edge of the Tar. We ran me and Slim in the night from Big Easonburg woods, near the white church, to turn onto the tar road and there was a big black snake squashed in the street, we could see by the moon, a little white dog was following us, the frogs were crying out like madmen with dumb little faces, some were—it made me wanna cry. He took me out through the window in the middle of the night, yes, and when we left, through the woods me on his shoulders; there was a white line in the street.”
And it was true. And then they had hitchhiked to New York, the little boy sitting on the suitcase so that Slim could play his music in New York. His wife had just died, Slim, of a baby; he kept his little brother for a son in their apartment in Harlem, he’d moved everything from her mother’s, he left only a little sock of Pic’s in the middle of the floor—Slim and Pic lived alone, in the spare room, the musicians’ room. He’d once stayed in the room of a friend of Count Basie’s, Hot Lips they called him, Count was there and they’d talk about life back when they’d played in Nebraska in the house of love and ran from the bar downstairs to the rooms upstairs, the bass player too; stories of the jazz life, their big round faces of a generation behind the bottle, “There’s always gotta be some women singin, man.” And one of the youngest and tallest in the gang asked a question, and the guy hears him but doesn’t answer, just looks at his match with a proud smile happy to be with the old friends all talking. “Look at this old picture of Slim here, looka that face!—That man is twisted!” showing the picture with stiff fingers; laughing in the staggered room. “Hey, I bet them Roman soldiers got high, sittin in a room all alone at noon with his helmet by his side, all down with his thoughts,”—suddenly, staggering away—“sittin not movin a muscle, listening for the sound of the Roman bell to see what time it is and listenin to the girls all laughin in the tenement court downstairs—man, he’s high!”
Slim didn’t want to stay at his mother’s, he had no home in Rocky Mount because his father had left and his mother was dead. There was a feud between his family and the family of the dead man, who was an uncle. He had no place to go, Slim lived one day to the next as a musician, running all over town to play, to eat, to drink, to smoke, the whole gang together throwing each other wheelbarrows of wild jazz. It was almost enough to make you forget your poor dead little wife. He had a picture of her, beautiful as a princess of the Nile, gone.
The little Negro had a low voice around his little brown and red woolcap. They slept together now, in a vacant apartment, only floorboards, in the building of a friend in Harlem—But they now looked for a home of their own, and for money. They’d suffered through a lot of hunger pangs, and embalmed comforts in the fog, on the road; New York didn’t bother them much, though. Slim’s old father was hiding out in Harlem; he had murdered a man in the South, had bounced the highway camp by throwing himself into a ravine, they didn’t find him, was an old ragman with a broken hat in the dump lots of Harlem—early in the morning in winter—he slept in an impossible flop that had no working toilets, nor any warmth of spirit or Heart; an old dormitory with broken windows, shoes and ashes in a corner. An old man singing: Song of the Old Negro Hobo “Crossed the Niobrara.” You didn’t know from where he’d found the songs, whether you heard what you thought, whether it was coming out of his mouth
! or out of some rusted up black iron lodged in his throat, a weary heart broken all the way down to his socks, an impossibility fallen into the eyes of all the yards dirty with snow.
“They’re gone,” said little Pic, “They didn’t wanta wait no mo,” and “humph” he said, “un-huh,” and shrugged a little, “just wouldn a want no more, no? s’m . . . You done lost the man’s hole, axlebrain, you done lost the man’s hole,” he mocked, recalling one from home, he didn’t take his eyes off Ti Jean’s ball.
Old Bull took out his bottle and took a little drink, you saw his hat flashing in the light, his face red, his enormous nose immaculate, his teeth missing. He looked over his shoulders to see if someone had seen him.
Slim Jackson came back at one in the morning: he looked happy; he’d made his money, played his music. “Come on Pic, we got a beautiful little warm room to sleep in tonight, at the Cecil Hotel—You’ll sleep tonight.”
