Desolation Angels

by Jack Kerouac

  “Boy,” I say, “tonight I’m gettin me a few beers”—or a bottle of wine—“and sit by the river”—I dont tell them all this—Pat doesnt drink or smoke—Fred has a snort every now and then, on the way up in the truck two months before old Andy’d uncorked his quart of Marblemount-bought blackberry 12 percent wine and we’d all slupped it under before Newhalem at least—At that time I’d promised Andy I’d buy him a great quart of whisky, in gratitude, but now I see he’s somewhere else, up on Big Beaver with the pack, I sneakily realize I can sneak out of all this without buying Andy that fourdollar bottle—We get our things together, after long talk at table—Fred putputs the boat down past the Resort floats (gasoline pumps, boats, rooms for rent, tackle and gear)—down to the big white wall of Ross Dam—“I’ll carry your pack Pat,” I offer, figuring I’m strong enough to do it and I wont give it a second thought because it says in the Diamondcutter of the Wise Vow (my bible, the Vajra-chedika-prajna-paramita which was supposed to’ve been spoken orally—how else?—by Sakyamuni himself) “practice generosity but think of generosity as being but a word and nothing but a word,” to that effect—Pat is grateful, hoiks my rucksack up, I take his immense topheavy packboard and sling on and try to get up and cant make it, I have to push Atlas away to make it—Fred’s in the boat smiling, actually hates to see us leave—“See ya later, Fred.”

  “Take it easy now”

  We start off but right away there’s a nail in my flesh so we stop at the dam trail and I find a little piece of fisherman cigarettepack and make a bulge in my shoe, and we go on—Tremble, I cant make it, my thighs are gone again—It’s a steep downgoing trail winding around the cliff by the dam—At one point it goes up again—That’s a relief on the thighs, I just bend and upsweat—But we stop several times, both exhausted—“We’ll never make it,” I keep saying and babbling on all kinds of talk—“You learn pure things on the mountain, dont you?—dont you feel that you appreciate life more?”

  “I sure do,” says Pat, “and I’ll be glad when we get outa here.”

  “Ah tonight we’ll sleep in the bunkhouse and tomorrow go home—” He has a ride for me to Mount Vernon on Highway 99 at five P.M. but I’ll just hitch hike out in the morning, not wait—“I’ll be in Portland afore you,” I say.

  Finally the trail levels off down at the water level and we come thwapping and sweating thru sitting groups of City Electric dam employees—run the gauntlet—“Where’s the boat land?”

  His sleepingbag under my arm has slipped and unrolled and I just carry it that way, dont care—We come to the boat landing and there’s a little wood walk we clomp right on, woman and dog sitting on it have to move, we wont stop, we slap the gear on the planks and presto I lie down on my back, pack underhead, and light a cigarette—Done. No more trail. The boat’ll take us to Diablo, to a road, a short walk, a giant Pittsburgh lift, and our truck waiting for us at the bottom with Charley drivin—

  57

  Then down the trail we’d just sweatingly completed, racing to make the boat, here come two mad fishermen with gear and a whole outboard motor slung on a 2-wheel contraption which they roll and bounce along—They make it just in time, the boat comes, we’ve all got on—I stretch out on a seat and start to meditate and rest—Pat’s in the back talking to tourists about his summer—The boat goes churning down the narrow lake between boulder-cliffs—I just lie on back, arms folded, eyes closed, and meditate the scene away—I know there’s more than meets the eye, as well as what does meet the eye—You know it too—The trip takes 20 minutes and soon I can feel the boat slow up and bump into dock—Up, at the packs, I’m still luggin Pat’s big pack, generosity right down to the end?—Even then we have a painful quartermile dirt road to walk, turning at a cliff, and lo! there’s a big lift platform ready to ease us down a thousand feet to little neat houses and lawns below and a thousand cranes and wires connecting the Power Dam, Diablo Dam, Devil Dam—the devil of the dullest place in the world to live, one store and no beer in it—People watering their prison lawns, children with dogs, mid-Industrial America in the afternoon—Little bashful girl at her mother’s dress, men talking, all on the lift, and soon it starts grinding down and slowly we descend to the earth valley—Still I’m countin: “Goin one mile an hour towards Mexico City on her High Valley Plateau four thousand miles away”—snap of a finger, who care?—Up comes the big weight of unsoldered iron that’s holding us poised precarious downcoming, a majestical ton upon ton of black mass, Pat points it out (with comments) (he’s going to be an engineer)—Pat has a slight speech defect, a slight stutter and excitement and burbling-up, choke, sometimes, and his lips hang a little, but his brain is sharp—and he has manly dignity—I know that on the radio all summer he’s said some very funny boners, his “oopses” and excitement, but nothing on that radio was madder than serious evangelical Jesuit student Ned Gowdy who, when visited by a gang of our climbers and firefighters, screamed a crazy tittrous laugh, the wildest I’ve ever heard, his voice hoarse, all from talking so suddenly with unexpected visitors—As for me, all my record on radio was “Hozomeen Camp from forty-two,” beautiful poem every day, to talk to Old Scotty, about nothing, and a few curt exchanges with Pat and a few charmed talks with Gowdy and a few early concessions of what I was cooking, how I felt, and why—Pat was the one who made me laugh most—Somebody called “John Trotter” was referred to, at a fire, and Pat made these two announcements: “John Trot Scoop will be in with the next drop load, John Twist did not make it in the first plane load,” actual fact he said that—a completely mad mind—

