by Jack Kerouac
“Don’t mind me! Go ahead with your friends,” cried the man, gripping Peter’s arm again and pushing him back and forth slightly. “Don’t mind me, I’m nothing, I’ll be dead in a couple of days.”
“No!” cried Peter. “Take this nickel and go down to the ward, they’ll clean it. Take this quarter too. Eat! You need some food, some energy, or that thing’ll get you! You can’t go around like this!”
“Peter, are we going?” called Francis. “Please! Let’s go now.”
“Now go and do as we say,” said Peter, shoving a coin in the man’s side pocket. “Isn’t that right, Al?” he demanded. “Shouldn’t he do that?”
“By all means,” said Panos in a deep, sad, grave voice. He had been watching everything in silence.
“You think I ought to?”
“Right now, man, right now!” And Peter started off on his crutches. And presently the old hobo weaved off down the street, under a streetlamp and around the corner, and he was gone.
“There he goes,” said Peter, “back to a bar. He’ll just drink up my thirty cents. I shouldn’t have given it to him. Geezus, do you realize that man’s going to be dead in a couple of days, just like he said?” The two boys stared at each other gravely. “Did you take a last look at him? He looks like death already, it’s in the rings around his eyes. The poor old bastard.”
“I understand perfectly what you mean,” said young Panos slowly and sadly.
“It’s horrible!” cried Engels, coming over. “You shouldn’t have touched him, God knows what he has.”
“That man will be found dead by the cops in a few days,” mused Peter. “They’ll find him on the sidewalk all black up to his eyes.”
“Ugh!” said Francis. “I don’t see how a man can let himself go like that.”
“The streets are full of such men,” said Engels. “But at least,” he went on, “you’ve done your good Boy Scout deed for today, Peter. Oh, you football-playing Samaritan!” he chuckled richly, pressing Peter’s shoulder.
“It takes money to be a Samaritan,” said Peter.
“How can a man let himself go like that,” said Francis again, “staggering around the streets, drinking, with a leg like that? He doesn’t seem to mind anything.”
They took a cab to a bar uptown, and sat at the clean mahogany bar, in the dim lights that glowed from behind glittering bottle displays. There was a low fulsome murmur of engrossed voices all around, soft music, the smell of clean leather and Scotch and soda.
“Well now,” said Engels jovially, “that was a little touch of the lower depths, wasn’t it? I can see, Peter, that this is the sort of thing you and your young friend here are fond of exploring in New York.” He paid for the drinks, as he had for the cab, and waved their contributions away. “What do you think, Francis? Does all this appeal to you? Should we join the boys in these forays into the highly cultural parts of the city?
“Tell me,” he demanded, tapping Peter’s knee, staring at him gravely, “where are you going tonight, for instance? What are you going to do?”
“We weren’t thinking of anything special—”
“What? No waterfront saloons with sawdust on the floor? No all-night movies on Times Square?” He laughed, hugely amused. “What do you say, Francis? Doesn’t it sound like the real thing?”
“Well—” said Francis, pursing his lips. He was not really sure whether Engels was being ironic. The other two boys were grinning foolishly, completely abashed by this banter of Engels, which seemed so urbane, disturbing and richly droll.
It was not strange that these boys from Galloway were somewhat impressed by Engels that night—all three of them, the moody discontented Francis, the brash, amazed, and delighted young Peter, and the ravenously excitable young Alex Panos. They were sitting in a cocktail lounge with him in the great rare city of their youthful hopes—New York, the unbelievable and miraculous place of places that had been the lore of their hearts since childhood, the road’s end of young aspirations and secret boyish plans. Engels, somehow, was a man who belonged to it and seemed to understand and own it all.
After that weekend Francis decided to come and live in New York as soon as he finished school. Someday, like Engels, he too would have an apartment, with friends and associates in for cocktails and dinner each Saturday night. They would talk about the newest books and plays and art exhibits, exchange gossip, meet new people, encounter new ideas, and partake in all the thousand excitements that made up the brilliant surge and rush and style of life in New York. It was a hint of his heart’s desires.
