by Jack Kerouac
[12]
George Martin stood on the steps of a great railroad station in Chicago and looked about him in the sea of night. He was a thousand miles from home, in the middle of America, alone, excited, feeling strange. He thought of himself poised on the great plains of the continent and in the great city of Chicago, and it was a spellbinding thing to think about. He looked around him. He listened to the murmurs, rumbles, and clangings of the big city, he smelled the corky coal-smoke from the railyards in the moist, drooping nighttime April air.
“If I had the time and money,” he thought, “tonight I’d get on a train, tonight now, and I’d travel two thousand more miles to California. What is it like in California?”
He wandered slowly through the streets of Chicago and looked up gapingly at the State Street office-buildings deserted, dark and impressive at night. He crossed a canal bridge and walked among the grimy darknesses of South Halsted, and the Mills Hotel with its yellow light and dusty windowpanes and moving ruined shadows within. Then the old man roamed towards the throbbing halo of the Loop and found himself in the crowds and the lights, the music and the smell of chili beans. He walked—he walked beneath the elevated tracks, by saloons, across old deserted cobblestone streets, and finally on a railroad bridge, where he looked below.
There was an old wooden caboose abandoned at the side of the tracks, and inside an oil lamp burning, and six railroad men sitting around an old table drinking coffee, eating hamburgers, smoking cigars, and playing a heavy game of poker. And in the breathing murmur of the vast Chicago night, foremost before the hum and throb of the Loop, the distant soft thunder of trains, the Lake breeze like October, the far receded sighing—sharp and near beneath all that, he could hear the voices of the railroad men so harsh, gruff, good-humored and growling, he could hear the click of the poker chips, the scrape of chairs, the yawns, the sudden cries of laughter and surprise, and the muttering ruminations under the smoky lamp.
There leaned old George Martin on the rail above the tracks, brooding down and listening and watching with a grin, and thinking:
“Why, I remember seeing something like this years ago in New Hampshire. It was my uncle Bob, what did he call himself?—a railroad ‘boomer’—and they used to have card games in a caboose just like this one, I remember the night now, it was that night the circus came to Lacoshua and Uncle Bob played poker with the circus men. I was watching from outside. Why, I must have been ten years old then—”
And suddenly he was wrung with a great confused desire to live forever.
“These fellows here—they’ve traveled with the railroad all over, up to Milwaukee, Minnesota, to Dakota—they must have been to Iowa and Nebraska and those places with the grain elevators—and even Wyoming, the West. And that Denver!—and all the railroad yards everywhere, all the way to long California … and down to Texas, the cattle pens, and over to Los Angeles, California, where they have palm trees by the railroad yards. Pshaw! Well! They’ve been there, been there a hundred times, they’ve had their whiskey and women, and they’ve had their wives and children too, and they’ve been everywhere and played a couple thousand poker games, and collected a thousand paychecks, and spent money, and eaten and slept and got drunk and walked around everywhere, and seen all that country. These fellows—”
He looked down and brooded. Why was it that he had not been with them all this time? What had he done, where had he gone, why was it that he could not live again, and live forever, and do all the things he had forgotten to do. And why were all the things that he himself had done so confused, so especial and definite and finished, so tattered and ugly, so incomplete, so unknown and half-forgotten now, yet so painful and twisted as he thought of them. Why were they so unlike the things other men had done? Why had he been born in New Hampshire instead of Illinois somehow? What would it be like to be on a train going West across the plains, on the old Union Pacific tracks, and to see a single small lamplight burning in a shack across the American darkness, the prairie darkness?
And he wondered what they would say if he went down the steps, crossed the tracks, mounted the boards in front of the caboose, knocked on the door, and asked them if he could join them for a few hands. No, he could not do that. It was too late for that now.
He stood on the steps of the railroad station at midnight in Chicago and watched the soldiers and sailors going to and fro with their packs and seabags. He thought of his children.
