Doctor Sax

by Jack Kerouac

  “I never did forgive you for that time you hit me on the head with a marble Ti Jean,” Nin is saying to me, “but I will never hold it against you–but you hit me on the head.” I had, too, but if with Repulsion, champion of the Turf, she wouldn’t be saying it without a lump on her head. Luckily I used a regular marble not the ballbearing–I flew into an awful rage because Ma had sent her up to clean my room, Saturday morning 11 o’clock when smells of boiling’s on stove and I was settled for my game and cried when I saw the Meet (with 40,000 on hand) was going to be postponed, but she was adamant, so I confess before the judgment of the eternities I threw a marble (Synod, owned by S & S stables) right at the top of her head. She ran down crying–I was severely jostled by my irate mother and made to sit and sulk on the porch awhile—”Va ten dehors mechant! frappez ta tite soeur sur la tête comme col Tu sera jamais heureux être un homme comme ca.”(Go on outside, bad! hitting your little sister on the head like that! You’ll never be happy being a man like that!) Doubtful that I ever grew up, too. I’m worried.

  “Eh bien Nin,” I say, “faura du pas faire car (Well Nin, I shouldn’t a done that.)

  We come to the St. Jean Baptiste church and Nin wants to go in for a second to see if the third-grade girls at St. Joseph for girls are having their Lenten exercises, wants to check on her girlfriend’s little sister–ah the poor little girls of Lowell I knew that died, at 6, 7, 8, their rosy little lips, and little eye glasses of school, and little white collars and Navy blue blouses, all, all, underdusted in fading graves soon sinking fields–ah black trees of Lowell in your March glare–

  We peek in at the church, at shuffling groups of Little girls, at priests, people kneeling, doing the sign of the cross in aisleways, the prim flutter of front altar lights where a pursymouth youngpriest wheels sensationally to kneel and hangs knelt like a perfect motionless statue of Christ in the Agony of the Garden, budging for just an instant as he barely loses balance and all little kids in church who watched have seen, the sensational wheel failed, I notice all this just as I slip out the door–after Nin with a flick at the fount-waters and quick cap-on (my cap was an old felt hole-hat).

  Bright morn blanked our eyelashes right there, inside the church perpetual afternoon, here: morning… But as we proceeded right on Aiken Street and left up on Moody the day stretched to noon with a faint whitish glare now come into the halyards of the blue and the trumpets have stopped sounding, half lost their dew–always hate morning going– The women of Moody Street were rushing and shopping literally in the shade of the Cathedral–at Aiken and Moody, center of traffic activities, it cast its huge bloat shadow on the scene–climbing a tenement or two in shadow-vertical-extenuation lengthening with afternoon. Nin and I gaped at the drugstore window: inside, where neat black and white tiles made a golden sun floor for the drugstore, and where the strawberry ice cream sodas were foaming at the top in pink bubblous mist froth at the slavering mouth of some idle traveling salesman with his samples on the stool, soda in glass sitting in steel glass-grip with round clinky girderbottom, a solid soda, huge, oldfashioned, with a barbershop mustache on it, Nin and I sure wished we could get some of that. Joy of the morning was particularly keen and painful in the marble slab counter where a little soda was freshly spilled–I romped, we romped on up the Moody. We passed several regular journeyman Canadian grocery stores crowded with women (like our Parent’s) buying hamburger and huge pork chops of the prime (to serve with hot mashed potatoes in a plate in which also hot porkchop fat is floating around beautiful with luminescent golds to mix with the mash of hot palate, add pepper). In fact Nin and I grow hungry remembering all our long hikes to the Royal, looking at sodas, walking, seeing the women buying sausage and butter and eggs in the grocery stores. “Boy mue faimer a ben vite, tu-suite” Nin says rubbing her dress over her belly (Boy me I’d like real soon, right away—) “un bon ragout ctboullette, ben chaud (a good porkball stew very hot) dans mon assiette, / prend ma fourchette pis jell mash ensemble (in my plate, I take my fork and I mash it together), les boules de viande molle, les patates, les carottes, le bon ju grew, apres ca fma bien du beur sur mon pain pis un gros vert de la—”(the balls of soft meat, the potatoes, the carrots, the good fat juice, after that I put a lot of butter on my bread and a big glass of milk—)

  “Pour dessert” I put in, “on arra une grosse tates chaude de cerises avec d’la whipcream—”(For desert we’d have a big hot pie of cherry with whipcream)—

  “Lendemain matin pour dejeuner on arra des belles grosses crepes avec du syro de rave, et des sousices bien cui assi dans Yassiette chaude avec un beau gros vert de la—” (The next morning for breakfast we’d have some nice big crepes with maple syrup, and sausages well cooked sitting in the plate hot with a big beautiful glass of milk—)

  “Du la chocolat!”(Chocolate milk!)

