by Jack Kerouac
“Don’t close it yet!” howled Nick.
When Wesley had left, they laughed and began a new game.
At ten o’clock, Bill left the game and made his way down to the galley. The mess hall was crowded with seamen playing dice and drinking coffee. Bill had a cup for himself; then he went back to the moon washed deck and watched the big yellow moon sink toward the horizon. He felt a wave of peace come over him . . . his first day at sea had proved as uneventful as it was casual. Was this the life Wesley had espoused? . . . this round of work, feeding, ease, and sleep, this mellow drama of simplicity? Perhaps it was the sort of thing Everhart had always needed. What he would do now is go to sleep, wake up, work, eat, hang around, talk, watch the sea, and then go back to sleep.
Nothing could disturb this wise calm, this sanity of soul; he had noticed how quickly the seamen, and Wesley in particular, had put a halt to Joe’s sacrilegious rebellion—no, they wouldn’t have fellows like Joe “foul everything up.” And what was this “everything?” . . . it was a way of life, at sea; it meant equality, sharing, cooperation, and communal peace . . . a stern brotherhood of men, by George, where the malefactor is quickly dealt with and where the just man finds his right station. Yes, where he had once felt a deficiency of idealism in Wesley, he now found more idealism, and more practical affirmation of ideals there than in his own self.
Bill took a last look at the night sea and went below to sleep. He stretched in his bunk and smoked a last cigarette . . . he hoped he would dream.
Wesley was up before sunrise for his next watch. The bosun told him to do something around the deck, so Wesley picked out a broom and went around sweeping. No one was around.
The sea was rougher that second morning out, its swells less smooth and more aggravated by a wind that had picked up during the night. Wesley went topsides and watched the smoke fly from the funnel in ragged leeward shapes. He began to sweep along the deck, still dull with sleep and not able to stop yawning, until he reached aft. Two soldiers stood below him, near the four-inch gun, consorting like monsters in their earphones and orange lifebelts.
They waved at Wesley; he waved his broom.
The ship had begun to rock in the heavier swells, its stern jogging slowly in massive wobbles. The wind whipped across the waters sporting a dark green shadow of chasing ripples; here and there, a wave broke at the top and crested down a white edge of foam. In a few days, Wesley mused, rough seas would develop.
In the East now the sun had sent forth its pink heralds; a long sash laned to the ship, like a carpet of rose for Neptune. Wesley leaned on his broom and watched for the sunrise with a silent, profound curiosity. He had seen sunrise everywhere, but it never rose in the shaggy glory that it did in North Atlantic waters, where the keen, cold ocean and smarting winds convened to render the sun’s young light a primitive tinge, a cold grandeur surpassed only in the further reaches of the north. He had seen wild colors off the Norwegian North Cape, but down here off the top of Maine there was more of a warm, winey splendor in the sunrise, more of a commingling of the South with the North.
Wesley walked forward and breathed the salt-seeped wind deep into his lungs. He pounded his chest joyfully and waved the broom around his head, and since no one was around, he hopped around the deck like a gleeful witch with his broom.
This was it! That air, that water, the ship’s gentle plunges, the way a universe of pure wind drove off the Westminster’s smoke and absorbed it, the way white-capped waves flashed green, blue, and pink in the primordial dawn light, the way this Protean ocean extended its cleansing forces up, down, and in a terrific cyclorama to all directions.
Wesley stopped near the bridge and watched the destroyer up ahead. Its low form seemed to stalk the waters menacingly, her masts pitching gently from side to side, her guns alternately pointing above and below the horizons as though nothing could escape her range.
Wesley put aside the broom and sauntered around the deck. He found an oil can and went over to check the lifeboat pulleys; when he knelt down to oil one of them, the bridge house tinkled its bell. The wind whipped away the sound quickly.
“Brring, brring . . .” mimicked Wesley whimsically. “Music to my ears, damn it.”
In five minutes, the sun appeared above the horizon, a rose hill rising gently to command the new day. The wind seemed to hesitate in homage.
Wesley finished his work around the deck and clambered down a ladder to the next level; he took one last deep breath of the air and pushed open a door that lead midships. When he shuffled into the galley, Glory was already up preparing breakfast.
“Mawnin’!” boomed Glory. “If you lookin’ for breakfast, man, you goin’ to wait!”
“Just a cup o’ coffee, Pops,” smiled Wesley.
Glory began to hum the blues while Wesley poured himself a cup of hot coffee.
“Where you from?” asked Wesley, jetting a stream of evaporated milk into his coffee.
“Richmond!” boomed Glory, removing his pipe. “I done lay down a hipe when I left Richmond.”
Wesley stirred his coffee: “I worked on a construction job down near Richmond once.”
“Richmond!” sang Glory, “dat’s my town, man. I pulled outa there on account of a woman, yessuh!”
A seaman came in and unlocked the galley portholes; the pink light poured into the room with a gust of salty breeze.
