by Jack Kerouac
One night there was an air raid drill. Francis was ordered out to stand guard with rifle, bayonet and steel helmet, in front of a sandbag shelter, where he stood for an hour in total darkness as sirens howled and airplanes whined in the black skies. An officer came strolling by with a flashlight. Francis stared at him curiously.
“Confound it, you!” yelled the man suddenly. “Don’t you realize that you’re supposed to order me into shelter.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you realize your duties, you idiot?”
“Well, now, I wasn’t exactly certain—”
“You’d better address me sir or I’ll report you right on the spot! How long have you been in camp? What’s your name there, show your face!”
Francis was stunned, suddenly he was completely panic-stricken. With a feeling of unreality, he thought vividly of shouting: It’s none of your business who I am and I don’t give a damn who you are! He threw his rifle down in the dark, shivering with terror, and stalked away.
“Halt!” cried the officer in a sharp, clear, almost joyful tone of voice. At that moment a detachment of fire-fighters came running down the dark path with fire equipment on their way to a mythical “direct hit” in the course of the maneuvers, and in the resulting confusion the officer seemed to disappear on some more urgent matter. Francis, gloating and almost insane in the darkness, wandered around for a half an hour enjoying a strange freedom, chatting with guards who believed him to be a member of the fire-fighting units. Finally he made his way back to his station at the sandbags; at least he thought it was his station until he realized that some stranger from another company was standing there. Finally, after the drill, when the alley-lights came on again, he found his way back to his barracks.
The next day a form sheet was passed around to his company asking, among other questions, what they thought of the camp library. Francis took up his pen with a leer of joy, and wrote: “As an individual in this group, without the opportunity to exercise my own prerogatives, I should imagine that my opinion is of the least significance. Be that as it may, I feel most strongly that the selection of books represented in the camp library constitutes something that amounts to an intellectual fraud.” He signed his name to this hopefully. He never heard anything from the officer-librarian.
When the realization came to him that he could not possibly bear another moment of military life—mild though it was at this stage—the overwhelming thought came to him that he was slowly being forced to the most important decision of his life.
“If I should revolt openly,” he thought fearfully, “isn’t it going to be awfully easy for them to destroy me? I’m caught between the stupidity and the danger of men. I ought to find some way to persuade myself that the stupidity of submitting to all this is at least not a threat to my life,—but I just can’t submit to them. I think the submitting itself is more dangerous to me than the consequences of not submitting.” And at this he smiled happily for the first time since coming to camp.
“There’s only one thing to do,” he brooded anxiously, “find some way of getting out somehow.”
Two things happened that day that gave a tremendous impetus to his plans to escape military life “somehow.” Alexander Panos, with whom Francis had never exchanged more than a dozen words back home in Galloway, wrote him a letter from an Army camp in Virginia, on the impulse of some harried loneliness of his own in the swirl of military life.
Dear Francis:
To you, the brother of the greatest friend I have ever had, I write tonight from the guardhouse at Camp Lee here. If I sound a little drunk and maudlin, please forgive my very existence. These few things I have to say to you are important to me, they weigh so heavily on my heart. In spite of the beer I drank tonight, I write to you, unknown brother of my friend. Right now I am assigned to guardhouse duty and as you probably know I have two hours on duty and four hours off. The guardhouse is divided in two by a wire screening. The guards sleep on one side and the prisoners on the other. Just now the second lieutenant of the guard came along with the corporal and they were engaged in some silly conversation regarding how impossible it is for the prisoners to escape—when quite astonishingly one of the prisoners called out, quoting from Thoreau: “You are the prisoners, not I.” How can I describe how I felt! And being a guard in this horrid little shack with the wire screening between us—not being allowed to talk to the victims who have broken some stupid little law—Aren’t they our brothers? Francis, when I joined the Army I deliberately refused the chance for a commission (as you know, I was a major in the Galloway High School brigade) because I wanted to suffer with the masses and be among them, humble and patient. But I have found since, Francis, I’ve been cheated, I’ve been cheated! I wish with all my might there is a God!
