The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  He looked at everybody fatigued with tenderness.

  He played cards from love of the red and the black in the night.

  The game continued chip-chip. Ti Jean sat on an upsidedown pail in the corner. Old man Leo gave him one look across the smoke and said hat-on-head “Find yourself a little place there and sleep, we’ve been driving all night.” And Ti Jean sat in the brown sadness of his corner and watched life. He was a strange little boy. He always had heavy thoughts. He never wanted to talk with anyone. He wanted to see New York but had to wait in the loft with the bunch. While waiting, he passed his time among them dreaming imaginary pictures of life that came out from the things they said and the faces they made in the game; he saw their windows.

  All of a sudden a Negro came in with a beard in his chin, Slim Jackson, a tall skin-and-bones with a big yellow eyeball red threaded behind each great brown eye, a well formed nose and a drop of beard flowing from his chin; very sad, very fast, with a saxophone case in his hands, and a long necktie that seemed to fall from his coat halfway to his feet. With him was a little Negro boy of eleven. “This is my little brother Pictorial Review Jackson. I’m gonna leave him here for twenty hours and I’m coming back to get him.”

  “Okay Slim,” said Ching Boy.

  It was said that he and Slim smoked opium together in his rooms; hasheesh, kief, dagga, gangee; once in a while they put a sniff of heroin on a razorblade, or else they shot them some cocaine five, six times in an hour; a gang of friends. “We’re going to have a shipment from my great uncle in Peking tomorrow. Come and join us.”

  “Yes, if I have time,” said Slim with his eyebrows going up and down fast like a comedian. “Ziggity zow,” he said, jiggling himself a little, “I gotta go play in a record session with my girl, she’s gonna sing six or seven songs—I Want a Little Girl I’m gonna play without words—Ha!—You Can Depend on Me—Smoke Gets in Your Eyes—I want to be in my best shape. Louis’s gonna be there—I got cigarettes—Shot of Vodka! Here I go!”

  “Bring money for the game tonight,” said Ching Boy, and the young Chinese laughed.

  “Yay. I’ll be seeing you, Dad. Hey, Dad!”—sincerely searching in his eyes—“See ya later! Pic, take care of yourself.”—falling on his knees to the child—“You got a dollar to eat, there’s places all around, it’s early in the morning, take it easy. Play with that lil boy there.”

  “It’s a lil white boy,” little Pic told him in the ear.

  “Well, it’s alright, he’ll let you play with him.”

  “I don’t wanta play with him.”

  “Well sit here.”

  “I’m gonna wait for you.”

  “Naturally, angel. Until tomorrow.” He squeezed his fist with the dollar in it; he adjusted the little hole-hat on his head. And Slim Jackson left, swift, his case swung, his hands; he had to go to work. At night he stood in front of nightclubs with his horn, stamping his feet, the fog came out of his mouth; he talked with Roy Eldridge in the dark street. “What ya say, man?” “Hey Little Jazz!” And they endured in the winter that’s around their music. Ti Pic looked at the men and the children with averted eyes.

  “I’m gonna blow my brains out this morning!” Slim shouted at the top of his lungs, hitting the stairs hard, whaling the doors.

  As usual Leo was beginning to lose; he was starting to get mad. “Goddamit I had the king and I forgot I saw his damn brother and the deuce on the other side of the table. I play cards like a numbskull.” All the others regarded him curiously at this confession. The play continued.

  “Why don’t you try to get up and come play cards,” said Leo seeing old Pomeray’s eyes open on the floor. “You don’t know me, I was your wife’s nephew; Leo Duluoz.”

  “Aw yeah—well—I’ll have ta—” the man said from the floor and didn’t move.

  “If you get up we’ll fry some eggs!” yelled Bull Baloon. “And I bought a little bit of hamburger if you want to make a tomato sauce to mix with them pork and beans.”

  All you could see was a cracked grin in the shadows of the floor. The little boy Dean was frozen tight at his father’s side. His eyes’d been open for a long time. Old Pomeray said nothing; he had forgotten; he lay down again with his eyes open. He took his bottle of wine and took a long drink leaving just a drop; up on an elbow. You could see the moon in his wet kisser; a Bowery moon. He smiled. Little Dean was asking him a question in a little voice; it seemed you could hear the old man reply in the tiniest gentle voice. Dean threw the tennis ball in his hands, in the gloom.

