The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  Now I had on my good old muffcap and pulled it down over my ears and bent my way down the shroud of Gershom, glad. O all the strange sad songs of the Thirties, “Wait for Me Darling,” “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life,” I could see it all swirling there in the snow like the faces of my mother and father and sister and Bea and Shabby and all the rest, what lone sorrows hid behind the fences like angels kneeling with both hands to their faces. There, even Ernie Noval’s home had Xmas lights in them, Ernie Noval the evil sex fiend who always had girls, even he believed in Xmas. And Bobby Morrisette’s house had a huge tree in the window and in the kitchen I could see the brown light where almost the whole boisterous family was sitting now by the hot stove, Melaye and his brothers wailing away at their pishnut game, smack of the finger and the little wood disc scooted across the board and knocked another one in. And up that strange little street of sorrows, X street, the huddled cottages, like in my dreams the narrow hill cottages, the lights, the telephone wires, up to the top of the hill behind which my birches and forest began and all the way up to New Hampshire the sad snow was swirling and it was quiet in Lowell now. Even tho in later life you find out that nothing exists but what is thought to exist, what good can it do anyway . . . ? The very picket bespeaks something other than that, when I grabbed a picket and tried to pull it off it was cold and hard and wouldnt move. Up high Harry Charity’s house, the 4th floor of the Gershom tenement, I could see even there the skinny lights of a cheap skinny tree and could imagine all his little dirty brothers and sisters staring with shining eyes at it. On Blazon’s corner now no more standers, they’d all gone into the club, only the yellow light of the store falling out there, showing the marks where they’d stood against the wall. I went in the club to join them, by the side door. What a roar and a blast of smoke met me as I opened that door, always, especially on winter nights when all the windows are closed and everybody feels warm and secure inside. What faces, personalities, hundreds of well known friends and enemies all milling around, smoking, spitting in spittoons, bowling, shooting pool, yakking on waiting benches, drinking cokes. All four alleys were going to town with big gay bowling parties. In New England in those days (probably still) we used small balls about the size of a cannonball and duck pins, fat low squat pins, with the small ball it was possible for great strong men like St. Jean or kid de jo djo to send that ball rolling down the aisle like a shot out of a rifle, crack, sometimes they’d hit pins square on and make them bounce up in the air to come down and clobber poor Scotty Beaulieu the pinboy who was trying to make his decent living. There in fact was poor Scotty, bent to his work, gathering up pins and setting them up, holding three pins in each hand, going as fast as he could. Great superior pinboys like Pete Houde could set up pins twice as fast but Scotcho was learning. The pool table was taken over by the greats: St. Jean, Mike Houde, Carrouspel, they were playing rotation and at this moment little Pee Too Houde was bent seriously to a difficult long shot that he accomplished beautifully with a straight whack right in, the great gunshot of the ball placking into its pocket’s back wood, a sound I would have liked to imitate without playing pool sometimes. Seated around the table on benches were the regular gangs and there was G.J., younger than anybody, staring wide eyed at everything hoping without hope to get in a game or get to bowl but this was a big night. Inside the little office my father sat reading a magazine and puffing on his cigar. Whenever the game was over he had to come out and rack up the next game and collect the money. He never played pool himself unless it was for money, on bets, a big game, but of course he never took on the champs. He bowled more than he shot pool. He had taken this job managing the alley for the Centreville Social Club as a kind of civic activity, there was no money in it to speak of, it was a good hangout for him and only 5 houses from home. Sometimes he threw out a wise guy and wasnt too popular, he wasnt afraid to throw out anybody, he was one of those fat men who probably cant fight at all but can scare anybody and if it came time to fight would probably be unbeatable from sheer rage. So he wasnt popular and some of the wise guys referred to me as “the little Christ Kerouac.” They called me that