The impassioned letter ended just like that. Francis felt that it was one of the most impressive documents he had ever read. He suddenly found himself regretting that he had not befriended the young Greek in past years.
“He’s been cheated,” he thought excitedly, “but I’m not going to give them a chance to cheat me, I’m not going to wait to find out if there’s a God to punish the monsters of this world.…”
The second thing was this: while talking to two other sailors as the sun went down over the vast spread of barracks, one of them suddenly leaned over confidentially and said, in an awed tone: “One thing you don’t want ever to do is complain about headaches. If you’ve got a headache just take a couple aspirins and forget it.”
“Why?”
“There’s a feller in my outfit who kept having headaches and going to the medics for aspirins and complaining. Next thing you know, poof!”
“What …”
“They packed him off home, right out of the Navy. They put him under observation for a week in the nut-wards and gave him his discharge. And that was all, brother.”
With a convulsive feeling of the most ravenous glee, he hurried off the very next instant to the medical office, throbbing with excitement, foolishness and wild hope. “This is crazy!” he kept thinking. He complained of a headache, they gave him three aspirins to take intermittently, and noted down his name. He went back to his barracks and swallowed all three of them, hoping they might make him nervous and give him a real headache. The next day he went back twice for aspirins, and each time the Pharmacist’s Mate made a note of it. Francis swallowed all the aspirins they gave him, ate almost not at all, kept himself awake at night to rack his nerves, and finally began to drink countless cups of black coffee. Finally, his heart pounding with the fear that none of this would work, he began to be actually nerve-racked and began to feel, or imagine, very real headaches indeed. Meanwhile he continued to drill and train with the other boys, all of whom seemed to Francis to be enjoying themselves idiotically. The whole experience was becoming so horrible to him that he actually began to derive a certain amount of morbid brooding pleasure in being there and doing what he was doing.
He went back the third day for aspirins, and at last the Pharmacist’s Mate looked at him curiously.
“Say, you must have some pretty bad headaches. Don’t the aspirins help any?”
“No. My head just keeps on pounding.”
“Ever have ’em like that before, mate?”
“Oh,” replied Francis casually, “yes, always.”
He was summoned before an examining physician, a Lieutenant Commander, who gravely questioned him for fifteen minutes, made notes, and gave him an encephalography test with the complicated wire devices, which revealed at least that he had no skull injuries or defects of any kind. Whereupon the psychologist was called in. Francis was ready for him.
They sat in an office overlooking the gray stony day of the barracks, the psychiatrist behind his desk and Francis in a chair in front of him. Francis had purposely bought a pack of cigarettes for this interview: even before the psychiatrist was ready to begin questioning him, he had chain-smoked three cigarettes already. For some odd reason he expected that thi
s performance, not only the harried chain-smoking, but the very fact that he would have the gall to smoke without asking permission from a commanding officer, would in some way arouse the doctor’s suspicions. However the psychiatrist, who looked like he had had a bad night, seemed to pay no appreciable attention to anything that Francis did, including the violent convulsive trembling, and in time Francis dropped his pretense on the hunch that he was overdoing things. He even forgot to smoke when the conversation became interesting.
After the routine questions, about wetting beds and so on, the psychiatrist asked: “Now tell me, what is the funniest thing you ever saw?”
“Ah … let’s see. Well, now. The funniest thing I ever saw was in—Boston. I was walking on Commonwealth Avenue and a pigeon got run over by a car. It was early in the morning.”
“A pigeon got run over,” repeated the psychiatrist without any curiosity or surprise. “And why was that funny?” Meanwhile he made notes.
