by Jack Kerouac
“That’s perfectly alright” says Deni. “Move right along, we’ll make it.”—He beats, the next light to make it look good but eases up for the next, and up the track and back, you can’t see any sign of the rear or the front of no Red Car, shoot—he comes to his place where coupla years ago he’d dropped that seaman, no Red Car, you can feel its absence, it’s come and gone, empty smell—You can tell by the electric stillness on the corner that something just was, & aint.
“Well I guess I missed it, goldang it,” says the cabdriver pushing his hat back to apologize and looking real hypocritical about it, so Deni gives him five dollars and we get out and Deni says:
“Kerouac this means we have an hour to wait here by the cold tracks, in the cold foggy night, for the next train to L.A.”
“That’s okay” I say “we got beer aint we, open one up” and Deni fishes down for the old copper churchkey and up comes two cans of beer spissing all over the sad night and we up end the tin, and go slurp—two cans each and we start throwing rocks at signs, dancing around to keep warm, squatting, telling jokes, remembering the past, Deni’s going “Hyra rrour Hoo” and again I hear his great laugh ringing in the American night and I try to tell him “Deni the reason I followed the ship all the way 3,200 miles from Staten Island to goddam Pedro is not only because I wanta get on and be seen going around the world and have myself a ball in Port Swettenham and pick up on gangee in Bombay and find the sleepers and the fluteplayers in filthy Karachi and start revolutions of my own in the Cairo Casbah and make it from Marseilles to the other side, but because of you, because, the things we used to do, where, I have a hell of a good time with you Den, there’s no two ways about… I never have any money that I admit, I already owe you sixty for the bus fare, but you must admit I try—I’m sorry that I dont have any money ever, but you know I tried with you, that time … Well goddam, wa ahoo, shit, I want get drunk tonight.—” And Deni says “We dont have to hang around in the cold like this Jack, look there’s a bar, over there” (a roadhouse gleaming redly in the misty night) “it may be a Mexican Pachuco bar and we might get the hell beat out of us but let’s go in there and wait the half hour we got with a few beers … and see if there’re any cucamongas” so we head out to there, across an empty lot. Deni is meanwhile very busy tellin me what a mess I’ve made of my life but I’ve heard that from every body coast to coast and I dont care generally and I dont care tonight and this is my way of doing and saying things.
A COUPLA DAYS LATER the S.S. Roamer sails away without me because they wouldnt let me get on at the union hall, I had no seniority, all I had to do they said was hang around a couple of months and work on the waterfront or something and wait for a coastwise ship to Seattle and I thought “So if I’m gonna travel coasts I’m going to go down the coast I covet.”—So I see the Roamer slipping out of Pedro bay, at night again, the red port light and the green starboard light sneaking across the water with attendant ghostly following mast lights, vup! (the whistle of the little tug)—then the ever Gandharva-like, illusion-and-Maya-like dim lights of the portholes where some members of the crew are reading in bunks, others eating snacks in the crew mess, and others, like Deni, eagerly writing letters with a big red ink fountain pen assuring me that next time around the world I will get on the Roamer.— “But I dont care, I’ll go to Mexico” says I and walk off to the Pacific Red Car waving at Deni’s ship vanishing out there …
Among the madcap pranks we’d pulled after that first night I told you about, we carried a huge tumbleweed up the gangplank at 3 A M Christmas Eve and shoved it into the engine crew foc’sle (where they were all snoring) and left it there.— When they woke up in the morning they thought they were somewhere else, in the jungle or something, and all went back to bed. So when the Chief Engineer is yelling “Who the hell put that tree on board!” (it was ten feet by ten feet, a big ball of dry twigs), way off across and down the ship’s iron heart you hear Deni howling “Hoo hoo hoo! Who the hell put that tree on board! Oh that Chief Engineer is a very funny m-a-h-n!”
