The Town and the City: A Novel

by Jack Kerouac

  “Charley, you take that piece of iron and pry out the tire on the front wheel,” he commanded. “There’s another tire on that old Nash there. And you, Liz, you carry all of it back to the car and the stuff you already picked up this afternoon.” Having dispatched these orders, Joe fell back to his work with sensational vigor, on an ancient ruined Graham this time.

  In that manner, under Joe’s supervision, as the dusk slowly deepened, the three of them managed at last to pile up more than a sufficient amount of scrap and junk to meet Charley’s poor needs. The boy was all amazed and joyful. It was as though the world had come back to him again, back to reclaim him after disasters and isolations to keep him infolded in sweet and safest brotherly darkness.

  “Look all the stuff we got!” he yelled. “When we going to sell it, Joe?” he cried with shining eyes.

  “Right now, pardner,” said Joe very severely. Charley leaped away in ravenous excitement, and Elizabeth watched with brooding satisfaction.

  It was getting dark, and as the wind rose driving ghostly snow across the murky fields, as a thousand ranked windows glowed in the Galloway factories across the waters, the two brothers and their sister loaded the back of the Chewy, and rattled off along an old dirt road that wound away from the river into the woods.

  The junkman was a rather moronic person by the name of Zouzou, who lived in a dilapidated old farmhouse at a fork in the roads leading out of Galloway into Norcott, New Hampshire. This Zouzou could not have been much more than thirty years old but owing to the idiocy of his nature, and perhaps also as a consequence of the incredibly lonely life he lived as a hermit junkman, he already presented an appearance of the most extraordinary decay. His skin was like wrinkled brown parchment, he had a toothless mouth and a senile pointed chin that was always drooling and unshaven and trembling from moronic excitement, and in the way that he walked and moved around there was a strange and disorderly energy like the last shaky vigors of an old man.

  When they arrived at Zouzou’s farmhouse, it was completely dark except for one dim light burning in the back kitchen window. Charley led them around to the back and knocked. In a moment Zouzou himself opened the door and emitted a meaningless giggle. Behind him they could see a littered kitchen table upon which was his supper. An empty can of beans lay beside a frying pan in which the beans had been heated and out of which he had evidently been eating with an enormous ladle of some kind. On the wall beside the table there was a ring screwed into the woodwork to which Zouzou had apparently attached a towel irrevocably. It was the dirtiest towel the Martins had ever seen.

  Charley indicated to Zouzou the purpose of their visit, and the simpleton straightaway picked up his oil lamp and went out in the yard to see what they had. After a cursory examination of the load he turned to Charley—while Elizabeth and Joe stood back in the dark outside the range of the weaving lamplight—and he uttered a sentence of jargon which young Charley apparently understood.

  “He says to drive the car in the barn. We’re in!”

  Joe gravely drove the car into the ruined old barn, and there, by the light of his oil lamp, Zouzou unloaded the junk onto the ground and grunted something that sounded like “Oui!” each time he found some object particularly suited to his liking. Finally, having examined everything, Zouzou sat down on the ground in front of the enormous pile and began to thumb a corncob pipe reflectively.

  “What do we do now?” Joe wanted to know.

  “He’s thinking,” said Charley with a touch of impatience. “Give him time to think.”

  Finally after minutes of pipe-smoking and smacking his lips to say, “Pah! Pah! Pah!” he rose and left them waiting in the barn.

  “What’d he say, for krissakes?” cried Joe in stupefied amazement.

  “He’ll be right back,” said Charley, deep in thought. In a moment Zouzou was back with some money in his hand which he now held out to Charley at arm’s length, with a suspicious glare. Charley took the money and counted it. It ran up to ten dollars and eleven cents. When he at last looked at Zouzou and nodded in mute agreement, Zouzou exploded into a wild maniacal laugh of happiness.

  “Hokay! Hokay!” yelled Zouzou, and picking up his lamp he beckoned them out of the barn. “Ginjale! Ginjale!” he was shouting.

  “He wants us to have some ginger ale in his house,” explained Charley eagerly.