“Slim, stay with us!” cried Ching Boy. “We’ll have a big dinner in my store—in the light—no?—it’s too late?—”
“I gotta go to Chicago, I’m gonna play with a big band—the drummer’s an old friend from North Carolina, we went to grammar school together—Suddenly I find him in a big band, today, at the session; Jimmy—was there!—I go talk to the leader—I played, I swung—like Lester Young! It went! Wow! Man, we rolled; he kicked that drum in when we rolled. He beat it to death his next chorus, the alto saxophone. I was doin a riff. You shoulda been there. I came in low, real low, like from underneath it s’prised everybody with a wild idea! They dug! I came on strong with my best efforts—I wrestled the horn up & down—That’s all I could do. Yessir daddy, I stretched myself out.”
They’d had it, their session. They started off tipsy in the morning, strap on neck, a piano, a bass, a guitar that struck the rhythm, a trumpet and a kid who came from the South; and Slim, with his tenor. They crashed the first train from the first tune and they started. “The guitar was Charley St Christian or somebody like that,” said Slim’s chum, the drummer. “Meet me in Georgia Avenue, and we’ll drive on to Chicago. Got that straight, George Washing-tone?” he said, the drummer, Jimmy, hat placed on the ground in the sidewalk after the session, to drive up to reach their plans.
And the Kid with the alto, “A lil Negro from Chicago?” asked Slim. Wham, Slim blasts big notes in the baths of bars, “I Got Rhythm,” behind him the lil kid didn’t give a damn he was playing his alto saxophone with fantastical notes, Slim heard him and he heard himself, it was a new medley of music, it was going everywhere, seeking all funny spots and everything, but the kid found them up high. He emerged from the ideas of others like a dinosaur, then rose, neck extended, to the top of the mountain; played like that, bopping horn in the kisser, his knees shaking a little making his pants fall a tiny bit each time. Slim was astounded; around all this the trumpet kid from the South played the same way, with impossible whinnies from the trumpet, he got angry and he grabbed him and gave him a big hit filled with bucketfuls of ideas. They blasted together like that at ten in the morning; a young Jew was sitting there, by the record player, leaning on his arms like some movie idol, looking, big blue eyes, red cheeks, as if he wanted something, 17 years old, an expensive watch on his soft arm’s wrist.
“Blow,” he said.
Had it, the session, the inventors of music in the morning, in the hangover school of America, rising up to their art like local thieves, and all of a sudden on the side of the building, from the toilet, “Hey!” a tramp in the wall like in the war. They all of them gassed with the noise that we all wanted to hear.
“Go!” cried the kids, shivering through a big wave, yet all standing on the same floor arm in arm looking at each other in line, bouncing with the whiplashes of the fantastic drummer that you wouldn’t believe; he was kicking the bottom of the bottom floor of the world with his foot, he dropped bombs on the cities of joy, he looked directly in front of him with neck locked, his hands working the noise of time’s arrival, while Slim pulled out in front with buttock strikes. The lil kid throws himself into the sky to knock his idea!—in the middle of a chorus that no one was playing! Slim purred one out of the big engine with both hands held forward to tear the doors doawns! The alto, circling in place, to think, spurted out a string of broken wings all written in gold and afterwards gave out an impossible tweet-tweet from his tone, at the same time putting a stop to the idea Slim had started, picking up a piece from the edge of the trumpet’s idea, and threw a little yell to say that this was it, that’s it we said when we said it in our spot at (at five years old) four o’clock at five years in the morning of the cities of the past.
“That man is bent!” cried Slim pointing to the young lil bird at the alto who came from the far West, and for his reward, a grave and surprised smile from the young man, an artist.
“Come on lil Pic,” he said, leading him by the hand, “we’re gonna go find the room to sleep in, and tomorrow we’ll take our suitcases out onto the roads an’ find the damn station. Ey? Boys? Find peace when you’re dead. It aint no fairytale joke to be in need & to try to live from one day to the next.”
“And to stay in the same place,” said Bull.
“Chicago, I’m gonna blow my brains out, Chicago. I hope we don’t have a crackup in Cleveland,” cried Slim at the top of his lungs in the staircase.
“He’s tired, give him some peace,” said Ching Boy, seriously, everyone looking at his white face and he not knowing he’d said anything special, other than a little sentiment.