Joe was in England, across the sea of night in England, ancient unknown England. And Peter was coming and going on a ship in the Mediterranean sea, off North Africa, off the Carthaginian rocks. And Rosey, big genial yet woebegone Rosey, was in Seattle, a nurse in an Army hospital, and where was Seattle, how far across that wide darkness? Ruth was in Los Angeles, a WAC, and she was going to marry a soldier boy from Tennessee, she wrote and told her father. And Lizzy—poor fierce child of terror—was in San Francisco; in what chain of lights at night, in what sea-fog and night-fog was she? And Francis—across the pin-point lights of Chicago, near now, silent in the murmurings of the night, silent Francis. Where were all his children?
The old man stood on the steps of the station, and it began to rain, April rained again. He stood in the rain and smelled the rain, he remembered Galloway and the muddy sweet twinkling wash of rain at night in his part of the world.
In his part of the world!
“Lordy, Lordy, Lordy,” he sighed.
He went on the train, found a seat, sat down, put on his old silver-rimmed spectacles, and opened the pages of the Chicago paper.
He was alone in the wide darkness of the world, but he was going home now, and his children were scattered like lights in the land. There was a war, he was on a train, he was old, he was George Martin.
[13]
Peter returned from a voyage to North Africa in late September of that year. His ship, a cumbersome vast Liberty already old and rusty and battered in one year’s incessant sailing, with one gaping patch in its bow from an old torpedoing, made its way round the Florida Keys and came up the mouths of the Mississippi, and into the ancient quays of New Orleans.
It was a glorious blue sky, and wild red flowers in Andrew Jackson park, the smell of molasses, loam and petals in the soft tropical air, the white shining marble balconies, the greeneries, the dark scrolled iron of balustrades, and even the ripple of women’s laughter in a little open courtyard restaurant in the French Quarter—everything that Peter would have wished New Orleans to be like.
But he was a deckhand, a seaman. He wandered and roamed the South Rampart Streets and Magazine Streets of his seaman’s soul, he prowled and roamed, he was restless, feverish, drunken, seeking out the impossible ecstasies of the land as dreamed at sea, confused, brooding, crazy, lonely: he was a seaman.
He crowded at smoky bars with men in dirty shirtsleeves and greasy straw hats, he lurked in alleys with Big Slim and Red and drank raw whiskey from the bottle, he was blood-red drunk in whore-houses, sat in waterfront doorways waiting for something, anything, he even went aboard an antique Panamanian freighter one night to smoke hasheesh with the dark smiling Latins and he never forgot the weird drunken slant of that old ship’s deck as he tried to cross it at dawn after a night in a jabbering crowded forecastle: it was as though the whole world had tilted over, like the moon, but it was only the old Panamanian freighter listing at the docks.
It was not until a week later, when he woke up one morning in a dirty room somewhere on Dauphine Street, that he decided to “pull himself together” somehow. He thought of going to see his sister Ruth in California. She had written and told him all about her marriage to the soldier from Tennessee eagerly, joyfully, and with her own rare simplicity of soul. “Oh, Petey, we had such a time getting Luke’s leave so we could get married. I waited all morning at the marriage license bureau in Los Angeles but when he finally arrived all the boys were with him in a truck, including his Captain who turned out to be such a swell guy. They had wedding gifts and whiskey and just everyth
ing, and we got married and had such a grand time and I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Now Luke is shipped out and I don’t know where, and I haven’t heard from him in a week. I guess he’s going overseas now. Isn’t it terrible and sad the way life is now? Are you taking good care of yourself away from home?”
After all the squalor of waterfront saloons, Peter longed to see someone sweet like his sister, to talk, and remember home, to do “something sensible” for a change, if only for a while.
“I could hitch-hike out to L.A.,” he thought, and then he suddenly thought of his little brother Charley who was a kid soldier stationed in Maryland now. He could hitch-hike up there and meet him in Washington somewhere, and then go settle down a few weeks with poor wild Judie in New York.
