by Jack Kerouac
JACK. (thinking) And this is the exact eastward direct route, through Nebraska, of his old flyswatter days
CODY. (thinking) Jack is thinking his thoughts, his feet up on the dashboard, and I breaks the speedometer at a hundred and ten—big heavy hard-assed car, s’got the road held down, humps along like a bumblebee, some lotsa car, best yet—I take my T-shirt off, naked in the waist I go cuttin towards Greeley so we can make Ed Wehle’s ranch by nightfall, only a hundred and fifty miles out of way
JACK. I agree to ranch idea, Cody was cowboy on it
CODY. I show him stretch of dirt road out by Sterling where I rode and galloped all one morning, ten, twelve miles on an errand for old man Wehle who’s cussin at cows in the grass, other boys on horseback, “Git im, git im!” yells old man driving out on range in his new ranchero Buick
JACK. Going too fast on the muddy rainy road in the dismal moors of the Plains Cody whoops the big Cadillac with a “Whoops, hey, ahum, wal, ouch, ork!” into the ditch, ass-back, nobody hurt. Huddled in the prairie storm Cody goes for farmer help, tractor, Bonaventura backseat riders say “Is he your brother? He’s crazy.” I’m mad as hell, I’m bigshot in those days; but there’s Cody right smack in his world, walking across a stretch of rainy plains to get help in the mist and mud, like when he waded through that New Mexico flood and lay down soaking in a raw old gondola, trying to light fires, and the water all around the boxcars in the drag, and no restaurant for miles—
CODY. Farmer pulls me out of mud for five. Has pretty daughter. We move on to ranch. Cows mill at door. I spot ranch house across the dark, one light. We follow sand road through range. Ed’s in barn milking. I see his flashlight flickerin in the barn. I’m back home on the ranch
JACK. This is the ranch where he wrote that first letter of Val’s I saw
CODY. Ed used to play Laramie with me in old days, we was buddies at harvest time
JACK. I sense coyotes beyond. Ed’s wife listens to the Hit Parade in the dismal Saturday night of the wide wide deep. Delicious ice cream she froze
CODY. Jack is polite and excited
JACK. I peer into night beyond the kitchen, eyes shaded—there’s no end to the night out there, all northeast of Colorado
CODY. In the midnight we bowl, we split the air
JACK. We unroll Nebraska in one grand land furl, the little houses are there, man’s in his infinity
CODY. Roads never end, the horizon is black, they got lights up ahead
JACK. We smash Nebraska off our fenders pebble by pebble—we fly up to the dawns of Iowa, a hundred and ten miles an hour; Old Union Pacific Route of the Streamliners drops off to our right, the telegraph wires are burning in our fan, we’re moving
CODY. I’m blasting the rods to hell, it’s not my Cadillac
JACK. Far back in the funereal seat the two college boys sleep
CODY. Meat for Chicago
JACK. We pass the hobos of the road with the fire under a watertank—we don’t pause to inquire—Iowa is pale green, Cody is grimly driving. We love each other and talk all night about it and comment on memories. Tom Sawyer never had a better time. Cody’s tellin me about his past, “Yes, but no, well yes, I do remember and in fact, it was Ed Wehle’s aunt’s parlor, we had pimple games, talkin all day and doin it all day—but wait, I do think it was after and not beyond the artkino film book I lost—”
CODY. I’ve talked about a lot of things in my time
JACK. Bye and bye the church bells are ringing in little Iowa towns, it’s Sunday morning, hymns is raising in the golden air, they’re bringing in the sheaves in the Baptist churches of the gaunt great land
CODY. Lady with white hair in diner treats us to extra potatoes
JACK. We smash onwards, Cody races with a maniacal Italian gangster hipcat from Chicago who, with mother, wants to match new Buick to our Cad, for ninety miles he tries to race Cody, Cody teases his bumper along, terrible, the guy gets a hundred-yard headstart on a passcurve and Cody eats up deficit with a purse of his lips as his foot descends on limousinic throttle—The Italian maniac gives up with wild cheer and smile hands up as we roar on by—his mother gave up. I get scared of Iowa curves and lay on backseat in a ball—paranoia about a crash
CODY. Man is all-fired hysterical just because I happen to know how much this baby can do, why shucks—
JACK. Pop tunes pop in the clouds but nonetheless I’m scared of this frightening afternoon, a minute ago he came down on a congestion of cars in a narrow bridge that only disentangled when he forced the issue in passing—he had us lined for the snout of a westbound truck trailer, with bump and ditches and honking hysterical passed cars on all sides, we made it, no great truck raised its tragic hump in the fatal red afternoon of Ioway, they’ll be singing Wabash of the moon tonight and we’ve made it—but I can’t rest with the road rushing and hissing beneath my head as the huge float of the car pummels forward with that maniacal Ahab at the wheel. The flash and throb of these trees, daylights, it’s too fast
CODY. By mid-Iowa and after the insipid hassle of Des Moines (where Ma & Pa met) (in 1926) that damn nigger fool whose waterbag I busted, a little traffic light bump, and here he is calling the law, claiming hit-and-run, and we gave him blood, owner’s name and address and everything—the hangup thence resulting, two hours at the po-lice station while they phone on ahead the tycoon in his Chicago—midafternoon, near Illinois, I’m tired
JACK. Sweet little rivers flow in a red dappled dream