2. MEXICO FELLAHEEN
WHEN YOU GO ACROSS THE BORDER at Nogales Arizona some very severe looking American guards, some of them pasty faced with sinister steelrim spectacles go scrounging through all your beat baggage for signs of the scorpion of scofflaw.— You just wait patiently like you always do in America among those apparently endless policemen and their endless laws against (no laws for)—but the moment you cross the little wire gate and you’re in Mexico, you feel like you just sneaked out of school when you told the teacher you were sick and she told you you could go home, 2 o’clock in the afternoon.— You feel as though you just come home from Sunday morning church and you take off your suit and slip into your soft worn smooth cool overalls, to play—you look around and you see happy smiling faces, or the absorbed dark faces of worried lovers and fathers and policemen, you hear cantina music from across the little park of balloons and popsicles.— In the middle of the little park is a bandstand for concerts, actual concerts for the people, free—generations of marimba players maybe, or an Orozco jazzband playing Mexican anthems to El Presidente.— You walk thirsty through the swinging doors of a saloon and get a bar beer, and turn around and there’s fellas shooting pool, cooking tacos, wearing sombreros, some wearing guns on their rancher hips, and gangs of singing businessmen throwing pesos at the standing musicians who wander up and down the room.— It’s a great feeling of entering the Pure Land, especially because it’s so close to dry faced Arizona and Texas and all over the South-west—but you can find it, this feeling, this fellaheen feeling about life, that timeless gayety of people not involved in great cultural and civilization issues—you can find it almost anywhere else, in Morocco, in Latin America entire, in Dakar, in Kurd land.—
There is no “violence” in Mexico, that was all a lot of bull written up by Hollywood writers or writers who went to Mexico to “be violent”—I know of an American who went to Mexico for bar brawls because you dont usually get arrested there for disorderly conduct, my God I’ve seen men wrestle playfully in the middle of the road blocking traffic, screaming with laughter, as people walked by smiling—Mexico is generally gentle and fine, even when you travel among the dangerous characters as I did—“dangerous” in the sense we mean in America—in fact the further you go away from the border, and deeper down, the finer it is, as though the influence of civilizations hung over the border like a cloud.
THE EARTH IS AN INDIAN THING—I squatted on it, rolled thick sticks of marijuana on sod floors of stick huts not far from Mazatlan near the opium center of the world and we sprinkled opium in our masterjoints—we had black heels. We talked about Revolution. The host was of the opinion the Indians originally owned North America just as well as South America, about time to come out and say “La ti-erra esta la notre”—(the earth is ours)—which he did, clacking his tongue and with a hip sneer hunching up his mad shoulders for us to see his doubt and mistrust of anyone understanding what he meant but I was there and understood quite well.— In the corner an Indian woman, 18, sat, partly behind the table, her face in the shadows of the candle glow—she was watching us high either on “O” or herself as wife of a man who in the morning went out in the yard with a spear and split sticks on the ground idly languidly throwing it ground down half-turning to gesture and say something to his partner.— The drowsy hum of Fellaheen Village at noon—not far away was the sea, warm, the tropical Pacific of Cancer.— Spine-ribbed mountains all the way from Calexico and Shasta and Modoc and Columbia River Pasco-viewing sat rumped behind the plain upon which this coast was laid.— A one thousand mile dirt road led there—quiet buses 1931 thin high style goofy with oldfashioned clutch handles leading to floor holes, old side benches for seats, turned around, solid wood, bouncing in interminable dust down past the Navajoas, Margaritas and general pig desert dry huts of Doctor Pepper and pig’s eye on tortilla half burned—tortured road—led to this the capital of the world kingdom of opium—Ah Jesus—I looked at my host.— On t
he sod floor, in a corner, snored a soldier of the Mexican Army, it was a revolution. The Indian was mad. “La Tierra esta la notre—”
Enrique my guide and buddy who couldnt say “H” but had to say “K”—because his nativity was not buried in the Spanish name of Vera Cruz his hometown, in the Mixtecan Tongue instead.— On buses joggling in eternity he kept yelling at me “HK-o-t? HK-o-t? Is means caliente. Unnerstan?”
“Yeah yeah.”
“Is k-o-t… is k-o-t… is means caliente—HK-eat…. eat…”
“H-eat!”
“Is what letter—alphabay?”
“H”
“Is…HK…?”
“No… H…”
“Is Kard for me to pronouse. I can’ do it.”