He spent the entire afternoon sitting on a pierhead at the foot of Canal Street watching the Mississippi, the great uniting river of all rivers, and thought of everything and everyone in his life as the old late sun glowed upon the waters.
And that night, after writing a long harried letter to Ruth in California, and a postcard to young Charley telling him to meet him in Washington, and wearing his old black jacket and the same battered canvas bag he took everywhere, he thumbed the big trucks that started rolling at eleven o’clock across Louisiana on Route 90 … to Mobile … and Atlanta … and the big Southern night towards Washington.
He hitch-hiked all the way to Richmond blurry-eyed and dazed, boozing his way along till he was one shattered ecstatic nerve, slugging out of bottles with every soldier and sailor he met along the way, and suddenly growing weary and sick in Richmond, getting on a train and sleeping the rest of the way to Washington.
And in the morning he woke up, sober, and ate a big breakfast in the dining-car, and sat wondering what it all meant.
“Once,” he thought, “once upon a time I was a crazy little kid rushing to football practice in Galloway and getting nowhere, and rushing back home to eat big meals—and I knew I was right. It was so simple and right in those days. I was a crazy little kid.”
He was sitting by the window, watching the October earth roll by, the Virginia forest he had never seen.
“Five weeks ago I was in Casablanca, four months ago I was in Liverpool, a year ago I was at the North Pole! Arctic Greenland; who ever heard of Arctic Greenland! And before that? I was a crazy kid, rushing back from scrimmage to eat big meals in my mother’s kitchen at home. What a simple good little guy I used to be. What happened? Is it the war? Where am I going, the way I do things, why is everything so strange and far away now?”
He saw his brother Charley that night in Washington. At first he didn’t recognize him. They had arranged to meet on the steps of the Union terminal, and Peter stood there for thirty minutes staring at all the soldiers who passed and poured by him on the great pavement. He gazed at the Capitol dome looming in the Indian Summer dusk, and wondered at the soft mysterious light in the sky overtopping this famous city that he had never seen before. He wondered at the ancient sadness of this city and the everlasting ghostly sorrowfulness of all the soldiers and sailors and Marines that came and passed.
He had expected somehow that Washington would be a scene of great international excitement with diplomats, ambassadors, foreign generals rushing by with eager entourages towards some indistinct place in the city blazing with light, all a-murmur with rumors, great preparations, mighty pronouncements. But it was just a lot of soldiers and sailors and Marines passing in the dusk, and sad girls strolling, and birds singing in the park, and trolleys clanging mournfully across the lowering darkness, and the lights coming on. Something was lost and forgotten, like sunsets vanished, and old names and dust, and the remembrance of history books, Civil War songs, and brown daguerreotype portraits of dead families.
One of many soldiers that had poured out of a bus in front of the station came hurrying towards Peter, smiling blurrily in the darkness. Peter looked and saw that it was Charley, his own kid brother, Charley Martin.
“It can’t be!” he said with awe.
“Hi, Pete, don’t you recognize me?”
“Sure I recognize you, but—Well, I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen you for so long—”
“I got taller, that’s why you couldn’t tell.”
Peter shook Charley’s hand and gazed at him. He had grown up, almost taller than Peter now, thin and wiry, graceful and sad, looking almost exactly like Joe Martin, except for the sadness, grace, and pensiveness of his face and whole slow-moving figure.
“You sure do look like a soldier!” smiled Peter. “Have you been home yet to show the folks?”
“Not yet. But I’m getting a furlough next month.”
Peter had no idea what to say or what to do now that he was confronted by this sweet, sad brother, so much like a stranger and so quiet. “Well, hell! Look!—do you smoke? Have a cigarette!”
“I’ve got my own but I’ll take one,” said Charley, gravely wetting his lips and taking a cigarette with trembling fingers.