during huge battering autumnal football games out back in Dracut Tigers and piled on me sometimes and one guy even punched me one time in the pileup, to get even with my father, so on the next play I sneaked up on him as he was sweeping left end and hid behind a would be tackler and there he was smiling thinking himself in the clear when I, 13, came up on him low and hit him head on with arms around his knees and he was out like a light and had to leave the game. He was six feet tall, too, and 17. My father was glad about that. But as a rule my father never taught me to hit anybody or revenge for anything, it was just the spur of the moment rages that made him so formidable. Right now he wasnt interested in anything but the arrival of his best friend Old Mike Fournier, getting the night’s business over with by turning it over to his assistant, and going home for the big party. I sat down by G.J. “Zagg, de jay de jo jo has just left me an ancient message from Kid Shine, which was brought to me by snow pigeon that came sailing across the river and into the open window of my shit house, saying that Kid Slavey cannot come to the club tonight due to previous commitments. He said . . . you know what Salvey said after you left and he walked me up Phebe? He said he was going home to see if King Kong was in his kitchen.” “Did you eat your porkchops?” “Zagg I did but I blew up at my mother again. God will punish me for screaming at that old lady someday, I’m telling you Zagg I just cant help it, sometimes she makes me so mad and I start yelling at her and she just sits in the corner with her bible and answers me not, Zagg what do you think God will do to me for being like that?” “He’ll break your arm in the hall.” “Do you realize that Scotty is down there in that pit right now counting every penny he’s going to earn tonight, that he’s already added it up and he even showed me a little slip of paper a minute ago all written out in red ink with his new red ink pen, he’s got it figured out that by 1938 he can buy a used car and we can all go to Vermont and swim. Zagg, I’m telling you it’s a crazy world . . .” And he leaned over and spit into the spittoon to show he was just as big a guy like the rest. He even borrowed a butt from Pete Houde and lit it awkwardly and held it in his mouth, hat over eyes, and leaned back and crossed his long legs and said “Ah shit.” New parties of bowlers kept pouring in, it looked like we would never bowl but I asked my father for just one string, he said to use Scotty’s alley and G.J. and I rushed out and suddenly we were standing in the bright lights of the bowling stage, as angry guys stared at us thinking “Little pricks get an alley because his old man runs the alley” and G.J. said “Zagg we better get this string over with fast, we’re going to be murdered.” “Okay I go first” and as Scotty waved at us with a sad smile down-alley, I started with my famous style (imitating Pete Houde’s beautiful easy soundless style where the ball never plumps on the floor but is just eased gently with sweeping arm, down the line, with a hook) and baff, I had only 2 pins to hit, and hit them for a spare and G.J. wrote down the score. “Hurry up Zagg I’m telling you we’re goners, they’re going to throw poolballs at us.” We hurried through our string. It was a great night for me, I hit 121 which is amazing for a kid, and G.J. as usual hit about 78 or 68 throwing balls down the gutter and laughing and swearing and sometimes running after the ball after he’d thrown it. We were too scared to start another string and quit. Big gay parties of drinkers were taking over. Upstairs the club saloon floor was roaring with the stomp of a thousand drinkers and poker players and up there they had 3 more pool tables. “Zagg how swiftly we die,” said G.J. suddenly, back on the bench, and “How poor we are.” Sometimes he’d say things like that, with his dark Greek face fixed in utter despair, and I always knew then that G.J. would be a great man somehow. “Empty baseball fields is all that’s waiting for us,” he added, incomprehensibly, throwing his butt away. “Think I’ll go home Zagg.” What a sad bed G.J. slept in, on that high house on the parapet receiving all the blizzardy winds of the whole river, the great trees