  “Non non non non, s pas bon ca–du la blanc– Boy sa waite bon.”(No no no no, that’s no good–white milk-Boy it’s gonna be good.)

  “Le suppers de ce jour la, cosse qu’on vas avoir?’ ( The supper of that day, what we gonna have?)

  “Sh e pa—”(Dunno)—she’s already turned her attention to other things, to watching the women hang up the area-ways of wash in the great shining alleys of famous Moody Street–

  “Moi fveu un gros plat de corton—” ( Me I want a big bowl of corton) (meatspread) —”des bines chaudes, comme assoir, Samedi soir–un pot de bines, du bon pain fra de Belgium, ben du beur sur mon pain, du lards dans mes bines, brun, ainque un peu chaud–et avec toutes ca du bon jambon chaud qui tombe en morceau quand tu ma ta fourchette dedans–pour dessert je veu un beau gros cakes chaud a Maman avec des peach et du ju de la can et d le whipcream —ca, ou bien le favorite a Papa, whip cream avec date pie.” (—And hot beans, like tonight, Saturday night–a pot of beans, good fresh Belgium bread, lots of butter on my bread, lard in my beans, brown, just a little hot–and with all that some good hot ham that falls apart when you put your fork in it–for dessert I want a beautiful big cake, hot, made by Mama, with peaches and the juice from the can and some whipcream–that, or else Pa’s favorite, whipcream with date pie.)

  Thus we rushed along, and came to the bridge … we’d almost forgotten the Flood–

  2

  HUGE WASHED OUT NOON’S shining on the river day. Great marks show how high the river was. Forests in the pebbly shore are all mudbrown. A cold high wind blows, the sign of the store at the end of the bridge, on pawtucket, creaks and cringes. Whipping bright skies wash over the sight of the earth. Over in Rosemont you see great pools of despair still reflecting clouds … six blocks long some of them. All Lowell sings beneath our sight as we dance across the bridge. The flood is over.

  I look to see towards the Castle on Snake Hill and I see the gnomic old figure gnarled in its vlump on the keen desirable hill far away. Blazing heavens shine on its knobs.

  3

  THE CASTLE IS REALLY DESERTED—no one lives there–an old sign sags in the overgrown grass by the front gate–not since Emilia and her pals in the 20’s did we see any signs of a car or a visitor or prospective buyer– It was a heap. Old Boaz endured in the woodsmoke cobweb hall–the only inhabitant of the Castle who could be seen with mortal eye. The kids who played hookey, and the occasional people who walked around in the moldy cellarly ruins inside did not realize that the Castle was Totally occupied– in the reality of the dark dust the Vampires slept, the gnomes worked, the black priests prayed their Litanies of the perfidious Damp, the attendants and Visitors of the Nark said nothing but just waited and workmen of the underground mud local were ever loading trucks with bare shoulders below– When I walked on the Castle grounds I always felt the vibration, that secret below– This was because the location was not far from my birthplace hill Lupine Road… I knew the ground whereof I thought & tread. That sunny afternoon I Visited the Castle, kicked at a broken glass in the side cellar window, and then retired to a bed of grass beneath a crabapple tree by the lower picketfence–from where I lay I c
ould see I could see the regal slope of the castle lawns with their hints of last October’s ruddy-spot leaves (O great trees of the Versailles castle of our souls! O clouds that sail our Immortalities!— that tear us to the Voom, beyond the ledge and massive widow, O fresh paint and marbles in a Dream!)—the gentle, graceful grass, the weaving waving in the drowsy afternoon, the kingly slump and slope of the earth of Snake Hill, and then sensationally out of the corner of the eye a whole wing and corner and facade of the Castle–wild, noble, baronial home of the soul. This was an afternoon of such bliss that the earth moved–actually moved, I knew why soon enough–satan was beneath the rock and loam hungry to devour me, hungry to sleek me up through his portal teeth to Hell–I lay back and innocently in my boyhood barefoot sang “I got a nose, you got a nose—” Nobody passing in the road beyond the wall asked what I was doing there little boy–no paint trucks, no women with children —I was relaxed in my day in the yard of the homely old Castle of my play.