  Old Pomeray’s old shoes, cracked from the West, were on the floor, split. You couldn’t find father & son for the black robe that fell from them.

  After awhile little Dean got up to the window and began to play a fantastic game; he sent the ball from one wall to another, catching it after the fourth change of direction to bounce it up and down; for this sometimes fell flat on his face. The other two boys watched him interested. Ti Jean came up to play. Little Dean looked at him with blue curious eyes, like an old man’s; he kept his mouth firm-closed and studied him to see. Ti Jean struck out his hand for the ball, smiling at the ball; took it, did the same thing almost without jumping. The little Negro was afraid to jump, move. Little Dean and Ti Jean jumped together to whang at the ball against the wall, punching with fists, hard and furious, until the men yelled at them in big voices to stop. They stopped. Old man Pomeray was watching them very gravely from up on his elbows, studying them. Dean held out his hand for his ball: Ti Jean gave it back with a little plop and a laugh of pleasure. They looked at each other; Dean had shown that he knew how to play, Ti Jean’d had his fun. He left to place himself among the men at the game; Dean’s father was telling little Dean to come back where he was. Little Dean was saying no, seriously, biting his lip, pushing his chin down on his fist; the old man was saying yes. Dean had to lie down, fix himself to wait to get up to leave. Ti Jean had already forgotten their new acquaintance, was watching the men; little Dean had already lost everything from his side. You could see him, eyes in the ball, mouth in the darkness, feet buried in the floor, in the hay, in the great foundation of darkness and rags that sat in the base of their corner like a drape, a battleship deck of pain all split in the thoughts of the poor Hag who saw in the light of the room immense black profundities of the contract of life, the well-known shadows, telling himself Yes, believing himself and counting himself in his head, pressing his mouth on his teeth wishing it.

  And he turned to little Dean. There were tears in his eyes, “Just like we’ve always done in Denver Dean—you and me!! That’s what it’s gonna be! Didja have so much to complain with, batchin with me?—think your mother’s folks woulda done so much better for the way they talk?—The Skylark is called a flophouse by some people—but you went to school didn’t ya? And in the winter we was warm, Dean. In the Saturday mornings we was warm we was happy—”

  “I ain’t sayin nothing daddy,” scared the others would hear.

  “—wasn’t we? We went to the barber shop together and I worked, and you roamed around town picking up scrap and Saturday night we always did have a good meal at Jiggs’ buffet of chickenfried steaks usually and always did see a movie—didn’t we Dean? That’s ’cause I’m your father and wanted to do well by ya—didn’t I Dean! And so there’s some folks won’t name no names, call me a bum, a wino, came and said because I drink and get drunk don’t take much to get me drunk they say—So you sometimes talked to the judge to help me out—and sometimes you even panhandled dimes for me because—Dean—but didn’t I love ya? Didn’t I? Ain’t I offerin you everything I got right now? Be workin, working again—I ain’t gonna drink much—look, all I got’s this little poorboy bottle tokay left, that’s all, Dean—Dean—” His voice didn’t even rise.

  The little boy said nothing, waited, to grow up.

  A Chinese came in the loft with an ironingboard, went out by the back door, Ching Boy said something to him in Chinese, business. Leo Duluoz shook his be-hatted head. Ti
Jean watched his pop’s face, blackened with rage; reddened, from sadness; lowered, to look at the floor; lips pinched, saying to himself “What a damn world—what a poor world,” in French. Around him all the brownness of great dreams of life, the phantoms with him, the smoke, the darknesses on the floor near the spittoon of spit and cigarettes; Uncle Bull Baloon’s great knees in fat pants, dropping ashes on his pants, brushing them off with big coughs and looks at the clock on the box, ruined like a great corpse in a coffin, not yet cut by the embalmer, teeth rotten, a great cracked smile on his Christ of a clown’s face.

