by Jack Kerouac
25
WHEN JOE LIVED on Bunker Hill Street and we were 8,9, we explored first thing the banks of the Merrimac in that part along Lakeview Avenue then-Polish slums where the river swam dirtily, meekly without rock-roar along the huge red walls of Boott Mills–we’d on rainy Sunday afternoons in February run down there to kick at ice floes and rusty empty kerosene cans and tires and crap– One time we fell in to our hips, got wet–Big brother Henry shat against a tree, he actually did, squatted and aimed an explosion on a lateral line, horrible. We found fat lovers disentangling huge dimpled lady legs and hairy manlegs out of an intercourse in a litter of movie magazines, empty cans, rat rags, dirt, grass and straw halfway up the slope in the bushes … a gray afternoon in summer, they were delightfully engaged in a field dump by the river … and at night came back, darker, wilder, sexualler, with flashlights, dirty magazines, jiggling hands, sucks, furtive listens to the Sound of Time in the river, the mills, the bridges and streets of Lowell … wildeyed in heaven they screwed, and went home.
Joe and I ransacked the river down there … the darker and rainier the better the time… We fished out crap from the stream. An unknown and forgotten morning took place in the yard of a rickety two story house corner of Lakeview and Bunker Hill where we threw firewood and balls all up and down the air and mothers yelled at us, new friends,— like the forgetting of the memory of next Monday morning in school–ugh it’s impossible to forget the horror of school … coming … Monday-
One afternoon–in the ghost yards of St. Louis, the crunchly gravels of recess, banana smells in the lockers, a nun combing my hair with the water of the pissoir drip-pipe, dank dark gloom and sins of corridors and corners where also (on the girl side) my sister Nin dashed in eternities echoing of her own horror–one afternoon as the whole school stood silent in the noon gravel, listening and fidgeting, Joe, who’d done some pécker (sin) during the recess, was being whanged with a big ruler with iron rims on the ass in the Sister Superior’s office–shrieking and howling he was, when I asked him about it later he said “It hurt” and didn’t make any excuses for the howling he did. Joe was always a big cowboy. We played in some old Farmer’s (Farmer Kelly’s) field–he had a solemn farmhouse on West Sixth with attendant hugetree and barns, 100-years-old farm, in the middle of middleclass cottages of Centralville, behind his great fields spread, apples, hollows, meadows, some corn close in, fences,—with the St. Louis parish on his flank (rectory and church and school and auditorium and battered sadfield of recess) (St. Louis, where my brother’s funeral darkened in a fitful glimmer before my eyes … in a dim far loneliness far from here and now … forgotten rains have shrouded and re-shrouded the burial grounds) … Farmer Kelly-his old lamplit oil house flimmered in a glub of night trees when we passed going from my house to Joe’s, we always wondered what kind of an old mysterious hermit he must be, I knew farmers and farm life from Uncle John Giradoux in the Nashua woods where I went in summers … to a cobwebbed Sax of forest trees–
A kid across the street from Joe’s died, we heard wailing; another kid in a street between Joe’s and mine, died–rain, flowers–the smell of flowers–an old Legionnaire died, in blue gold horrors of cloth and velvet and insignias and paper-wreaths and the cadaverous death of satin pillows– Oh yoi yoi I hate that–my whole death and Sax is wound in satin coffins– Count Condu slept in one all day below the Castle-purple lip’t–they buried little boys in them–I saw my brother in a satin coffin, he was nine, he lay with the stillness and the face of my former wife in her sleep, accomplished, regretted–the coffin streaks, spiders join his hand below–he’d lay in the sun of worms looking for the lambs of the sky–he’d gook a ghost no more in those shroudy halls of sand incarnate dirt behung in drapes of grain by level deep doop dung–what a thing to gape at– AND THROUGH ROTTING SATIN.
I gave up the church to ease my horrors–too much candlelight, too much wax–
I prefer rivers in my death, or seas, and other continents, but no satin death in Satin Massachusetts Lowell–with the bishop of St. Jean de Baptiste Stone, who baptized Gerard, with a wreath in the rain, beads on his iron nose, “Mama did he baptize me?”
“No he baptized Gerard,” I wished– I was just a little too young to have been baptized by a Saint of the Hero Church, Gerard had, and so baptized, saint did thus die —rain across the Rouault Gray Baroque Strasbourg Cathedral facade Big Minster Face of St. Jean Baptiste church on Merrimac St. at Aiken’s sad end–rising stone heap from the tenements of Moody Street–grooking rivers piled beneath.
