The Town and the City: A Novel

by Jack Kerouac

  It was the night before Peter was to go back to Penn for his second year, and it was also the night when the women of the Martin house began packing in preparation for moving away from the old house to a new home in a flat. The Martins could no longer afford the old house, and now that Elizabeth, Francis and Peter were going to live away from home it was not practical to stay there even if they wanted to.

  It was a beautiful night, rich with steep sheer darknesses, and the high looming shadows, the moving boughs, the swaying streetlamps of the old road, all of it overvaulted tremendously by the great chunky nodding stars of August bending close to rooftop and treetop, blazing there close-packed—and the old man and his son sat on the porch on their last night together in the Martin house.

  “So there it is, Petey, my son,” spoke up the father mournfully. “There it is. Your little sister went and got married at eighteen and I guess I’m to blame. And just look at us there”—he pointed inside the house where Mrs. Martin and Ruth and Rosey were rolling up the rug in the front room—“moving out of the house we’ve been living in for years and years, farther back than you or Charley or Mickey or even little Lizzy can remember. And your little brother Mickey’s up in his room wondering what it’s all about, the poor little beggar. Ah!” he cried bitterly. “It’s too much, too much!” and he shook his bowed head slowly.

  “Pa, don’t worry about it,” spoke up Peter gently. “After all, a lot of families move from one place to another all the time. And as for Lizzy—why, hell, she’s not the only girl who gets married at eighteen, a lot of them do. That’s what she wanted to do. That Buddy Fredericks is a nice guy.” He looked at his father anxiously.

  “Young Fredericks is a nice boy,” agreed old Martin sadly, “I’ve nothing against the boy. But Lizzy is too young, much too young to get married, she’s only a child, my little girl, just a little kid. You don’t understand, you’re too young, you’ll never understand!”

  And after a long brooding silence Peter said: “I guess everything turns out the way it’s supposed to, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes,” sighed his father wearily, “it does that. And all on account of my own damn foolishness—”

  “What do you mean!” Peter laughed angrily.

  “My own foolishness, Petey, I should know better than anyone else why this family is falling apart, and still, still, I’m not entirely to blame, you can only do the best you can—”

  “Who says this family is falling apart? Who says that?” cried the boy, laughing, trying to cheer up his father, poking him on the arm. “I never heard you say that before! Not you!”

  And his father sat shaking his head in the darkness, saying nothing, and all around the million treeleaves were swishing and rustling in the night, trembling together on drunken boughs, all a-hush and vast, whispering and sweet in darkest shadows above.

  “And now they talk of war,” said the old man, sorrowfully staring up at the trees, “and they talk of sending kids like you across the ocean to fight and get killed. That’s what they’re talking about now, more and more every week. Kids like you and Joe and maybe Charley in time—and even kids like poor young Buddy Fredericks—all kids, all of you. I wish I could help you all, you just don’t know what you’re in for in this world now. Do you hear me? You just don’t know what you’re in for now! Just a lot of poor kids. We’re all in for it. I’d like to ask God what it’s all for!” he whispered hoarsely, wearily, entreatingly.

  They were silent on the dark porch: and then, once more in that first sad year of saddest understanding, young Peter was overwhelmed with a tearful wrenching sadness that made him want to cry, from awful knowledge, to see his father sitting there beside him so full of sorrows and heartstricken love and mortal loneliness. He seemed old now, suddenly so old as they packed up the things of his house inside, as he sat thinking of his youngest daughter who had left his house, as he rued the ragged way he was losing his house.

  “Pa,” said Peter with a choked sobbing voice, “I think everything’ll be all right now, honest!” And he couldn’t say any more, he didn’t want his father to know that he felt like crying, and yet he wished there would be a way to let him know.

  “Yes,” echoed the old man, “everything’ll be all right now.”

  “You have a good job!” cried Peter. “And Joe’s garage is coming along great, he told me so himself. We’re all making money, even Charley, and I’ll have a job on the campus this year and send some money home to Ma whenever I can, see?”

