On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [166]
Neal absolutely needs shoes- -I’m going to give him the old pair. How about letting him come over and pick them up?” “No, definitely no” she said and how forewarned can you get but we agreed that I could meet him on the corner down the street and hand them over. “Yass, o yass” said Neal sensing all this, and he hitched in from the country and met me half an hour later on the corner. It was a beautiful warm sunny afternoon. I had also been dispatched to get a quart of vanilla ice cream for Clementine’s supper party with friends and came to Neal, whom I found playing baseball with a bunch of kids while he waited, carrying an old pair of shoes in a brown paper bag and a quart of vanilla ice cream. “There you are man---oh yes, oh yes vanilla ice cream, lemme taste.” I put the ice cream on the ground and began firing high hard ones at the kid catcher, then I took over the catcher’s mitt and squatted by the lubrication pit of the gas station and Neal fired some in. We were having a great time. We showed the kids how to fashion curves and make them drop. Then we played high flies and Neal went scattering among the traffic of 27th St. with his thumb stuck breast-high like a shield and the glove upheld for the flyball that dribbled down through branches and leaves of high old trees. Suddenly I noticed the ice cream was melting. “Say Neal what am I, a con man? I think I’ll move in with you and Johnny tonight.” “Why of course man, what did you do it in the first place for?” “I thought I had some loyalty I owed Clementine---she gave me money to go to Frisco. I don’t know.” I didn’t know what I was doing. Neal and I shook hands on the corner and made a meet for eight o’clock in the Glenarm bar, the old hangout near the poolhall. I went back to Clementine and told her I was leaving for NY that night. She made a tremendous fried chicken dinner and for dessert strawberry pie with vanilla a la mode. I liked this woman and you can see why I owed her some attention. She was wise, too. “If you’re not really leaving for NY tonight come back any time and we’ll have a drink.” I rushed off guiltily. Things are so hard to figure when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world. Neal was very excited that night because his brother Jack Daly was meeting us at the bar. He was wearing his best suit and beaming all over. “Now listen Jack, I must tell you about my brother Jack---he’s really my stepbrother, my mother’s son before she married Old Neal in Missouri.” “By the way have you looked for your father.” “This afternoon man I went down to Jigg’s buffet where he used to pour draft beer in tender befuddlement and get hell from the boss and go staggering out- -no- -and I went to the old barbershop next to the Windsor- -no, not there---Old fellow told me he thought he was- -Imagine!- -working in a railroad cookshack for the BOSTON & MAINE in New England! But I don’t believe him, they make up fractious stories for a dime. Now listen to hear. In my childhood Jack Daly my stepbrother was my absolute hero. He used to bootleg whiskey from the mountains and one time he had a tremendous fist fight with his other brother that lasted two hours in the yard and had the women screaming and terrified- -We used to sleep together. The one man in the family who took tender concern for me. And tonight I’m going to see him again for the first time in seven years, he just got back from Kansas City.” “And what’s the pitch?” “No pitch man, I only want to know what’s been happening in the family---I have a family, remember---and most particuarly, Jack, I want him to tell me things that I’ve forgotten in my childhood, I want to remember, remember, I do!” I never saw Neal so glad and excited. While we waited for his brother in the bar he talked to a lot of younger Glenarm Denver downtown hustlers of the new day and checked on new gangs and goings-on. Then he made inquiries after Louanne, since she’d been in Denver recently. I sat over a glass of beer remembering Denver 1947 and wondering. Then Jack Daly arrived---a wiry curly-haired man of thirty five with work-gnarled