Atop an Underwood

by Jack Kerouac

  “That boy is no good. He will never be any good. He is too lazy.”

  Yes, he was too lazy. Every day, he would sit down on the top of the sandbank and gaze at the hills.

  “One day,” he told me on a cloudy morning, “I shall go into those forests and explore them.”

  “You’re nuts,” I told him. “They have already been explored. They are full of houses and roads and barking dogs and rubbish.”

  “They are not,” he said, biting a twig. “They are wilderness. I shall explore them some day.”

  And so he would sit there all day, gazing. From down on the street, we could see him up there, a speck straddling a cliff. The sandbanks were dusty in those sunny summer days. We could see him up there; sitting quietly, looking into the distance, the eddies of dust swirling about him.

  One sunny day, I was climbing the sandbank with my staff, talking to the trees and telling them that the prophet had arrived. I the prophet, I was shouting. I, the new prophet. Look at me, trees, and weep. I have come to save you, branch by branch. Bend before the winds, but break before me.

  He was up there, sitting on the jutting cliff, gazing quietly. I came to him.

  “Alcide,” I roared in his ear. “I am the new prophet.”

  “You,” he said. “Have been reading the Bible.”

  “Hell, I have not. I saw a movie of the life of Christ. He got nailed to a cross by a bunch of cannibals. I dream of him every night. I wish my mother would let me wear a long robe. I would really look like a prophet.”

  I stood beside him and looked at the New England hills. They were curved delicately on the horizon, veiled beneath a lovely pall. Pale, wan ghosts. A colossal cyclorama, circumventing the landscape.

  “Prophet,” he said profoundly, “let me alone.”

  I walked away.

  A few weeks later I was a World War soldier. I came by, carrying my rifle, crawling in the dust, begrimed and alert.

  “You Hun!” I shouted from behind a bush. “Yell Kamarade, or I’ll shoot you.”

  The boy shifted his position from the top of the hill, and turned his head to look at me.

  “You bore me,” he said. “Go away.”

  “I’ll shoot you nevertheless,” I said. And I did.

  The next day it rained in torrents. I had forgotten my sweater there, and when my mother found out, she commanded me to get it before it became completely destroyed. I found it, a crumpled mess of soggy clay and wool. Poor lost little thing, I roared to myself. Alone in the rain, glistening wet and limp and covered with pieces of sand. Little pieces of sand on a sweater in the rain, rivulets running through its valleys and mountains, carrying grains of sand. Little sodden mountain of forgotten mush. Musty mud.

  The boy was on top of the sandbank standing and looking away. He wore a raincoat and a little Gloucester fishermen rain-cap. He stood and looked. I disarranged my little mountain of lead-heavy wool, and shouted through the rain:

  “You’re nuts.”

  He said nothing.

  The next day, it was warm and sunny. I was walking to the store, dragging my feet through the hot sand, the lost Foreign Legion hero.

  “Water,” I muttered. “Water.”

  He was on top of the bank, sitting down this time. It was not raining; he was sitting down, munching on a blade of grass, like Whitman. What is the grass? asked the man carrying it to the child with full hands.

  “Hell,” he said, when I reached him. “Look at those hills. How long have they been?”

  “Been where?”

  “Just been,” he said.

  “I guess since the beginning of the world,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  The sun beat down on both of us: shimmering radiations—the distant hills are dancing, Father. They are dancing the Rhumba, the Tango, and the Jive.

  “Hell,” said the lazy child. “I’m going into those forests some day.”

  “When,” I asked.

  “When the time comes,” he said.

  I went to the store. I walked into the grocery shop, sweating. I was uncomfortable, waiting. The fresh apples, smelling off cool waves. Flies buzzing about, annoying. Sticking paper, hanging down. China, I roared to myself. Hanging mandarins, hung by the neck for throwing knives. Knives flash in the dark Shanghai alleys. Hang, you mandarin, and love it. Flies love it.

  “Twelve cents, Johnny,” said the grocer.

  To hell with you, I roared to myself. I walked home, handed the package to my sister. I went back to the swirling sands of the bank. No longer a hero of the French desert forces.

  “Alcide,” I said. “May I sit with you?”

