Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [60]
Tremendous excitement filled all the riverside streets of Lowell where people–in the clear air of holiday-like mornings–massed at the lapping beautiful flood-edge—”I got a nose, you got a nose”— I’m roaming both sides of the bank, singing–I go across the White Bridge which ordinarily I cross every day to go to Bartlett Junior High and there’s the massive miraculous long-awaited monstrous flood-hump rolling thirty feet below at a speed of 60 miles an hour– massively more of the flood arcs down from New Hampshire, over highways sometimes–Paul’s house was smack in the middle of the new waterbed across low-ground Pawtucketville— “I got a nose–you got a nose—” Poor Paul–I can’t see him in all the crowd–there’s a roadblock thrown across Riverside Street at the monument of World War I with Lauzon’s uncle’s name on it where the river is eating at the lawn-back of it, the monument’s about to topple in the river–the river is not only roaring through Mrs. Wakefield’s home but comes lapping almost beyond the monument to the very bridge head of Varnum Avenue–but Varnum Avenue is also flooded a few hundred feet beyond at Scotty’s–out on the boulevard there’s a new river– G.J. and I congratulate each other that our houses are built high on the rock of Pawtucketville–the Sandbank will never get wet–Sarah Avenue and Phebe Avenue survey immense vistas when you can see through the trees–the flood might rise like Noah’s flood and the mayor would know the difference in lower Lowell–in Pawtucketville Hump we could make a last ditch stand with a hastily improvised ark—”Clear the way gentlemen!” G.J. is asseverating at the sandbags as he tries to poke his fingers through—”From time immemoriam’s mortariums ye swabs avast ye’ve swabbed them seabags to the fore myzen mast god dam ye”—G.J.’s a regular Ahab at the Flood, a fiend at the Levee– Hungrily we prowl up and down the flood admiring the black madness, the demoniac river–it’s eating away everything that ever hated us–trees, houses, communities are capitulating– Mad glee fires in our souls, we hear now clearly the laugh of Doctor Sax penetrating the roar of the middle river, we feel the hum and Vibration of evil in the earth. When night comes we go striding with wild arms swinging into the matted leaves and rocks of the shore under Moody Street Bridge-we throw tiny feeble rocks into the mass … the rocks are hurled up–back-Along the tragic granite wall of the canal we see no more ancient watermarks of flood, or whitewashed numbers; the flood has reached a record peak. A famous St. Francis Lock in a Canal across town is saving the downtown District of Lowell from complete inundation. As it is, six feet of water fill my father’s printing plant–he has taken several despairing drives downtown looking at the water and even around Pawtucketville–
“I’ll never forget that time, Zagg, your father coughed” —G.J.’s talking to me as we prowl like rats—”in the alley wall, you know between the Club and Blezan’s store on Gershom you get those two wood walls each side of the street, I was on one side, your father on the other, one early morning last week, cold as hell you remember, I’m sending up smoke screens from my mouth, suddenly a great explosion rocked me to my knees–your father had coughed and the echo had hit my wall and bounced right off me —my ears exploded, I fell down on one knee Zagg no shit– I said (to regain my senses, no one there to slap me you understand)”—(reaching out and goosing me—) “Zagg–so I says, innocently, ‘Why Mr. Duluoz you do seem to have rather a bad cough there, don’t you know?’ ‘N-o-o,’ he says, no Gussie it ain’t so bad–just a little rasp, Gussie, just a little rasp in my throat’- A-a-oo-ay–Brash!” he yelled, lifting a leg–an imitation of big burpers laying explosive farts at board of directors meetings.
The flood roared on, Craw River–it came Raining and Weeping from