Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [19]
A school which has since burned down–rich trees–on Wannalancitt Street, name of a King–an Indian chief– Pawtucket Boulevard, name of a brave nation– The tragic ice house that burned down also and me and Jean Four-chette offered to help the firemen, we moved hoses, we had walked all the way from Dracut in pyro-maniacal excitement, drooling, “Gee I bet it a good fire, hoh?” (“Boy mon boy, m’a vaw dire, c’est un bon feu, ce feu la, tu va woir, oui, mautadit, moo hoo hoo ha ha ha”)—he had a maniac laugh, he was an idiot, underdeveloped mentality, sweet and kind, tremendously dirty, saintly, goofly, hardworking, willing, did chores I guess, a monster idiot Frenchman from the woods– He used to watch those Textile games on Saturday October afternoons through the trees —”moo hoo hoo ha ha, boy mon boy, he sure smear that guy, moo hee hee hee–hoh?”—
I had so (finally) perfected my timing-clock we grew more–we held great gloomy track meets in Textile field at sunset with the last event after dark–a regular cinder racetrack circled the field– I see G. J.—I’m on the sidelines timing him–he’s running the Five Lap “Mile”—I see his tragic white shirttails bobbing in the flapshroud of 9’o clock at summernight far across Textile field somewhere in the shadows of the orange brick castle of its halls and laboratories (with broken windows from Textile homeruns)—G.J. is lost in Eternity, when he rounds (when he flaps on straining in his heartbreaking void trying to catch time with feeble tired boy legs hell—) I-Ah G.J., he’s rounding the last turn, we hear him huffing horribly in the dark, he’ll die at the tape, the winds of evening ripple hugely through the shrub trees of the Textile fence and on out over the dump, the river and the summer houses of Lowell–the streets of flashing shadows, the streetlamps–the halls of Textile half-cut in a huge stab of Moody Street light through traceries and mockeries of star and shadow and twining limb, comes clover from Pawtucketville scenting, the Cow Field dusts of ballgames have settled down for the Pawtucketville summernight love of huddled standers– and fallers–G.J. comes twapping down the cinders, his time is miserably slow, he’s done all that running for nothing-
He gets sore and sick of my machine– He and Lousy start wrestling— (Meanwhile little George Bouen has started off on his 5 Flap Mile and I started machine and directed takeoff but now I turn from my duties as track official and inventor and leader of commands and puffings) —in this sorrowful huge summer dark with its millionfold stars milking up the pit of night so steep and inky deep with dew– Somewhere in Lowell at this moment my father, big fat Pop, is driving his old Plymouth home from work or an afternoon at Suffolk Downs or in the Jockey Club at Daumier’s–my sister, with a tennis racket, is 1935 in the swisheries of tree-haunted courts when tennis is over and the tennis ghosts pad whitefoot to the home, by water fountains and waterfalls of foliage– The Huge Trees of Lowell lament the July evening in a song begins in meadow apple lands up above Bridge Street, the Bunker Hill farms and cottages of Centralville–to the sweet night that flows along the Concord in South Lowell where railroads cry the roundroll–to the massive lake like archeries and calms of