When he said “K” his whole jaw leaped out, I saw the Indian in his face. He now squatted in the sod explaining eagerly to the host who by his tremendous demeanor I knew to be the King of some regal gang laid out in the desert, by his complete sneering speech concerning every subject brought up, as if by blood king by right, trying to persuade, or protect, or ask for something, I sat, said nothing, watched, like Gerardo in the corner.— Gerardo was listening with astonished air at his big brother make a mad speech in front of the King and under the circumstances of the strange Americano Gringo with his seabag. He nodded and leered like an old merchant the host to hear it and turned to his wife and showed his tongue and licked his lower teeth and then damped top teeth on lip, to make a quick sneer into the unknown Mexican dark overhead the candlelight hut under Pacific Coast Tropic of Cancer stars like in Acapulco fighting name.— The moon washed rocks from El Capitan on down—The swamps of Panama later on and soon enough.
Pointing, with huge arm, finger, the host:—“Is in the rib of mountains of the big plateau! the golds of war are buried deep! the caves bleed! we’ll take the snake out of the woods! we’ll tear the wings off the great bird! we shall live in the iron houses overturned in fields of rags!”
“Si!” said our quiet friend from the edge of the pallet cot. Estrando.— Goatee, hip eyes drooping brown sad and narcotic, opium, hands falling, strange witchdoctor sitter-next-to of this King—threw in occasional remarks that had the others listening but whenever he tried to follow through it was no go, he overdid something, he dulled them, they refused to listen to his elaborations and artistic touches in the brew.— Primeval carnal sacrifice is what they wanted. No anthropologist should forget the cannibals, or avoid the Auca. Get me a bow and arrow and I’ll go; I’m ready now; plane fare please; plain fare; vacuous is the list; knights grow bold growing old; young knights dream.
Soft.— Our Indian King wanted nothing to do with tentative ideas; he listened to Enrique’s real pleas, took note of Estrando’s hallucinated sayings, guttural remarks spicy thrown in pithy like madness inward and from which the King had learned all he knew of what reality would think of him—he eyed me with honest suspicion.
In Spanish I heard him ask if this Gringo was some cop following him from L.A., some F.B.I, man. I heard and said no. Enrique tried to tell him I was interessa pointing at his own head to mean I was interested in things—I was trying to learn Spanish, I was a head, cabeza, also chucharro—(potsmoker).— Chucharro didnt interest King. In L.A. he’d gone walking in from the Mexican darkness on bare feet palms out black face to the lights—somebody’s ripped a crucifix chain from his neck, some cop or hoodlum, he snarled remembering it, his revenge was either silent or someone was left dead and I was the F.B.I, man—the weird follower of Mexican suspects with records of having left feet prints on the sidewalks of Iron L.A. and chains in jailhouses and potential revolutionary heroes of late afternoon mustaches in the reddy soft light.—
He showed me a pellet of O.—I named it.— Partially satisfied. Enrique pleaded further in my defense. The witchdoctor smiled inwardly, he had no time to goof or do court dances or sing of drink in whore alleys looking for pimps—he was Goethe in the court of Fredericko Weimar.— Vibrations of television telepathy surrounded the room as silently the King decided to accept me—when he did I heard the sceptre drop in all their thoughts.
And O the holy sea of Mazatlan and the great red plain of eve with burros and aznos and red and brown horses and green cactus pulque.
The three muchachas two miles away in a little group talking in the exact concentric center of the circle of the red universe—the softness of their speech could never reach us, nor these waves of Mazatlan destroy it by their bark—soft sea winds to beautify the weed—three islands one mile out—rocks—the Fellaheen City’s muddy rooftops dusk in back …
TO EXPLAIN, I’D MISSED THE SHIP in San Pedro and this was the midway point of the trip from the Mexican border at Nogales Arizona that I had undertaken on cheap second class buses all the way down the West Coast to Mexico City.— I’d met Enrique and his kid brother Gerardo while the passengers were stretching their legs at desert huts in the Sonora desert where big fat Indian ladies served hot tortillas and meat off stone stoves and as you stood there waiting for your sandwich the little pigs grazed lovingly against your legs.— Enrique was a great sweet kid with black hair and black eyes who was making this epic journey all the way to Vera Cruz two thousand miles away on the Gulf of Mexico with his kid brother for some reason I never found out—all he let me know was that inside his home made wooden radio set was hidden about a half a pound of strong dark green marijuana with the moss still in it and long black hairs in it, the sign of good pot.— We immediately started blasting among the cacti in the back of the desert waystations, squatting there in the hot sun laughing, as Gerardo watched (he was only 18 and wasnt allowed to smoke by his older brother)—“Is why? because marijuana is bad for the eye and bad for la ley” (bad for the eyesight and bad for the law)—“But jew!” pointing at me (Mexican saying “you”), “and me!” pointing at himself, “we alright.” He undertook to be my guide in the great trip through the continental spaces of Mexico—he spoke some English and tried to explain to me the epic grandeur of his land and I certainly agreed with him.— “See?” he’d say pointing at distant mountain ranges. “Mehico!”