  But suddenly Zouzou had jerked his head around in a birdy movement of demented attention and was holding up his hand stiffly for silence. All that could be heard was the whistle of the wind through the niches of the barn, and the scraping of branches overhead, and the soft sift of snow under the door. At last, without turning his head or relaxing his tense mad stare, he said something happily to Charley.

  “What’s this?” cried Joe. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “He says that was his sister just then,” said Charley around his hand. “He says she’s been in the parlor for ten years.”

  “You mean he’s got a sister living here?” cried Elizabeth anxiously.

  “Naw, his sister’s dead! He’s always telling us his sister’s still in the parlor.”

  “Well,” said Joe, turning to Elizabeth, “I reckon it’s just about time for us to be moseying along.”

  Charley seized Zouzou’s hand and shook it firmly, and Zouzou went, “Hee hee hee!” bidding him good-bye. They jumped in the car, waved to Zouzou, and lurched off, while Zouzou stood out in the middle of the road waving his lamp gleefully at them.

  For Charley, who sat looking out the window bubbling over with pleasure, with his eyes turned away from Elizabeth and Joe for fear they would catch him with their laughing eyes, the day seemed now full of strange crazy glee—and all his fears and bruising terrors, his troubles and lonely unconsolations, were gone.

  And when they would get home now, in a few minutes, his father would be standing there in the kitchen with his gape of wondering curiosity. He would stare openmouthed at them for a moment and then ask what it was all about, and scratch his head, and frown, and peer at them, and wonder about it, and go back to the den. His mother would be full of anxiety and solicitude, peering at them shrewdly, knowing everything. Peter and Ruth would be there, grinning, and Mickey would be watching in wistful silence. Rose would be there saying, “Well, well, well, it’s about time!” Francis would be somewhere brooding about the house.

  In the smoky air of evening now, there was something mad with glee, something that laughed in a soundless choking in the dark.

  It seemed to Charley that he knew what this something was. He had been with the children at dusk when they suddenly leap up and tumble over and yell in diabolical delight, for no earthly reason, as something passes by in the dark smoky air, and the children have understood it so well.

  [10]

  When christmas eve came that year, the winds died down as if pious. A hush of nipping cold descended and caked the snow and filled the air with a silent locked frostiness. After nightfall huge and lustrous winter stars appeared to reign over the miraculous stillness of the night.

  To little Mickey it was all miraculous, a simple verity, the truth of Christmas which was the doing of little Child Jesus, and of God, to which he, Michael Martin, was tremblingly and joyously prepared and given over.

  The very sheen of starlight on the glossy snows, the little red and blue and green lights in the windows of homes, the icicles hanging from eaves—all these things, in the silence of mystery and prophecy fulfilled, were the altar flickers and divine meanings that had to come every year at Christmas. Reared in the Catholic myths and understanding, he walked in the frosty night and was a saint. Little Mickey, moody, dreamy, full of childlike revery, was wrapped in a silence of pieties, while all the others laughed and yelled and talked and enjoyed themselves. “Like it was New Year’s already!” he thought darkly, almost scornfully.

  They had all been skating at the pond a mile or so down Galloway Road in the evening, everybody—all the kids, Peter, Charley, Liz, her girl friends, Peter’s c
hums, Joe, some of his buddies, and boys and girls from all around—dancing like shadows by the roaring bonfire, and scooping around in great swishing zigzags. Some of them were singing and yelling; some, like Peter and his friends Danny and Scotcho and Ernest Berlot Jr., were nipping out of bottles of brandy; some, like Liz and her boy friend Buddy Fredericks, were skating in beautiful arm-locked waltzes. The night’s numb frosted air was sharp with cries and murmurs and shrieks.

  But Mickey skated around the fringes of the pond, alone, thinking, looking up at the North Star, running a stick in front of him like Dit Clapper the hockey star, pushing along doggedly deep in his own amazing thoughts about Christmas and everything, and once in a while—when no one was near—singing “Silent Night, Holy Night” in a small, high voice like the choir boys at midnight Mass. Once Charley came wobbling over on skates to show him the big studded Western cowboy belt Joe had bought him for Christmas.