“The sound of it,” said Francis with a spellbound air, “the squishing, cracking sound it made, because the car was going very fast and that pigeon never had a chance, not even a chance to coo.” He grinned widely, but the doctor was looking out the window with a kind of gloom. “The sound of it,” pressed Francis. “It was very funny”—and he caught himself almost adding, “in a way,” because he had actually experienced such a thing and it had struck him as horrible. “In its own way,” he said severely now.
“All right,” continued the doctor, “and now tell me, what is the strangest thing you ever saw?”
Francis pondered deeply. He was beside himself with excitement and even happiness, he had never been so deeply absorbed and pleased in all his life.
“You’ve never seen anything strange?” prodded the doctor.
“Hmm. Not particularly,” essayed Francis, intently studying the man’s face, and growing anxious when he saw no indication there of the success of his reply. Then he plunged. “Well now, I guess I could remember something.” He waited.
“You could?”
“Well, I can—that is, I do, as a matter of fact.” He grinned arrogantly into the man’s face; never had he permitted himself such wonderful and absurd liberties with another human being. “I once saw a woman, she was shopping, and she bought a whole lot of groceries, that is, she picked them off the shelf, and put them all in a little wagon”—and here Francis leaned forward eagerly—“in a little wagon with wires on it, and she rolled it along like a baby carriage over the floor.” Francis looked keenly at the doctor, and added: “Well, actually, it was in a big store in my home town, Galloway, on River Street”—and he grinned again, with a look of sly satisfaction.
The doctor was bored. “You say the little wagon had wires on it?”
“Yes,” said Francis pensively. He suddenly thought of something. “And I didn’t dare touch the wires because … well, electricity? Electricity in the wires, you see.” He saw a flash of absorbed interest in the doctor’s face as he leaned down to make a note, yet suddenly Francis felt confusedly disturbed by something, he had no idea what it was.
He was visibly disappointed when the doctor dismissed the interview at that point. He hated to leave the office. He was told to go back downstairs to the other office, where the Pharmacist’s Mate was waiting, the Pharmacist’s Mate who was quite definitely beginning to act like his keeper. Francis strolled along the hall grinning, however. And it was at that moment that he experienced the most mournful sensation of his life. He came to a halt, listening.
In one of the offices, through the flimsy barrack walls, he could hear an interview going on between a doctor and a patient. Regularly punctuating the sound of their voices was a series of heavy thuds that shook the walls.
He heard someone yell: “But that’s not all. There’s this one too, this one’s the hardest!”
“I see,” said another voice gravely.
And there was a great thud that shook the floor.
“Very good,” said the grave voice.
“Oh, I can do a million others. You don’t know the half of it, Doc, I’m full of terrific strength and speed, there’s nothing like it. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I feel so good I could blow up, blast, explode! You know, I like talking to a man who’s really interested in acrobatics, it shows a sign of interest. Birds! birds! I used to have a lot of birds in my backyard, them little sparrows especially. But wait a minute, I just thought of another one—”
“It won’t be necessary—”
But, after a short, almost electrified silence, there was a great shattering thud upon the floor, a cry of surprise, something, a glass, or a jar, fell on the floor and shattered, and someone giggled idiotically.
“Did you hurt yourself?” said the grave voice without any real consternation.
“Hell, no, Doc, I can usually do that one but I missed out that time! From the top of your desk I can do much better—”
“No, no! That’s enough for now, that’s fine.”
“By geez, I like a man who shows interest!”
“Yes. And we’ll do some more tomorrow. Now I think we better go back downstairs, it’s just about time for lunch.”
Francis, horrified, backed up against the wall and stared fearfully as the door opened. First there came a small, mournful, stooped, dejected fellow looking fearfully around him with rheumy eyes, his hands pressed to his sides, his head lowered and his eyes darting around with incredible furtiveness. Behind him was a tall bulky Lieutenant, carrying a briefcase and herding him along with one hand till they disappeared down the stairs. It was one of the most astounding sights Francis had ever seen.
“Was he the acrobat?” he thought with a wild fear. “And am I such an acrobat?” he asked himself wildly.