  Late that afternoon, almost dusk, very cold, I made my way down Snake Hill via the little cart road through the jackpines in the sand not far from the sooty old coal shute of the Centralville Bee Coal Co.

  4

  AFTER SUPPER I WANDERED up to the sandbank and stood on top till dark,—looked at the coal shack below, the sand, Riverside Street where the sand road crossed, the rickety Voyer grocery store, the old cemetery on the hill (homerun centerfield in old games against Rosemont Tigers on their own grounds), the backyard viney and autumn-like of the Greek brothers Arastropoulos (faintly related to G.J. thru relatives working a lunchcart on Eighth Avenue New York)— The vast fields towards Dracut Tigers, distant pines, stonewalls– The trees of Rosemont, the great river beyond–far off, across Rosemont and over the river, Centralville and its darkening Snake Hill. I stood on sandbank top like a meditative king.

  The lights turned on.

  Suddenly I turned. Doctor Sax was standing there.

  “What do you want Doctor Sax?” I said immediately– didn’t want the shade to overcome me and I pass out.

  He stood, tall and high and dark in the bushes of the night. The feeble Lowell night lights, and the early stars of 8 o’clock evening, sent up and down a gray luminescent aura to illuminate the long green face beneath the shroud slouch down hat— “Staring with mute sun eyes were you at the drop of day in your billygoat town–think old men ain’t traveled and seen other shepherds and other gray goat pies in the meadow by the wall– You didn’t read a book today, did you, about the power of drawing a circle in the earth at night–you just stood here at nightfall with your mouth hanging open and fisting your entrail piece—”

  “Not all the time!”

  “Ah,” said Doctor Sax rubbing his cane against his jowl, his shroudy cane popped up from black pedestal bases in his stomach dark–he leered—”now you’re pro-testing—” (turning away to do a sudden smirking grin with himself in the palm of his black glove)—”Look, I know you also saw the little children of that Farmier family running up and down the log at the river’s flooded edge and complimented yourself for the keenness of your eyes and thought of mowing them down with a distance scythe didn’t you!”

  “Yes sir!” I snapped.

  ‘That’s better-” And he pulled out a mask of W.C. Fields with David Copperfield Mr. Swiggins hat and put it over the black part where his face was under the slouch hat. I gaped,— When I’d first heard the rustle of the bushes I thought it was The Shadow.

  5

  AT THAT MOMENT I KNEW that Doctor Sax was my friend.

  “When I first saw you on the Sandbank I was scared– the night Gene Plouffe was playing the Moon Man—”

  “Gene Plouffe,” said Doctor Sax, “was a great man–we must pay him a visit. I’ve been watching Gene for years, he was always one of my favorites. As a phantom of the night I get to know and see a lot of people. I once wrote a story about one of my madder adventures which I’ve since lost.”

  Neither one of us at that time knew Amadeus Baroque or that he had found that ghostly manuscript.

  ‘The Flood,” said Doctor Sax, ‘lias brought the thing to a Head.”

  When I heard him say that, even though occasionally through my being struggled the wonder of his holding the W.C. Fields mask to his face and it makes not my mind whirl but settle in obvious understanding– I knew what he meant about the flood, but by the same laws I couldn’t piece it. “The understanding of the mysteries,” he said, “will bring forth your understanding in the maples”—pointing at the air.

  He started out of the bushes with a mighty shudder but suddenly stopped and stood silent beside me, so high, thin and tall that I couldn’t see his face unless I looked all up– From way up there came his famous sepulchral laugh, I tingled in my toes.

  Doctor Sax: “Stately Queens of evil rock caves come slomming in the slush of the underground, dripping … all the swimmers of hell are poking and sticking skinny arms thru the iron grates of the River Jaw, the underground river beneath Snake Hill—”

  ME: “Snake Hill? You don’t mean where I was this afternoon—”

  Doctor Sax: “THE HILL OF THE BLUE BALLOONS, SAME.”