  At lift bottom no sign of our truck, we sit and wait and drink water and talk to a little boy who has a big beautiful Collie-Lassie dog with him in the perfect afternoon—

  Finally the truck comes, there’s old Charley driving it, the clerk at Marblemount, 60, lives in a little trailer right there, cooks, smiles, types, measures logger wood—reads in his bunk—his son’s in Germany—washes the dishes for everybody in the big kitchen—Glasses—white hair—one weekend when I’d come down for my butts he’d gone off into the woods with a Geiger counter and a fishing rod—“Charley,” I say, “there’s, lots of uranium in the dry mountains of Chihuahua I bet”

  “Where’s that?”

  “South of New Mexico and Texas, boy—dintya ever see Treasure of the Sierra Madre that picture about the old coot prospector who outwalk’d the boys and found gold, a reglar mountain goat of gold and they first met him in Skidrow Flophouse in his pee-jamas, old Walter Huston?”

  But I dont talk too much seeing as how Charley’s a little embarrassed and for all I know they cant understand a word of my speech with its French-Canadian and New York and Boston and Okie accents all mixed up and even Español and even Finnegans Wake—They stop awhile to talk to a Ranger, I lay on the grass then I see children digging horses at a fence under a tree, I go over—What a beautiful moment in Diablo Dulltown! Pat’s on the grass over there (at my suggestion) (us old winos all know the secret of the grass), Charley’s talkin to the Forest Service old boy, and here’s this big beautiful stallion nuzzling his golden nose at my fingertips and snuffling, and a littler mare beside him—The children giggle as we communicate with the horse little tendernesses—One’s a 3-year-old boy, who cant reach up—

  They wave me over and off we go, packs in back, to the Marblemount bunkhouse—Talking—And already the woes of the non-mountain world are pressing in, big sideswipey rock-bearing trucks are lumbering in the narrow dust, we have to park aside and let em pass—Meanwhile to our right is what’s left of the Skagit River after all those dams and the backing up of her waters in Ross (cerulean neutral) Lake (of my love-God)—a boiling roily old madstream yet, wide, washing gold to the night, to the arterial Skwohawlwish Kwakiutl Pacific out there a few miles west—My pure little favorite river of the Northwest, by which I’d sat, with wine, on sawdust stumps, at night, drinking to the sizzle of the stars and watching the moving mountain send and pass that snow—Clear, green water, tugging at snags
, and Ah all the rivers of America I’ve seen and you’ve seen—the flow without end, the Thomas Wolfe vision of American bleeding herself out in the night in rivers that run to the maw sea but then comes upswirls and newbirths, thundrous the mouth of the Mississippi the night we turned into it and I was sleeping on a deck cot, splash, rain, flash, lightning, smell of the delta, where Gulf of Mexico middens her stars and opes up for shrouds of water that will divide as they please in dividable unapproachable passes of mountains where lonely Americans live in little lights—always the rose that flows, thrown by lost but intrepid lovers off fairy bridges, to bleed to the sea, and moisten up sun’s works and come back again, come back again—The rivers of America and all the trees on all those shores and all the leaves on all those trees and all the green worlds in all those leaves and all the chlorofic molecules in all those green worlds and all the atoms in all those molecules, and all the infinite universes within all those atoms, and all our hearts and all our tissue and all our thoughts and all our brain cells and all the molecules and atoms in every cell, and all the infinite universes in every thought—bubbles and balloons—and all the starlights dancing on all the wavelets of rivers without end and everywhere in the world never mind America, your Obis and Amazons and Urs I believe and Con-goal appurtenant Lake Dam Niles of blackest Africa, and Ganges of Dravidia, and Yangtzes, and Orinocos, and Plates, and Avons and Merrimacs and Skagits—

