Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

  “Why dont you just say give me Number Two, instead of Number Five, I made a mistake. Would he give it back to ya, Numbers?”

  (Raphael and I had also been amazed in the shack yesterday by Cody’s constant talk of numbers, as you’ll see at the races.)

  Instead of answering me would the ticket taker change the deal, he goes: “Because that was a disincarnate entity telling me ‘Number Five’—”

  “Sometimes you just hear them in your head?”

  “This entity may be trying to have me win or lose, with certainly the foreknowledge of the outcome of that race, old buddy, dont you think I dont know why pshaw boy I got and you know Lazy Willie never said he ever you ever deviate from that second choice—”

  “So at least you know the disembodied ghost entities are trying to make you lose—because you say the second choice system cant fail.”

  “Cant”

  “Whaddo they look like?” asks Lazarus from the other room where now he’s been brushing his hair, on the edge of the bed, playing a little music on the box.

  “All kinds of ways, auras, auras say for instance of that betrayer scared everybody down the street, auras showing ogres of the imagination probably—opers anyway.” That’s where Cody plys the Keltic language.

  “Big seedy ghosts amplin down the line—into that endless sky, shit man Cody, wha happens?”

  Oh the frou-frous and fifi-sweets he’ll demonstrate the eye, to show how, jumping up from the chair to wave and talk—The Preacher—Mal was right—Laz comes in to dig Cody dancing like that. Cody’ll lean way down and sock his fist on the floor, and reach up and jump a point about Nijinsky off the floor and come around and bring big muscular Lil Abner’s-15½-year-old brother arms to whisk and wave at your nose, he wants you to feel the Lord’s wind and heat—

  “It’s all one essential light beyond which there can be no further division,” I essay, and here to add: “Words.”

  “Jesus Christ comes down and his Karma is to know that he is the Son of God assigned to die for the sake of the eternal safety of mankind—”

  “Of all sensing beings.”

  “No—not ants. Knowing it, he does it, dies on the Cross. That was his Karma as Jesus.—Dig what that means.”

  Les onges qui mange

  dans la terre …

  86

  All Cody had to do to get outa that was say “But God is beyond words” but what does he care about words he wants to go to the races.

  “What we’re gonna do now is get in that little car and go see a sweet baby-pussy I want you to see and then we’ll go get your boy Raphael Shmashael there, and we’re ORF!” Like the announcer at the races. He’s banding all his papers and switch keys and cigarettes in the pockets, we’re off, Penny who was combing her hair to go out and taking her time about it now has to run right out with us and into the car, Cody wont wait, we leave Lazarus stranded in the doorway free to goof all day long in the apartment alone—we go barreling businesslike down the steep hill, and around to the right, around again, and around left and right into Third Street and wait at the light then on down just before it changes into the city, Cody wont waste a split-hair of time—“It’s all TIME, m’boy!” he yells—he goes into his theory of time and how we all gottact fast. “There’s no end to the things to be done!” he yells (the motor’s loud)—“If we only had TIME!” he cries almost moaning.

  “Whatinhell do you mean about time?” the girl is yelling. “For krissakes, all I hear is this talk about Time and God and every damn thing!”

  “Ah shut up” we both say (in our sneering thoughts) which gets Cody mad and he bats the car outa hell right into Third Street winos stumbling from the bottles you can see empty in the alleys and traffic around, he curses and swivels—“Hey take it easy!” yells Penny as his mad elbows bang her. He looks mad enough to rob a bank or kill a cop. You’d think looking at him he was a wanted outlaw in Oklahoma Panhandle 1892. He’d make Dick Tracy shiver before shoot holes in his head.

  But then at Market the pretty girls are in evidence and here goes Cody’s description. “There’s one. She aint bad. See her cutting in the store there. Nice ass.”

  “Oh you!”

  “Not half so nice that one there—hmm—nice front, nice side—no hippies—flippy dippy.”

  Flippy dippy, that’s when he forgets himself and when there are children around they all go mad laughing and digging it. Never will be clown with adults, though. The shooting star of mercy musta had a bleak face.

  “There’s another one. O is she a gone cutie, tho aint she?”

  “Where where?”

  “Oh you men.”