Doctor Sax traversed the darknesses between pillars in the church at vespertime.
26
FINALLY VINNY BERGERAC moved to Rosemont–from that tenement on Moody to the swampy interiors and lowlands of Rosemont, a rosecovered cottage flat on the dreaming lurps and purls of the Merrimac… Fact is, they had a swimbeach on that shore, Joe and I went swimming, three times a day in the white sand dumped there–where regularly you saw lumps of human shit floating–I have nightmares of swallowing a cud of crap when I get up on my half rock and point hands to dive, by God I learned to dive by myself by half submerging to my waist–but here’s these turds floating in the river of time and I’m ready to sprowf myself one up, flubadegud– the beach was located in reeds down by the easternmost lost fender of the dump where the rats scurried in a dull gloom of vague smokes smoldering since Xmas week–in the summer mornings of freshness and boyhood we sallied forth into the vast dewy day in a clew pale of happy easters, two kids in a wild swale, having times we’d never forget–I be Buck Jones, you be Buck Jones–all boys want to grow up into hardy weathered characters thin and strong who when they do grow old throw dark seamy faces to the shroud, blot your satin up and roll it away–
Doctor Sax is hiding in the dark room waiting for it to turn from gray afternoon, late, with quiet child singings in the block (on Gershom, Sarah) (as I peek from dark dumb dull drapes of afternoon)— Sax hides in that darkness coming from behind the door, soon it will be night and the shadows will deepen darker and hoo doo you– Gods of the Fellaheen Flagebus level of fly-away dung bottles blue with bags and scrawny cross black striped old Bohemian carpet of the clock-sprale-pot–
We heard the Henry Armstrong fights through roots of broken leaves, we lay on the sofa upside down in dark summer evenings with the window open and only the radio dial for a light, deep brown gloom red glow, Vinny, G.J., Lousy, Scotty, me, Rita (Vinny’s kidsister) and Lou (his kidbrother) and Normie (next oldest brother, blond, nervous)—Mother Charlie and Father Lucky out, she at graveyard shift of mill, he as bouncer in a French Canadian nightclub (full of cowbells)— We in the summer evening indulged ourselves in various listens to the radio (Gang-busters, The Shadow–which is on Sunday afternoon and always dismally short of the mark)—(Orson Welles great-programs of Saturday night, 11 P.M. Witches’ Tales on faint stations—) We all talked of screwing Rita and Charlie, the women in the world were only made to bang– There was an orchard in back, with trees, apples, we kicked among them–
One night we had a juvenile homosexual ball without realizing what it was and Vinny leaped around with a sheet over his head and yelled “Oook!” (the effeminate shrieking ghost as compared to the regular “Aouoool” of the regular virile dumbghosts) (eek, Dizzy); also I remember vaguely G.J.’s and my disgust with the whole thing. It was that madcap Vinny, that’s who it was. A horrible moron by name of Zaza hung around Vinny, he was almost 20, Zaza indeed–that was his real name, it was a regular Arabian country epic–along the dump he’d drooled since childhood, spermatazoing in all directions, jacking off dogs and worst of all sucking off dogs–they’d seen him try it under a porch. Doctor Sax the White-haired Hawk knew these things–The Shadow always knows–um hee hee he ha— (echo hollow chamber hello ripple anybody there-y-ere-y-ere-ere- Like? hike? hike?)—(as the tank recedes)—that’s The Shadow’s laugh–Doctor Sax lurked under porches watching these operations, from the cellar, made notes, sketched, mixed herbs, come up with a
solution to kill the Snake of Evil–which he used on the last climactic day–the Day the Snake was Real–and stove up–and hurled a honk of angers at the wailing world–but later–
Ah Zaza indeed–a moronic French Canadian sexfiend, he is now in a madhouse–I saw him masturbate in the livingroom one rainy afternoon, he did it in public to amuse Vinny who watched at his leisure like a Pasha and sometimes gave instructions, and munched on candy–no pariah the schoolboy be–but a Persian super Luminary of the Glittering Courts— “Come on Zaza madman, faster—”
“I go fast I can.”
“Go, Zaza, go-”
The whole gang: “Come on Zaza, corne!”
