On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [167]
hands. Neal stood in awe before him. “No,” said Jack Daly “I don’t drink any more.” “See? see?” whispered Neal in my ear “he doesn’t drink any more and he used to be the biggest whiskeyleg in town; he’s got religion now, he told me over the phone, dig him, dig the change in a man.. my hero has become so strange.” Jack Daly was suspicious of his young stepbrother. He took us out for a spin in his old rattly coupe and in the car first thing he made his position clear as regards Neal. “Now look Neal, I don’t believe you any more or anything you’re going to try to tell me---I came to see you tonight because there’s a paper I want you to sign for the family. Your father is no longer mentioned among us and we want absolutely nothing to do with him, and I’m sorry to say with you either any more.” I looked at Neal. His face dropped and darkened. “Yass, yass” he said. The brother condescended to drive us around and even bought us ice cream pops. N evertheless Neal plied him with innumerable questions about the past and he supplied the answers and for a moment Neal almost began to sweat again with excitement. Oh where was his raggedy father that night? The brother dropped us off at the sad lights of a carnival on Alameda blvd. at Federal. He made an appointment with Neal for the paper-signing next afternoon and left. I told Neal I was sorry he had nobody in the world to believe him. “Remember that I believe in you. I’m infinitely sorry for the foolish grievance I held against you yesterday afternoon.” “Allright man, it’s agreed” said Neal. We dug the carnival together. There were merry-gorounds, sad ferris wheels, popcorn, roulette wheels, sawdust and hundreds of young Denver kids in Levis wandering around. Dust rose to the stars together with every sad music on earth. Neal was wearing extremely tight Levis and a T. Shirt and looked suddenly like a real Denver character again. There were motorcycle kids with visors and mustaches and beaded jackets hanging around the shrouds in back of the tents with pretty girls in Levis and rose shirts. There were a lot of Mexican girls too and one amazing little girl about three feet hi, really a midget, with the most beautiful and tender face in the world who turned to her companion and said “Man let’s call up Gomez and get out.” Neal stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of her. A great knife stabbed him from the darkness of the night. “Man I love her, I love her..” We had to follow her around for a long time. She finally went across the hi way to make a phonecall in a motel booth and Neal pretended to be looking through the pages of the directory but was really all wound towards her. I tried to open up a conversation with the lovey-doll’s friends but they paid no attention to us. Gomez arrived in a rattly truck- -just like Dah-you-Go Freddy in Fresno- -and took the girls off. Neal stood in the road clutching his breast. “Oh man, I almost died..” “Why didn’t you talk to her?” “I can’t, I can’t…” We decided to buy some beer and go up to Okie Johnnie’s and play records. We hitched on the road with a bag of beercans. Little Nancy Johnny’s 14-yr-old dotter was the prettiest girl in the world and was about to grow up into a gone woman. Best of all were her long tapering sensitive fingers that she used to talk with. Neal sat in the furthest corner of the room watching her with slitted eyes and saying “Yes, yes, yes.” Nancy was aware of him; she turned to me for protection. Previous months of that summer I had spent a lot of time with her talking about books and little things she was interested in and to be utterly truthful the mother was harboring our marriage in her mind in a few future years. I would have liked the idea, too, the only thing wrong with it being I felt responsibility towards the whole family and of course I didn’t have the money to undertake any such mad scheme---the end would have been driving around the country in a trailer and working and my having a more mature relationship with the mother and a lovey-dovey one with the daughter. I wasn’t quite ready for the strain of real abysmal