clanking outside. “I’ll go wrap myself up in the angel’s hair and perceive the cool breeze of heaven, Zagg,” and he went out the side door, bent, to his home. I followed him and walked him home in the cold. “What say, Memory Babe,” he said, turning and seeing me. “Heaven will respect us, Zagg, Heaven will respect us.” “What’s Heaven, George, I mean what you see?” “I dunno, Zagg, I aint read any philosophical books lately and I dont care. Wanta come in my house awhile.” “I dunno.” “My mother likes you, Zagg, she appreciates it sometimes when you come in say hello to her.” “Okay . . . look, G.J. our new Xmas tree, see it in the window.” “It’s nice, Zagg, naturally we dont put up no Xmas tree in my house . . . it’s too gloomy.” “Why?” “I dunno Zagg, my mother doesnt care and my sister doesnt care. I guess my house is too marked by death for celebrations.” We went up Sarah in the snow, side by side, heads bowed, in the sudden sadness. “There,” he said pointing up at the windows of his house, “gloomy lights . . . my mother is sitting in the corner waiting for me. My sister’s already in bed. The wind blows through the windows. It’s cold. Zaggo, old G.J. aint long for this world.” We went upstairs and into the kitchen. A low lamp was burning on the table, his mother sat in the corner as he said with an old bible in her hand, a Greek bible. She smiled at me. Around her head was a dark shawl, like the ladies of Mexico, and her dress was all black and her shoes and stockings were black. G.J. fell disconsolately on the kitchen couch and stared up at the ceiling. “There you have it Zagg.” I could never talk to Mrs. Aposotolos because she couldnt speak En­glish nevertheless she always kept talking to me about something and G.J. would translate it with a sad smile. “Do you realize what she’s saying Zagg? She’s saying she’s so glad I have a nice chum like you, now what do you think of an old lady like that. I’ll tell you one thing Zagg,” getting up and pacing up and down in the kitchen, working himself up to a fury, “though my old lady is all in black and cant speak English and don’t have nothing to do with any of the ladies around here she’s the best goddamed old lady in this town, I dont mean your mother, Zagg but all the rest of them. She works in a shoe factory to support me and Ruby, she never complains, Zagg every morning at 6 I can hear her coughing in the bathroom and I come out and look at her cooking her pitiful breakfast on the stove and no matter how cold it is or hot it is or whatever the mailman’s bastard can try to get to, this woman goes to work, just for me, for worthless me . . . but I promised on the bible and on my mother’s name, Zagg, comes the day when I’ll be a big burper on Wall Street and buy her everything she needs and for once in my life I will have done something decent, just for once . . .” Poor George, and how he got himself worked up to raging and pacing back and forth in that gloomy kitchen, finally he’d start cursing and waving his fist and making such speeches his mother would become perturbed tho she couldnt understand what he was talking about to me, and would yell “Ra la ma ana a fat tap apta” in a big Greek outpouring and G.J. would become quiet, sigh, throw himself back on the couch and stare again at the ceiling. “That’s the story of my life, Zagg. Old kid de jo jo is lying on the couch in his kitchen wondering whatever will happen to all his robbons some day. Zagg I know I dont make sense but can you see what I mean?” sitting up to ask me earnestly. “Sure George.” “That’s why I like Salvey so much, he comes into this house and says ‘G.J. what happened to your coffeemaker?’ and I’ll say ‘What coffeemaker?’ and he will say ‘the one that we threw ice cream at Sunday.’ or some such silly thing like that and Zagg, it makes me laugh! I see him coming to visit me on stormy days, I see him plowing up ye olde Riverside Drive out there, head down, collar up, he’s coming here just to make me glad, Zagg. He knows how miserable I am. He comes right in here and tells my mother all kinds of nutty stuff she cant understand. I’m telling you Zagg, that Salvey has opened my eyes. He’s good. He has a good heart. That’s something. O when I think of all the dirty pricks in this world and how much they think of themselves . . . Let it be, let it ride, old de jo jo is now ready to hit the sack and forget it for another day. Give my regards to your ma and your pa, wish them a happy Xmas and all that, Zagg, and see ya later.” He let me down the hall with the hall light. “Good old Memory Babe,” he chuckled, “if your knees was as ancient as mine the phantom detective could never catch up to you.” Then as I went down the alleyway between the houses he was speaking to me from the porch. “It’s all up there, Zagg,” pointing up at the snowing sky, “it’s all up there. Adios Zagg. Give my regards to Kid Shine and the gang.” I went on home thinking about George. Then I saw my house, the lights in the window, heard the faint whoop of the big party in the kitchen, and I forgot poor George.