Yet Francis had made up his mind to pretend that he was insane. In a swirl of fear and confusion he prepared to spend his first hours in the “locked ward” of the hospital that night.
They had sent for his clothes and belongings back in his company’s barracks. It seemed to Francis that there was something final in this decision, and he exulted. But while they were getting him a pair of pajamas and slippers and a bathrobe, and he was waiting in the ward office, he was suddenly conscious of someone watching him nearby. At one end of the office there was a window, or a partition, with a wire screening, opening into a long room with a row of beds. In this window now stood a dark, hairy, staring young man in a bathrobe, whose eyes were fixed on Francis, and whose hands, enormous hairy hands, were raised and gripped to the screen. Francis looked back into his eyes. They were like pools of illuminated water. Suddenly the hairy youngster opened his mouth and began to gibber and giggle with idiotic joy. Francis looked over this fellow’s shoulder imperiously and noticed the others inside. They looked less fantastic, sitting around coolly playing cards and reading and talking. He turned to the attendant who was writing at the desk and said: “Look here, you’re not putting me in there for the night, are you? It’s like something in The Inferno.”
The attendant looked up at him, kindly, with real sympathy, almost with the sort of affection undoubtedly developed after many experiences of this kind. Francis was suddenly aware that no matter what he could say, there would always be this wall of sympathy and affection separating him from these attendants to whom, now, he was just another deranged patient until proved otherwise by the powers of the place. He watched him coolly.
“Only for a few days. Your name is Francis, isn’t it? Only for a few days, Frankie.”
“But that fellow in the window is an absolute maniac, anyone can see that. Isn’t there any danger?”
“That’s Jeepo. Jeepo’s okay, he wouldn’t harm a fly, you’ll be jake.”
“Hello, Jeepo,” said Francis, turning and gazing at the poor cretin who stood there grinning happily. He wanted to see what there was in him that could be depended upon.
Jeepo emitted a raving happy cry. Francis suddenly realized, with secret horror, that madness was the only key to uninterrupted,
unobstructed happiness; he realized that in a flash.
“It’s still not safe,” said Francis, turning to the attendant. “How can you prevent him from going berserk or trying to kill somebody?”
“Don’t worry, Francis, we’ve got that all taken care of—nothing’s in there that could be used as a weapon and we watch everybody twenty-four hours day and night. Besides, Jeepo’s leaving for Washington tomorrow. He’s a scarey sonofabitch but he’s harmless.” The attendant smiled. “My name’s Bill, Francis, just plain Bill.”
“What’s in Washington?” demanded Francis curiously.
“The last stop, Francis, the last stop.” Bill grinned and returned his attention to the report he was filling out. “Look what I’m writing here, Francis: ‘The patient shows excessive curiosity and alertness.’ That’s a good sign for you. You’ll be all right. We’ll take good care of you.”
Francis decided to ask no more questions.
In the morning, after spending a surprisingly pleasant night in bed, enjoying his privacy of contemplation for the first time in weeks, and sleeping soundly, Francis woke up, ate a good breakfast, smoked a cigarette, and had his first look at the doctors of the place. He noticed certain things with his brooding, watchful, suspicious eyes.
In the first place, the head man, a dashing handsome Lieutenant Commander of about forty or so, had that look about him, as he strode hither and yon in the course of his duties, of a man who was much more of an organizer than a doctor of any kind: an executive, a man of efficiency. At the same time, there was that certain strut in his manner that reminded Francis of some of the smalltown “wheels” in Galloway, the aldermen, half-political businessmen who were always to be seen on Daley Square at high noon. He suddenly remembered his father’s contempt for this kind of man. He studied the man carefully. Moreover, that same afternoon, he had an interview with this doctor and noticed his general blank disinterestedness. He also noticed, throughout the day, how the few women, the nurses and Red Cross workers and librarians who came around with books, seemed to adore this man and took every opportunity to follow him around and fawn over him.