  “Let’s eat!”—we’ll go eat in Chinatown, breakfast, I’ll have sweet and sour spare ribs and almond duck with my orange juice, ugh.

  “And now children I want you to realize that this is the day of days,” announces Cody in the restaurant booth, removing his racing forms from one pocket to another, “and by God” banging the table “I’m going to recoup my loss-es,” like W. C. Fields, and looks up blankly as the waiter comes but doesn’t stop (a Chinese cat with trays), “We’re bein ostracized here,” yells Cody—Then when orders come he gets a regular old ham n eggs breakfast or lunch, like the time we took G. J. to the Old Union Oyster House in Boston and he ordered pork-chops. I get all that almond duck and can hardly finish it.

  No room in the car, or some kind of dissuasion use, to drop Penny off at the corner and cut on down to see Cody’s favorite new girl who lives out there and we park the car violently and run out and into the room, there she is in a tightfitting little dress fixing her hair before the mirror, and lipsticking, saying “I’m on my way to a Filipino photographer to take nude photos.”

  “Oh isn’t that nice,” says Cody with extreme unction. And while she’s primping at the mirror even I cant keep my eye off her shape, which is dead perfect, and Cody like a sexfiend in some never-published special pornographic photo is standing right behind her holding himself up to her, close, not touching, as she either does or does not notice, or neither, and he’s looking at me with a big plea in his mouth, and pointing at her, and shaping and molding her with his free hand, without touching, I stand there watching this tremendous show then sit down and he keeps it right up and she goes on putting on that lipstick. A crazy little Irish girl named O’Toole.

  “Man,” she finally says, and goes over and gets a stick of tea, and lights up. I cant believe it and finally in walks a three-year-old boy who says something extremely intelligent to his mother like “Mama, can I have a bathtub with baby eyes, man?” something like that, or, “Where’s my baby toy I can go be a boy with,” actually—Then her husband walks in, cat from the Cellar, that I saw there milling around and running around. I am supremely tested by this situation, and trying to get out of it I pick up a book (Zen Buddhism) and start reading. Cody doesnt care, but we’re ready to go, we’ll drive her right out to her photographer. They rush out and I follow them but the book in my hands, and have to run back and re-ring the bell (while Cody armarounds pretty Mizzus O’Toole) and her husband stares at me down the stairs and I say “I forgot the book” and run up and hand it to him, “I really did,” and he yells down “I know you did, man,” completely cool and perfect couple.

  We drop her off and go on to get Raphael.

  “Now aint that some little nice sweet something, dyou dig that little dress,” and then instantly too he’s mad. “Now all on account of this Raphael idea of yours we’ll be late at the racetrack!”

  “O Raphael’s a great guy! I promise you I know!—What’s the matter dont you like him?”

  “He’s one a those guys that dont dig—them Dagos—”

  “Boy they got em rough and mean, too,” I admit, “but Raphael is a great poet.”

  “Boy wiggle through that as you will but I cant understand him.”

  “Why? Because he keeps yelling? that’s the way he talks!” (It’s just as good as silence, just as good as gold, I coulda added.)


  “It’s not that—Sure I dig Raphael, man dont you know we been—” and he gets stony silent on the subject.

  But I know I can (I can?) Raphael can prove he’s a great cat—Cat, shmat, man, pan, dog is God spelled backwards—

  “He’s a good kid—and he’s a friend.”

  “The Friends so-si-a-tay,” says Cody in one of his rare instances of irony, which though when it comes, as in Dr. Samuel Johnson whom I also Boswelled in another lifetime, come so Irish Keltic Hard and final, it’s like rock, receiving the crash of the sea, wont yield, but that slowly, but obdurately, irony meanwhile, iron in the rock, the nets the Keltic people spread on rock—Mostly in his tone of irony is the Irish Jesuit school, also to which Joyce belonged, not to mention hard Ned Gowdy back up there on that mountain, and besides Thomas Aquinas the ill-starred hard-begot Pope of Thought, the Jesuit Scholar—Cody had been to parochial school and was an altar boy—Priests had suffered at his neck as he twisted to break down buildings of heaven—But now he was back in the groove of his religion, believing on Jesus Christ, and in Him (as in Christian countries we’ll use the “H”)—

  “Did you see the cross Raphael loaned me to wear? wanted to give me?”

