Doctor Sax - Jack Kerouac [67]
When I heard him say that, even though occasionally through my being struggled the wonder of his holding the W.C. Fields mask to his face and it makes not my mind whirl but settle in obvious understanding– I knew what he meant about the flood, but by the same laws I couldn’t piece it. “The understanding of the mysteries,” he said, “will bring forth your understanding in the maples”—pointing at the air.
He started out of the bushes with a mighty shudder but suddenly stopped and stood silent beside me, so high, thin and tall that I couldn’t see his face unless I looked all up– From way up there came his famous sepulchral laugh, I tingled in my toes.
Doctor Sax: “Stately Queens of evil rock caves come slomming in the slush of the underground, dripping … all the swimmers of hell are poking and sticking skinny arms thru the iron grates of the River Jaw, the underground river beneath Snake Hill—”
ME: “Snake Hill? You don’t mean where I was this afternoon—”
Doctor Sax: “THE HILL OF THE BLUE BALLOONS, SAME.”
And with these words he started off and pointed, turning. “Say goodbye to your view of the sand hills of where you call your home–we’re going through these bushes and down to Phebe Avenue.”
And tragically he led me through the bushes. On the other end, where Joe and I and Snorro had spent a whole afternoon running and sailing thru the air till we got dizzy and faint landing in the hot sand like parachutists–here Doctor Sax looked up and a great dark eagle of the night swooped low to salute us with Uncle Sam fiercy eyes leadening at us in the silver darkness. “That was Tantalus Bird —flew in from the higher-than-Andean heights of the Tierra del Fuegan Princess–she sent a packet of herbs in his horny claw leg, I unwrap’t it–it has brought a blueish tinge to the state of my current powder—”
ME: “Where are all these tinges and powders sir?”
Doctor Sax: “In my ammenyuosis shack, madame” (he chewed viciously on a cud of tobacco and sunk the chaw-cake in his inner blackpockets till later).
I realized that we were both crazy and had lost all contact with irresponsibility.
The eagle flamed in heaven, I saw that his claws were made of water, his eyes were burning sand-storms of gold, his sides were solid shiny silver bars luminescent in flame, blue shadows at his rear, guards–seeing the Eagle was like suddenly realizing that the world was upside down and the bottom of the world was gold. I knew that Doctor Sax was on the right track. I followed him as we pitched down through the soft sand of the bank and came stomping softly in the thinner sand at the edge of the halo-lamp light foot of Phebe-”Hup,” said Doctor Sax handing out his arms from which a great drape fell shrouding me to my feet, as we stood there melted in a black statue of ecstasy. “No Nadeaus in the Road?—forgot about them didn’t ye–no Ninips, poor little boy–no little frantic Drou-”as pigglywiggling in the dust before bedtime there where the brown supperlights stretch on sidewalk—”
“No sir”
“Nevertheless one of the Code laws of the dark, is, never let yourself be seen by shroud or self, sands have messengers in that starlight ink.”
And off he glided, shroud and soft, I right beside him, bent, head down, zooming to the next shadow, I’m a great veteran at it as Sax well knows already–we hit the darkness of the last-house yard.
“We’re paying a call on Gene Plouffe,” he said in a low sepulchral whisper. We leapt over the first fence, over violet bushes, and came to the Nadeau backyard crawling low– Not a sound, just the Saturday night Hit Parade on the radio, you hear the clash of cymbals, and the announcer, and the fanfare of the orchestra, and the crash of thunderous triumphant music, No, No, They Can’t Take that Way from Me song hit of the week, and it makes me sad remembering my little dead Bouncer that got lost and then recovered and then died when they put flea-powder on it and I buried it in right field in my backyard near the cellardoor–buried her six inches deep, she was just a little kitty, little