  “No, no, no, don’t talk like that!” cried the old man quickly. “I don’t want you to be sending any money home, do you hear me? We’ll make out, we’ll make out. Petey, my little boy,” he said, gripping Peter’s arm, shaking him gently, “all I want you to do is to make good in college and in football. That’s about all that’s left to me in the world. Petey, all the pride I’ve got left is you, in you, do you understand?” he cried anxiously. “Something may go wrong with the others—and, God knows, it’ll kill me over and over again and break my heart a hundred times—but if anything ever goes wrong with you, I just don’t know what I’d do. Why, Lord,” he suddenly chuckled gleefully, “don’t you remember when you were just a little tike and I used to throw you a football and make you catch it? Huh?” He tousled Peter’s hair roughly. “And, Lord, you were such a chunky little kid, rosy cheeks, plump, strong as an ox, always smiling, always smiling! I want you to go on smiling,” he continued gravely, “that’s the way I want your life to be. If anything goes wrong with you, I just don’t know what I’d do.”

  “But I can send Ma a little money, you know.”

  “No, no, no! You’ve got all you can handle there with your studies and your playing. No, no, no!” he cried angrily. “You hold up your end of the battle and we’ll hold up our end here. I’m banking on you to make good, if only because I can go and tell some of these punks around here that my son is a great star and a great boy—and if only because I want you to go on smiling all your life the way you used to do when you were just a plump little tike with rosy cheeks. Sonny, sonny!” he cried unhappily. “Listen to me! Do what your old father says, I know best. Study! study! Work hard and make good. There’s never anything wrong with a man who always, always tries! I want you to be that way—” He gripped Peter and looked at him for the first time since he was a child with the tender gaze of an anxious, pleading father: “Be my good boy, Petey, be my own good boy.”

  Peter stammered something, embarrassed and stricken with imminent hot tears.

  His father got up. “I’m going in now and see if I can help the ladies with the packing,” he said, with sudden wry amusement. He slapped the side of the house with his hand. “This old house, by golly, this old place of mine. I remember the first time I saw it, years ago. I always used to think it was too big and too far from town.” He leaned back and looked at it. “Yep, I hate to leave it now. Funny, I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way about the old joint. Got some nice trees around here, nice fresh air.” He sniffed the air and looked around ruefully. Then he chuckled. “Years ago I always wanted to leave, I always thought it would be great to leave sometime. Well, I’m leaving it now, all right!”

  “Well,” said Peter sheepishly, “it’ll be a change to go somewhere else.” He looked up at his father with a quick grin.

  “Yup. I guess I’ll go in now and go to bed.” And Martin waited by the door, slapping the wall of the house again and again nervously. “You go to bed early and get some sleep, Petey. I’ll see you in the morning, give you a sendoff on your big year. Your old man’ll be praying for you tonight, Petey,” he said in a trembling voice finally, and he wandered into the house and closed the screen door behind him, and Peter was alone on the porch.

  He was alone on the porch and his father was gone, and something mournful was left behind to brood by him in the darkness, something old and sorrowful, and something unspeakably good and kind and wonderful, his father the strange, great, brooding companion of his life, whom he ha
d never realized before for the dark near figure that he was, immediate, close, loving, anguished, right at his side speaking to him and gripping his arm—his father.

  And Peter, realizing these things, knew that he was no longer the joyful eighteen-year-old boy of little more than a year ago in prep school, the boy of powerful sensual vigors, of food and drink and sleep and tremendous pagan indifference, of life as a delicious loafing laziness, sensuous and profligate routs, and stupefacted appetites. He knew that at nineteen now, somehow, something in him was done and finished and departed, strange melancholy forebodings were in him, and a heaviness of heart, a dark sense of loss and dull ruin, as though he had grown old at nineteen. Suddenly it seemed to him that college and football were no longer important, and suddenly he thought of war, and felt a thrill coursing in him. And all the suitcases and college banners and sharp sport jackets and pipe-smoking, quipping, wry mannerisms of college life were ridiculous as he thought of them.