  Mayonnaise—

  Mayonnaise comes in cans

  Down the river

  58

  We drive down the valley in gathering dark about 15 miles, and come to that right hand turn that’s a mile straightaway blacktar road among trees and little innested farmhouses to the Ranger Station at the dead end, such a perfect road for speeding that the car who had been my last hitch hike ride two months before, a little high on beer, and aimed me 90 miles an hour at that Ranger Station, turned into the gravel driveway at 50, kicked up dust, goodbye, and had swiveled and roared and hotrodded off, so’s Marty the Assistant Ranger meeting me for the first time “You John Duluoz?” hand outstretched then added too: “S’ that a friend of yours?”

  “No”

  “I’d like to teach him a few things about speeding on government property”—Here we come in again now, but slow. Old Charley’s got the wheel in his grip and our summer’s work is done—

  The bunkhouse under big trees (Lazy 6 painted on it) is deserted, we throw our things on bunks, the place is littered with girlie books and towels from recent vast gangs of McAllister-Fire-bound firefighters—Tin helmets on nails, the old radio that wont play—I start right off by lighting a big fire in the shower woodstove, for a hot shower—I’m diddling with matches and sticks, Charley comes over and says “Make a big fire” and picks up an ax (that he’s sharpened himself) and surprises the hell out of me with sudden sharp chops of the ax (in the half dark) splitting logs clean open and shaking that down, 60 years old and I couldn’t whap at wood that way—dead aim—“My God Charley, I didn’t know you could handle an ax like that!”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Because of a little redness on his nose I’d assumed he was a sedentary wino—no—when he did drink he did drink, but not on work—Meanwhile Pat’s in the kitchen heating up an old beefstew—It’s so soft and delightful to be down in a valley again, warm, no wind, a few leaves of autumn yellow in the grass, warm lights of homes (Ranger O’Hara’s home, with three kids, Gehrke’s too)—And for the first time I realize it’s really Autumn and another year is dead—And that faint not-painful nostalgia of Autumn hangs like smoke in the evening air, and you know “O Well, O Well, O Well”—In the kitchen I load up on chocolate pudding and milk and a whole can apricots with evaporated milk and polish all off with a huge plate of ice cream—I write my name down on the meal list, meaning to be charged 60¢ for the meal—

  “Is that all you’re going to eat—how about beefstew?”

  “No, this is what I felt like eatin—I’m satisfied”

  Charley eats too—My checks for several hundred dollars are in the night-closed office, Charley offers to get em for me—“Naw, I’ll only end up spending three bucks on beer at the bar.”—I’ll make a quiet evening of it, take a shower, sleep—

  We go to Charley’s trailer for a brief sitting visit, it’s like folks visitin in some Midwest farm kitchen, I cant stand the boredom of it, I go take my shower—

  Pat’s immediately snoring but I cant sleep—I go out and sit on a log in the Indian Summer night and smoke—Think about the world—Charley’s asleep in his trailer—All’s well with the world—

  Ahead of me are adventures with other far madder angels, and dangers, tho I cant foresee I’m determined to be neutral—“I’ll just pass through everything, like that which passes through everything—”

  And tomorrow is Friday.

  Finally I do get to sleep, half out of my sleepingbag it’s so warm and muggy low altitude—

  In the morning I shave, forego breakfast for a big lunch, go to the office to collect my checks.