  And with these words he started off and pointed, turning. “Say goodbye to your view of the sand hills of where you call your home–we’re going through these bushes and down to Phebe Avenue.”

  And tragically he led me through the bushes. On the other end, where Joe and I and Snorro had spent a whole afternoon running and sailing thru the air till we got dizzy and faint landing in the hot sand like parachutists–here Doctor Sax looked up and a great dark eagle of the night swooped low to salute us with Uncle Sam fiercy eyes leadening at us in the silver darkness. “That was Tantalus Bird —flew in from the higher-than-Andean heights of the Tierra del Fuegan Princess–she sent a packet of herbs in his horny claw leg, I unwrap’t it–it has brought a blueish tinge to the state of my current powder—”

  ME: “Where are all these tinges and powders sir?”

  Doctor Sax: “In my ammenyuosis shack, madame” (he chewed viciously on a cud of tobacco and sunk the chaw-cake in his inner blackpockets till later).

  I realized that we were both crazy and had lost all contact with irresponsibility.

  The eagle flamed in heaven, I saw that his claws were made of water, his eyes were burning sand-storms of gold, his sides were solid shiny silver bars luminescent in flame, blue shadows at his rear, guards–seeing the Eagle was like suddenly realizing that the world was upside down and the bottom of the world was gold. I knew that Doctor Sax was on the right track. I followed him as we pitched down through the soft sand of the bank and came stomping softly in the thinner sand at the edge of the halo-lamp light foot of Phebe-”Hup,” said Doctor Sax handing out his arms from which a great drape fell shrouding me to my feet, as we stood there melted in a black statue of ecstasy. “No Nadeaus in the Road?—forgot about them didn’t ye–no Ninips, poor little boy–no little frantic Drou-”as pigglywiggling in the dust before bedtime there where the brown supperlights stretch on sidewalk—”

  “No sir”

  “Nevertheless one of the Code laws of the dark, is, never let yourself be seen by shroud or self, sands have messengers in that starlight ink.”

  And off he glided, shroud and soft, I right beside him, bent, head down, zooming to the next shadow, I’m a great veteran at it as Sax well knows already–we hit the darkness of the last-house yard.

  “We’re paying a call on Gene Plouffe,” he said in a low sepulchral whisper. We leapt over the first fence, over violet bushes, and came to the Nadeau backyard crawling low– Not a sound, just the Saturday night Hit Parade on the radio, you hear the clash of cymbals, and the announcer, and the fanfare of the orchestra, and the crash of thunderous triumphant music, No, No, They Can’t Take that Way from Me song hit of the week, and it makes me sad remembering my little dead Bouncer that got lost and then recovered and then died when they put flea-powder on it and I buried it in right field in my backyard near the cel
lardoor–buried her six inches deep, she was just a little kitty, little dead kitties are poor.

  The music is coming out of the Nadeau radio raspy and distant– Doctor Sax and I glide thru the backyard shadows silently– At the next jumping, he puts a shroudal hand on my shoulder and says “No need to worry–mix your mud with elephant flowers, adamantine boy–the hook and curl in the crook of eternity is a living thing.” All his statements knock me on the head Come In even though I don’t understand them. I know that Doctor Sax is speaking to the bottom of my boy problems and they could all be solved if I could fathom his speech.

  “Grawfaced travelers have been this way, came waiting grayly and meekly at doors to the committee room and consulting booth at the Castle–they were all turned away.”

  “When are you gonna go there?”

  “Now–tonight,” said Doctor Sax—“you might as well be with me tonight as with anyone anywhere–for your own safety—” A fiery eye suddenly contemplated us in the dark, on the rail of the fence. Doctor Sax brushed it aside with his shady whip-cane-shroud. I couldn’t see when the Eye had vanished–for a moment I thought I saw it flying thru the sky, and the next thing I knew I saw a flashing speck in my eye and it closed-up again.

  Far ahead of me, low along the fence, Doctor Sax glided and led the way.

  We come to the Hampshire’s backyard, I can see the light in Dicky’s room where he’s drawing cartoons that he’ll be showing me Sunday at the house when my mother makes caramel pudding– I know Dicky will never see Sax or me with his weak eyes. “Punk,” I say, cursing up at his house–we’d had a fight after the raft episode–we’d make up in three days meeting gloomy and unwilling eyes on the irrevocable path in the park, and exchange Shadows.