On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [217]
a walk and came back to my wife to tell her what I thought about during my walk. She stood in the dark parlor with a strange smile. I told her a number of things and suddenly I noticed the hush in the room and looked around and saw a battered book on the television set. I knew it was Neal’s book. As in a dream I saw him tiptoe in from the dark kitchen in his stockinged feet. He couldn’t talk any more. He hopped and laughed, he stuttered and fluttered his hands and said “Ah---ah---you must listen to hear.” We listened. But he forgot what he wanted to say. “Really listen---ahem…look dear Jack…sweet Joan…I’ve come…I’m gone…but wait…Ah yes.” And he stared with rocky sorrow into his hands. “Can’t talk no more…do you understand that it is…or might be…but listen!” We all listened. He was listening to sounds in the night. “Yes!” he whispered in awe. “But you see…no need to talk any more…and further.” “But why did you come so soon Neal?” “Ah,” he said looking at me for the first time “so soon, yes. We…we’ll know…that is I don’t know. I came on the railroad pass…cabooses…brakeman pass…played flute and wooden sweetpotato all the way.” He took out his new wooden flute. He played a few squeaky notes on it and jumped up and down in his stockinged feet. “See?” he said. “But of course Jack I can talk as soon as ever and have many things to say to you in fact I’ve been reading and reading all the way across the country and digging a great number of things I’ll never have TIME to tell you about and we STILL haven’t talked of Mexico and our parting there in fever…but no need to talk. Absolutely, now, yes?” “All right we won’t talk.” And he started telling the story of what he did in L.A. on the way over in every possible detail, how he visited a family, had dinner, talked to the father, the sons, the sisters (they were cousins)---what they looked like, what they ate, their furnishings, their thoughts, their interests, their very souls, and having concluded this he said “Ah, but you see what I wanted to REALLY tell you…much later…Arkansas, crossing on train…playing flute…playing cards with boys, my dirty deck…won money, wooden sweetpotato…Long long awful trip five days and five nights just to SEE you Jack.” “What about Carolyn?” “Gave permission of course…waiting for me…Carolyn and I all straight forever-and-ever…” “And Diane?” “I…I…I want her to come back to Frisco with me live other side of town…don’t you think? Don’t know why I came.” Later he said in a sudden moment of gaping wonder “Well and yes, of course, I wanted to see your sweet wife and you…gone and done it, old man…glad of you…love you as ever.” He stayed in NY three days and hastily made preparations to get back on the train with his railroad passes and again re-cross the groaning continent, five days and five nights in dusty coaches and hardbench cabooses and still he didn’t know why he had come, and of course we had no money for a truck and couldn’t go back with him at all now. He simply had no idea why he had come, beyond the fact that he wanted to see me and my sweet wife, and we agreed she was. With pregnant Diane he spent one night fighting and she threw him out. A letter came for him care of me and I deliberately opened it to see what was up. It was from Carolyn. “My heart broke when I saw you go across the tracks with your bag. I pray and pray you get back safe…I do want Jack and his new wife to come and live on the same street…I know you’ll make it but I can’t help worrying---now that we’ve decided everything…Dear Neal, it’s the end of the first half of the century. Welcome with love and kisses to spend the other half with us. We all wait for you. (signed) Carolyn, Cathy, and Little Jami.” So Neal’s life was settled with his most constant, most embittered and best-knowing wife Carolyn and I thanked God for him. The last time I saw him it was under sad and strange circumstances. Henri Cru had arrived in New York after having gone around the world several times in ships. I wanted him to meet and know Neal. They did meet but Neal couldn’t talk any more and said nothing, and