The Unknown Kerouac

by Jack Kerouac

  “What’d you do with those babes?”

  “Went, daddy, went,” she said. Suddenly she jumped and grabbed her drummer’s iron brushes that she kept with her wallet, and played sharply on the table, in her slip, sitting at the end of the bed. “Lose me, you mother, lose me!” she cried. She played seriously, neck melted, like a hepcat, up to three minutes, four minutes, Omer was lying back.

  “I’m just another one of your ‘Johns’.”

  “No you’re not a John!” she cried angry and snappy.

  They got dressed. The clothes were falling off Omer. He was standing in the kitchen with one hand on the wall, all haggard, a blue suit, nothing else. He raised his collar. Nicki was even taller in her high heels. She played with the keys.

  “Come on.”

  She supported him on her arm; he was really weak. “We’ve got to get you some fresh air—some food—some jazz, baby, jazz. Ooh, look at the beautiful pumpkin in the candy store! Oh how I understand these naborhoods here, they swing, I lived in quite a—Walk faster—” She was taking great leaping strides and he was going fast twinkling his little paws like he had sneakers on; Omer was as sincere as crossed eyes.

  Going down the cold subway staircase, “So how d’you like that little Peaches?”

  “Boy, there are some wild girls in New York. How come she wanted to be with us for 2 days—It’s sad to live in Boston.”

  “There’s some wild ones there too, come on. The world is waking up. Some day we’ll see paradise on earth, kid.”

  “Eh, boy, Nicki—you’re one beautiful woman.”

  “Aw, you’re as pale as powder,”—in the street, around a restaurant light in Times Square—“We have to put some pancake makeup on you to add some color.”

  Omer swallowed, looking everywhere; his face was all wet; he was trying real hard to keep upright. The Benzedrine had eaten 15 pounds off him, and he was just a little bowlegged country boy. The big redhead applied the pancake; his face was coffee red. He looked like a ghost who’d played a part in a Broadway play, he played the part, and then died before they could remove the powder. In the back ways of Times Square the ghosts were raising their arms with thoughts on the whole of life. “Here we’ll go on the uptown train.” She was taller than he was; she supported him. People saw this phantom and that shiny-eyed Amazon, and marveled.

  At Times Square station suddenly Omer stopped and said “No, I can’t make it to the Savoy. I’m really too sick and tired, I’ve gotta go sleep for 2 days. At my friend’s place in Jamaica.”

  “No, come with me. We’ll pass the time together in hotel rooms, we’ll talk—come, love.”

  “But I’ve got no more strength. We’ll do it some other time!”

  “No, right now!” said Nicki stomping her foot like a little girl. “I still haven’t seen Red—he’s gonna give me money if he found any—the sleeping pills—my coat that I told you—”

  “Can’t do it,” said Omer head in hand—I am going to die he thought. “Gotta go.”

  “But why, when we were loving each other—”

  “It’s not personal, I’m just dying—”

  “Dying of what?”

  “I’m gonna fall to the ground!”

  They argued—they decided to disengage—Nicki was on one side of the subway—Omer the other, inside the turnstile. He had his package of vellum paper around his arm that he’d purchased in New York for his work at the print shop in Massachusetts; the package was all torn up. “Oh come with,” said Nicki.

  “Aw—aw—” It had been three nights since Omer had slept, really slept, alone in his bed.

  “Alright!” She got mad, she left, walking fast: she stopped, looked on sadly, walked slow; and started up again, fast, to get away, and Omer watched her leave in disbelief. She ran back. “Come with me.”

  “Can’t ya see I’m in need,” cried Omer seeing her; he leaned his head between the bars, on his hand.

  “Come with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “There!”

  “Coming in or out? But where we going! But what’re we gonna do! But I’m gonna die! My heart’s going too fast, my eyes are slammin and clackin some big hits, I dunno what I’m seein, Nicki! I can’t do it.—”

  “Alright first off you can do it. Alright if you don’t wanna. I gotta go—Look, I’m gonna go—”

  “I would, I would, I would but it’s been two days!”

  Omer looked at her, big girl of a little sister, a tiny corner in his heart for all of her torments and her big luminous loathsome face. “Are you gonna leave?”

  “You see that I’m gonna leave.”