  Rolfe had taken himself to Times Square via the El with a little walk on 42nd Street from Third Avenue till the Times Building. You saw him in front of the overall store with the long sideburns—it seemed you could see gray rocks over his head, drizzle, mountains of used tires, as if he was thinking it. Have you ever seen anyone like Rolfe Glendiver?—say on a street-corner on a winter night in Chicago, Fargo, cold towns, a young guy with a bony face that looks like it’s been pressed against iron bars to get that dogged rocky look of suffering, perseverance, finally when you look closest, happy prim self-belief, with Western sideburns and big blue flirtatious eyes of an old maid and fluttering lashes; the thin muscular kind of fellow wearing usually a leather jacket and if it’s a suit it’s with a vest so he can prop his thick busy thumbs in place and smile the smile of his poor grandfathers; who walks as fast as he can go on the balls of his feet, talking excitedly and gesticulating; poor pitiful kid sometimes just out of reform school with no money, no mother, and if you saw him dead on the sidewalk with a cop standing over him you’d walk on in a hurry, in silence. Oh life, who is that? There are some youngsters who seem completely safe, maybe just because of a Scandinavian ski sweater, angelic, schoolboyish, saved; on a Rolfe Glendiver it immediately becomes a tragic dirty sweater worn in wild sweats. Something about his tigrish out-jutted raw facebone could be given a woe-down melancholy if only he wore a drooping mustache. It is a face that’s so suspicious, because so normal, so energetically upward-looking like people in passport or police lineup photos, so rigidly itself, looking like it’s about to do anything unspeakably enthusiastic, maybe criminally affectionate, and so much the opposite of the rosy coke-drinking boy in the Scandinavian ski sweater ad that in front of a brick wall where it says “Post No Bills” and it’s too dirty for a rosy boy ad you can imagine Rolfe standing there in the raw gray flesh manacled between sheriffs and Assistant D.A.’s and you wouldn’t have to ask yourself who is the culprit and who is the law . . . who “wired Dad” who had tennis rackets in the back of the car; and who did not. He looked like that and God bless him he looked like that Hollywood stunt man who is fist fighting in place of the hero and has such a remote, furious, anonymous wildhaired viciousness—one of the loneliest things in the world and we’ve all seen it a thousand times in a thousand B movies—that everybody begins to be suspicious because they know the hero wouldn’t act like that in real unreality. If you’ve been a boy and played on dumps you’ve seen Rolfe, all giggling excited and blushing with the pimply girls in back of fenders and weeds till some vocational school swallows his ragged blisses and that strange American iron which later is used to mold the suffering man-face is now employed to straighten and quell the long waving spermy disorderliness of the boy. Nevertheless the face of a great hero—a face to remind you that the infant springs from the great Assyrian bush of a man, not from an eye, an ear or a forehead;—the face of a Simón Bolívar, Robert E. Lee, young Whitman, young Melville, a statue in the park, rough and free.

  Rolfe had asked a few questions; he was walking slow. “Nothin’s gonna bother me,” he told himself. Only girls. He saw thousands passing. He lost words to address them; only looked at them. He spent his time leaning, laughing, and watched them. He walked.

  He went in two shows, sitting in front alone, boots crossed, laughing “Hyoo hyoo!” at every little feeble joke yuckled by old man Windy Smith Whiskers in the cowboy B movies. Laughed all alone in an empty aisle. From time to time in the audience of the theater, upstairs or downstairs, you could hear other idiots laugh. Others seemed to catch the little gay looks on the faces of women in the insipid stories; most of the audience said nothing, laughed for nothing, waited for the show to end, to get out in the newsreel streets.

  Rolfe wandered downtown again, without knowing, as it destinied, and got to the North end of the Bowery, around East Fourth Street. He scratched his head in the shadow of the Cooper Union. He ate in a big cafeteria lit all brown in the sad night of the city. Rolfe hurried from there, it was too sad. He wore his hat, his cigarette dangled from his mouth, his boots moved slowly. There were no more girls in the streets. Twenty-four hours he’d been gone in these occupations of walking and watching. He wasn’t tired. He hardly knew he passed a night and a day without sleep; didn’t bother him. In the vast regions of himself, bored. He looked at the city. Laughed. Inside he was dead. He’d dreamed himself before. He saw everything with eyes blue and dead. Poor Rolfe, his life in Colorado had cracked him—he’d had the big smashup in his car that killed his grandfather, broken his ribs; broke his heart with his first girl (Jean Darling of Golden), put in a year in reform school for abducting her and bringing her in his car across the state line to his brother’s cabin, wouldn’t let her free for three days; abducted, wept at her belly for love; and when the father arrived took him on in a big fist fight, a prominent man of Denver; drank in roadhouses in the night and one time saw a Texas guy stomp on a man’s face in the driveway cutting off his tongue between his teeth. He’d been sick to see life when he was little but it took his present age to stop him with a knife stuck in his craw. The big knife of life that comes out of the night, when you’re at a carnival, and penetrates your heart. The sadness of love in the smell of the night. The mystery of the moon. Haggard eyes at five o’clock in the morning. The fog that falls on the bread of our life. Rolfe walked. Suddenly it seemed to him that his dead mother walked in front of him, shimmering, an apparition; she was Catholic, she was doing her sign of the cross; the street was Second Avenue. Beside him walked his phantom. His phantom left to walk on in front of him. He saw it in front of a store on the other square. He stopped in front of a jewelry store and looked at rings. He pointed his finger at the glass. Nobody around. He hurried to walk deeper. His face swallowed itself. He passed a bar, went in.

