by Jack Kerouac
Forgive me o Lord
AT THE RICKETY FENCEBACK Del Monte Fruitpacking Company which is directly across the track from the San Jose passenger station there is a curve in the track, a curve shmurve of eternity rememberable from the dreams of the railroad dark I had where I’m working unspeakable locals with Indians and suddenly we come upon a great Indian caucus in an underground subterraneana somewhere right there in the vicinity of the Del Monte curve (where Indians work anyway) (packing the crates, the cans, the fruit in cans with syrup) and I’m with the heroes of the Portuguese bars of San Francisco watching dances and hearing revolutionary speeches like the speeches of the revolutionary sod squat down heroes of Culiacan where by the bark of the wave in the drearylit drolling night I have heard them say la tierra esta la notre and knew they mean it and for this reason the dream of the Indians revolutionary meeting and celebrating in the bottom lip cellar of the railroad earth.— The train goes around the curve there and gently I lean out of the grabiron darks and look and there’s our little clearance and train order sitting in a piece of string which is stretched between the two train order bamrods, as the train passes the trainmen simply (usually the fireman) reaches out with whole arm so to make sure not to miss and hooks the string in passing (the string being taut) and off comes the string and the two bows which are rigid sorta ping a little and in yr arm is looped the train orders on yellow onionskin tied by string, the engineer upon receipt of this freight takes the string and slowly according to years of personal habit in the manner of undoing train order strings undoes the string and then according again to habit unfolds the paper to read and sometimes they even put glasses on like great professors of ivy universities to read as that big engine goes chug chugging across and down the green land of California and Mexicans of railside mexshacks standing with eyes shaded watching us past, see the great bespectacled monk student in engineer of the night peering learnedly at his little slip in big grimy paw and it reads, date, “Oct 3 1952, Train Orders, to Train 2-9222, issued 2:04 PM, wait at Rucker till 3:58 for eastbound 914, do not go beyond Corporal till 4:08 and etc.” all the various orders which the train order dispatchers and various thinking officials at switch towers and telephones are thinking up in the great metaphysical passage of iron traffics of the rail—we all take turns reading, like they say to young students “Read it carefully dont leave it up to us to decide if there are any mistakes many’s the time a student found a mistake that the engineer and fireman out of years of habit didnt see so read it carefully” so I go over the whole thing reading even over and over again checking dates the time, like, the time of the order should certainly be not later than time of departure from station (when I went loping over the junkfield with lantern and loot bag racing to catch my guilt late in the gray candy gloom) and ah but all of it sweet. The little curve at Del Monte, the train orders, then the train goes on to mile post 49.1 to the Western Pacific RR crossing, where you always see the track goes directly vertically across this alien track so there is a definite hump in the rail bed, but chickaluck, as we go over, sometimes at dawn returning from Watsonville I’d be dozing in the engine and wondering just about where we were not knowing generally we were in the vicinity of San Jose or Lick and I’d hear the brock a brock and say to myself “The Western Pacific crossing!” and remember how one time a brakee said to me, “Cant sleep nights in this here new house I got here out on Santa Clara avenue for the clatter and racket of that damn engine out there in the midnight” “Why I thought you loved the railroad” “Well to tell you the fact of the matter, is the Western Pacific happens to have a rail running out there” and with such, as tho it was inconceivable that there could be other railroads than the Southern Pacific.— On we go across the crossing and there we go along the stream, the Oconee of old Jose the little blank blank Guadaloupe river dry and with Indians standing on the banks, that is Mexican children watching the train, and great fields of prickly pear cactus and all green and sweet in the gray afternoon and gonna be golden brown and rich when the sun at five flames flares to throw the California wine over the rearwestern licks into the pacific brine.— On we go to Lick, always I take my looks at favorite landmarks, some school where boys are practising football in varsity and sub varsity and freshman and sub freshman squads, four of em, under tutelage of raven priests with piping glad voices in the wind, for it’s October of footingball heavening rooting root to you.— Then at Lick there is on a hill a kind of monastery, you barefly see the dreaming marijuana walls of it as you pass, up there, with a bird wheeling to peace, there a field, cloisters, work, cloisterous prayers and every form known to man of sweet mediating going on as we wrangle and back-giggle by with a bursting engine and long knocking space-taking-up half mile long freight any minute I expect a hotbox in, as I look back anxiously, fit to work. —The dreams of monastery men up there on the hill at Lick, and I think, “Ah creamy walls of either Rome, civilizations, or the last monasterial mediation with God in the didoudkekeghgj” god knows what I’m thinking, and then and my thoughts rapidly change as 101 rears into sight, and Coyote, and the beginning of the sweet fruit fields and prune orchards and the great strawberry fields and the vast fields where you see far off the humble squatting figures of Mexican brazeros in the great haze working to pluck from the earth that which the America with his vast iron wages no longer thinks feasible as an activity yet eats, yet goes on eating, and the brass backs with arms of iron Mexico in the cactus plateau love, they’ll do it for us, the railroad freight train and concomitant racks of beets is not even, the men on it, are not even mindful of how those beets or in what mood, sweat, sweetness, were picked—and laid to rest out of the earth in the steely cradle.— I see them their bent humble backs remembering my own cotton-picking days in Selma California and I see far off across the grapevines the hills to the west, then the sea, the great sweet hills and further along you begin to see the familiar hill of Morgan Hill, we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it’s all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat—the proprietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now—happy.