  “Aw yes we must leave, aw yes we must leave,” said Omer sadly, watching her go, letting her take her leave, not stopping her, waiting to stop, waiting to think, letting her leave herself, slowly, looking back at him, from herself, over her shoulder, mournful, wanting to go play, Omer too dumb to accept it, too sick to talk about it, to think about it. Never to see her again—without an address—Only her name, Nicki. Her second name wasn’t her real one.

  Omer walked, hands in pockets, small, angry with himself, flayed, debauched; it was all a mad dream; there were teeth seizing him in the dark corners. Love was all tangled up with spikes. The Benzedrine was teaching him the dream of death, he saw the earth of the grave over his eyes; and now that Nicki was gone, his body was seized by pure sensations at the thought of Nicki. It was too much to grasp, he was afraid to waste time, had to go to work, he looked for clocks, in the subway. In Massachusetts, in the brown printshop of night, he’d stand upright on the platform of the big press, and they’d start the pages of the Billerica News. Boom, it was Omer who understood that big beast of a black greasy machine, so tender in its middles, so vast, interesting like a rule book ­perfectly written by a succession of industrial savants; the parts perfect. It made Omer’s head split in half. The people of New York didn’t know that this little Canadian from Massachusetts had sneaked into town for a weekend and had hooked himself a coupla dolls, they’d see him clack up his heels, tap on the sidewalk, disappear into the great rednesses of the piers at 5 in the afternoon; they’d see him asleep in the subway like a heap.

  When he arrived at his uncle’s house in Jamaica, he’d wanted to save some money but he’d spent it anyway buying spare ribs for the girls. The uncle and the aunt were in the middle of arranging the floorboards around his bed; working with hammers, it was a tender disaster in the tiny apartment. It was an old couple—hardworking, the old man happily busied himself in the yard with his sidewalk and his tree, the old woman listened to her radio in the hall; went to bed at 10 o’clock. Before he could ask him if he wanted to help them Omer said, “I have to lie down” and laid down on the bed in the extra room, without ceremony, fleeing so fast pulling the rags over his head that he didn’t defrock himself.

  He was about to feel worse the next morning. But before he’d slept two hours he was woken up by Uncle Bull Baloon. There he was, cigar in mouth, the bulb behind his head up high; the damn Bank Dick.

  “W d is it?”

  “Old Pomeray’s arrived from Denver, where’s that damn place o’ yours at?”

  “I told Rolfe—in the letter—Rolfe here yet?”

  “Well Rolfe says that there’s naked ladies staying in the place and that you made a mistake—”

  “Rolfe—made a mistake? Look, I have the other key myself! Somewhere in those pants there!”—fed up with his pants—“It’s Leo who has the key?” Omer wasn’t exactly quick.

  “Yes. But now they’re afraid to try it. They’re already talking about going back to Colorado. Been spending the whole day with em, poor Pomeray’s got no head left, he’s all eaten up by wine—much faster than I thought.”

  “Whadda we gotta do?”

  “Get dressed! We gotta bring em there, make em feel at home, before they leave. You and me gotta get back to Boston with Leo and the Kid in the Plymouth—gotta work—”

  “Ah,” Omer saw his uncle in the door, “I�
�m sorry about all this.”

  “Aw, you gotta get goin already?”

  “Yes, Arthur. Thanks. I’ll tell my mother the good news. They ordered a beautiful 36 Pontiac.” Dark trees made little scratches in the glass, it was the Long Island wind, at the window.

  The old man and his wife had put away the dope from the bucket on the street, the doors, the double windows; it was time to leave. She was an old friend of his mother’s; they’d given little pies to Omer for dessert on the first evening; the guy was a factory guard far into Long Island, the woman sewed in a dress factory. They were sitting, both of them, in big chairs, faces fallen; the design of the living room linoleum was painful to look at, it strayed, in blue and in brown, from the floor’s natural vanishing lines. The other rooms of the house were dark and scary. The hospitality of these good people was lost in the ruin of the dream they’d once had in their eyes—the quest was dull. Suddenly, it was over.

