On the Road_ The Original Scroll - Jack Kerouac [88]
me back to see the Banana King. I told him I didn’t give a damn about the Banana King. “Until you learn to realize the importance of the Banana King you will know absolutely nothing about the human interest things of the world,” said Henri emphatically. On the highway in back of our shack, up the hill, Henri planted birdseed in the ditch in the hope of raising a crop of marijuana. The only time we went to look at the progress of the thing a cruising car pulled up beside us. “What are you boys doing?” “Oh, we’re members of the Sausalito police force, we work down there at the barracks. Just spending an afternoon off.” The cops went away. Down by the Sausalito waterfront Henri suddenly whipped out his gun and shot at the gulls. Nobody noticed, except an old woman with a bag of groceries who turned around. “AAAAh*hoo!” howled Henri. There was an old rusty freighter out in the bay that was used as a buoy. Henri was all for rowing out to it, so one afternoon Diane packed a lunch and we hired a boat and rowed out to it. Henri brought some tools. Diane took all her clothes off and lay down to sun herself on the flying bridge. I watched her from the poop. Henri went clear down to the boilerrooms below, where rats scurried around, and began hammering and banging away for copper lining that wasn’t there. I sat in the dilapidated officer’s mess. It was an old, old ship, it had been beautifully appointed at one time. There was scrollwork in the wood, and old built in seachests. This was the ghost of the San Francisco of Jack London. I dreamed at the sunny messboard. Rats ran in the pantry. Once upon a time there’d been a blue-eyed sea captain dining in here. Now his bones were wove with immemorial pearls. I joined Henri in the bowels below. He yanked at everything loose. “Not a thing. I thought there’d be copper, I thought there’d be at least an old wrench or two. This ship’s been stripped by a bunch of thieves.” It had been standing in the bay for years. The copper had been thieved by a hand a hand no more. I said to Henri “I’d love to sleep in this old ship some night when the fog comes in and the thing creaks and you hear the big B*O of the buoys.” Henri was astounded; his admiration for me doubled. “Jack I’ll pay you five dollars if you have the nerve to do that. Don’t you realize this thing may be haunted by the ghosts of old seacaptains. I’ll not only pay you five I’ll row you out and pack you a lunch and lend you blankets and candle.” “Agreed!” I said. Henri ran to tell Diane. He was amazed at my courage. I wanted to jump down from a mast and land right in her cunt, but I was true to Henri’s promise. I averted my eyes from her. Meanwhile I began going to Frisco more often; I tried everything in the books to make a girl. I even spent a whole night with a girl on a parkbench, till dawn, without success. She was a blonde from Minnesota. There were plenty of queers however. Several times I went to Sanfran with my gun and when a queer approached me in a barjohn I took out the gun and said “Eh? Eh? What’s that you say?” They bolted. I’ve never understood why I did that, I knew queers all over the country. It was just the loneliness of San Francisco and the fact that I had a gun. I had to show it to someone. I walked by a jewelry store and had the sudden impulse to shoot up the window, take out the finest rings and bracelets and run to give them to Diane. Then we could flee to Nevada together. These were mad dreams. The time was coming for me to leave Frisco or I’d go crazy. I wrote long letters to Neal and Allen at Bill’s shack in the Texas bayou. They said they were ready to come join me in Sanfran as soon as this and that was ready. The fantastic story of what they were doing down in Texas came to me later. Meanwhile everything began to collapse with Henri and Diane and me. The September rains came, and with it harangues. Henri had flown down to Hollywood with her, bringing my sad silly movie original, and nothing had happened; the famous director Gregory LaCava was drunk and paid no attention to them; they hung around his Malibu