CODY. I’m balling straight on through, Davenport to Cicero in two seconds, smoky old Chicago’s up front, we pick up a couple hobos for fifty cents gas fare and here we come
JACK. Rolling into the city of Chicago, at dusk, in August
CODY. Brakes ain’t working no more, rods ruined, we pass the hideous Skid Row of Madison Avenue, some of ’em are stone dead in the gutters
JACK. Carl Sandburg knew some of ‘em—the great heroes of the Chicago night long ago, the ones who knew Willard from just watching one fight one night and touching him as he passed and then died in flops, from Denver clear on through: the density of the tragedy in America is confusing and immense in volume, oomaloom along the oil cloth with your little bug, the screendoors weren’t made to slam for nothing and in no interesting night. Everybody is important and interesting
CODY. We clean up at the Y in the great city of Chicago I’m seein for the first time—When was it I got and gave myself the right to see Chicago, yes—point the muddy nose snout of the horny automobile deluxe at the street, ass to brickwall in a good big alley with just redbrick dust light illuminating the upper edges of the backalley pit, to make the infernal night of the city, the somber lost unspeeched red of our city night color, the red of night, the Caddy sits in its proper bed and we eat in a cafeteria
JACK. Cody is digging that old town—the gloom of it, the Els, the beans, the whores, you’re in Chicago you hear guys say “Ah New York’s alright sometimes,” in New York the word Chicago is never heard; but a big town, and here’s all the bop opening for us in the night—
CODY. In a bar—
JACK.—great soft summernight, Chinamen on the unreal sidewalks of North Clark, women with great breasts watching the street from sleep-windows, the sight of a naked woman through the peepholes of hootchy-kootchy joints, a monstrous Moody Street of later life in the world
CODY. We pick up on our own kicks, talking, driving around for girls, they are scared of us in that big limousine like—
JACK. Like car thieves and juvenile heroes on a mad—slamming hydrants, ruining the car—but the bop
CODY. The combo
JACK. Lean, loose, pursymouth tenorman, twenty-one; blows modern and soft, cool in his sportshirt only; with bony shoulders and fingering horn keys with their movement; next tenor is freckled boxer, Prez, in suit open at collar, hitching horn, long lapels, tie, neck strap, shiny golden horn, blows round and Lester-like; all leaning and jamming together and whaling in North Clark saloon and a hep niteclub later, th
e heroes of the hip generation. Me and Cody is right there; he’s sweating, he wants to hear the jazz, he nods his head and socks his hands and bounces to the beat. They roll into a tune—“Idaho.” The Negro alto high-school broadgash mouth Yardbird tall kid blows over their heads in a thought of his own, moveless on the horn, fingering, erect, an idealist who reads Homer and Bird. The other alto is a blond effeminate hipster from Curtis Street, Denver, with a red shirt, or South Main Street, or Market, or Canal, or Streetcar, he’s the sweet new alto blowing the tiny heartbreaking salute in the night which is coming, a beauteous and whistling horn; he just held it there till his turn, and blew breath easily but fully in a soft flue of air, out came the piercing thin lament but completely softened by the Sound, the New Sound, into a—great Gad, man, the prettiest—
CODY. The bassplayer was a redheaded kid who looked gone, he just fucked that bass to death, his mouth hung open, the beat boomed
JACK. Drummer, with soft goofy complacent Reichianalyzed ecstasy, gum chewing, raggedydoll-necked like all Reichians, fluttered his brushes at the flowers, fit chee chee, fit chee chee and held the beat; piano dropped chords like a Wolfean horse turding in the steamy Brooklyns of winter morn
CODY. Then (because I had called him God in New York) Jack said “Look there’s God” and there in a corner, pale head leaned in one hand, is George Shearing listening to the American sounds, old elephant ears, eager to transform it to his misty summernight’s use, Keatsian; and with him the vein-popped Denzil Best, who, starch-collared, sits at his drums machining it in like a law student (“When he’s excited his vein pops!” yells Cody)—George is persuaded by the young musicians to play, which he does, gassing the afterhours club, which, at roar of great Chicago day is still open, nine, and we all stumbled out into raggedy American realities from the dream of jazz: all our truths are at night, are to be found in the night, on land or sea. Pray for the safety of the mind; find a justification for yourself in the past only; romanticize yourself into nights. What is the truth? You can’t communicate with any other being, forever. Cody is so lost in his private—being—if I were God I’d have the word, Cody is my friend and he is doomed as I am doomed. What are we going to do? Oh Jack Duluoz what are you going to do? Oh Cody Pomeray, tell me the secrets of the—of the what? Cody Pomeray, of the what! sing me a song of yourself, explain your soul, why will you die, did you inquire, make a comment, repast, fast, think and plot to prayer or just come to this state of being dieable by yourself without help and in your own blank and unseeing lost stare into the roomy lights inside the round fold in the curvallex half part of the upper nodule brain. Trumpets don’t make the past reality; horns won’t bring back your sense of life in cribs of no-death, who taught you to die?