  “But you ain’t supposed to look at your presents till midnight!” cried Mickey, astounded.

  “It’s all right; Joe said it was all right to wear it skating tonight!”

  “But you can’t do that,” scoffed Mickey. “Don’t you know nothin’ about Christmas? You didn’t open my present did you!”

  “I don’t even know where it is. Say!” Charley laughed savagely. “Rosey was lookin’ for you! She’s lookin’ for your presents to wrap ’em up in paper. She’s been wrappin’ presents all day, up in the bedroom with big piles all over the bed and she’s wrapping ’em with ribbons. Did you know there’s a big party going on at the house now? Mr. Cartier and Mr. Mulligan and Mrs. Cartier and Mrs. Mulligan and everybody. Pa’s in the kitchen making drinks and they’re playin’ the piano and singing. It’s crazy over to the house—”

  “I wrapped ’em myself,” muttered Mickey, “and they’re hid and nobody can see them till midnight. They’re hid in the cellar.”

  “What?”

  “My presents!”

  “What’d you get me, Mick, what’d you get me? I bet you can’t never guess what I got you!”

  They had bought scout knives for each other, and they both thought it was going to be a big surprise, too. On the other hand they both wanted scout knives.

  At eleven o’clock Peter—their big brother Peter, a hero of heroes, a captain of captains among the little high-school football players who were skating all over the pond with their Galloway “G’s” on heavy woolen sweaters and nodding and blushing whenever Peter chanced to look their way, an unfathomable football player at Olympian Penn—their big brother Peter was standing on the bank, with his skates around his neck, by the roaring bonfire, calling out to them, through cupped hands: “Heyyy, Mick! Hey, Char-lee! Come on home.… We’re all getting a ride home!” Everybody piled into a rattling car that belonged to Ernest Berlot and Peter’s wild chums, who were a little drunk now. They wanted Peter to join them in further celebrations in the Rooney Street saloons, and they all went speeding back down Galloway Road, Joe and Liz singing crazy songs, Mickey sitting on Peter’s lap in front, some other kids from down the road riding on the runningboard and yelling in the wind, Berlot the driver tooting the horn wild and insistent.

  When they came in sight of the Martin house, Mickey’s heart filled with pleasure when he saw the soft lights in the windows and the curl of smoke winding from the chimney. He knew that Christmas was always beautiful. Every room in the Martin house that night was lighted up to serve one purpose or another. When they parked in front they could hear a chorus of voices singing in the front room, and great adult roars of laughter, the celebrating elders having a big time. “Just like it was Saturday night!” Mickey thought darkly again.

  The kids giggled and peeked in from the front porch, at Martin, and Mrs. Martin, and the Cartiers and the Mulligans and other guests who were gathered around the piano with drinks in their hands. George Martin, almost as drunk as a lord, was singing loudest of them all, while the mother sat at the piano playing with a radiant and happy flush on her face. It made Mickey happy, yet also somehow sad to see his mother laughing and playing the piano like that. At Christmas, he always liked to just sit beside her on the couch. She let him have red port wine to drink with the walnuts, and watch the warm soft lights of the tree, red and blue and green, and listen to Scrooge on the radio. He liked to listen to Scrooge every year. He liked to have the house all quiet and Scrooge and Christmas songs on the radio, and everybody opening the Christmas presents after midnight Mass.

  He liked it when his father sat in his chair with a clean white shirt and a necktie and a vest, and a fresh cigar, eating candy and nuts and fruit out of bowls, laughing, talking to everybody, sitting there all neat and combed and rosy-faced from the holiday. He liked to have his mother putting tinsel and cotton snow and bulbs and decorations on the Christmas tree, and Rosey helping her, and a big turkey roasting in the oven and filling the house with its delicious smells, and Liz on the floor reading the funnies, and Joe and Charley, and Ruthey and Petey all there, the whole family in the quiet house at Christmas.

  They all went in the house. The singing went on around the piano; big Mr. Cartier was doing a crazy dance with his wife’s hat on backwards. It was too much for Mickey who had to sit down in a corner and giggle. For a moment he was worried when the Christmas tree shook a little from side to side, but it had been well secured to the floor—Joe had done the job himself—and he guessed it wouldn’t fall over. He went over and threw more tinsel on the branches.

