by Jack Kerouac
JACK. Wouldn’t I know? You still do!
CODY.—urp, or, but that’s alright, that’s aw-right, we let that one go, this black hair’s too long, this black hair’s got to go, down the gangplanks, wup, overbo-a-a-ard! Hear that, ock? hock? aaaaard, that nasal twang from Issouri, twang. There were stockyards, and thoughts, I suppose; and my father was there. It was just one thing, just had, naturally to be anything at all truthful about the matter, it was a thought that didn’t matter wasn’t it!
JACK. It matters, all—
CODY. Had, yes all, in it elements of such unimportance and unimportant imperfect sections running throughout it that you had to just slip it out, things had to be thought to be done—you know that yourself, you’ve, had, all experienced, in the same thing as those scythes, those bloody scythes of yours (imitating W. C. Fields) cuttin my way through a wall of hu-man fl-e-sh (sniffs). I mean, we know, we both of us know (bending to his work) that the fact of matters like sleepy afternoons in the sun and flies buzzin is all nice and pretty and in fact you know as well as I do easy to come by, images not in the instant ridiculous but—well, made up of the goos and glup of life
SLIM. Yes, (shuddering) you was almost down then! In your thought, man—
CODY. True, ah, true; I always told Esmeralda my wife in the galleon hangings of nineteen oteen, when Mayor Robinson and I washed the floors of Mack Avenue trolleys in Detroit, coughing, the bank was so dusty from all that old California gold dust and Model A juice…(Music: Les Paul echoey guitars wrangling in highway palaces all up and down the night.) (“Hold that Tiger”)
JACK. It was Jelly Roll Morton, when, like Blake, seeing visions of the lion breaking the door down he wrote “The Lior is Breaking the Door Down,” I mean the Lion, and he said, the tiger, hold that tiger, he’s coming in the door; no he must have been already in and the whores hung on by the ge—, vestibule gowns of the curtains, you know, New Orleans nineteen ten, Jelly Rool Morton
SLIM. And his Kansas City Stools
CODY. The sonumbitch’s high! I can’t, what are you gonna do man with a piece of turdy thoughts, how can you hold it for long, just like you say, you roll your hoop along, hoop along Pomeray; but by God man I did walk along those old stockyard tracks many’s the time, the rats just like you say, were huge; I had that cat killed—I loved Monte Cristo—it’s all the same—The Indian halfbreed hero is hungup on comic books and just the same; he had maybe a whole horse killed on HIM—Rinick you was right, you was right Ferdy, yeah, Ferd, lemme tell ya Ferd—but, ah by gorsh, yar, ain’t she yar though?
JACK. Enchilado?
CODY. Par—har—har har har! (laughs) Oh, this is real good shit. Tell my story some other time. Put away your quills and quidnuncs, the good lawyer’s in his box, we buried him last night by the shadow of the moon, he fell down the stairs with a severe and stately air, old Hannegan Bannegan the Wake Man spilled beer all over Mrs. O’Farterty’s gown, she had it sent down by an old navvy in Albany, I once sailed up that river almost but instead was corpsed
JACK. Well then man, after that…. I knew from the deaf mute when he wrote all those long letters that you had gathered up the whole mob inside of a half hour on Times Square and down to the Village and departed the fair city of New York in right good order, without a hitch. But what happened then as you sped across the country with that hideous harload, that hideous carlot?
CODY. We, and so we came flaming into the Hylson glare, flanked on all sides by lisping garters, edged over by the Moor to a stately mountainside upon which marks of a wallmaker yet sate, and behold, from all-golden temples on the hill beyond the desert, we made haste to hurry the horde into its prci—, precipitate, precipitit, precipitate hole and hiding-place of eternity; but providence visited the stately dead bone in his styles accouchered, on a nate, made up of quality-givings and sanctions, redeemed by no other than the king of States, the massive arbi—, arboreal foreman of the time; the consummate and most madeup wretch of all time, he spwe, he spewed on me from all quarters an awful gelatin of gluttondraggon juice, green like in spent grass (Spenser), but you make a mow?
JACK. Yes; kindly resume the tale
CODY. Well it was a carload, by god; first there was the Deaf mute, poor Tony, we never saw him have we again, no, he’s down floating disemboweled in the Gate of Gold
JACK. What was he like on Times Square?