  He shifted his position on top of the sandbank to turn his neck.

  “No!” he said. “Go away. You bore me!”

  I went away, and in the yard, Tarzan came by on an elephant and I roared, To hell with you.

  The next day, I went back to the sandbank. Alcide was not there. He is gone into the forest at last, I cried to myself. He has gone at last. All afternoon, I sat on his spot and gazed at the far-off woods, smiling.

  Alcide’s family moved away. They roared away from our street the next day, the truck tottering with beds and chairs. Alcide was sitting on the top of the pile, his legs folded like an Arab’s, quietly riding along and swaying with the truck. His brothers were yelling with joy. Alcide was thunderously quiet. His brown little eyes stared down at me as the truck grunted sway, its chassis low slung and smoking and stumbling up the street like a giant frog that is hurt and cannot leap.

  I have not seen Alcide for years. I don’t know what happened to him. He went away from us, but not from himself, I assure you. Alas for him? Hell!

  Hell! I roared as the truck teetered around the corner and disappeared.

  Today, the sandbank is slowly swirling itself away. The distant hills are still there, with more houses.

  I don’t know; apparently, we’re losing something. We must not let it go. Any more of this stuff, and we shall all die. If I was a millionaire, I would search for Alcide until I found him or his grave. Then I would carefully prop him up on the top of the sandbank, tear down the houses in the distant hills, grow some trees there, and then throw a cordon around the sandbank.

  “Stand back, you pack of howling dogs. Let this boy muse. Find your own Goddamned sandbanks!”

  In New Jersey today, while looking over the mass production in the Ford motor plant, I took a moment off to smoke a cigarette, and in so doing, I looked out of the window. Behind me roared Ford’s Ford-makers; in front of me, through the turbid window pane, stood a cliff, on the other side of the street. On top of it sat a speck, looking over the whole blooming scene with the wisdom of altitude and perspective and silence.

  Hell, I roared to myself in the plant. As long as the women of America keep turning out Alcides in mass production, we’re all set. There’s a new one up there now. Hell, I thundered, as five Ford-makers bumped into each other, trying to beat the assembly track to the deadline.

  Alas, Hell!! I boomed to myself. Not for the little speck, at least. One at a time, Gents, one at a time. Let the prophet come by with his staff. Get out of the way. You’ll get a staff on the head.

  Farewell Song, Sweet from My Trees

  Attached to the typescript of this story is a slip from the office of Arnold Gingrich, editor of Esquire, The Magazine for Men, with written comments from three readers: “This doesn’t quite make it I’m afraid,” “Doesn’t jell to me—,” and “Good—tho not for Esky” (the last note initialed “AG”). The slip is not dated, but in a diary entry from December 1941 Kerouac writes: “Worked on ‘Farewell Song, Sweet from My Trees’ today. Will finish job tomorrow and mail it to Atlantic Monthly. Also wrote ‘Story of a Touchdown’ a somewhat paced, hysterical psychological study of a paced, hysterical football player’s mind—will send that to Esquire. I must sell my stuff—it is the only thing that will justify my exhaustive plan for full-time study in 1942.” In October 1941 Kerouac wrote in a letter to Se
bastian Sampas that he had submitted the story to Harper’s magazine. Writing about his family leaving Lowell in August 1941, Kerouac alludes to the “farewell song” of the trees in both The Town and the City and the 1968 version of Vanity of Duluoz.

  It is not surprising that Kerouac would have been writing and attempting to publish short stories around 1940. Between the two world wars America saw a revival of the short story, with some of the prime examples of the form being produced by Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, William Saroyan, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright. In 1940 more than sixty magazines in the United States and Canada were publishing stories regularly, and the same year forty-eight story collections were published. The arrival of the annual Best Short Stories became a publishing event.

  The Song?

  . . . . . Listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song! Oh listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song . . . . .

  My trees have stood there for generations, I think, but I myself have been listening to them for ten years. It was ten years ago that we moved into this neighborhood, the furniture van groaning with the stacked weight of our belongings, and that was when I first began to hear those trees sing. In the summer night I used to sleep in the hammock on the screened porch, and there stood my trees tall and black and singing. One night I lay awake right straight through till dawn, listening, and then I rose and passed the milkman as I headed out for the forest in back of our neighborhood. When I returned at sunrise, spent and sated with the glory of it all, I went back to my blankets.