  A lot of men were singing, there was beer in mugs, onions, crackers, the odor of vinegar, night; an old saloon with sawdust floor. He went in the toilet; a well dressed man followed him in. When Rolfe tried to do his business the man tried to watch. Rolfe stared at his face, his understanding too wide eyes—Rolfe could hear his heart beat; he sensed himself with a maniac. He fixed up to leave. The man said nothing, looked away. The man also hurried to leave. Rolfe followed him. The man sat down with some other men at a round table in a corner where they were singing in a gang; a young man with a turtleneck sweater had hair curled like a Portuguese. Rolfe left the bar.

  He stood in the doorways looking at people. He hadn’t slept for five days, drove from Gunnison to Denver before starting the big trip. You could see his strange eyes beneath the hatbrim, his ranch suit beneath the topcoat as though he had come out of an alfalfa field and put on coat and hat to visit the moon of New York.

  He hurried in an old street.

  Suddenly he saw the time in an old delicatessen window with Hebrew writing; seven o’clock. He had been gone from Pomeray and Dean and Bull for 24 hours. He’d found no girls, had not seen the burlesque of gold like he wanted to do—poor tourist!—He looked at the name of the street, Henry Street. He remembered it, the address Omer had written him. “I’ll see the place; after, go get the gang.”

  He went up the street counting numbers. It was dismal, the wind was black, full of stinking smokes of fires, sad. Cats scurried like rats. Rolfe went through a hole in the fence, an empty lot inside, cans, swill. There was an old fire, an old spectre of a ragman, rags on a wagon. The city above, the kitc
hens of light. The mad dream of life. Rolfe did his business against the fence, waiting, in a dream. The ragman had seen his dream; eye to eye in the dark had seen. It was suffering—you have to firm your lips in the cold. The two men had fallen from the stars of the East and the West but they knew the same face of life. The ragman left on the other side; you couldn’t see him any more. Rolfe left the lot, his hat straight and unnecessary on his head; walked in a store and bought a quart of milk.

  His mouth was white. He found his address and climbed the tenement steps in the dark street. He went up in the somberness, cold smell, odor of the harbor; the great black ships were disengaging themselves from big buildings, the Els were going up and down in the dream; there were little white houses in the darkness (beneath) the rivers, streets and parks long lost. He looked at the long gray stairs between the bars of the middle well, a sad roof on top somewhere. He stopped, remembered a beautiful morning in Colorado when he’d slept near some red rocks in his sleeping bag, the blue sky, the smoke of his fire, singing “Ramona” and cooking eggs in his fryingpan.

  He reached the top floor, looked around. He rubbed his eyes in the sadness, looked on his paper, the right number, 10. A little wire ran along the ceiling and then buried itself in plaster. He tried the door softly; locked. The light in the hall was green like fish. He climbed another flight, came to the roof door. Locked. He didn’t know what to do. He looked through the big hole of an old lock in the wood. The latch. He took out his knife, opened it softly, and lifted the little latch. He shrugged. He came out on the roof. The city was all around him, black; red lights, brown, and blue; he could see great fogs of light further. He shrugged in immensity. “If the guys back home could only see me,” he said. “Drove all the way to stand on this roof, to scatter on the ground . . .” he told himself. “Drove all that road and now here I am on the roof of the city. From here you could see all the way to Colorado, everywhere, all the way to California, it seems, thinking about it—it’s nothing but a huge black and dirty trap, I’m buried, lost, drowned—I thought there were blondes in the street, men with guns, waterfronts—there’s nothing, only the dream. I’m heading back. Pomeray can have this place here. I was gonna stay a little but not any more.” He went down the fire escape and looked in the window, careful not to fall, wiping his hands from the sooty black bars, his big coat hanging.