“Here he comes!’
We all laugh and watch the horrible sight of an idiot youth pumping up his white juices with his jerking fist in a dazzle of frenzies and exhaustion of the spirit… nothing else to resort to. We applaud! “Hooray for Zaza!”
“Thirteen times last Monday–he came each time exactly, no lie–Zaza has an endless supply of come.”
“That’s Zaza the crazy one.”
“He’d rather jerk off than die.”
“Zaza the sex fiend–look! he’s startin again–Gol dang son of a bootch–Zaza’s at it again—”
“Oh his record’s longer than this—”
(To myself: “Quel— what a damn fool.”)
I believe eight-year-old Lou must have seen–no, as Vinny always made sure his kidbrothers weren’t involved in any dirty play … he protected them with sanctimony and gravity.—His sister much less–as primitive people do-
It was later when Vinny moved to Moody Street again, farther downtown, in the humbuzzing around St. Jean de Baptiste that we began to have less childlike pursuits haunted by darkness and goofs– Later we simply forgot dark Saxes and hung ourselves on the kick of sex and adolescent lacerated love … where everafter the fellows disappear. .. There was a great big whore called Sue, 200 pounds, friend of Charlie’s, came calling at Vinny’s, to sit in rockingchair and yak but would sometimes throw her dress up to show us herself when we made cracks from a safe distance. The existence of this huge woman of the world reminded me that I had a father (who visited her purple doorways) and a real world to face in the future —whoo! It snowed on shroudy New Year’s one two three as we laughed about that!
27
SATURDAY NIGHT WAS the time of the balloon in the sky when I’d listen to wayne King, or some of those great Andre Baruch orchestras of the thirties (our first radio had a great shit-colored false-paper-disc speaker round and strange)—sit back, imagine–stoned beyond eternity as I listened to the for-the-first-time-to-me individual pieces of music and instruments,—all of it by the literal flower-vase of the Golden Davenport Thirties when portly Rudy Vallee was a dalliance dawn cuteboy of rosy moon saws by a lake, coo owl–lost in Saturday night reveries, earlier of course it’s always the Hit Parade, fanfare number one song hit, boom, crash, the title? Film Your Eyebrows in my Song, Tear— with an upswing of the band and crash of events as I turn over my page of Saturday night funnies fresh from the wagons of the boys in the exciting Sat night streets in which also I cut along considerably, one night with Bruno Gringas arm in arm wrestling all the way up the bright market of Moody from City Hall to Parent’s meat store (where Ma bought everything)—the butcher himself looked good enough to eat, the store was so rich– Pursy times, when I’d a 20¢ cake splurge, and they were the biggest cakes then–black night shadows of Sat night wound with fiery lights of stores and traffic make a huge arrangement of lacelike blackery to splarse and intersplash the views and heels of spiny real people in clothes interwiling with the wild blue dark, disappear–the mystery of the night, which is a dew of grain-
Great White Sheets of the house being ironed by my mother on the big round table in the middle of the kitchen-She drinks tea while working,— I’m in the solemn furniture of the livingroom, my mother’s brown chairs, with leather, and wood, big and thick, inconceivably solid, the table is a massive plank on a log, round–reading Tim Tyler’s Flying Luck— My mother’s past furnitures have almost been forgotten, certainly lost, O lost–
On Saturday night I was settling down alone in the house with magazines, reading Doc Savage or the Phantom Detective with his masky rainy night– The Shadow Magazine I saved for Friday nights, Saturday morning was always the world of gold and rich sunlight.
28
NOT LONG AFTER WE MOVED TO PHEBE from Centralville, and I had met Zap Plouffe, I was playing at latedusk in the yard with aftersupper buzzes and slamming screendoors everywhere–with Cy Ladeau and Bert Desjardins in their part of their own childhood which is so antique to me that they seem unbelievably monstrous and assumed more normal shapes in the age molds of later years– Bert Desjardins it was impossible to see young, twelve, his long tall weeping brother Al… I saw him cry boohoo in front of a whole gallery of porch sitters composed of gene and joe plouffe and others in the midst of an eclipse of the sun that partly I’m looking at through my darkburnt glass from the dump and partly ignoring to gape at this spectacle of Al Desjardins sobbing in front of the gang (from some Al Roberts kick in the ass, Al’s sittin there giggling, he was a great catcher and longball hitter)—as the darkness fills all the brown windows of the neighborhood for an instant in the fiery summer afternoon– Bert Desjardins no less eccentric —playing–he walked across the Moody Street Bridge with me the first morning I went to St. Joseph brothers school —the rail was on our left, iron, separating us from the 100-foot drop to the roaring foams of the rocks in their grisly eternity (that became white be-maned hysterical horses in the night)—he said “I remember my first day at school, I wasn’t tall enough to look over the thick bar of that rail, you’re going to grow just like I did right over it–in no time!” I couldn’t believe it.
