Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [30]
SCENE 11 Thunder again, now you see my room, my bedroom with the green desk, bed and chair–and the other strange pieces of furniture, the Victrola already to go with Dardanella and crank hangs ready, stack of sad thirties thick records, among them Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek, Parade of the Wooden Soldiers by John Philip Sousa– You hear my footsteps unmistakably pounding up the stairs on the run, pleup plop ploop pleep plip and I’m rushing in the room and closing the door behind me and pick up my mop and with foot heavy pressed on it mop a thin strip from wall near door to wall near window–I’m mopping the race track ready–the wallpaper shows great goober lines of rosebushes in a dull vague plaster, and a picture on the wall shows a horse, cut from a newspaper page (Morning Telegraph) and tacked, also a picture of Jesus on the Cross in a horrible oldprint darkness shining through the celluloid—(if you got close up you could see the lines of bloody black tears coursing down his tragic cheek, O the horrors of the darkness and clouds, no people, around the stormy tempest of his rock is void–you look for waves–He walked in the waves with silver raiment feet, Peter was a Fisherman but he never fished that deep–the Lord spoke to dark assemblies about gloomy fish–the bread was broken … a miracle swept around the encampment like a flowing cape and everybody ate fish … dig your mystics in another Arabia. . .). The mop I am mopping the thin line with is just an old broomhandle with a frowsy drymop head, like old ladies’ hair at the hair stylists–now I am getting down briskly on my knees to sweep away with my fingertips, feeling for spots of sand or glass, looking at the fingertips with a careful blow,—10 seconds pass as I prepare my floor, which is the first thing I do after slapping the door behind me– You saw first my one side of the room, when I come in, then left to my window and the gloomy rain splattering across it-rising from my knees, Wiping fingers on pants, I turn slowly and raising fist to mouth I go “Ta-ta-ta-tra-tra-tra-etc.”—the racetrack call to the post by the bugler, in a clear, well modulated voice actually singing in an intelligent voice-imitation of a trumpet (or bugle). And in the damp room the notes resound sadly– I look goopy with self-administered amazement as I listen to the last sad note and the silence of the house and the rain click and now the clearly sounding whistle of Boott Mills or Goop Mills coming loud and mournful from across the river and the rain outside where Doctor Sax even now is preparing for the night with his dark damp cape, in mists– My thin trail for the races began at a cardboard inclined on books–a Parchesi board,—folded, to the Domino side to keep the Parchesi side from fading (precursor to the now Monopoly board with checkers on other side)—no wait, the Parchesi board had a black blank side, down the huck of this all solid and round raced my marbles when I let them slip down from under the ruler– Lined on the bed are the eight gladiators of the race, it’s the fifth race, the handicap of the day.
SCENE 12 “And now,” I’m sayin, as I bend low at the bed, “and now the Fifth Race, handicap, four year olds and up etc.”—”and now the Fifth Race of the gong, come on Ti Jean arrete de jouer and get on with the–they’re headed for the post, the horses are headed for the post”—and I hear it echoing as I say it, hands upraised before the lined up horses on the blanket, I look around me like a racing fan asking himself, “Say, it shore is gonna rain soon, they’re headed for the post?”—which I do— “Well son, better bet five on Flying Ebony the old gal’ll make it, she didn’t do too bad against Kransleet last week.” “Okay Pa!”—striking new pose—”but I see Mate winning this race.” “Old Mate? Nah!”
SCENE 13 I rush to the phonograph, turn on Dardanella with the push hook.
SCENE 14 Briskly I’m kneeled at the race-start barrier, horses in left hand, ruler barrier clamped down at starting line in right hand, Dardanelles going da-daradera-da, I have