[7]
Peter went home that December for Christmas week.
He sat in the train wide awake at dawn, and leaned his head wearily against the back of the seat with his face turned to the frosted window in grave attention. The Boston-bound express sped eastward in the frozen Rhode Island dawn, and he suddenly sensed a new joy swelling up in him, something strange, something exultant, something that came to him from the scene outside the window where the sun had just appeared on the gray horizon and was spreading a cold rose light over the snowy fields and lonely farmhouses and over the forests of ragged birch that were everywhere slowly turning away from the sweep of the train’s progress, all of it remote and beautiful through blurs and streaks of blown snow and flying steam that whipped past his window from the locomotive. He realized, almost with a shock, that nothing could be more beautiful to him than these stretches of snow and these woods all tainted pink from the dawn. It all belonged to his own New England; he was rediscovering his earth, which he had been away from too long, it seemed.
Warm little kitchen lights were coming on in the isolated farmhouses out there below the high immense skies, shining through pale mist across the snow, twinkling like messages, filling him with the wonder and delight of coming home, reminding him of cozy warmth and snugness in blankets of dawn with windows rattling in the wind and the house full of smells of oatmeal, toast, and coffee in New England winter mornings.
What was it to which he was returning? What had he left behind only a few months ago as inconsequential? Now it came back to him with the full impact of discovery, brooding out there in the stark frosty air. He wanted it back for himself again and for always. It was his land, his own land.
The locomotive whistle howled across the snowy woods, again and again, and each time it blew he was overwhelmed with an indescribable joy and longing for home. It was all there, the wild, crude birch forests and the orderly fields surrounded by stonewalls, with the lonely-looking farmhouses standing desolate alongside their woodsheds and wells and barns, casting long shadows on the snow, and he knew that the farmers were getting up and putting on their shoes by the kitchen stove, their wives pouring water in the coffee pot, the chickens waking and preening in warm fusty coops while the rooster crowed in the snow.
It was the morning of a December day in 1940, he was eighteen years old, a football star at Penn, and he was coming home for Christmas.
After the first months of his freshman year with its dark campus at night when soft golden light shone in library and lecture-room windows, after his wanderings in New York and Philadelphia, he was now returning to something wild and crude, to deep snow and raw gray skies, a flight of dark birds over the pines, to ice-locked brooks and kids skating and shouting in the frosty air, to old woodstoves in saloons and men in boots and jackets, to the New England of towns and woods and snowstorms and deep star-sparkling nights. He realized now with strong conviction that nothing which could be taught him in the university could ever touch the wild joy in his heart, the plain powerful knowledge of things, the boyish glee and wonder he felt now as the train bore him back to the weather and veritable landscape of his soul. He wished that he would never have to leave Galloway again. Nothing that the university taught him could match for him the power and wisdom of his own kind of people, who lived and drew their breath in this rugged land joyous with tidings of towns, plain, homely, genuine and familiar, that he saw rolling by him again.
Restless, feverishly happy, Peter walked through the train as it sped clackety-clacking on the last lap from Providence to Boston. The coaches were filled with sunlight, men were awake and reading morning newspapers, the sparkling snowy countryside swept by outside—and it was then, with the shock of strangeness and half-remembrance, half-prescience, all half-dream and half-reality, that he saw his brother Joe sitting casually alone at the other end of a coach.
Joe—sunbrowned, fierce, meditative and watchful at the window, with a little half grin of anticipation on his lips, ragged like a hobo with long hair and dirty workclothes and a tattered canvas bag at his feet, coming home at last from his tremendous roamings, coming home incredibly on the same train as Peter in the same snowy world of morning.
Joe looked up casually—spurting smoke from his nostrils, full of thoughts—and they looked at each other dumbly. Joe frowned with surprise and disbelief, Peter’s heart pounded and he hurried over.
Joe suddenly let out a wild whoop of amazement.
“Don’t tell me it’s YOU!”
They swung each other around on gripped hands and pounded each other and blushed with tears of embarrassment and joy, and passengers in the coach turned and smiled.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming home for Christmas! Geezus, Joe, where you been?”
