Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [39]
“It’ll husk them” spoffed Condu splurtering in his laugh-beard hands,—”phnuff–what?”
“I expect,” said Boaz looking up, “the Snake will devour them that deserve it,” but he said it in such a way Condu couldn’t tell if this was an ordinary friendly statement or not–
“Simply– divinel” concluded Baroque closing the book. “It’s so refreshing–we need any kind of revival, my dear, because you know it’s got great yoiky elements of Coney Island Christian in it.” He leaned over and turned on his favorite record … Edith Piaf dying.
Count Condu was gone–he had transformed himself to his bat-form, while no one looked, and into the moon he Flew–Ah me, Lowell in the night.
4
THERE WAS AN ALLEY DOWNTOWN among the soft redbrick of Keith’s Theater and the Bridge Street Warehouse, with a red neoned candy store of antique Saturday nights of funnies still smelling of ink and strawberry ice cream sodas all pink and frothy with a dew on top, in Dana’s–across the street from the alley– In the alley itself there were cinders, leading to the stage door– Something there was so fantastically grad sad about this alley–in it the living W.C. Fields had walked, headed from a rainy afternoon stint in the 6-Act Vod Bill (with gaping masks ha-ha)— twirling that Old Bull Balloon cane, W.C. Fields and the tragic Marx Brothers of early times swaying precariously from immense ladders and goofing in an awful holocaust of Greatstage Sorrow all huge with drapes and jello rippling flop props in the middle of the day, 1927—in 19271 I saw the Marx Brothers, Harpo on the ladder–in 1934 I saw Harpo on the screen, Animal Crackers, in a dark and unbelievably Doctor Sax garden where Neo-Like God-Like the rain and sunshine just mixed for a Cosmic Joke by Chico “Don’t go out that door, it’s raining–try this one”—tweet tweet birds —”see?” and Harpo drops silverware in the dark, God how Joe and I in the dark balcony sat transfixed by this picture of our joint dreams snoring in the dark attics of our boyhood together … brothers of the frantic snazzle in the Wood, at 8, when, with Beauty the immense Shepherd dog of the Fortiers, and little Philip Fortier nicknamed Snorro, we took off on a 20-mile hike to Pelham New Hampshire to shde up and down the hayloft of some dairy farmer–there were dead owls skewered on the pine, gravel pits, apples, distances of green Normandy fields into a mist of New England Inscrutable Space mystery–in the imprint of the trees on the sky in the horizon, I judged I was being torn from my mother’s womb with each step from Home Lowell into the Unknown … a serious lostness that has never repaired itself in my shattered flesh dumb-hanging for the light-
But Joe never had anything to do with that alley of tragedy harpo marx hurrying by greasepaint Variety oldprint brown crackly, with masks on a shiny ballroom in the menu,— Nights of 1922 when I was born, in the glittering unbelievable World of Gold and Rich Darkness of the Lowell of my prime father, he would escort my mother Tilly the Toiler of his weekly theatrical column (with whom he argued in verbose slang about the quality of the shows) (“Boy O boy, next Wednesday we gets to see The Big Parade, with Karl Dane, Dead Hero John Gilbert—”) —escort my mother to the show among the black cardboard throngs of long ago in 1920’s of U.S.A., the grawky sad loop of the City Hall clock illuminating or staring sadly at penyons of real endeavor in another air, another time-different outcries on the street, different feelings, other dusts, other lace–other funnies, other drunk lamp posts– the inconceivable joy that creams up in my soul at the thought of the little kid in the funnies under his blanket quilt at midnight New Year’s when thru the blue sweetness of his window in comes the bells and hom cries and honks and stars and slams of Time and Noises, and the blue fences of the quilt night are dewy in the moon, and strange Italian rooftops of parliament tenements in Courts that are in old funnies–the redbrick alley where my father