  And something dark, warlike, mournful and far was suddenly brooding in the air.

  Peter thought of his home now. This was the last time that he would ever sit on his front porch and look out on Galloway Road, yet this too was almost a great strange thrill coursing in his veins. His tall dark singing trees there, swaying in the breeze, swishing leaves in a million hidden places, bending by his bedroom window as they had done for him all his life, rustling softly against his window screen, his tall dark singing trees—he would see them no more, he would have to pull up his stakes and roll, and they were singing him a farewell song, the winds were going softly through the branches and a sound was advancing in the night, and it was a farewell hushing song.…

  Something mournful, dark, and far off was brooding in the air, across his fields—and he would never come back here again, this was the last time, the last night, and then no more, no more. Where was he going? And his father’s voice speaking to him in the darkness was still haunting, still heard. The trees swished and swayed, weaving-drunk with a hundred moving dark boughs,—and it was a farewell song. He remembered how the days of his boyhood here had been rich and golden, tumbling one upon the other, he remembered all the places around the house and the road, the places he knew so well. And Elizabeth was gone far away from these trees, his little sister, Lizzy gone away. It was strange, she had heard these trees, she had been under them and had heard them, in her room she had heard them long in the night swishing by her window—and his father’s house was dark now in the middle of the night, and the starwealthy sky vaulted over, bending near and milky-blurred by the highest waving treetop—and there was the hush of silence and night, the song of a million trembling treeleaves, the dogs barking far off, nighthawks in the field mists, crickets, crickets, further vast dull boomings of distant forests in the wind, the whole world brooding and sad and whispering at nighttime, in the starpacked Augustcool night, and somehow, now, omened with war.

  It was a farewell song all around and he was never coming back again. It was farewell, sweet from his trees, dark from his high shadowy trees, and he was alone on the porch, for the last time on the porch beneath his bending trees. Now he would pull up his stakes and roll, and go far away, and never come back here—and the trees were waving a vast soft song, a million tender rustlings for him, for him alone—and there had been tears in his father’s eyes in the darkness. They had rolled up the rug in the house that night, the women had rolled up the rug—and where was Liz tonight? Where was little Lizzy, his sister? Now everyone was asleep, and he was alone listening to the serenade of his dark old trees, the lullaby of his boyhood trees, and he knew he didn’t want to leave now, he knew he would never come back, it was the farewell song of his trees bending near him, farewell, farewell.…

  [5]

  A family leaves the old house that it has always known, the plot of ground, the place of earth, the only place where it has ever known itself—and moves somewhere else: and this is a real and unnameable tragedy. For the children it is a catastrophe of their hearts.

  What dreams children have of walls and doors and ceilings that they always knew, what terror they have on waking up at night in strange new rooms disarrayed and unarranged, all frightful and unknown. More than once little Mickey Martin woke up in the middle of the night in the new flat in Galloway where his family had moved that very day, and went to the window to gaze down on the iron-gray street, and the naked trolley tracks, and the empty sidewalk, with a feeling of panic and forlorn doom.

  The next afternoon Mickey started home from school in the wrong direction, towards Galloway Road and the old house, not realizing that he was doing this. Suddenly remembering that he actually did not live there any more, Mickey turned and pulled his steps in the other direction. A moment later he was suddenly plunged in an awful confusion as he positively could not remember which way he was supposed to go to get home. Trembling and almost on the verge of crying, he started to walk towards Galloway Road again, feeling that this was distinctly wrong, virtually a sin, and at the same time again remembering with an awful painful impact that they did not live there any more.