  I peeked in from the front porch, through the window with the little Xmas lights, and could see the heads and shoulders of partiers in the kitchen, hear their cries, get that orphaned feeling I always used to get when I’d stop on winter nights to peek into my home windows before going in and always making a phantasy that I am actually an orphan and am hungry and just returned from freezing China and want some food and to be adopted by 2 nice parents like Leo and Gabrielle Kerouac? Will they accept me? There was old Mike, I could see him hugging Alice Gallagher in the kitchen and yelling loud laughter, behind him sitting politely laughing on a chair was his son Mike, my buddy, my second brother, who was along to help his old man in case he got too drunk and also to see me about our plans for what to play all day tomorrow Saturday Xmas Eve. Alice Gallagher lived in the house next door, she also had her Xmas tree up by now, I could see it in her window and her husband Charlie who was about to join our party in a minute was standing in front of the tree putting up the last tinsels as the little kids watched. Their home had always seemed to me in my childishness the typical perfect beautiful “English” American Home (they were Irish, of course) where you had nice new furniture and thick rugs and fancy kitchens and people who talked En­glish instead of French brought glittery presents on Xmas Eve all wrapped in the fanciest wrappers from downtown and they drank egg nog. Actually they were very simple people but to me they were mysterious “Americans” whose lives were ever so much more joyous and bright than the life of the “Franco-Americaines” and indeed brighter than the life of the Greeks like G.J.’s bereaved home. I went down from the front porch, around the back, and again peeked into the kitchen door to watch them before going in. Poor Mike, I mean my Mike, the young one, one year older than me, he was a little bored now because I was late getting home, he wanted to say to me: “Podner, tomorrow we lopes out the back wood section and go see how Jack Holt’s makin out with his traps, or if not that we can head for the hill country and see if Buck Jones is still in his shack.” I went in, greeted by whoops, “Ten, Ti Jean yest arrivez!” “Where ya been, ya little tyke!” yelled my father, and old Mike ruggled the top of my head with his big rough hand and chuckled, his face was all rosy with liquor and his eyes shiny. My mother was in the kitchen mixing Lemon and Lime soda with big shots of gin, chipping ice out of the box with the ice pick, setting up ham sandwiches in a big platter, all rosy and cute in her party apron, with lipstick on her lips, all gurgling with joy yakking with Alice and Nin and her friends. Meanwhile broody Bea our cousin (Uncle Joe’s daughter), a blonde with a flair for the tragic, was sitting in a corner of the kitchen brooding at the floor. Shabby was a big handsome truckdriver, extremely polite, who merely puffed on his pipe and smiled at all the jokes. He was a good simple old soul. Nothing bothered him. He came to see Bea but he never seemed to look at her, till sometimes she’d speak to him, unexpectedly, and he would answer very little, so that in the solitude of my mother’s chambers Bea would often complain “But he’s a nice man I know, but so unromantic!” Alice Gallagher was a cute blonde woman, very sexy, who caused a great deal of talk among my gangs. “Zagg one of these days I’m going to sneak up to that Gallagher house and watch that Alice undress in her bathroom, and if that Charlie ever catches me I’ll run I’ll fly.” . . . Charlie himself, who came in now, was a handsome darkhaired Irishman full of l
aughs and white teeth, he came in waving a new bottle of gin, the house was in such an uproar Kewpie was hiding upstairs on my bed. They all drank and began reminiscing. My father was in his element, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, necktie off now, sitting shiningly at the table saying “Remember that time we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Canada, Charlie?” “How can I ever forget forget it Leo! ‘HOOO HOO’.” “There we were, midnight, drunk as hoot owls, the whole gang, me, Gabe, Alice, Charlie and Mary Nestor and her boyfriend Taft, we didnt know what to do next so I just said, hell let’s get in my Plymouth and drive to Canada, we’ll be back Monday, it was just a joke but Mike they took me up on it!” “I remember that one.” “So we all piled into the car, no suitcases nothin, the women had on their house aprons, we left Ti Nin Boozie here to babysit for Alice and feed Ti Jean and off we went, it’s only a 9 hour drive nowadays. O boy what a time we had. Remember the donuts Charlie?” “Hoo hoo the donut shop, where was that up around Vermont someplace.” “Well we went in there for donuts but they were hard as rocks so we started pitchin em at the bottles of pop on the back shelf, I hooked three bottlenecks by God and won 50 cents from Charlie.” “Taft didnt get a one!” “We paid for all the donuts! He almost called the cops the poor devil who ran the joint!”