  “Yeah”

  I dont think Cody approves of my wearing it—I leave it out, I’ll go on—I get the strange feeling of it and then I forget it and everything takes care of itself—Same with anything, and everything is holy I said long ago—long ago before there appeared an I to say it—words to that effect anyway—

  “All right we’ll go to that damn Richmond and man it’s a long way so let’s hustle—You think he’ll ever come down outa there?” peering now out the car window at Raphael’s roof windows.

  “I’ll run up and get him, I’ll ring.” I jump out and ring and yell to Raphael up the stairs, opening the door, as a distinguished old lady makes her appearance—

  “I’ll be right down!”

  I go out to the car and soon here comes Raphael dancing down the high porch steps and swinging as he goes and comes bashing into the car as I hold the door open for him, Cody starts us off, I slam the door and drape my elbow over the open window and here’s Raphael, fingers up in little bunched fingerfists, “Yai, you guys, wow, you told me you’d be here at twelve o’clock sharp—”

  “Midnight,” mutters Cody.

  “Midnight?!! You told me damn you Pomeray you waz gonna be—you ai, you, Oh I know you now, I see it all now, it’s plots, everywhere it’s plots, everybody wants to hit me over the head and deliver my body to the tomb—The last time I had a dream about you, Cody, and about you, Jack, it was much more with golden birds and all sweet fawns consoled me, I was the Consoler, I lifted my skirts of divinity to all the little children who needed it, I changed into Pan, I piped them a sweet green tune right out of a tree and you were that tree! Pomeray you were that tree!—I see it all now! You cant follow me!”

  His hands all the time held up, gesturing with little snips, or mows, at the air, just like an Italian talking a long harangue in a bar to a whole brass-rail of listeners—Wow, I’m amazed by this sudden ring of sound, and the unimpeachable delicatesse of every Raphael’s words and meanings, I believe him, he means it, Cody must see that he means, it’s true, I look to see, he’s just driving along listening sharply and also avoiding traffic—

  Suddenly Cody says “It’s that breach of time, when you see a pedestrian or a car or an upcoming crack-up you just crack right up like nothin’s gonna happen and if it dont separate you got that extry breach of time to give em grace, because ordinarily ten times outa one them astral bodies’ll separate, cat, and that’s because it’s all figured out in the hall up there where they make the Cee-ga-ree-los.”

  “Ach, Pomeray—I cant stand Pomeray—he gives me nothin but bullshit—he pulls my ears—it’ll never end—I quit I give up—What time’s the first race, man?” the latter spoken lowly and politely and with interest.

  “Raphael’s a razzer!” I yell out, “Raphael the Razzer”—(it was Cody had just said that, “One of them guys likes to razz the boys, you know” “Isn’t that all right?” “It’s awright”—)

  “The time of the first race is well out of our reach now,” says Cody bleak, “and naturally we cant play the daily double—”

  “Who wants to play the daily double?” I yell. “The odds are never long enough. It’s a hundred to one or fifty to one chance you got pickin two successive winners, shit.”

  “Daily Double?” says Raphael fingering his lip, and suddenly he’s brooding into the road, and here we come in that little coupe with the old 1933 hardchug engine, and you see the vision of three faces in the glass, Raphael in the middle hearing nothing and seeing nothing but just looking straight ahead, like Buddha, and the driver of the Heavenly Vehicle (the full Oxcart Bullock White-as-Snow Number One Team) talking earnestly about numbers, waving with one hand, and the third person or angel listening with surprise. Because he’s just then telling me that a secondchoice horse paid six dollars to show, then five dollars to show twice, then four three times, then a little under four (bout twenty forty cents) twice, and came in the money all day, first, second, or third all day—

  “Numbers,” says Raphael from far away. But he’s got his little wallet of about thirty dollars with him and maybe he can make a hundred and get drunk and buy a typewriter.

  “What we should do, insmuch you dont believe me, but I beg you to see and understand, but I’ll tell ya what, I’ll play him to win all day, ’cordin to Lazy Willy’s system—Now Lazy Willy now you realize Raphael he was an old hand at bettin that system and when he died they found him dead out there in that clubhouse with $45,000 in his pocket—which means that by that time he was plankin real heavy and affectin the odds hisself—”

  “But I only got 30 dollars!” yells Raphael.