  Bright morning on morning desks

  Where we face the delicate music

  59

  The boss is there, big kind tender O’Hara with a beaming face, who nods and says pleasant, Charley’s at the desk befuddling over forms as forever, and here comes Assistant Ranger Gehrke wearing (since the fire, when he had his comeuppance) logger overalls with the traditional suspenders, and a blue washable shirt, and cigarette in mouth, coming to office morning work, and eyeglasses neat and trim, and just left his young wife at breakfast table—Says to us: “Well, it didnt do you no harm”—Meaning we look all right even tho we thought we’re dead, Pat and I—And they shovel me out big checks to go roam the world with, I hobble down a mile and a half to town in shoes stuffed with wrapping paper, and pay my $51.17 store bill (for all summer’s eats), and then Post Office, where I mail debts—Ice cream cone and latest baseball news on a green chair by the grass, but the paper is so new and clean and print-fresh I can smell the print and it makes my ice cream sour, and I keep thinking of eating the paper, which makes me sick—All that paper, America makes one sick, I cant eat paper—all the drinks they serve are paper, and the supermarket doors open automatically to ballooned bellies of pregnant shoppers—the paper is too dry—A jolly salesman goes by and says “Can you find any news in there?”

  Seattle Times—

  “Yeh, baseball news,” I say—licking on my cream cone—ready to start hitch hiking down across America—

  Hobble back to bunkhouse, past barking dogs and Northwest characters sitting in doorways of little cottages talking about cars and fishing—I go in the kitchen and heat me a 5-egg lunch, five eggs and bread and butter, that’s all—For gyzm for the road—And suddently in come O’Hara and Marty saying there’s just been a report from Lookout Mountain of a fire, and will I go?—No, I cant go. I show them my shoes, even Fred’s shoes are pitiful answers and I say “My muscles couldnt take it, in my feet”—“over small rocks”—to go lookin for what probably was not a fire at all but just a smoke reported by report-ingest Howard on Lookout Mountain and it’s just industrial smoke—In any case, I cant feature it—They really urge me to change my mind, I cant—and I’m sorry when they leave—and I go limping to my bunkhouse to take off, and Charley yells from the office door “Hey Jack, what ya limpin about?”

  60

  Which kicks me off, and Charley rides me to the crossroads, and we exchange pleasant farewells, and I go around the car with my pack and say “Here I go” and thumb the first car passes, which doesnt stop—To Pat, to whom I’d just at lunchtime said “The world’s upsidedown and funny and it’s a crazy movie” I say “So long Pat, see you sometime, hasta la vista,” and to both of them “Adios,” and Charley says:

  “Drop me a card”

  “A picture card?”

  “Yeh, anything” (because I’ve arranged to have final checks forwarded by mail to Mexico) (so later at the bottom of the world I did send him an Aztec red headdre
ss postcard)—(that I can see being criticized and laughed at by all three, Gehrke, O’Hara and Charley, “They got them down there too,” meaning the Indian faces)—“So long Charley,” and I never found out his last name.

  61

  I’m on the road, after they go, I walk a half-mile to go round the bend and be out of sight when they come back—Here comes a car going wrong way but stops, in it’s Phil Carter the regular man on the boat on the lake, good old Okie soul, as sincere and as wide as the ranges to east, with him’s riding a 80-year-old man who glares and stares at me with lighted eyes—“Jack, good to see ya—Here’s Mr. Winter the man that built the cabin on Desolation Peak”

  “That’s a good cabin, Mr. Winter, you’re a mighty carpenter,” and I mean it, remembering the winds that hit that rigging on the roof while the house, sunk in concrete in steel rods, never budged—except when thunder shook the earth and another Buddha was born 900 miles south down in Mill Valley—Mr. Winter glares and stares at me with illuminated eyes, and a grin so wide—like Old Connie Mack—like Frank Lloyd Wright—We shake hands and farewell. Phil, he was the old boy who’d read the boys’ letters over the radio, you never heard anything so sad and so sincere as the way he’d read “—and Mama wants you to know that J-j—j—Jilcey was born on the 23rd of August, what a cute little boy—And here it says” (breaks in Phil) “something that wasn’t writ right, I think yore Mama judged wrong on that wra-tin”—Old Phil from Oklahoma, where Cherokee Prophets roar—He drives off in his Hawaiian sports shirt, with Mr. Winter (Ah Anthony Trollope), and I never see him again—About 38—or 40—sat by television—drank beer—burped—went to bed—woke with the Lord. Kissed his wife. Bought her little gifts. Went to bed. Sleep. Drove the boat. Didnt care. Never commented. Or criticized. Never said nothin that wasn’t plain ordinary talk of Tao.