CODY. In Chicago—
JACK. Whenever I realize that I’m going to die, I no longer can understand the meaning of life
CODY. We staggered to Detroit in a bus to see his first wife, we walked at dusk along Jefferson Street, five, six miles, wondering in the ruins of Detroit, sat on the lawn of his love to chat by summer moonlit trees, but neighbors called cops, we were casing joints
JACK. Next day we saw her—
CODY. He and his ex-wife were no longer on the same team; it was his last touchdown with her; all he had, was a remaining chance to lick a fieldgold—
(this may be the production of a cracked brain again)
Blow, baby, blow—
JACK. We stayed in Detroit, situated at the upper end of the middle up there, for three days—It was farcical. We were frisked in the streets; at the same time we spent afternoons riding in the back of her teenage friends’ cars, open rumble seat, looking for Vernors Ginger Ale in the moppy clouds of afternoon among redbrick factories—
CODY. One night we saw a big baritone sax in a Hastings Street joint, he blew alright, the gals were fine—but—
JACK. Cody had no girl, he fell asleep—mine made me walk home five miles—apathetic, I hung on the edge of the night—we sat in the balcony of an all night B-movie, saw Eddy Dean and Peter Lorre, slept in the seats in the roar of the pictures, almost got swept up at dawn in one gigantic heap by corps of broomers in sullen suits. Where was Billie Holliday, where was Huck? We dug Detroit Skid Row. In a cold park, sitting on the grass among trolleys, Cody said I had brown in my ears; we were beggars.
Finally we got a ride arranged to New York, for a pittance, in a new Chrysler; meanwhile the summer that had plummeted across the continent with all its showers and heats now turned autumnlike and we huddled in the wind—because Cody and I returning East was the last expression of space left in the general knowledge. And even it wasn’t working. Nothing awaited him there, he was on a wildgoose chase, he was being given the runaround by Fate. Stories, promises of Italy—I’d said “We’ll go to Italy with my money,” which was nonexistent and never showed up—He faced the bleak East and winter—It was a prophetic night when we dug Skid Row in the cold wind, thinking about his father. In New York, upon our arrival there, he immediately met his third wife to be.
Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom.
* * *
SHE WAS A RAVING fucking beauty the first moment we saw her walk in, at a party; she said “I always wanted to meet a real cowboy” and I called him over. I had a chick of my own a few days later, cool—tremendous activities in the apple, Manhattan, New York. Cody got divorces and whatnots and promised to do this and that, I saw him often at their place: in the evening after work he sat in his Chinese hip-length gown, naked, puffing on a Turkish water pipe full of Zombie, under the love-bed’s his battered suitcase he’s had since poolhall days. His children are being born on the West Coast. We listen to basketball games. One night I meet him in a bar, I’m late, he’s wearing a suit for the first time since 1947; I say “Sorry I’m late,” he says “I thought you were standing me up on our first date,” and flutters his eyes at me. We try to talk seriously but can’t any more; everything blew out on that Cadillac trip East, there’s nothing left. I’m depressed. I sit at home and listen to the slamming Long Island freights and think of worries of all kinds. Cody’s in his bathrobe, the Chinese one, composing an epic novel: “Cody Pomeray was born Feb. 8, 1926, in Salt Lake City.” I help him edit it under the cockroaches. We go to Birdland, there’s Sonny Stitt whaling.
But when Spring comes I want to leave New York, I gotta hear the bird of Shenandoah whistling, I take off for Mexico City via Lexington, Virginia and Stonewall Jackson’s grave, and Denver. I’m in Denver, preparing to go south by rail, when Cody suddenly appears in a 1937 Ford jalopy. What’d he do?—to come rattling back West across the Plains, alone, 1800 miles? Why, he threw up everything; but actually he was headed for Mexico City for a divorce from Evelyn, but not as No. 3 thought so he could husband her, rather to return to Evelyn dis-wed or uppity-wed, all wed and inter-wed.
Mexico was the last great trip. But it began in Denver.