  “This’ll come in time—” Cody was going to become a millionaire with Lazy Willy’s system and go out building monasteries and Samarian retreats and hand out “fi-dollar-bills” to deserving bums in Skid Row and in fact even people in trolleys—Then he’s going to get a Mercedes and go spinning down to Mexico City on that El Paso Highway, “doin 165 on the straightaways and boy you know that’s gotta be in low gear because when you come to that curve and gotta make it at 80 or 100, and gotta swash the car through it’s a matter of sideswipin that curve with your brakes—” He demonstrates a little by gunning up the motor and simultaneously going into low to ease us up at a convenient red stoplight (which he can tell is red because the cars are stopped, tho colorblind)—What hazish gray vistas doth bold noble Cody see? This is a question I could ask Raphael, and he’d answer me from his horse:

  “Some hoar immaculate mystery.”

  87

  “What we’ll do,” says Cody arm around both of us at the flag-whipping race track as we edge right into the mob of bettors under the grandstand, “I’ll play to win, Raphael play to place, Jack play to show, all day, on that second choice” (tapping his program at the second race and at the horse-number now, he sees craning over heads, is running second choice on the tote board)—Raphael doesnt understand any of it but at first we dont realize.

  “No I wont bet,” I say, “I never bet—Let’s get a beer—It’s beer and baseball and hotdogs.”

  Because finally Raphael announces his horse to our immediate joint consternation as it shows he’s understood nothing whatever of what “second choice in the betting” meant—“I’m gonna bet on number nine, it’s a mystical number”

  “It’s Dante’s mystical number!” I yell—

  “Nine—nine?” says Cody, looking, wondering, “Why that dog’s goin off at thirty-to-one?”

  I look to Cody to see if he understands, all of a sudden nobody understands anything.

  “Where’s my beer?” I say, as though an attendant was standing behind me with it. “Let’s get a beer and you bet.”

  Raphael has his money out and is nodding seriously.

  “Natcherly,” says Cody, “I’ll go wit
h my secondchoice horse and bet him to win—You understand? that’s number five.”

  “No!” laughs and shouts Raphael. “My horse is number nine. Dont you understand?”

  “Yes I understand,” concedes Cody and off we go to bet, I wait at a beer counter as they merge into long panicky lines of waiting bettors as the horses are nearing the six furlong pole now for the dash and soon there’ll be (there it is!) the warning buzzer and they all hustle and push, the line is slow, and nobody’s even once looked out at the actual horses out on that physical field—it’s all astral numbers and cigarsmoke and shuffling feet.—I look out over the crowd and over the field and the distant Golden Gate Bridge across the water far away, it’s Golden Gate Fields Racetrack in Richmond California but it’s definitely an ant-heap in Nirvana, I can tell by the little cars far away—They’re smaller than you can believe—It’s a vast space trick—With what a particular reverence do the little jockeys out there pat their horses into the starting-gate but we cant see that far too well, I can just see the silk reverend jockeys bending-bodied over their horses’ necks, and nathless the fact there are more horses’ necks than horses in the world, the horsenecks are strapping beautiful things—Brrang! They’re off—We haven’t even bought a program so I dont know what silks Cody’s 5 is wearing, or Raff’s 9, all we can do (like all the other downtrodden bettors of Karma world) is wait till the pack drives on down the 70-yard-pole and see which way the number sets, in that diamond heaving pack, and as for the announcer his announcings disappear under the roar of the crowd at the far turn salience, which leaves us with upjumping looks to see just numbers coming by—passing through—as soon as the jockeys ease up around the clubhouse turn when the race is over, fans are already clobbering the statistics on the third race—Cody’s 5 comes in third, Raphael’s 9 is out, near last, a tired horse of Dante—they’ll be bringin him in by lamplight in my dreams—Cody proudly advises us to recall and announces: “Good, when the second choice comes in third, naturally that’s almost as it should be, right? Seeing as how he’s third choice, he should third choice it to the public’s satisfaction, good good, just let him lose all he wants, the more he loses the stronger I get”