CODY. As you know for a living he polished the shoes of men with a golden rag; for his living he scathed his knees hardsore, he brought them to grief; he made pads on the pavement for his bones; he was beat; he had nowhere to go but a poor beat house in the slums where his mother was sick and crazy and laying up in the dark night with nothing to do but look at the moon on the ceiling which is like Out of the Depths Have I Cried to Thee O Lord! Thus Tony in his innocence, one day perceiving, in the welter of librarial tomes in the libroa-a-ary, with radio-ators to keep the place warm, radio-ay-tors, came to see his own m—, name, Nicholas Breton, in the pages of an old turdish English poetrybook, a chapbook of carts: each one with wheels: if I had eyes, the woods had eyes; or some such poesy; I think it was, had I eyes, or eyes to make me see, or were I ever mute, or sent to sing about her ruby lips, or torn between twixt and twence, a wench, a pence, a tight bodice, a lilt in her ribbons, a tattered shoetongue, a cut fan, a fanny to boot, one well formed and fitted in Balzacian scrolls and laces; but up, up, hup—Dig that Joe Holliday blowing that little ta tup tee tup tup, man he really is sweet and cool and beautiful, O world! What will thee hence? Whenfly in your furbishoors? and moors? and spoors? and lures? loors? loons? goons? beautiful dancer desert me not; beautiful tone dethorn me not, castrate me not with your loveliness; if I had such a so lovely soul I too would make a vow in the mow; O May Mows, O Times—
JACK. Nicholas Breton—a brief poem—not too well known—this my tale and descantation hear you now, I dedicate to you, to thee, sing you well—But in his EEP’s eyes he did not realize anything but that Nicholas Breton was a deafmute too, because of the couched meanings in the language, and so, a neighbor relative of Cowens on the Blankums, in old Dervishoor. Thyme?
CODY. Well said lad—figuratif, dedicatee, dove
JACK. Roaned, spavined, lorned, de-horned, hoof and mouthed
CODY. Leaking, drooly, bloody, rollypolly, wounded
JACK. Made to wring the meaning, made to roam the void Made to sing demeanors to the meeters of the
CODY. You mean this is the pit of night, the moonsaw?
JACK. The moonsaw’s come, the rainy night is milk, red eyes sea,
CODY. Can’t decide? Have no bones? Pick up stone? Or stick an own?
JACK. Crick alone, turtle dove alone, moan alone, pose alone.
CODY. Nonsense be, as nonsense was; or nonsense is a trapeze
JACK. Nay a hole beneath it; with a balloon upon the void afloat.
CODY. Van Doren, excellent; New Yorker, extrasmash; Walt Winchell, bardstart
JACK. Tell me Nones; throw a Flying Scone;
CODY. Yeah but the deafmute after an afternoon goofing in the Pokerino with Freddy the French-Canadian hitch-hike kid from up north when they bet on the monkey in the glass cage there and brought postcards to the Chinaman’s pigeon, why, I brought the car around at seven o’clock or so, cut right into the Angler to meet Huck; there he was, he had our ten and Phil’s five and some other guy’s five whose name I don’t remember and off we went to meet the connection, he was sitting in Lindy’s Diner on Forty-third and Lebenth Avenue and here come this whole mob of—but that was, cops, girls, but something other—and we pick up, up at his pad, pay him, lightup, bombers, high, Huck’s sittin there with those eyes you know, high, and I’m sittin there still tryin to hold my breath and can hardly crack another lung, and wham, I let loose, and go pherrrrf, and laugh, and spew smoke, and spit all over myself, you know, high, and Huck’s just smilin a little thin corner smile with his eyes all disapprovin and sad fixed on mine, you know, as if to say and in fact sayin in the next minute, “What you
doin man?” Just that and nothin else, dig; but J, Huck; and we picked up, and ran back to the gang on the Square, we picked up the imbecile and Freddy in the penny arcade, they were goofing like two romantic mechanics that come riding around on bicy, motorbikes, motorcycles on Satnight running in from Jersey like mad, they was standin and goofin there at the nickel machine with the flippity hips and earnestly homosexual, you know, or whatever, arm around arm diggin these biglegged babies comportin themselves in a flaphole all cold and blue and dark for Ben Turpin to come cuttin in to, damn that old Ben Turpin always gettin in the panties, the mouse, like—Mother Hubbard’s cupboard—Shee-it, I could tell you stories make you wish you was daid. I could lay you down a hype make you wish you was dead and gone, dead and gone
JACK. I could ripple you houndspack make you wish I was dead and void
CODY. Dead and voiced; I signed it last night, my voucher—Please, no callers today, I have a tired point between my lgets, my legs, last night those Liggens bandmen the honeyrippers came in here and desecrated my thighs, damn their hides. (The swish of a rubber through the air.) There, that dark deed’s done, Jack; no scones or bonescan furnish me now!