—“Oh it was a mad trick.” And my mother yelled “And all the ladies had was a few boxes of Kotex and the customs man look at me and said ‘Is that all you gals bring with you on trips?’ That’s just what he said then we drove into Canada and all started to sing ‘Au Canada’ o boy what a time we had and we come to Aunt Alice’s house on St. Hubert Street at 7 in the morning and got them all up and old Doc didn’t give a damn, he come right downstairs in his bathrobe and cooked up the biggest breakfast you ever saw, Canadian bacon, about 2 dozen eggs and bang, he goes down the cellar and gets out that white liquor of his that they make out on the farm and he poured a big can of cherries in there and we were off.” “Yes,” my mother yelled in, “and then he took the whole diningroom table and pushed it in the door and made a bar, we was all sittin around on the rug all day, no chairs.” “Boy did we get piffed!” “And that night,” said Alice, “we went to that nightclub there and had a heck of a time dancing . . .” “That was the night that little Romeo with the mustache didnt know Gabe was my wife and started serenadin her, you know, and O boy but she was in love that night. . . . ha ha ha ha.” “Thats not true I wasnt makin eyes at him at all . . . Bea that’s the godshonest truth!” “O my,” said Bea interrupting all the hilarity with her usual philosophical sadness, “wouldnt life be grand if we could all have a good time like that every day.” “Bea why dont you get on that piano and play Rachmaninoff.” “O I dont feel like it tonight.” Shabby puffed on his pipe. Old Mike got up and began to sing “By the light . . . of the silvery moo-oon” and everybody immediately joined in and a big songfest was on and Mike and I went in the parlor and sat on the couch before the tree. “Well old Podner,” said Mike, who looked like a young Errol Flynn with his chiseled features and blue eyes and serious lip-wettings and deliberate gravity, “how’s about you and me takin off tomorrow for Pine Brook and go see the lay of the land out thar?” “Will you come get me.” “Shore, pod, I’ll be over around 8 or so and we can saddle up our old grays and go canterin out across Dracut Tiger fields and mosey on down the backtrail country and say, we can come around through Rosemont and Centreville and come back by downtown and go up to my house for a little bit of beans, you know.” “Okay,” (but I didnt intend to eat none of his mother’s beans, she never put enouf molasses in them and my mother said they were bleme comme un vesse de careme; white as a Lenten fart). However we agreed on a big day of cowboying around the backwoods and then “Say, after that we can go down the Merrimack Square Theater and see the new Marx brothers.” “Now you’re talkin Brother! I’ll ask Pa for a quarter and you get a quarter too. Hyoo hyoo hyoo!” he laughed, slapping his thigh in anticipation of the Marx ­Brothers “you remember that time the doctors asked Groucho what his medical education was and he steps up and says ‘Dodge Brothers, late 29’ and the way he rolls his eyes, hyoo hyoo hyoo!” and Mike got up and imitated it and glided around the parlor, stopping to look up at the tree from his crouched position with rolling eyes, puffing on the imaginary cigar. “Who’s that a picture of?” he asked suddenly. “That’s Gerard.” “Is that him? Say, pod, you sure looked just like him, you know?” In the kitchen they were all getting up and going next door to Alice’s house, we all went outdoors in the swirling snow, whooping, and Mike and I had to walk on both sides of his father to see he didnt slip in the snow, he was really piffed by now. For that matter so was Charlie, and my father Leo too, but old Mike when he got piffed he didnt step too easy. “Got a nice present for me, Podner?” said Mike smiling and I realized I hadnt even bought a present for Mike yet. “I got a nice one for you. Give it ya tomorrow night, amigo.” What an enormous difference there was between Mike and G.J., my range of friends ran from normal French Canadian podners who went playing cowboy with me, to strange sad philosophical Greek boys who preferred sitting and talking about life. Mike wasnt interested in such things at all, his idea of a day was to go out and explore the woods and jump up on rocks and dig around and follow creeks and go down by the river. He was always Buck Jones, he was always leading me the way down the trail, cantering, turning around to shout instructions. Actually we were kind of big by now to be still playing cowboys but Mike didn’t care and insisted. In a short while that would all be over with. In no time at all Mike suddenly grew to almost six feet and began going out with girls, sometimes big fat screaming harlots of Little Canada, and seemed to enjoy that as much as anything else he’d ever done. As for my private games and racing horses and baseball records in my room, he had no interest in all that, once in a while he’d look over my shoulder and marvel at the precision of my handwritten print.