When Peter saw Charley’s fingers trembling, he was suddenly almost moved to tears. Once more he was struck with the haunted, guilty, mixed-up sorrow that weighed on him in the war from everything, all around, everywhere, all the time. The sight of Charley’s trembling nervous fingers, his thin face lowered shyly, the gentle demeanor of him again, all this inexplicably filled him with the whole force of blurred-up time and sad change.
“Charley!” he cried, starting to say something, but suddenly not knowing what to say, and falling blushingly silent. They stood together on the steps, side by side watching the people and the servicemen going to and fro before the great railroad station. Then they started to walk aimlessly down the street, alongside a park, towards the lights and traffic.
“And do you drink too?” demanded Peter, assuming a gruffly tender air.
“Sure, I drink beer! Me and some joes got drunk the other night on beer, over at Hyattsville.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Peter. “And what else? What else, Charley?”
“Huh?”
“What else is there?”
“Well,” grinned Charley, “I don’t know.”
They both looked away and grinned foolishly, and yet they realized that they liked each other somehow; their positions were changed, no longer big brother and little brother now, just two men walking down the street, yet they discovered this with a happy kind of awe.
“Well, what do you say,” cried Peter. “How about a beer in that bar over there?”
“Let’s go!”
So they stomped into the crowded bar together and leaned their feet on the brass rail and ordered two beers. But the bartender leaned over and peered at young Charley skeptically.
“Soldier, I’ve got a liquor license to worry about, so be a good boy and tell me how old you are.”
“I’m twenty-one years old,” said Charley gravely.
“Show me your papers, show me the papers!” said the bartender wearily looking away.
“It’s all right, he’s with me, I’m his brother!” cried Peter.
“That don’t make no difference, he’s got to be of age or I lose my license, so the papers, the papers.”
“Okay,” said Charley, “I ain’t of age, forget it, give me a coke.” He looked at Peter, and they burst out laughing. So Peter drank beer and Charley drank cokes.
“How old are you, Charley? Seventeen?”
“No, eighteen!”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” They didn’t have much to say, but they stayed together happily, quietly.
Then they wandered along the bright streets, looked at all the girls, bought popcorn and ate it as they strolled, stopped underneath all the marquees to look at the pictures, wandered on.
Finally, long after midnight, they sat down on a park bench when all the places had closed and all the girls and people had disappeared from the streets, and only the ghostly young soldiers and sailors passed and went away and came by again wandering aimlessly in the night, in the empt
y night. It was the same way Peter had seen it everywhere. And it was a balmy, soft, faded night, a southern night, with a vast warm dawn throbbing at the edges of the sky. Where they sat, not a leaf stirred in the trees.
There was silence in the world.
And sprawled everywhere in the grass and on benches, in a litter of newspapers and bottles—the ghostly young soldiers, the sailors, homeless and lonely and tired and trying to sleep, while a cop passed silently yawning, while a taxicab suddenly swept by and disappeared, while the empty streets clicked and glowed strangely as traffic lights continued to change red and green in the hollow desolation.
Just across the street from the park, in an impressive building behind great trees, a light glowed all night. There was silence, the only sound was the clicking of the traffic lights and a distant train along the Potomac—and the quiet light glowed in the building behind great lawn trees across the street.
“Well,” said Peter, “I guess you’ll be seeing some action all right, you’ll be shipping out sometime.…”
“We had our maneuvers. We’ll be shipping out pretty soon.…”
“That’s the way it is.…”
“It’ll be morning soon. The sun’ll be coming up,” said Charley. “Then I have to go back to camp.…”
“And I’ll be taking off again.…”
Another soldier came by humming a song all by himself, and disappeared across the park, his hands in his pockets, shuffling, looking around, prowling the empty night, kicking empty bottles, sighing.
“Nobody knows what to do with their leave. We were sitting just like this in a park here last month. No kidding, Petey, nobody knows what to do with their leave. There was some twelve-year-old kids, boys and girls, sittin’ in the grass all night, gigglin’ and singin’ and everything—I don’t know what they were doing out all night, but they were there till morning.”