“Sit down! Sit down!” yelled Joe. He whacked Peter one on the back that sent him staggering down on the seat, he joyfully punched him, and shoved him back and forth. “Fancy meeting you on a train! I just got on this thing in New London a couple of hours ago! I’ve been hitch-hiking up from New Orleans till I won money in a crap game in New London last night!” With an agile and anxious movement he held out a light to Peter’s cigarette and his own, inhaled smoke prodigiously, blew it out his nose in sharp spurts, impatient and absorbed and feverish with excitement.
“What happened?” asked Peter with shining eyes.
“You mean the whole trip? The whole year and a half? Man, I’ve been everywhere!”
“Wow—”
“I’m tired, Pete, I want to rest, I’m sick of roaming around. Wait’ll the family hears about this! What about you? What’s this I heard about your leg? Ma wrote me a letter and told me you hurt your leg!”
“Against Columbia frosh,” laughed Peter. “It was nothing, just a small bone cracked, it’s all right now, good as new.”
“What about next year? Will you be able to play next year?”
“I tell you it’s good as new!”
“You sure?” cried Joe anxiously.
“Sure I’m sure.”
“It better be!” cried Joe, intent and troubled.
“I’ll bet you’ve been all over!”
“Ah, I’ll tell you all about it later! Right now we’ll hit Boston and have a few beers, hah? Like I told you, I won a few shekels in New London. This calls for a celebration!” He wetted his lips, then caught Peter’s eye again. “We ought to hit Galloway around eleven o’clock and surprise the old lady, hey, Petey? Wait till she sees both of us waltz in, huh? And the old man!” He whacked Peter jubilantly again as the train rushed on to Boston, and the day was almost insane with joy.
In a few minutes the train was slowing down to the great South Station. They jubilantly gathered their things and hurried out across the huge, dark, smoke-smelling shed, out among the crowds that filled the vast marble floor of the station, and then out on Atlantic Avenue with taxicabs bleating and maneuvering about for fares that poured out of the station, and heavy trucks rumbling by on the cobblestones, policemen’s whistles shrilling, cars and busses swoshing by over the dirty snow with tire-chains beating and ringing. The sharp frosty air of Boston with its smoke and sea-smells sent shivers up and down Peter’s spine.
They hurried along the narrow crowded streets towards North Station, hitting a half-dozen bars on the way and gulping down beers. They were swaying and almost staggering up to North Station, buying tickets, exultantly boarding the dusty rattling trunk-line train to Galloway. They rolled over the white countryside beside long stretches of forest and field and icy pond, and finally, almost suddenly—to Peter who was half-drunk and chattering eagerly—they were clacking on a bridge over the Concord River and the conductor was calling:
“Gallo-way, Gallo-way.”
All of Peter’s emotions rose marveling in his soul, and a film of tears came to his eyes. He was home and his brother Joe was miraculously at his side. The locomotive whistle was howling at the gates of Galloway where years ago as a boy he had lain in his room listening for it in the night dreaming of voyages and great personal events, and he knew that now the sound of the whistle was carrying across the rooftops of his hometown, clear across the river to his family’s house on the old road, and he knew that he would never grow old and weary of his life.
High and hilarious they started off on foot from the depot, and soon they were striding up the hill over icy ruts on Galloway Road engaged in gleeful conversations in the wind. There it was, the big wind-belabored weather-sheltered house, their home. In a moment Joe broke into a run and went sprinting over the snow-deep lawn, hurdling over bushes and running around to the side of the house to the windows of the living room where he crouched furtively and peeked in. Peter followed.
“Duck!” whispered Joe. “I see them—Ma and Rosey. I knew they’d be in there. Look at ’em, knitting away like fiends!”
Peter peeked in, and he saw his mother and Rosey sitting in old brown wicker chairs rocking back and forth, their hands fluttering swiftly over needle and yarn. He heard the mumble of their voices; and a bright patch of sunlight fell on them, illuminating their meditative, placid, blue-eyed faces in a cheerful winter morning brilliance that sent pangs of joy through him. The bright chintz curtains, the shiny top of the mahogany table, the clean smooth linoleum on the floor, the gayly colored cushions on the wicker settee, all of it was just as he had expected. Kewpie the cat lay dozing warmly in an old sweater in the corner.