* * *
IT BEGAN IN DENVER in a little Ford model 1937—Model T—T-Zone, V-8—flying and rattling south. It was Cody’s return to his native city, he stood on porches with a coat over his arm, rocky and stern. He goofed with local ex-athletes in round-the-town high cars at 1 A.M.—I was there, up front with Slim Buckle and Tom Watson, others in back, we all got high on Dave Sherman getting his first kicks on tea: he kept slapping his knee and laughing, yelling, squealing, “Son of a bitch—god damn.” Mad, Cody loved him and at nine o’clock in the morning polite important suburbanites of Denver, while cooking their bacon and eggs, could hear great subterranean “Yesses” rumbling from the earth, from the cellar where I lived, where Cody and Sherman sat in a bed talking about everything. It was the first time that any of the Denver group represented by Dave ever dug Cody. There was a master and student relation, for forty-eight hours. Sherman was just an ordinary Denver guy who’d been high-jumper in high school, four years in the service, six months in an office, now didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile Cody conducted a complicated affair with a crippled gir
l across town, she almost followed us to Mexico. Sherman’s father, fearful of his son’s departure, an unhappy old man like the unhappy old men of French movies and real life, all rheumy and wasted and immitigably gloomy in brown darknesses of afternoon parlors…so frightened was he of the magic sound of Cody’s name on Dave’s lips when he announced he was leaving for Mexico, that, when I showed up to help Dave with luggage, the old man insisted on calling me Cody. (Cody had goofed an entire party, given in honor of a local young writer, with his idiotic behavior in company, Lord knows he’ll do anything, he fingered his balls, he grabbed the hostess, cake spluttered from his mad activities laughing up and down the dish line, he charmed and bemused half our lives away, all kinds of emotions ran riot in the room, Helen Buckle with her Slim in tow now for good (him all beaming), and Earl Johnson and Helen, same Earl raced for that football in insane past days, others—) We left Denver in a cloud of dust, we said goodbye to the charming tennis wizard and buddy beerdrinker wit, the All Knowing—I saw a dot decreasing in size and it was still Ed Gray, watching us go to Mexico. Two miles outside town, all our suitcases intact, Sherman is bit by a bug; it comes from golden Colorado wheatfields, it’s like home, but his arm swells poisonously, we have to buy penicillin in San Antone. Now the moon like a fevered bulb arises, New Mexico is hot under the stars, dew-cold; there’s Dalhart, Texas burning far across the horizon, we’ll be there by dawn light; the moon hugens in the sky, a fatted calf; leans its skewered castrative eyes on a nob, poor good moon; we’re rolling to Mexico. Fantasize us no Samarkands. This is the New World. The spine of America runs deep down…. “Think of it, boys, we’ll be rolling bean-bugging down the continent and over the rolling world”—a frightening thought, Time, and Space so vast anyhow; why did God leave us on this ledge? and didn’t warn us a bit? God created a sin. He sins, we die.
We’re rolling down along, Pueblo, Trinidad, Raton Pass and soft roll of rocks in truck midnights, a hamburger; anthropologist campfire off the road marks where the anthropologists of our youth are telling their life stories, as we in the car are doing. Cody recalls childhood occasions when he must have met Dave. “When I was covering the alleys up by Cherry I used to doublecheck by your house ’cause I always found—you must have seen me, I’d bounce a ball sometimes, seems like I seen you, on a bike, or somethin, but at any rate.” And here we’re three gringos rolling in the summer night to Mexico, by moon. “Keep her rollin, boys,” yelled Cody from the backseat sleep, “we’ll be kissin senoritas b’dawn.” We spent a whole day traversing downwards through Texas, eternities of bush, Coleman, Brady, hot, dusty; at one point I thought Cody was something else and the car a celestial wagon when I dropped off to doze at his side in the afternoon; a grueling huge journey. I drove some; Sherman leaned on the wheel through interminable counties. Texas! At Abilene we saw the red faced Texans crossing their hot white pavements. After Fredericksburg (where Cody, Joanna and I had crossed in the snows of 1949 with eyes on the West) it was the cool of evening, a gradual general descending to San Antonio; that dawn had been Amarillo in the buffalo plains, the whip of flags at great gas stations, the windy panhandle grasses. Here it was evening, and the heat increasing as the plateau gives off to the level of the Rio Grande. Lights get browner, darker, you can tell Mexican territory long after; San Antonio is humming and buzzing and fragrant in a tropical night. While Sherman gets his shot at the hospital, Cody and I walk the Mexican verdurous shacktown streets, looking for girls, shoot some pool in local Mex hall, play records at juke, Wynonie howling “I Love My Baby’s Pudding,” the poolsharks are tormenting a young hunchback, Cody says “Look, a young Tom Watson.” I feel like Jimmy Cagney, I can feel the air with my fingers.
