The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac [88]
“What does it mean that those trees and mountains out there are not magic but real?” I’d yell, pointing outdoors.
“What?” they’d say.
“It means that those trees and mountains out there are not magic but real.”
“Yeah?”
Then I’d say, “What does it mean that those trees and mountains aren’t real at all, just magic?”
“Oh come on.”
“It means that those trees and mountains aren’t real at all, just magic.”
“Well which is it, goddammit!”
“What does it mean that you ask, well which is it goddammit?” I yelled.
“Well what?”
“It means that you ask well which is it goddammit.”
“Oh go bury your head in your sleeping bag, bring me a cup of that hot coffee.” I was always boiling big pots of coffee on the stove.
“Oh cut it out,” yelled Warren Coughlin. “The chariot will wear down!”
One afternoon I was sitting with some children in the grass and they asked me “Why is the sky blue?”
“Because the sky is blue.”
“I wanta know why the sky is blue.”
“The sky is blue because you wanta know why the sky is blue.”
“Blue blue you,” they said.
There were also some little kids who came around throwing rocks on our shack roof, thinking it was abandoned. One afternoon, at the time when Japhy and I had a little jet-black cat, they came sneaking to the door to look in. Just as they were about to open the door I opened it, with the black cat in my arms, and said in a low voice “I am the ghost.”
They gulped and looked at me and believed me and said “Yeah.” Pretty soon they were over the other side of the hill. They never came around throwing rocks again. They thought I was a witch for sure.
26
Plans were being made for Japhy’s big farewell party a few days before his boat sailed for Japan. He was scheduled to leave on a Japanese freighter. It was going to be the biggest party of all time, spilling out of Sean’s hi-fi living room right out into the bonfire yard and up the hill and even over it. Japhy and I had had our fill of parties and were not looking forward to it too happily. But everybody was going to be there: all his girls, including Psyche, and the poet Cacoethes, and Coughlin, and Alvah, and Princess and her new boyfriend, and even the director of the Buddhist Association Arthur Whane and his wife and sons, and even Japhy’s father, and of course Bud, and unspecified couples from everywhere who would come with wine and food and guitars. Japhy said “I’m gettin sick and tired of these parties. How about you and me taking off for the Marin trails after the party, it’ll go on for days, we’ll just bring our packs and take off for Potrero Meadows camp or Laurel Dell.”
“Good.”
Meanwhile, suddenly one afternoon Japhy’s sister Rhoda appeared on the scene with her fiancé. She was going to be married in Japhy’s father’s house in Mill Valley, big reception and all. Japhy and I were sitting around in the shack in a drowsy afternoon and suddenly she was in the door, slim and blond and pretty, with her well-dressed Chicago fiancé, a very handsome man. “Hoo!” yelled Japhy jumping up and kissing her in a big passionate embrace, which she returned wholeheartedly. And the way they talked!
“Well is your husband gonna be a good bang?”
“He damn well is, I picked him out real careful, ya grunge-jumper!”
“He’d better be or you’ll have to call on me!”
Then to show off Japhy started a woodfire and said “Here’s what we do up in that real country up north,” and dumped too much kerosene into the fire but ran away from the stove and waited like a mischievous little boy and broom! the stove let out a deep rumbling explosion way inside that I could feel the shock of clear across the room. He’d almost done it that time. Then he said to her poor fiancé “Well you know any good positions for honeymoon night?” The poor guy had just come back from being a serviceman in Burma and tried to talk about Burma but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Japhy was mad as hell and really jealous. He was invited to the fancy reception and he said “Can I show up nekkid?”
“Anything you want, but come.”
“I can just see it now,