When Joe began to tap on the window-pane the women looked up sharply with the inquiring, incisive air women have when they’re home and there is a knock from outside. When they saw who it was, they turned to each other that swift glance of stunned prophecy. They rose from their chairs with a cry and came scurrying to the door. Joe bounded up the steps. In a moment he was being smothered with kisses, the women were crying: “It’s Joey, it’s Joey! He’s come back! Oh, my God!”
Peter came after him into the warmth and the smells of boiling meat and vegetables that filled the house. It made him furiously hungry, wildly glad.
“And Petey!” Rose whooped with delight. “The two of them together!” She grabbed Peter in her powerful arms and kissed him violently on the cheek.
“My Petey’s home too!” called out the mother. “Oh, this is too much, my two boys together, my boys are home,” and when Peter kissed her she threw her arms around both her sons and hugged for dear life.
“I’m hungry, Ma!” yelled Joe with a shout of laughter. “What’s that chow I smell! What’ve we got for dinner?”
“Oh,” cried Mrs. Martin beside herself with uncontrollable joy, “I can’t believe it. I was expecting my Petey home from college, he wrote me he was coming, but you, Joey, you never told me you were coming home. Now he’s come home for Christmas! Rosey!”
“Joe, you old son of a gun, where the hell have you been!” cried Rose in her high raucous yell of greeting. “And don’t give us any of your lies!”
“Never mind that, I’m hungry!”
“He’s hungry again. He’s always hungry. Get away from me, you old bum. I’m all out of breath!”
And they both laughed their high whooping laughter.
Then they all went into the kitchen, and the mother, with a flushed and anxious expression on her face, wiping tears from her eyes, was at the refrigerator pulling out great quantities of food from her larder. “I’ve got some nice Maine sardines here,” she said, “and here’s some bacon, eggs, ham—and here’s some ham
burger steak nice and lean I got yesterday, and milk, and here’s some lettuce and tomatoes. Do you want a nice salad? And some beer if you want it, some fruit salad, pineapples, peaches. And here, do you want some beans? I baked them Saturday, they’re still very good. Here’s some peanut butter, jam—”
“Whoa! wait a minute, Ma!” cried Joe, running up and putting his arms around her. “We don’t want all that. How about a cup of hot cocoa, huh?”
And Rose was standing at her mother’s side peering anxiously into the refrigerator.
“And here’s some nice cheese I just got at Wietelmann’s,” the mother went on, oblivious of everything in the world except that her sons had been starving to death away from home. “Oh, and if you want a snack before dinner, if you want a little lunch before dinner I can fry you some of this nice tenderloin steak—and I’ve got a few lamb chops left if you’d like that. Just say what you want. And here’s some nice canned asparagus tips and ripe olives. Oh, and I’ve got plenty of Vermont maple syrup here. Do you want me to make you some pancakes?” And as she said this, all the food was coming out of the refrigerator and being piled on the kitchen table.
“No, no,” cried Joe, “just make us a cup of hot cocoa! We’re not hungry, I was just kidding, we ate in Boston!”
“Unless you want a nice bowl of peasoup?” the mother inquired anxiously. “I made it last Friday, it’s very good. Or maybe you’d like to try some of the boiled dinner that’s on the stove?”
“No, no, Ma! Cup of hot chocolate! Hey, Rose, tell her we ain’t hungry!”
But Rose herself was not easily to be dissuaded. She crossed the kitchen floor with the heavy step of a pachyderm, the whole room trembled and a rack of dishes in the pantry rattled and jingled, she said: “You’re going to eat something with that cocoa! How about a couple roast-beef sandwiches?”
“Yes,” said the mother, “there’s that, from Sunday’s roast. Or you could have—” She paused awhile as she hauled out a big roast of beef from the ice box and stacked it beside everything else on the table, then she began to rub her lips meditatively. “Rose!” she finally said. “What else is there?”