Glory gazed through the porthole and shook his head slowly, like a great lion.
“I done put down a hipe when I left Richmond,” he moaned deeply. “A lowdown hipe!”
“What did your woman do?” asked Wesley.
“Man, she didn’t do nawthin’ . . . I done it all, old Glory done it all. I lost all her money in a crap game.”
Wesley shook with silent laughter. Glory poked his enormous finger in Wesley’s chest: “Man, you think I was goin’ to hang around there till she slit my gut?”
“No sir!”
“Hell, no! I done pull out o’ Richmond an’ dragged me North to New Yawk. I done worked up there for the W.P.A., in restaurants, and man, all the time, I had them lowdown woman blues.” Glory chuckled with a rich growl. “I thought o’ comin’ on back to Richmond, but man I didn’t have the guts . . . I shipped out!”
Wesley sipped his coffee silently.
“Everybody,” sang Glory in his thunderous basso, “want to go to heaven . . . but no-one want to die!”
“What was her name?” Wesley asked.
Glory pushed a pan of bacon into the range oven and kicked it shut.
“Louise!” he moaned. “Louise . . . the sweetest gal I ever know.” He began to sing as he broke eggs into a pot for scramble: “Lawise, Lawise, is the sweetest gal I know, hmmm, she made me walk from Chicago to the Gulf of Mexico . . . now looka here Lawise, what you tryin’ to do? Hmmm? What you tryin’ to do, you tryin’ to give the man mah lovin’—an’ me too—now, you know Lawise, baby that will never do . . . now, you know you can’t love me . . . an’ love some other man too . . . hmmm . . .”
His voice broke off in sinking tremolo.
“Way down blues, man,” said Wesley.
“Richmond blues!” boomed Glory. “I used to sing ‘Louise’ all day in front o’ the pool hall . . . an’ den at night I done drag my feet over to Louise’s. Man, you ever see Virginia in the Spring, hmmm?”
“You Goddamned right I did,” said Wesley.
“Ever take yo woman out thar with a bottle o’ gin, them willow trees, them nights out thar with a big fat moon jus’ lookin’ down, hmmm?”
“You Goddamned right I did!”
“Man, you know all ’bout it! Do I have to tell ya?” boomed Glory.
“No sir!”
“Hoo hoo hoo!” howled Glory. “I’m headin’ back for Richmond soon’s I drag my pants off dis ship . . . yassuh! I’m goin’ on down agin!”
“I’ll go with you, man! We’ll spend three weeks with a couple o’ them Richmond mommas!”
“Yeah!” thundered Glory. “I�
��m gonna get me mah honey Lawise an’ you amble on down de street an’ get you sump tin’.”
“High yaller!” cried Wesley, slapping Glory on the back. “You an’ me’s goin’ to have three weeks o’ Richmond beach . . .”
“Hoo!” cried Glory. “Throw me dat Jelly Roll, boy, an’ I’m gonna eat it right up!”
They hooted with laughter as the ship pushed on, the sun now peered into the galley port with a flaming orange face; the sea had become a great flashing blue gem specked with beads of foam.
CHAPTER EIGHT
That afternoon, while Everhart sat sunning near the poop deck rail, reading Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner,” he was startled by the harsh ringing of a bell behind him.
He looked up from the book and glanced around the horizon with fear. What was it?
A droning, nasal voice spoke over the ship’s address system: “All hands to the boat deck. All hands to the boat deck.” The system whistled deafeningly.
Bill grinned and looked around, fear surging in his breast. The other seamen, who had been lounging on the deck with him, now dashed off. The warm wind blew Bill’s pages shut; he rose to his feet with a frown and laid down the book on his folding chair. This calm, sunny afternoon at sea, flashing greens and golds, whipping bracing breezes across lazy decks, was this an afternoon for death? Was there a submarine prowling in these beautiful waters?
Bill shrugged and ran down to his focastle for the lifebelt; running down the alleyway, he hastily strapped it on, and clambered up the first ladder. An ominous silence had fallen over the ship.
“What the hell ’s going on!” he muttered as he climbed topsides. “This is no time for subs! We’ve just started!” His legs wobbled on the ladder rungs.
On the top deck, groups of quiet seamen stood beside their lifeboats, a grotesque assemblage in lifebelts, dungarees, cook’s caps, aprons, oiler’s caps, bow caps, khaki pants, and dozens of other motley combinations of dress. Bill hastened toward his own lifeboat and halted beside a group. No one spoke. The wind howled in the smoking funnel, flapped along the deck waving the clothing of the seamen, and rushed out over the stern along the bright green wake of the ship. The ocean sighed a soothing, sleepy hush, a sound that pervaded everywhere in suffusing enormity as the ship slithered on through, rocking gently forward.
Bill adjusted his spectacles and waited.
“Just a drill, I think,” offered a seaman.