Bert was in the same school. I don’t know what I did —irked a kid, at recess–I was in love with Ernie Malo, it was a real love affair at eleven–I tiptoed on his fence heartbreakingly across the street from school–I hurt him once with my foot on the fence, it was like hurting an angel, at Gerard’s picture I said my prayers and prayed for Ernie’s love. Gerard made no move in the photo. Ernie was very beautiful to my eyes–it was before I began to distinguish between sexes–as noble and beautiful as a young nun–yet he was just a little boy, tremendously grown up (he became a sour Yankee with dreams of small editorships in Vermont)—A kid known as Fish darkly approached me as I was lifting my foot off the last Moody Bridge plank approaching Textile and the walk in fields and dumps to home–came up to me, “Well, there you are,” and punched me in the face, and walked away as I blubbered. I staggered home aghast in weeps–by walls and under orangebrick chimneys of the painful eternity–to my mother–I wanted to ask her why? why should he hit me? I vowed to hit Fish back for a lifetime and never did– finally I met him delivering fish or gathering garbage for the city, in my yard, and didn’t think anything of it–could have hit him in the gray–the gray’s forgotten now–and so the reason’s gone too–but the tragic air is gone–a new clime dew occupies these empty spaces of Nineteen O Two Two we’re always in– All this to explain Bert Desjardins —and playing with Cy Ladeau in the yard.
I threw a piece of slate skimming in the air and accidentally caught Cy at the throat (Count Condu! he came in the night flapping over the sandbank and cut Cy in the neck with his eager blue teeth by sand moons of snore) (the time I slept at Cy’s with Cy and Big Brother Emil when folks drove to Canada in ‘29 Ford–moon was full the night they left)— Cy cried and bled into my mother’s kitchen with that wound, fresh varnish just moved in he spills blood on, my mother coaxes him to stop crying, bandages him, slate so neat and deadly everybody’s mad at me–they say the Castle Hill’s called Snake Hill because it’s got so many little garter snakes hangin around–snaky slate– Bert Desjardins said “You should not do that.”— Nobody could understand it was an accident, it was so sinister–like the paper I used to Black Thief Dicky, sinister —that gray’s forgotten
too, as I say Cy and Bert were dreadfully young in a long-ago of moving Time that is so remote it for the first time assumes that rigid post or posture deathlike denoting the cessation of its operation in my memory and therefore the world’s–a time about to become extinct —except that now it can never be, because it happened, it– which led to further levels–as time unveiled her ugly old cold mouth of death to the worst hopes–fears—Bert Desjardins and Cy Ladeau like any prescience of a dream are unerasable.
29
AND THERE’S ME—playing my baseball game in the mud of the yard, draw a circle with a rock in the middle, for 3rd, for SS, 2nd base, first, for outfield positions, and pitch ball in with little selfward flick, a heavy ballbearing, bat is a big nail, whap, there’s a grounder between the rock of 3rd and ss, basehit into left because also missed rolling through infield circles–there’s a flyball to left, plops down into left field circle, he’s out, I played this and hit such a long home-run that it was inconceivable, heretofore the diamond I’d drawn in the ground and the game I was playing were synonymous with regular distances and power-values in baseball, but suddenly I hit this incredible homerun with the small of the nail and drove the ball which was my great race champion $1,000,000 repulsion in its bedroom-in-the-winter-life, now it’s spring, blossoms in center field, Dimaggio’s watching my apples grow–it goes sailing across an intervening stadium, or yard, into the veritable suburbs of the mythical city locating the mythical ballfield —into the yard of the Phebe Street house where we used to live–lost in the bushes there–lost my ball, lost Repulsion, the whole league ended (and the Turf was bereft of its King), a sinister end-of-the-world homerun had been hit.