JACK. In the bonecan with it. But tell me, fair prince, what betideth then?
CODY. We got that other bore, Rod Moultrie, and Ray Smith I guess and all jam’d into the car—but there was also Dorie Jordan all hassled and castrated and half alive, with no dangling, the screw girl of that lot? Pah! We had Huck; we had a carload and drove across the country, insane. There was then talk of a certain Roger Boncoeur who started at Cape Cod, Provincetown Bohemian summers, walking the roads by night; and ended walking all over America in the night with a candle in his hand; later he went mad, or it simplified itself into something practical like a brakeman’s lantern and some walking shoes and gear; or, really now, I can’t tell; then his kid brother was it? Ben Boncoeur, that with fevered brow came running back from Mexico in dusty coaches of the Ferrocarril Mexicano, with a bomber like a hyacinth bough wrapped around his sculptured waits, waist, like a seraph, a satrap, a molasses black strap, a roach to kill a vulture, a mighty boomblast joint, the hugest hunk of Swaziland boom ever assembled in the history of the Paleontological Museum, or was it the Herbivorous? no, the, why of course, the goddamned, ah, the damn, old, museum there, you know the one I—the Botanical Gardens swimmingpool or whatever, the Botany Tie, the Botany Tool, the Botanical Weed Garden and now everybody’s left me fuddling in my own foolish thoughts, well that’s all I’ve got left and if the Lord will be patient I shall again try to resume my narrative without suffering everyone to terrible and foolified hangups. Across Kansas we ate dung; an evening star hung on the edge of the dim blaze of night in Iowa; in Illinois we saw a barn; in Indiana there was an organist who didn’t understand, he hid himself—but really and truly, in Indiana there was a barn too, and a tree, a tree Oh yes Oh most; in Pennsylvania there was snow, in Ohio there was snow, in Nebraska there was snow, in Wyoming there was snow, in Nevada there was snow, and night; and in California with the unfriendly palms, there was fog, and day. We came running out on Ellis and O’Farrell with all our gear on the sidewalk; the baby was crying; I told Luke to light the stove. They threw us in jail; not but two nights later when Old Bull Balloon was sittin there with his ass in a pan of hot water because he’d caught cold in his rectum, outside in the alley with cats and fish on the fence and a moonsaw view, comes this old shroudy blackhat stranger cuttin along, looks in, says nothin, Old Bull looks back at him, lays a watery fart that you can hear rippling and turkishpiping clear to—and finds himself off into the gloom; yessir, I’ll tell you who it was, it was the eternal husband coming back to peek at the tortured old lover who stole his wife away; why, hell, and both of them mad. But up in Butte, Montana it all worked out when I told Smiley—but he understood—but it’s all a bore, and recently
JACK. Yes, that’s the one
CODY.—yeah, they spoke, yeah the one, away why hell, understood Butte, just a…(silence) (as Cody tucks in the edges)…just awhile ago there occurred to me that there must have been someone else on that road with me, some strange character yet unheard of, like I told you, can’t remember, and you know that dream of yours about being pursued across a white desert by a shrouded stranger in a hood, with stave of shining gold, terrible feet, clouds for knees, and a black face in snow cowls; and that time, coming out of New York, across the misty rainy New Jersey night, the white highway sign pointing South, and pointing West, and take your pick, and we drove South, for that warmpiss of rivers and greengrass and docks, you said “Seems to me I’ve forgotten something—” something about packing for the trip, and mentally, and you forgot you said some thought, or some important dream that you had thought of remembering and didn’t, and expressed later the concern that it might have been in connection with the shrouded Arab stranger and you wished therefore you could remember it, that dream having always—mystified—But think back: the someone else not in your, or the, sense, you, used about, last, when you—said, that, Cody is the brother I lost—not that sense as senses, but a gap in the air along by me in the road, the night under the gray moon, the mist—But you know—
JACK. Who was it?
SLIM. What owl wooed it? What fowl deed reads it?
