The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [45]
When I woke up again and the sunlight was a pristine orange pouring through the crags to the East and down through our fragrant pine boughs, I felt like I did when I was a boy and it was time to get up and go play all day Saturday, in overalls. Japhy was already up singing and blowing on his hands at a small fire. White frost was on the ground. He rushed out a way and yelled out “Yodelayhee” and by God we heard it come right back at us from Morley, closer than the night before. “He’s on his way now. Wake up Smith and have a hot cupa tea, do you good!” I got up and fished my sneakers out of the sleeping bag where they’d been kept warm all night, and put them on, and put on my beret, and jumped up and ran a few blocks in the grass. The shallow creek was iced over except in the middle where a rill of gurgles rolled like tinkly tinkly. I fell down on my belly and took a deep drink, wetting my face. There’s no feeling in the world like washing your face in cold water on a mountain morning. Then I went back and Japhy was heating up the remains of last night’s supper and it was still good. Then we went out on the edge of the cliff and Hooed at Morley, and suddenly we could see him, a tiny figure two miles down the valley of boulders moving like a little animate being in the immense void. “That little dot down there is our witty friend Morley,” said Japhy in his funny resounding voice of a lumberjack.
In about two hours Morley was within talking distance of us and started right in talking as he negotiated the final boulders, to where we were sitting in the now warm sun on a rock waiting.
“The Ladies’ Aid Society says I should come up and see if you boys would like to have blue ribbons pinned on your shirts, they say there’s plenty of pink lemonade left and Lord Mountbatten is getting mighty impatient. You think they’ll investigate the source of that recent trouble in the Mid-East, or learn to appreciate coffee better. I should think with a couple of literary gentlemen like you two they should learn to mind their manners…” and so on and so on, for no reason at all, yakking in the happy blue morning sky over rocks with his slaking grin, sweating a little from the long morning’s work.
“Well Morley you ready to climb Matterhorn?”
“I’m ready just as soon as I can change these wet socks.”
11
At about noon we started out, leaving our big packs at the camp where nobody was likely to be till next year anyway, and went up the scree valley with just some food and first-aid kits. The valley was longer than it looked. In no time at all it was two o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was getting that later more golden look and a wind was rising and I began to think “By gosh how we ever gonna climb that mountain, tonight?”
I put it up to Japhy who said: “You’re right, we’ll have to hurry.”
“Why don’t we just forget it and go on home?”
“Aw come on Tiger, we’ll make a run up that hill and then we’ll go home.” The valley was long and long and long. And at the top end it got very steep and I began to be a little afraid of falling down, the rocks were small and it got slippery and my ankles were in pain from yesterday’s muscle strain anyway. But Morley kept walking and talking and I noticed his tremendous endurance. Japhy took his pants off so he could look just like an Indian, I mean stark naked, except for a jockstrap, and hiked almost a quarter-mile ahead of us, sometimes waiting a while, to give us time to catch up, then went on, moving