THE SWEETNESS OF THE FIELDS unspeakable—the names themselves bloody edible like Lick Coyote Perry Madrone Morgan Hill San Martin Rucker Gilroy o sleepy Gilroy Carnadero Corporal Sargent Chittenden Logan Aromas and Watsonville Junction with the Pajaro River passing thru it and we of the railroad pass over its wooded dry Indian draws at somewhere outside Chittenden where one morning all dew pink I saw a little bird sitting on a piece of stanchion straight up wood in the wild tangle, and it was the Bird of Chittenden, and the meaning of morning.— Sweet enough the fields outside San Jose like at say Lawrence and Sunnyvale and where they have vast harvest and fields with the bentback sad mexicano laborioring in his primavery.— But once past San Jose somehow the whole California opens ever further, at sunset at Perry or Madrone it is like a dream, you see the little rickety farmhouse, the fields, the rows of green planted fruit, and beyond the green pale mist of hills and over that the red aureoles of pacific sunfall and in the silence the bark of a duog and that fine California night dew already rising ere maw’s done wiped the hamburg juice off the frying pan and later on tonite beautiful little Carmelita O’ Jose will be gomezing along the road with her brown breasts inside cashmere sweater bouncing ever so slightly even with maidenform bra and her brown feet in thonged sandals also brown, and her dark eyes with pools in em of you wonder what mad meaning, and her arms like arms of handmaidens in the Plutonian bible—and ladles for her arms, in the form of trees, with juice, take a peach, take the fulsome orange, bit a hole in in, take the orange throw your head back use all your strength and drink and squeeze out the orange thru the hole, all the juice runs down your lip and on her arms.— She h
as dust on her toes, and toe nail polish—she has a tiny brown waist, a little soft chin, soft neck like swan, little voice, little femi- mmty and doesn’t know it—her little voice is littletinkled.— Along comes the tired field hand Jose Camero and he see her in the vast sun red in the fruit field moving queen majesty to the well, the tower, he runs for her, the railroad crashes by he pays no attention standing on the engine student brakeman J. L. Kerouac and old hoghead W. H. Sears 12 years in California since leaving the packed Oklahoma dust farms, his fathered in a broken down okie truck ordered departures from there, for the first nonces they were and tried to be cottonpickers and were mighty good at it but one day somebody told Sears to try railroading which he did and then he was now after several years a young fireman, an engineer—the beautify of the salvation fields of California making no difference to the stone of his eye as with glove framed throttle hand he guides the black beast down the star rail.— Switches rush up and melt into the rail, sidings part from it like lips, return like lover arms.— My mind is on the brown knees of Carmelity, the dark spltot between her thighs where creation hides its majesty and all the boys with eager head do rush suffering and want the whole the hole the works the hair the seekme membrane the lovey sucky ducky workjohn, the equalled you, she never able and down goes the sun and it’s dark and they’re layin in a grape row, nobody can see, or hear, only the dog hears OOO slowly against the dust of that railroad earth he presses her little behind down to form a little depression in the earth from the force and weight of his tears slowly lunging her downthru and into the portals of her sweetness, and slowly the blood pounds in his indian head and comes to a rise and she softly pants with parted brownly lips and with little pear teeth showing and sticking out just far and just so gently almost biting, burning in the burn of his own, lips—he drives and thrives to pound, the grain, the grape nod in unison, the wine is springing from the noggin of the ground, bottles will roll on 3rd Street to the sands of Santa Barbara, he’s making it with the wouldyou seek it then would and wouldn’t you if you too could—the sweet flesh intermingling, the flowing blood wine dry husk leaf bepiled earth with the hard iron passages going oer, the engine’s saying K RRRR OOO AAAWWOOOO and the crossing it’s ye famous Krrot Krroot Krroo ooooaaaawwww Kroot—2 short one long, one short, ‘sa thing I got to learn as one time the hoghead was busy telling a joke in the fireman’s ear and we were coming to a crossing and he yelled at me “Go ahead go ahead” and made a pull sign with his hand and I lookied up and grabbed the string and looked out, big engineer, saw the crossing racing up and girls in sandals and tight ass dresses waiting at the flashby RR crossing boards of Carnadero and I let it to, two short pulls, one long, one short, Krroo Krroo Krrrooooa Krut.—So now it’s purple in the sky, the whole rim America falling spilling over the west mountains into the eternal and orient sea, and there’s your sad field and lovers twined and the wine is in the earth already and in Watsonville up ahead at the end of my grimy run among a million others sits a bottle of tokay wine which I am going to buy to put some of that earth back in my belly after all this shudder of ferrous knock klock against my soft flesh and bone exultation—in other words, when work’s done, I’m gonna have a drink of wine, and rest.—The Gilroy Subdivision this is.