The bus was an old high thin affair with wooden benches, as I say, and passengers in shawls and straw hats got on with their goats or pigs or chickens while kids rode on the roof or hung on singing and screaming from the tailgate.— We bounced and bounced over that one thousand mile dirt road and when we came to rivers the driver just plowed through the shallow water, washing off the dust, and bounced on.— Strange towns like Navajoa where I took a walk by myself and saw, in the market outdoor affair, a butcher standing in front of a pile of lousy beef for sale, flies swarming all over it while mangy skinny fellaheen dogs scrounged around under the table—and towns like Los Mochis (The Flies) where we sat drinking Orange Crush like grandees at sticky little tables, where the day’s headline in the Los Mochis newspaper told of a midnight gun duel between the Chief of Police and the Mayor—it was all over town, some excitement in the white alleys—both of them with revolvers on their hips, bang, blam, right in the muddy street outside the cantina.— Now we were in a town further south in Sinaloa and had gotten off the old bus at midnight to walk single file through the slums and past the bars (“Ees no good you and me and Gerardo go into cantina, ees bad for la ley” said Enrique) and then, Gerardo carrying my seabag on his back like a true friend and brother, we crossed a great empty plaza of dirt and came to a bunch of stick huts forming a little village not far from the soft starlit surf, and there we knocked on the door of that mustachio’d wild man with the opium and were admitted to his candlelit kitchen where he and his witchdoctor goatee Estrando were sprinkling red pinches of pure opium into huge cigarettes of marijuana the size of a cigar.
The host allowed us to sleep the night in the little grass hut nearby—this hermitage belonged to Estrando, who was very kind to let us sleep there—he showed us in by candlelight, removed his only belongings which consisted of his opium stash under the pallet on the sod where he slept, and crept off to sleep
somewhere else.— We had only one blanket and tossed to see who would have to sleep in the middle: it was the kid Gerardo, who didnt complain.— In the morning I got up and peeked out through the sticks: it was a drowsy sweet little grass hut village with lovely brown maids carrying jugs of water from the main well on their shoulders—smoke of tortillas rose among the trees—dogs barked, children played, and as I say our host was up and splitting twigs with a spear by throwing the spear to the ground neatly parting the twigs (or thin boughs) clean in half, an amazing sight.— And when I wanted to go to the John I was directed to an ancient stone seat which overlorded the entire village like some king’s throne and there I had to sit in full sight of everybody, it was completely in the open—mothers passing by smiled politely, children stared with fingers in mouth, young girls hummed at their work.
We began packing to get back on the bus and carry on to Mexico City but first I bought a quarter pound of marijuana but as soon as the deal was done in the hut a file of Mexican soldiers and a few seedy policemen came in with sad eyes.— I said to Enrique: “Hey, are we going to be arrested?” He said no, they just wanted some of the marijuana for themselves, free, and would let us go peaceably.— So Enrique cut them into about half of what we had and they squatted all around the hut and rolled joints on the ground.— I was so sick on an opium hangover I lay there staring at everybody feeling like I was about to be skewered, have my arms cut off, hung upsidedown on the cross and burned at the stake on that high stone John.— Boys brought me soup with hot peppers in it and everybody smiled as I sipped it, lying on my side—it burned into my throat, made me gasp, cough and sneeze, and instantly I felt better.