CODY. They made matters where matter was there, they tore earth—they ended up writing great poems about the foundation of canals—and not dull canals—wild canals, crazy canals, immediate banal canals…down canals; canals. But you really don’t want to hear the rest about that trip—How the idiot jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge when he realized I was crazy and couldn’t communicate with him on Folsom Street, and little Freddy stayed and learned bop from an old schmecker who used to blow when he was a shipyard worker in L.A., 1943 and ‘four, and turned to the hype himself, for sadyoungkid kicks smoking nervous cigarettes at the jam session door and thinking, thinking, always and all the time thinking music as though he was about to break his American mind wide open and let the pieces of the puzzle sprawl on the floor like old queers in Turkish baths falling on Scandinavian harlot boys. (Why did I ever show you my collection of Pierre Louys ponog, porno-graphic arts, pictures of black queens and brown boys and feathered men and sad sisters naked together and old hermit saints and little plum-boys and tender mothers and wild American tourists caught fallen in a bouge with a big pernod bottle at the side of her mouth, there she is, Eleanora! Eleanora went wild! Theodora! Theodora Eleanora Roosevelt Dodsworth, that’s what…. No, Freddy learned to blow real sweet too, and ended up, in New York, right there on the apple, bowed, appealing, sad, brow-shiny, in the lights of Bop City or Birdland blowing soft sweet pearly tones for the boys and girls and weaving his girdles of gold around “A Small Hotel,” “Zing Went the Strings,” and “Long Island Zounds”! (!)(“—” !) Bam!: (that mad Stan Getz that’s got everybody stoned, man, and I told you didn’t I about the time I met him in Denver when he was passing through with Herman’s band playing—
JACK. I talked to Ray Eberle when he was singing with Glenn Miller’s band, on a summer night in the Massachusetts road, smoking cigarettes in the moonlit driveway, and Ray Eberle said, “Shit.”—that sweet singer—
CODY.—and (talking at the same time as Jack) and he came up to the pad, that is he was brought up…. Huh?…yuh, um-hum (looks away in Caesar conformation) (or confirmation) (in Caesar confirmation). Those two guys on Tenth Avenue in New York had ’em, the, you know, those African French pictures that Andre Gide dug, all those hrr—that gone—aff—I stole the picture of the gone little nigger cunt that is kneelin there with her body thrown back over her heels and all set out to go with her everything completely out
JACK. Yes—fit for desert nights, I’d say it was fit for rugs in loverooms
CODY. Blooms, blooms—but we’ll turn off this tape
(MACHINE ENDS)
CODY. (in the doorway) But darling I…don’t…want…. hear that? an old cuntlapper she called me
JACK. (on the porch, night) She did
not
CODY. But she did, man, she did. Yes (addressing a listen) Yes. Yes. Oh inert mass of nerves, O dull heart; yes. Alright, dear
JACK. (holding Cody by the shoulders) Easy man, snap out of it. (slaps him sharply in the face) There, is that better?
CODY. No
(MACHINE ENDS AGAIN)
(starts, music)
CODY. Then upon Liberty, on the Mission Hill up there old shroudy hat and old Smiley Balloon or whatever made up; we went—Well Freddy ended up like Stan Getz in New York, the imbecile died, he made the bay his bed that night; he bumped along, a greenly corpse, piles and rust chains of ghost buoy boats
JACK. In other words he drowned
CODY. Aye and he did
JACK. So lies a tale that teaches a moral; don’t make your lanterns too soon, it may be darker than you think, or you may not need lanterns at all; for I had imagined it all dark and big and prophetic-like and it wasn’t anything but the conjoiner of directions, a road’s a road, that’s all; and so now I’ve been up and down the road, all over, forty-seven states, bar your South Dakota, and—Wounded Knee, that’s where she was born, Wounded Knee; now she makes her mows in Ajijic; she makes her, gasses her, self in old Ah-hee-heek; damn. Helen by name, launched ships, had hips; eyes; furlined pussy; won over the father image and the King by the sharpness and tartness of her master’s wines, I bet
CODY. Helen of Goy? She made tsimitzes about her tsimitzes. She had ice-cold rice pudding in her hair. She was a model, a dream; she was a gas. I caught her one night sitting on the edge of the bed in her pink slip yelling “Lose me you motherfucker lose me” at a Lenny Tristano record, blowing her bop brushes on a hatrack, or a hatbox; snares it was, real snares; blowing her pop brushes on a snare, and not a care, not a sneer, blowing her boppy poppy brushes on a-24587-X-type snares, yeah
