Atop an Underwood (20 page)

Well, I weathered the storm. I sat there in that little bit of a boat and saw the horizon dance crazily, roll drunkenly, heave savagely. I let the rain blast at my face; I bailed out with my hands, rolled with the boat, laughed like a lunatic.

Then I knew that this moment was a great moment in my life, and therefore I decided to swim back [to] shore and begin remembering it. I slipped off and made for the beach, stroking madly, hugely; actually striding in the ocean's breast, lavishing in its enormous fullness, pulling at it with wet arms, kicking feet widely, eating up yardage in the water. I got to shore and went in to the little cottage by the sea, dripping wet, walking solidly on the ground like the ancient Bretons used to do.

I was sitting at the table, eating. The soldier went up to the bar and ordered a beer. He had on his winter issue, belt and buttons and all. He adjusted his little cap carefully, jauntily, and paid for the beer. He was a clean looking soldier, and as far as I can see, he looked like a real soldier.

Drinking his beer, he noticed the juke-box in the corner. Walking up to it, he inserted a dime and asked the telephone hostess to play “Pack Up Your Troubles in the Old Kit Bag.” She played it, and the soldier returned to the bar for another beer. One of the drunks in the tavern got up from his table and began to dance to the lively, gay tune. The soldier watched him, quietly pleased. When it was through, he went back to the juke-box and asked the hostess for the same number again. The tune returned, and the drunk resumed his dancing.

I was astonished, inwardly. I ate my steak with great delight. The juke-box, I said to my steak, is saving America.

For the third time, the soldier played the tune. This time, the drunk began to march around the tavern, swinging his arms in a military manner, left-flanking around chairs and about-facing at the walls; left-obliquing at the booths, and column-lefting at the waitress who hurried around him. The soldier adjusted his cap carefully, stood up straight, and watched, quietly pleased.

I began to think about the words of that song. They implied, I concluded, the best war philosophy of them all: Which is, go ahead to the war and forget it; it's nothing, and have fun. But the main point is that the soldier paid out his money for music, which is a good sign for America.

I just got back to my room from work, ostensibly speaking, and I must tell you about the song, the symphony, the clash of light and hurtle of dance that is Hartford after work. Bob drives me home in his car and plays some torrid jive on his radio; and the hotter the music gets, the wilder Bob gets, until after a while he is tearing along at the rate of sixty miles per hour, dodging people, swinging around corners with a rhythmic flourish of his arms, hurtling over little lumps on the street floors with a beautiful and hot knee action, whisking and whipping along to the hot music, beating his hands on the wheel with the rhythm, tearing around the city in his car with the music blaring, tooting rhythmically at all the nice looking chicks that walk on the sidewalks with slender stockinged legs, and finally coming to a screeching stop in front of my cheap rooming house, yelling out rhythmically: “Seeya later!” And then he is off in a blur of jazz and speed, going home from work, to a supper, a nap, and then some girls in the evening; he is tearing around to beat hell, the music is hot, and Bob is all rhythm, all wound up American-wise, redhot Bob in his redhot orgy of speed and jazz and sex. Zoooom! Whacko! Step on the gas, toot the horn, whip through that intersection, you don't give a damn Hartford, you've money, women, drinks, you've got everything, you've a supper, a nap, a date; Zoooom! Whisssk! Dart around that pedestrian and turn up the radio; let's swerve in this old street while the jazz, the jive, the swing gets hotter, hotter, hotter, swifter, hotter, hotter!!! Through the streets we fly with rhythm, little old Hartford of the Aircraft, little old Hartford of lights and dance and blur of jazz and wings of song and Swooop! Swooop! Swooop on, swoooop on. Faster . . . . . faster! Blare, Jazz, blare! Whoooops! Look at those legs . . . Hey! Honneeeeeee! Yow! Looka them legs, willya? Jazz, blur, sex, speed! Zoooom! Man alive, Bob gets redhot, redhot! He's all rhythm, all grace, all sex, all speed! He's all wound-up American-wise, as redhot as the sun that sinks beyond West Hartford, sadly silent. Bob is on the loose, he's all there, he's on his way, he's roaring around, he's all rhythm, I tell you, all rhythm . . .

Well, that's the way it is. That's the way it is when you live in Hartford, work in Hartford, and at night you come home from work with a guy like Bob. It's all Hartford, all rhythm; strictly Hartford, strictly rhythm. It is what is Hartford, all this talk. It is nothing else.

Then you go to your room and find it steeped in darkness; when you raise the shade, you find the dark red gloom of brickwalls at dusk. You open the window and let the November air come in, carrying with it the odors of alley, of tenement, of garbage pail, of backyard fence and skinny tree. Then you turn on the light and find that your wallpaper is a dull stained brown; that your bed is lumpy, the blanket as old as Job, and as poor; you find your typewriter, and suddenly, beneath its majestic keys, beneath the rows of wordmakers, book-makers, letter-makers, beneath these owlish little keys of passion you discover to your sudden horror a brown cockroach, and it discovers you, it runs out from beneath the ancient sanctity of your keys, it speeds along the surface of your working desk with a horrible swiftness, as of death, it blurs its many legs and floats to the edge of your desk, it starts down the side of the desk, flying swiftly with small blurring horror, its brown back hard and shell-wise in the light. When you kill it, you do it with loathing, revulsion, with a desire to vomit. But you know that war is war, and that the enemy must be taken.