  “Get up, you lazy child!” scolded my mother, coming down to do the breakfast and yawning.

  Ah, mother, mother.

  Those were the rich tumbling days, golden indeed. As I make these observations, sitting on my old porch, it is exactly 2:37 A.M. The night is black. The star-packed sky is drawn right down to the treetops, and shadows loom huge and spectre-like. It is a man’s night, I tell you, with Substance and Form. The kind of night that Goudt liked to achieve in his biblical engravings. The kind of night that brings nodding chunkfuls of starsparkle clear down to rooftops in thrilling immanence. My pipe spirals off its fragrant fume, I shift in my seat on the steps, my hat rests on the back of my head, and I am very sad.

  You see, I have to pull up my stakes and roll. Tomorrow morning, when the swift and clean dawn appears, a big van will rumble up my little old street, will puff and roar laboriously into position, and release a band of men who will immediately begin to load on our furniture and other household objects. My family is moving away from this neighborhood, from this city and state, and migrating to a strange city, many miles away. This is the last chance I’ll have to sit on my porch, looking at the lumpy little dirt street, the three street lamps, tall singing trees, and the drowsy bungalow. It is all over.

  I am only a boy, but I know a few things. I know, for instance, the hidden legend of my old neighborhood. We have all lived here for years, our lives plied in casual proximity, garage-door slamming mornings, mother-calling noons, hammer-banging afternoons, child-screaming sunsets, radio-blaring evenings, and finally, river-hushed and tree-swished nights . . . I have seen these things, and never mentioned it to anyone. I have taken it all in with a silent, vague joy. And now, suddenly, I must leave. I must leave the song of my trees forever, and the grief that is in me, the pressure against my shirt-pocket, is unbearable . . . . Time, damned and cursed Time must persist, and does. New Time advances, destroying old Time. Time advances in its maddening amble, unstopping. All things persist and will not delay for one meagre second. Why? Why? Why?

  Stop! Go back! Go back, damn you, go back!!!

  “Hush, child . . .” moan my trees. “Farewell, child . . . . farewell . . . . farewell . . . .”

  Ah, well . . . . this, then, has been my home and my land. That, there, the leaning fence that I knew. And over there, the lean melancholy telephone pole that I knew. These things I knew in my boyhood, and now I must leave. Why couldn’t I just simply turn back Time and begin all over again? Why? Why the advance of Time? Why? A slow mounting rage, and then: Stop, Time, stop! Go back! Go back, damn you, go back!!! I hurl my pipe into the little front yard, scattering a furious shower of orange embers.

  “What is the grass?” asked the man, fetching it to the child with full hands. And the child saith unto him: Go thou unto thine Host, for he hath spread a sumptuous board; avail thyself of his good cheer, and in partaking, question not.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, American-wise. “All right.”

  “But now wait!”

  Listen!

  The breeze just came, a rather cool August breeze, and it is going through my trees. A sound advances . . . .

  Listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song! Oh listen to the song of the trees, the swishing song, the swishing song . . . .

  Listen to that lullaby! Have you ever heard such lovely music, sir?!!! A million little green leaves in the summer night, trembling together tenderly and all joining in the chorus. Hush . . hush . . wush .. hush . . hush . . wush ... shhhhhhhh .....

  The haunting tug at my shirt-pocket grows heavier. In the middle of the night, while people sleep, I sit silently sad.

  And suddenly, in a luscious flood, memories come up to me from the beauty and mystery of the night . . . . millions of memories, tumbling in my hat. Ha ha ha, I say. Ha ha ha.