One of the Puerto Rican seamen in Bill’s group, who wore a flaring cook’s cap and a white apron beneath his lifebelt, began to conga across the deck while a comrade beat a conga rhythm on his thighs. They laughed.
The bell rang again; the voice returned: “Drill dismissed. Drill dismissed.”
The seamen broke from groups into a confused swarm waiting to file down the ladders. Bill took off his lifebelt and dragged it behind him as he sauntered forward. Now he had seen everything . . . the ship, the sea . . . mornings, noons, and nights of sea . . . the crew, the destroyer ahead, a boat drill, everything.
He felt suddenly bored. What would he do for the next three months?
Bill went down to the engine room that night to talk with Nick Meade. He descended a steep flight of iron steps and stopped in his tracks at the sight of the monster source of the Westminster’s power . . . great pistons charged violently, pistons so huge one could hardly expect them to move with such frightening rapidity. The Westminster’s shaft turned enormously, leading its revolving body toward the stern through what seemed to Bill a giant cave for a giant rolling serpent.
Bill stood transfixed before this monstrous power; he began to feel annoyed. What were ideas in the face of these brutal pistons; pounding up and down with a force compounded of nature and intriguing with nature against the gentle form of man?
Bill descended further, feeling as though he were going down to the bottom of the sea itself. What chance could a man have down here if a torpedo should ram at the waterline, when the engine room deck was at a level thirty or forty feet below! Torpedo . . . another brutal concoction of man, by George! He tried to imagine a torpedo slamming into the engine room against the hysterical, blind power of the pistons, the deafening shock of the explosion, the hiss of escaping steam, the billions of water pouring in from a sea of endless water, himself lost in this holocaust and being pitched about like a leaf in a whirlpool. Death! . . . he half expected it to happen that precise moment.
A water tender stood checking a gauge.
“Where’s the oiler Meade?” shouted Bill above the roar of the great engine. The water tender pointed forward. Bill walked until he came to a table where Nick sat brooding over a book in the light of a green shaded lamp.
Nick waved his hand; he had apparently long given up conversation in an engine room, for he pushed a book toward Bill. Bill propped himself up on the table and ran through the leaves.
“Words, words, words,” he droned, but the din of the engine drowned out his words and Nick went on reading.
The next day—another sun drowned day—the Westminster steamed North off the coast of Nova Scotia, about forty miles offshore, so that the crew could see the dim purple coastline just before dusk.
A fantastic sunset began to develop . . . long sashes of lavender drew themselves above the sun and reached thin shapes above distant Nova Scotia. Wesley strolled aft, digesting his supper, and was surprised to see a large congregation of seamen on the poop deck. He advanced curiously.
A man stood before the winch facing them all and speaking with gestures; on the top of the winch, he had placed a bible, and he now referred to it in a pause. Wesley recognized him as the ship’s baker.
“And they were helped against them, and the Hagarites were delivered into their hand, and all that were with them,” the baker shouted, “for they cried to God in the battle and he was entreated of them because they put their trust in him . . .”
Wesley glanced around at the assemblage. The seamen seemed reluctant to listen, but none of them made any motion to leave. Some watched the sunset, others the water, others gazed down—but all were listening. Everhart stood at the back listening curiously.
“And so, brothers,” resumed the baker, who had obviously appointed himself the Westminster’s spiritual guide for the trip, “we must draw a lesson from the faith of the Reubenites in their war with the Hagarites and in our turn call to God’s aid in our danger. The Lord watched over them and he will watch over us if we pray to him and entreat his mercy in this dangerous ocean where the enemy waits to sink our ship . . .”
Wesley buttoned up his peacoat; it was decidedly chilly. Behind the baker’s form, the sunset pitched alternately over and below the deck rail, a florid spectacle in pink. The sea was deep blue.
“Let us kneel and pray,” shouted the baker, picking up his bible, his words drowned in a sudden gust of sea wind so that only those nearby heard him. They knelt with him. Slowly, the other seamen dropped to their knees. Wesley stood in the midst of the bowed shapes.
“Oh God,” prayed the baker in a tremulous wail, “watch over and keep us in our journey, oh Lord, see that we arrive safely and . . .”
Wesley shuffled off and heard no more. He went to the bow and faced the strong headwind blowing in from the North, its cold tang biting into his face and fluttering back his scarf like a pennant.
North, in the wake of the destroyer, the sea stretched a seething field which grew darker as it merged with the lowering sky. The destroyer prowled.
1
A group of Jack’s friends from Lowell which included: Sebastian Sampas, Cornelius Murphy, George Constantinides, Billy Chandler, George Apostolos, John MacDonald, Ed Tully and Jim O’Dea who met informally to discuss various topics including literature and the arts.
2
These journals and notes can be found in the Jack Kerouac archive, Berg Collection at the New York Public library.
Copyright © 2011 by John Sampas, The Estate of Stella Kerouac Introduction © 2011 by Dawn Ward
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First Da Capo Press edition 2012
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