Hartford after work is terrific. You go out on the street and head for the restaurant of your choice glancing at all the lights that flicker on Main Street, thinking about which place to eat. The Black & Silver, the Cardinal Grille, the Parkview, Friar's, Juddy's, John's, the Brass Rail—all of these places where a man may eat in the midst of warm gushing humanity, men and women eating, drinking, shouting, Hartford after work is terrific. In the place right across from this cheap hole of a room there are checkered table cloths, and a telephone nickelodeon with a hostess at the other end who will play any number for you, and too there is a fine beefstew, some pinball machines, and ceiling fans. And suddenly you find that the people in these places are full of rhythm, that all of Hartford is full of rhythm, that it is rhythm, it is a Boomtown in rhythm.

“The Kerouacs have always been the same; get them in a one room, and they will gab and gab and gab, until there is such a noise that you can hear it up the street. Oh, they're an awful bunch, your father's people, Little Dear. They have always been; from the time way back in Canada, way way back in Canada, they've always been known to be the most foolish, the most stubborn, the most inhuman people around.”

“Inhuman?”

“Well, yes, in a different sort of a way. They will not be brutal, physically, they will not hurt a fly; but Son they have no feelings! no feelings! they will see the awful suffering of their own blood and will not bat an eyelash, will not raise a finger to help. Why your own father, Little Dear, has lived some five hundred yards or so away from his brother for years, and has never paid him a visit! Brothers! mind you, Brothers! Six years within a stone's throw from each other, yet they never set eyes on each other. I tell you, the Kerouacs are and always were the most foolish and inhuman of all people I have ever known. You take your father's mother; she was a fine old woman, working her finger to the bone trying to keep the family going, and yet she never got an ounce of help from any of her sons or daughters. Oh, let me tell you, your dear father is an angel compared to some of your uncles; your father, Little Dear, is absolutely an angel when compared to some of those brothers of his. Oh My, but they were a cruel lot, a stubborn lot, a foolish lot. Your father will admit it, you know he will, you've heard him say often that his family had been hard! hard! on his poor mother. And the old man! My Goodness, everyone in the town knew that your father's father was crazy! Absolutely crazy! a nut! And cruel! Oh my but how could such a man exist! He drank and drank and drank, killed his wife and himself with his drinking, leaving behind a snarling pack of cubs that were Kerouacs. Oh, your father's father! My how such a man could exist! Here! Let me tell you . . . . he used to stand on the porch of his home in the midst of thunderstorms and shout up to the heavens, to God, daring him to strike! Daring God to kill him, and there's your father's poor old mother kneeling in the kitchen and praying while her husband stands there bareheaded in the rain, howling and roaring up to the heavens, drunk as a dog. And he used to almost drive her to her grave by juggling oil lamps—you know the big tall oil lamps we had in those old days . . . . . and daring God to blow himself and his home right up to hell and heaven. My Goodness, Little Dear, if ever the kerosene should have touched the flame there would have been a horrible explosion, and you wouldn't be here, nor would your father. My Goodness, he used to stand there in the kitchen, tossing the oil-lamp up and down, daring God to strike! and his family all coiled up together in a corner, whimpering like dogs. Crazy! I tell you, the man was crazy! And your father's brother who stole all that money from his own brothers and sisters, took your grandfather's insurance after death and kept it for himself, all of it, every cent for himself. Oh, let me tell you, your father is awful, but he is an angel compared to the rest of those Kerouacs. Ah! the Kerouacs. Don't talk to me about them . . . . it was my family, the Levesques, that was the family. Kind, quiet, generous people; simple people. Look at your Aunt Alice, a woman in her fifties, and she has the most beautiful white hair in the whole world, . . . why, up there in Montreal today, men still turn when she passes along the street, a beautiful stately woman with white hair, white white flaxen hair. She was my father's sister . . . my father. Oh Little Dear if you had only known my father. He was the kindest man that ever lived. He was a tall handsome man with white hair; he was very handsome, and so loving, so understanding. He had unhappy marriages; his first wife died, that was my mother, and his second wife left him, that's your Step-grandmother in Brooklyn. Oh Little Dear, what you don't know about my family, my own people, and about your father's awful race of madmen . . . what you don't know won't hurt you . . . . Oh Little Dear, those Kerouacs .... of course mine was a simple folk, we had no booklearning, no culture as they call it, but we were the fine people, the gentle people; your father's people were devils, they were wolves, they were a mad mad lot . . . . a mad mad lot, your father's people . . . .”

A lot has been said about my father and his people, a lot has been said about them and they have said quite a bit themselves about others. Look at me, shooting off my mouth with a typewriter, writing the sort of prose that scholars would not even consider spitting upon. Ah, the scholars . . . . essays on the sociological significance of the New Order in Europe; essays on the psychological basis of Hitler; essays on the Lost Generation and its influence on the new generation; essays on Bolshevism and its effects on World Peace . . . . all those things that have no relation whatsoever with life, here in this world, life from day to day, the struggle to exist, the problems which arise from family living, community living; no treatment of these things with any ounce of sense, only with a lot of scholastic conceit, academic egotism, something to make you want to give up reading for good. If a scholar will give you an exhaustive theory on the Lost Generation, I would prefer Thomas Wolfe's remark that there is no such thing; or Will Durant's theory that the most important thing about the world is the family, that progress comes from the family itself; and my own inexhaustive theory that the Lost Generation is nothing but a body of men who were born during a certain World Crisis (superficially speaking), and who grew up reading books, calling themselves the Lost Generation, not knowing that there have been and will be millions of Generations and that all there is to this word Generation is that it implies the force, the impulse of life, and that with each succeeding Generation, there is that little bit of progress added on, so little that it takes centuries for Generations to differ from one another. In other words, or from another corner of the gallery, I would say that the family is the thing, that all the families of one generation make up the personality of that particular generation, and not the children themselves. For I know that to be a man is one thing, and to be the member of a family is a man plus responsibilities, which implies that there is more to life than theories on the lunacy of Hitler and his New Order, or essays on the Modern Trend to romantic realism in literature, etc.