  Memories . . . . I have plenty of those, sir. Those were the rich leaping days, golden indeed. The first kid I met was Fouch. He was Greek, lived just across the street, and the first time I saw him he was sitting on his porch steps, if you please, like William Saroyan used to do in Fresno, California. I was pouting at him with silent, outraged interest, hidden behind my mother’s parlor curtains. Fouch and I got to know each other well, and since I was the more dominating brat, I took over the reins of our prosperity. We negotiated many a trade with Pete, who lived on the corner, and came out of it with fabulous cargoes of dime novels, including The Shadow, Eerie Tales, Masked Detective, The Spider, and Secret Agent X. Yes, sir, that was back there in those good golden days . . . . hush . . hush . . wush .. hush . . hush . . wush .. shhhhhhhhh . . . . . Here I am on my porch, remembering.

  Those dime novels . . . . it wasn’t so much the killing in these stories that we used to feed upon, it was rather the dark and mysterious labyrinthal movement of our heroes, the sibilant hiss of their secret sanctumed laugh, the fall of rain on Fifth Avenue mansion at night, the slow creeping menace of masked justice along Manhattan depths, and above all, our hero unmasked and posing before the dull eye of the world as he sits lounged in brown-hushed gentlemen’s club, comfortably below Moosehead and cigar smoke, facing fireplace and chessboard with intelligent opulence, while outside the grand window skims a yellow taxi over the rain-sleeked Manhattan street. Ah, but we loved these stories, and how the image of New York grew deeply and slowly into our boy minds!

  ... hush . . hush . . wush ... I’m on my porch, remembering . . . Into the neighborhood roared Bill, bringing with him his nervous chatter, his boast, his large heart. Bill also was a dominating brat, and there developed between us a tremendous feud, while flitting in the background like a wise Ghost was smiling Hellenic Fouch, calmly inheriting the Golden Mean. Bill and I ranted and raged and roared, and Fouch was right behind us, borne along and smiling. We were kids, we did everything.

  Once I ran a newspaper, the Daily Owl. I printed it by hand with a pencil, and pasted pictures at the appropriate spots, using my own delectable hand-wrought captions. Bill was my star reporter. One Sunday my family went riding in the old Plymouth and while we were away, Bill broke into the house and deposited a terrific scoop on my work-desk: LOCAL HOME-MADE WAGONS DISAPPEAR! (Bill failed to mention that these “homemade wagons” of ours were so noisy that in all probability a delegation of neighbors had commissioned someone to eliminate the rickety nuisances from the local scene.) Anyway, it was quite a paper. My Hollywood correspondent was a melancholy little
Greek boy named Sebastian; he came from another neighborhood, but had heard from afar of my publication. He used to submit his daily column with a sad smile, and I would print it laboriously into my paper. The subscriber was Fouch’s older brother, who was an ill man, and who used to read it from cover to cover. He died some years later. I shall never forget it.

  Bill used to draw cartoons, and after a while I closed down the paper and took up cartooning with Bill. Every Sunday afternoon we would sit in my living room, turning out strip after strip of adventure serials, while my mother cooked some caramel pudding for us and while my father sat in the parlor listening to the negro singers with tears in his eyes. Oh, those were the bounding days, rich indeed. We went to school together, and bragged all the way, every day. Once, Bill and I got mad at each other and didn’t speak for about six weeks . . . . until one evening we met in the street, both of us carrying a copy of those precious dime novels. I hadn’t intended to speak to him, but as I neared him a sudden pang of regret coursed through my boy-heart, and I realized that I liked this fool braggart, that all those six weeks had been wasted weeks.

  “Whatchyou got there?” I asked casually.

  “The Shadow,” said Bill, thumbing through the exciting pages.

  “I’ve got Secret Agent X,” I said. “Swap?”

  “Okay,” said Bill.

  We swapped. I felt wonderful, and so did Bill. The world was good . . . . . I’m doing some mighty fine remembering . . .

  This fellow Pete I was telling you about . . . . . he used to take us down to his cellar and let us feast our eyes upon his rich store of dime novels. Then he would load our arms generously, jesting continually, large-hearted Pete. “Here you be, Tsi-Gene!” he would say to me drawling. “Cast yore orbs on that fer a while . . . . an’ now if you gen’I’men will excuse me, I’m goin’ on upstairs for my vittles ....” He had all kinds of magazines down there, but 80% of them were Westerns. He loved them—and I’m sure that the thing he liked about them was the drawl of the thin-lipped cowhands, their smoke-blue eyes, their long lean rawhide walk.