  The little boy paused on the bridge in long meditation. He was amazed and confused, and all his thoughts were frightened. Again he pushed himself back towards his real home, thinking, “Gee! Oh, gee!” He was almost panic-stricken at the thought that perhaps nothing was real, that he was wandering in the world alone, that he had no home actually, and that he himself was an intruder and a ghost in the real world of regular ordinary things. He hurried towards home and he was almost fearfully amazed when he saw familiar faces on the streets, and saw that he was noticed, and heard the children calling him. Now he wanted to brood and imagine that after all a great joke was being played on him by God, and that he was arriving to this neighborhood from some long dusty journey around the world, just a fantastic stranger grim and weary and looking for a place to rest. When he opened the door and walked in the house he was overwhelmed with a strange, yearning, wonderful gratitude and joy.

  This new home was situated in a neighborhood denser in population than that around the old house on Galloway Road, and made up largely of wooden tenements and small closely-packed bungalows, with stores and shops nearby that made it a small kind of shopping district for the suburban homes and farms thereabouts. It was a flat, on the fourth floor of a wooden tenement house, consisting of four bedrooms, a livingroom, large kitchen, and bath. There were two suspended porches front and back overlooking a busy street on one side and the roofs of small houses on the other. It was a spare, white-washed, square wooden building, a typical example of New England French-Canadian building, roomy, drafty, yet oddly comfortable and homelike. Heavy telephone wires swooped past the windows, the gaunt telephone poles seemed to lean athwart the porches, the hallways were musty and creaky—yet something in the air outside the windows was high and lyrical, swooping and powerful, for there were vistas and views, the house was built on a rise near the river, and you could see the town across the river all redbrick and smoky, the bridges, the falls, and on the other side the fields and lorn birch and small farmhouses, and the hills.

  In October—for the family was moved in and unpacked by then—great northern clouds moved above at dusk gilded hugely by the sun, and the street below rang with the cries of children, the roaring of busses, and the laughter of drugstore corner boys. It was lively indeed. And Mrs. Martin often said: “Oh, it’s nice and lively here, I like it very much.”

  And surprisingly enough she seemed to be enjoying herself more than anyone else, she soon established her place by the front windows when it was not too cold to go out and sit on the high porch, and there she could see everything, the street below, the river and the bridges, the lights, the people, the cars going by, and the fields and woods far off that darkened and became vast, impenetrable and pin-pointed with lonely lights at nightfall. And soon everyone was reconciled and even pleased with their new home: it was full of old comfort and a thrilling, close-packed secrecy that the other house did not have.


  The rent in this flat turned out to be extremely reasonable, due to some sort of odd oversight on the part of the old, deaf French-Canadian landlord who came regularly by the month, collected the rent, and accepted bread and milk at the kitchen table (a custom Mrs. Martin was well conversant with). He would puff on his pipe a few times, and leave solemnly for another month.

  The father had his job in a printing plant downtown paying him good wages; and Ruth helped the family considerably with her earnings and contributions; as well as Joe, who however was not making as much with his little gas station as he might have wished, due to its bad location on an out-of-the-way street. But with the low rent, and the three incomes, the family was at least well on its feet.

  Peter, away at Penn, was doing his best to earn his own way. Francis was completely on his own in Boston, where he had his job in a music store, making himself more and more indispensable to the department he worked in, and continuing his studies at Harvard. And it was not strange that Francis should be showing this kind of ingenuity and self-reliance over and above Peter’s sad half-hearted attempts on the campus, because somehow everyone knew that Francis would be able to take care of himself in these matters. They had long ago decided that he necessarily was alone in the world.

  They missed Francis at home. He only came back infrequently and briefly, picking up his clothes and things by slow stages, and coming and going about the house in his old, silent, meditative way.

  “Well, by God, Francis is showing some brains, all right,” said the father, shaking his head. “He can take care of himself, no doubt about that. I sort of always knew he’d be able to do these things, though I don’t know why exactly. Just a hunch he gives you with that look of his—he’s had that look always, even as a little kid.” And the old man was silent at the thought of it, at the thought even of the little Francis who had once come into his office years ago, unannounced and roaming from school, a sickly-looking, shy, moody little boy of eight, to watch his father all afternoon long in a reverie of child-meditation and wonder. The old man remembered that incident now with surprise and regret.