  Omer and Bull were returning to the city, to Manhattan, in Leo’s Plymouth that Bull had borrowed. Bull drove. Halfway across Brooklyn, on Atlantic Avenue, he said “Wait a minute, I gotta buy some coffee.” Omer waited outside. Bull was all alone in the store, there was nobody, it was a little neighborhood market. He saw his coffee at the top, he took the pole and started to bring it down. Just when the proprietress came out, some old lady, all the cans fell on the floor. Bull, his big behind moving fast, grabbed the chair and put it around the spot and with a handful of cans got up onto the chair to put them back. He’d put up three, when two others fell. He went down to chase them, and another one fell. He made a face. He climbed back onto the chair and stood up to put the cans back when all of a sudden the chair broke. He fell flat on his feet, but he fell against the Cornflakes counter, and all the Cornflakes and the Wheaties and the Grape Nut Flakes fell into a big heap in the aisle. Plack, another coffee can and some Rice Krispies. There was nothing more he could do. He took out his wallet and gave the old lady $2 for his coffee can.

  “Good god, I had to give her a tip!” he said in the car. “Let’s get outa here!”

  Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge they saw the whole city, dark, illuminated, the sad ships surrounding it. “What in the hell we all doing in New York?” cried Bull, driving, nose hovering over the windshield, leaning forward, giving himself little slaps to the face with each thing he saw in traffic.

  “Poor Rolfe—What’s Rolfe doing in New York.”

  “Hey, it’s a hell of a mixup. Pomeray—his kid—Leo—his kid—It was quite an escapade of mistakes.”

  They looked around the Brooklyn Bridge; there in the dark roofs was the gang, holed-up and hangjawed, waiting for fortune; Bull and Omer anxiously looking to see down there. “We’ll turn right at the bottom of the bridge here.”

  One time Bull had, in his youth, started off with a bunch of book salesmen that he knew and they’d all left from New York in the car to see a girl in Fall River, and they reached the Cumberland Mountains in the valley where they got them old wooden shacks all lit up at 9 in the evening in the rain showing washtubs and tragic mothers at their labors and above the riverside trees that don’t climb 15 feet over the other a wall of black mountains and rock-lifts with their mangled and chewed-up pines peeking through the impossibly lost tops in the fog. A terrible place, Bull and the salesmen standing crack-knee for so long in an old station while one of the guys was sick for a half hour in the shitter. They bought some moonshine; it hit Bull an hour after he drank it, he was laughing his head off, somebody had told them they were on the road to Louisville, Louisville okay, it was gonna be some goddam Mint Juleps “and ceytenly th’old Carstairs,” cried one of the salesmen; they arrived at the Ohio River at 2 in the morning, it was sad lights in the spring darkness. Old Bull had always remembered this beautiful moment in the episode; it was the night he’d made love to the Mrs. Blood woman, who was up in her beauty parlor at 5 in the evening and Bull had gone in to convince her to join him on the beach by the river all night, with the car and some hotdogs. Voyages do not scare men of gold.

  Big New York loomed over their faces like a black wall.

  “Who was it that put this whole damn thing together?” Omer waking up.

  “No one! McGee what’s-his-name Pomeray had asked me to help him out, find him a place to live—in New York, okay, in New York, he’d have Rolfe to drive him. I told Leo; he said he wanted to take a trip to New York anyway. I told you to give me the key to your damn place, in Lowell. No, you forgot and you left it for Leo.”

  “The damn apartment yes, it’s the key to the damn apartment.”

  “I know it’s the key.”

  “There’s somethin that ain’t right somewhere.”

  “Somebody’s a total numbskull.”

  “Somebody’d fall right into a hole on the sidewalk,” said Omer not knowing what he was saying.

  He should have given the keys to Bull, then everything would have been set. But suddenly you couldn’t see how it was gonna work any more.

  They arrived at 18 Pott Street. It was midnight. Rolfe’s car was gone. “Oh come on, they didn’t leave!” cried Bull, exiting the Plymouth; he looked up into the windows of the loft. Leo was in there, shrugging his shoulders to say gone, with his hands, from him, just like that, over, stone faced. “Ah? He means they’re gone!” cried Bull in his teeth. He and Omer jumped up the stairs, Bull with big leaping steps like a football guard of 60; Omer like a mad gazelle with a small swiveling head. It was gray.

  “Yes,” Leo said in the hall, “they left.”

  “Where for?”

  “For Denver.”

  “For Denver again?” cried Omer. “Rolfe this? Rolfe Glendiver yr sure?”