THE FIRST RUN I EVER MADE on the Gilroy Subdivision, that night dark and clean, standing by the engine with my lamp and lootbag waiting for the big men to make up their minds here comes this young kid out of the dark, no railroad man but obviously a bummer but on the bum from college or good family or if not with cleanteeth smile and no broken down datebag river Jack from the bottoms of the world night—said, “This thing going to L.A.?”—“Well it’s going about part of the way to there, about 50 miles to Watsonville then if you stick on it they might route you down to San Luis Obispo too and that’s about halfway to L.A.”—“Ba what d’l care about halfway to L.A. I want to go all the way to L.A.—what are you a railroad brakebanana?” “Yeah, I’m a student”—“What’s a student”—“Well it’s a guy learning and getting, well I aint getting paid” (this being my student chain gang run all the way down)—“Ah well I dont like going up and down the same rail, if you ask me goin to sea is the real life, now that’s where I’m headed or hitch hike to New York, either way, I wouldnt want to be a railroad man.”—“What you talkin about man it’s great and you’re moving all the time and you make a lot of money and no body bothers you out there.”—“Neverthefuckingless you keep going up and down the same rail dont you for krissakes?” so I told him what how and where boxcar to get on, “Krissakes dont hurt yourself always remember when you try to go around proving you’re a big adventurer of the American night and wanta you hop freights like Joel McCrea heroes of old movies Jesus you dumb son a bitch hang on angel with your tightest hand and dont let your feet drag under that iron round-wheel it’ll have less regard for the bone of your leg than it has for this toothpick in my mouty” “Ah you shitt you shit you think I’m afraid of a goddamn railroad train I’m going off to join the goddam navy and be on carriers and there’s your iron for you I’ll land my airplane half on iron half on water and crashbang and jet to the moon too.” “Good luck to you guy, dont fall off hang tight grip wrists dont fuck up and tout and when you gets to L.A. give my regards to Lana Turner.”—The train was starting to leave and the kid had disappeared up the long black bed and snakeline redcars—I jumped up on the engine with the regular head man who was going to show me how the run runs, and the fireman, and hoghead.— Off we chugged, over the crossing, over to the Del Monte curve and where the head man showed me how you hang on with one hand and lean out and crook your arm and grab the train orders off the string—then out to Lick, the night, the stars.— Never will forget, the fireman wore a black leather jacket and a white skidrow San Frisco seaman Embarcadero cap, with visor, in the ink of this night he looked exactly like a revolutionary Bridges Curran Bryson hero of old waterfront smosh flops, I could see him with meaty hand waving a club in forgotten union publications rotting in gutters of backalley bars, I could see him with hands deep in pocket going angrily thru the uneccentric unworking-bums of 3rd Street to his rendezvous with the fate of the fish at the waterfront gold blue pier edge where boys sit of afternoons dreaming under clouds on bits of piers with the slap of skeely love waters at their feet, white masts of ships, orange masts of ships with black hulls and all your orient trade pouring in under the Golden Gate, this guy I tell you was like a sea dog not a railroad firemen yet there he sat with his snow white cap in the grimeblack night and rode that fireman’s seat like a jockey, chug and we were really racing, they were opening her up wanted to make good time to get past Gilroy before any orders would fuck them up, so across the onlitt tintight and with our big pot 3500 style engine headlights throwing its feverish big lick tongue over the wurrling and incurling and outflying track we go swinging and roaring and flying down that line like fucking madmen and the fireman doesnt exactly hold on to his white hat but he has hand on fire throttle and keeps close eye on valves and tags and steam bubblers and outside looks on the rail and the wind blows his nose back but ee god he bouncing on that seat exactly like a jocket riding a wild horse, why we had a hog-head that night which was my first night so wild he had the throttle opened fullblack and kept yanking at it with one heel against the iron scum of the floor trying to open her up further and if possible tear the locomotive apart to get more out of her and leave the track and fly up in the night over the prune fields, what a magnificent opening night it was for me to ride a fast run like that with a bunch of speed demons and that magnificent fireman with his unpredestined impossible unprecedentable hat white in the black black railroad.— And all the time and the conversations they have, and the visions in his hat I saw of the public hair restaurant on Howard, how I saw that Frisco California white and gray of rain fogs and the back alleys of bottles, breens, derbies, mustachios of beer, oysters, flying seals, crossing hills, bleak bay windows, eye diddle for old churches with handouts for seadogs barkling and snurli
ng in avenues of lost opportunity time, ah—loved it all, and the first night the finest night, the blood, “railroading gets in yr blood” the old hoghead is yelling at me as he bounces up and down in his seat and the wind blows his striped cap visor back and the engine like a huge beast is lurching side to side 70 miles per hour breaking all rulebook rules, zomm, zomm, were crashing through the night and out there Carmelity is coming, Jose is making her electricities mix and interrun with his and the whole earth charged with juices turns up the organo to the flower, the unfoldment, the stars bend to it, the whole world’s coming as the big engine booms and balls by with the madmen of the white cap California in there flossing and wow there’s just no end to all this wine —