  Ruthey was whispering to Mrs. Mulligan: “That’s Mickey’s blue star up there on top of the tree. Every year we’ve got to get up on a chair and put it up, or else! You know, or else!”

  Mickey heard, but he paid no attention, he just stood before the tree with his hands clasped behind him. Then his mother came running over and threw her arms around him saying: “Oh, my little Mickey! He loves his tree so much!”

  “Where’s your present to me?” cried Ruthey. “Where did you put all your presents?”

  “In the cellar.”

  “Well, it’s time to bring them up now! Bring them up and we’ll lay them under the tree with all the others.”

  So Mickey went downstairs and came up a moment later with a pile of packages all crudely wrapped his own secret way.

  “Oh, you wrapped them up nice!” cried Ruthey. “But I’ll fix them up with ribbons and everything. Is this mine? Oh, I can tell what’s in mine!”

  “No, you can’t!” Mickey affirmed sternly. “How can you, if you ain’t seen it?”

  “I can guess, can’t I? It’s about big enough for a bottle of perfume.”

  “Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed savagely. She had guessed it right on the nose. He smote his brow incredulously: “Boyoboy, are you off! You’re a million miles off!”

  “I am?” murmured Ruth with hesitation, realizing somehow that he was taking the whole thing altogether seriously, and in a rush of tenderness she kissed him impulsively on the cheek. She knew what it all meant to passionate Mickey, Christmas, and the realization of his feelings filled her suddenly with a longing to guard over his little devotions.

  “At midnight,” she said to him softly, “in about a half an hour you and I and Ma are going to midnight Mass and when we come back everybody’ll open their presents. And I’ll bet you’ll be a million miles off guessing what I got you!”

  “Oh, your guess was a billion miles off!” yelled Mickey with a broad smile.

  “Well, then I’ll get a big surprise. And I bet you can’t ever guess what I got for you. There it is there under the tree.”

  “Let me see!”

  She handed him a large package. He judiciously weighed it in his hands, turned it upside down to see if it would rattle, or make any revealing noises, he shook it, held it up to the light, put his ear against it with a crafty mysterious look. He wanted Ruth to think that he had secret methods of his own for determining such things.

  But finally he admitted, “Naw, I can’t guess.”

  “You’re no bett
er at guessing than I am!” Ruth laughed and kissed him once again.

  Then there were more uproars in the house as Mr. Cartier yelled, “Beans! It’s time to eat them beans! Where’s the bean-pot? George, I’m genuinely sorry, I know you had them baked beans done for Christmas morning tomorrow, but I gotta eat them beans!” They trooped into the kitchen where Mr. Cartier began to eat the beans.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” said Martin, “if you want to make up for this, ask Santa Claus if he’s got a woman who can bake a pot of beans like Marge and that’s what I’ll take!”

  The noisy merriment swirled and rolled, it was as though the very windows were rattling.

  Joe and Rose were opening up another bottle of whiskey, and Peter came hurrying into the kitchen with some ice cream and ginger ale. He gave Mickey a glass and showed him how to make an ice-cream soda. Out in the parlor Liz was dancing around with Charley trying to show him the jitterbug, and suddenly Liz swept Mickey up and danced him around the room, and he jumped about to show her he could do a better job than Charley.

  It was almost time for midnight Mass now, but everybody was having so much fun and everything was so crazy and funny that Mickey almost didn’t want to go to church after all.

  Finally his mother got their coats, and they started out on foot with Ruth, and walked off in the frosty quiet night.

  Mickey was sublimely happy now. All along the streets people began to appear from their houses, afoot or in cars, all moving in the same direction. It amazed Mickey that the whole night was full of voices and the crunch of steps over the hard snow, even though it was almost midnight. And again and again he looked up to gaze at the stars, which seemed to touch the rooftops of the houses, icy bright and trembling and hovering over the snowy chimneys and over the sleep of little children smaller than he who believed that Santa Claus would soon be climbing down those chimneys.