  “Yeah Rolfe, your Rolfe—he was here just a minute ago—well, a half hour, they left, yes, a half hour. Rolfe had been gone for 24 hours, he came back and told us that there were nude women in the apartment and we couldn’t move Pomeray in there. We all thought he was mad!” Leo cried, throwing out his arms. “And your Pomeray. An old louse of a bum if I ever saw one—all day long he was sleeping on his cardboards and blankets, and after that he started to drink his wine, lit a fire, with the electric hot plate, made coffee, some eggs that Bull had left him”—Leo was talking to Omer—“Oh it was a day! I’m telling you, was that poor damn wretch a real bum, or what? Ain’t it just a lil life, though?”

  Bull and Omer realized the tragedy of these excited words of Leo’s. In the corner Ching Boy was sitting, on a crate, legs spread open, throwing dice on a little tablecloth; the others close by, men of all kinds, Chinese, Irish, Greek, there was one who was a Greek from 23rd Street and 8th Avenue and he’d grown close to the Chinatown gang because he had a little lunchcart the other side of Chatham Square. On many evenings there, enshrouded, river ghosts pass by, guys who drink Bay Rum in clinker excavations. All those men, playing, weren’t thinking about what had just happened . . . The little Negro was still there, in the corner; and the quilts still on the floor, near some grocery bags. Nothing had changed, except that Pomeray and little Dean and Rolfe had left. Old Bull, scratching his jaw, was bothering himself raw in his old damp heart, inside of which only a small warm fire was left in the vastness, he himself also lost, gone.

  “Aw, it’s too late to go find em?” and looking at the others with his big blue eyes wanted to see everyone else’s expressions.

  “Look,” said Leo, “Rolfe left a pack of cigarettes.” Omer looked; they were Raleighs, cork tipped, next to an unimaginably chewed and mangled book of matches—nothing doing—

  The little Negro boy was still waiting for his brother Slim Jackson.

  Ti Jean, all of a sudden, saw everything from his dice game corner; there he stood, arms held backwards, looking at the athletes of life in their game—looking at the players and the yakkers too. The poor Little Boy hadn’t eaten all day, his father had had a couple of drinks and didn’t think of eating, as usual, and Ti Jean followed him in this, in their adventure. Now he was hungry but the day continued—He too had see
n the Pomerays depart. In his hand was the tennis ball; Dean had given it to him.

  “Why’d they do that!” exploded Bull.

  “I never seen such sad people—They figured they couldn’t get inside the house with the naked women, and got it into their heads that it was over and they decided to go back to Denver. They talked about it, he and Rolfe, for a half hour.”

  “They’re Oklahomans,” said Bull, “they’re a one of a kind race.”

  “Rolfe was certain that he couldn’t—He told us the story of the girl at the edge of the bed, no clothes on, and of a tall redhead in a black slip who was going out, and a man—it certainly wasn’t Omer’s place: Ah Omer?”

  “Sure it was my place Leo! That was me in there! I’ve been using that place for girls from time to time; I knew the farmer and his kid were coming, but I didn’t know when—Boy, Leo, I’m tellin ya I had myself a time this go around!” Leo looked at him cigar in mouth like a straight popsicle.

  “It’s Rolfe’s fault,” said Bull.

  “Why Rolfe?”

  “He decided—But the old man wanted to leave too. He was scared of New York, he just never went outside of this loft—He stayed in bed all day—the little boy he played a bit—” He paused, to listen, “Ti Jean—. . . . Rolfe he looked angry—And that’s how it happened. It rained a bit, you remember, and he sat down, hearing Rolfe—I figure that Rolfe’s as crazy as a broom—”

  Omer: “Rolfe isn’t crazy—It sounds like he didn’t know what was happening—He’s a damned bastat, I remember; dammit, I didn’t see him! Ah, he shoulda—He looked in the windows?—It just didn’t come into his head to think that it could have been my place—Ah well, what a frizzy of blah blah blah this is.”

  “But they all wanted to leave!” cried Leo. “I was trying to tell him the poor guy, wait, Bull went to see if he can find Omer, and he’s gonna bring you to the place himself. But I don’t think they even believed in Omer’s existence. I kept telling em, Omer Leclerc! Omer Leclerc!”