Ti Jean watched Pictorial Review Jackson pass in the street with Slim—who was to die a year from now in a crackup in the South—around the corner, toward the night of the city, of America, walking fast in the wind, hurrying, looking at the big circus into which you saw them disappear. They too were going to Chicago, to the immense winter snow, golden banjo.
He thought about the faces of bums in newsreels, all their mugs white like in minstrel shows, like Negroes, all buried in a sad rain, all black. Ti Jean wanted to go home.
“Alright,” said Leo, “we might as well Omer. You’re coming, William?”
“No.”
“But why?—”
“I changed my plans, I’m not going to Massachusetts.”
“Eh well—”
“I have to continue my circle in the world—Gotta take off again. Say goodbye to Gaby.”
In the street Leo said, from the car, “We’re gonna eat in Chinatown—at that open restaurant over there—We can smell it, smell! Eh? Come with us. We’ll eat us a good little perfect dinner and after that am gonna have a good cigar. After that I’ll be ready to leave.”
“You could eat at Ching Boy’s in the morning.”
“No, it’s too late, time to go, Bull. Poor damn Bull, what’re we gonna do, uncle?”
“Ah yes—okay—” Bull didn’t know what to say.
“We’ll see you—”
“Well yeah—well known—”
The Plymouth started, Omer was driving, tongue wagging, he’d combed his hair; they were awake, they had to drive and spend the night on the road and arrive in the morning. That was life, dammit. No Nicki, no more St Petersburg Russia. “Ah beautiful Nicki. The gas tank’s almost empty! Dammit!”
They left. You saw the little boy with the big eyes surrounded by his baseball cap, watching. Bull was all alone in the street when they turned the corner with a little sad puff of gasoline. The other men didn’t play long; all of a sudden they all went to bed in the darkness. “Might as well not have supper,” said Bull—Sitting, at the end of evening, hands on knees, the last two old friends.
“No,” said Ching Boy.
“We’ll go to bed—”
“You gonna sleep here—?”
“Well, no, not that, I’m leaving, you go to bed, at your place, Ching Boy, and thanks for your kindness. We didn’t talk between the bars of a jail for nothing, ah? We understood each other, ah, when we spent white afternoons telling each other the stories of our lives? Old
Frisco!”
“It didn’t bother me, the business with your brothers.”
“Your ancestors were proud and smart men like you, Ching.”
“Yes, and yours big hearted, thin headed,” laughed Ching Boy, looking at Bull over eyelids thick as a shelf, to rest his hardworking eyes.
“That a compliment or no?” laughed Bull, but Ching Boy went out, with the lamp, turned it off, the two men went out into the street. They looked, both hands in their pockets, it was goodbye.
“Goodnight, gotta go, I’ll see you tomorrow before leaving.”
And Bull went down, another snap of the hat, sharp, and went around the corner, on Bowery Street, where a dark wind made powdery dust clouds in the aura of the lamp; turned back one last instant, to tie his boot, quickly, on a hydrant, and left, a boat between his legs was floating there behind his strides in Chatham Square only to disappear from one of the spokes, Pott, Mott, East Broadway, Bowery Street or the alley of the red eyed black cat.
The old Chinese was already on his own way. The old buildings were dark. There was only an ash can on the sidewalk.
It was the bridge that you could see in the night from on high, and even higher the eyes of man could see the whole city from an airplane, the island, the people; the rivers, the smoke from various places; the little holes where all the rats of life ran into, lost in darkness, impatient maladies of all kinds; unknowingness of joy, innocence in love, of Rabbits. The belief is caught in their throats. A rabbit sits majestic in the sun.
Far down the road the poor guys were returning to Denver, for another winter there, around the tracks and the poor lunchcarts of Larimer Street, and Rolfe for the great fields of snow cracking and shimmering in the gray winds of the North—he watched the old face of light that was being projected and caught on the road. Rolfe was going fast, every moment deadly dangerous. There were curve signs, . But Rolfe watched his wheel, his road; the ditches shone from within their brownishness, you could see the dry grass. All their eyes were searching beyond the hubcap for whatever was happening in the jaws of mortal hunger.