Lonesome Traveler. Jack Kerouac
pools in bathingsuits and with blondes and in big hugging poses. Deni tall, fattish, dark, smiling white teeth hypocrite’s smile, Matthew Peters an extremely handsome blond with a self-assured grim expression or (morbid) expression of sin and silence, the hero—of the group, of the time—so that you hear it always spoken behind the hand, the confidential stories told to you by every drunk and non-drunk in every bar and non-bar from here to the other side of all the Tathagata worlds in the 10 Quarters of the universe, it’s like the ghosts of all the mosquitos that had ever lived, the density of the story of the world all of it would be enough to drown the Pacific as many times as you could remove a grain of sand from its sandy bed. The big story was, the big complaint, that I heard chanted, from Deni, an old complainer and chanter and one of the most vituperative of complainers, “While I was scrounging around in the garbage cans and barrels of Hollywood mind you, going behind those very fancy apartment houses and at night, late, very quietly sneaking around, getting bottles for 5 cent deposits and putting them in my little bag, for extra money, when we couldnt get longshore work and nor get a ship for love nor money, Matthew, with his airy ways, was having big parties and spending every cent he could get from my grimy hands and not once, N O TTT Once, did I hear one W O R D of appreciation—you can imagine how I felt when finally he took my best girl and took off with her for a night—I sneaked to his garage where he had his car parked, I very quietly backed it out without starting the motor, I let it roll down the street, and then man I was on my way to Frisco, drinking beer from cans—I could tell you a story—” and so he goes on with his story, told in his own inimitable way, how he wrecked the car in Cucamonga California, a head-on crash into some tree, how he almost got killed, how the cops were, and lawyers, and papers, and troubles, and how he finally got to Frisco, and got another ship, and how Matthew Peters who knew he was on the Roamer, would be waiting at the pierhead this very same clammy cold night in Pedro with a gun, a knife, henchmen, friends, anything and everything.—Deni was going to step off the ship looking in all directions, ready to throw himself flat oñ the ground, and I was to be waiting there at the foot of the gangplank and hand him the gun real quick—all in the foggy foggy night —
“Alright tell me a story.”
“Gently now.”
“Well you’re the one who started all this.”
“Gently, gently” says Deni in his own peculiar way saying “JHENT” very loud with mouth moawed like a radio announcer to pronounce every sound and then the “LY” is just said English-wise, it was a trick we’d both picked up at a certain madcap prep school where everybody went around talking like very high smotche smahz, ….now shmuz, SHmazaa zzz, inexplicable the foolish tricks of schoolboys long ago, lost,—which Deni now in the absurd San Pedro night was still quipping up to fogs, as if it didnt make any difference.—“GENT ly” says Deni taking a firm grip on my arm and holding me tight and looking at me seriously, he’s about six-three and he’s looking down at little five-nine me and his eyes are dark, glittering, you can see he’s mad, you can see his conception of life is something no one else has ever had and ever will have tho just as seriously he can go around believing and claiming his theory about me for instance, “Kerouac is a victim, a VIC timm of his own i ma JHI NA Tion.”—Or his favorite joke about me, which is supposed to be so funny and is the saddest story he ever told or anyone ever told, “Kerouac wouldnt accept a leg of fried chicken one night and when I asked him why he said ‘I’m thinking about the poor starving people of Europe’… Hyaa WA W W W” and he goes off on his fantastic laugh which is a great shrieking lofter into a sky designed specially for him and which I always see over him when I think of him, the black night, the around the world night, the night he stood on the pier in Honolulu with contraband Japanese kimonos on, four of them, and the customs guards made him undress down to em and there he stands at night on the platform in Japanese kimonos, big huge Deni Bleu, downcast & very very unhappy—“I could tell you a story that’s so long I couldnt finish telling it to you if we took a trip around the world,—Kerouac, you but you dont you wont you never listen—Kerouac what WHAT are you going to tell the poor people starving in Europe about the Puss n’ Boots plant there with the tuna fish in back, H MHmmh Ya aYYaawww Yawww, they make the same food for cats and people, Yyorr yhOOOOOOOOOO!”—And when he laughed like that you know he was having a hell of a good time and lonely in it, because I never saw it to fail, the fellas on the ship and all ships he ever sailed on couldnt see what was so funny what with all, also, his practical joking, which I’ll show.— “I wrecked Matthew Peters’ car you understand—now let me say of course I didnt do it deliberately, Matthew Peters would like to think so, a lot of evil skulls like to believe so, Paul Lyman likes to believe so so he can also believe I stole his wife which I assure you Kerouac I ding e do, it was my buddy Harry McKinley who stole Paul Lyman’s wife—I drove Matthew’s car to Frisco, I was going to leave it there on the street and ship out, he would have got the thing back but unfortunately, Kerouac, life isnt always outcome could coming the way we like and tie but the name of the town I can never and I shall never be able to—there, up, er, Kerouac, you’re not listening,” gripping my arm “Gently now, are you listening to what I’m SAYING to you!”
“Of course I’m listening.”
“Then why are you going myu, m, hu, what’s up there, the birds up there, you heard the bird up there, mmmmy” turning away with a little shnuffle lonely laugh, this is when I see the true Deni, now, when he turns away, it isnt a big joke, there was no way to make it a big joke, he was talking to me and then he tried to make a joke out of my seeming not-listening and it wasnt funny because I was listening, in fact I was seriously listening as always to all his complaints and songs and but he turned away and had tried and in a forlorn little look into his own, as if, past, you see the double chin or dimplechin of some big baby nature folding up and with rue, with a heartbreaking, French giving-up, humility, meekness even, he ran the gamut from absolutely malicious plotting and scheming and practical joking, to big angel Ananda baby mourning in the night, I saw him I know.— “Cucamonga, Practamonga, Calamongonata, I shall shall never remember the name of that town, but I ran the car head-on into a tree, Jack, and that was that and I was set upon by every scroungy cop lawyer judge doctor indian chief insurance salesman conman type in the—I tell you I was lucky to get away alive I had to wire home for all kinds of money, as you know my mother in Vermont has all my savings and when I’m in a real pinch I always wire home, it’s my money.”
“Yes Deni.” But to cap everything there was Matthew Peters’ buddy Paul Lyman, who had a wife, who ran away with Harry McKinley or in some way that I could never understand, they took a lot of money and got on an Orient bound passenger vessel and were now living with an alcoholic major in a villa in Singapore and having a big time in white duck trousers and tennis shoes but Lyman the husband, also a seaman and in fact a shipmate of Matthew Peters’ and (tho Den didn’t know at this time, aboard the Lurline both of them) (keep that) bang, he was convinced Deni was behind that too, and so the both of them had sworn to kill Deni or get Deni and according to Deni they were going to be on the pier when the ship came in that night, with guns and friends, and I was to be there, ready, when Deni comes off the gangplank swiftly and all dressed up to go to Hollywood to see his stars and girls and all the big things he’d written me I’m to step up quickly and hand him the gun, loaded and cocked, and Deni, looking around carefully to see no shadows leap up, ready to throw himself flat on the ground, takes the gun from me and together we cut into the darkness of the waterfront and rush to town—for further events, developments —
So now the Roamer was coming in, it was being straightened out along the concrete pier, I stood and spoke quietly to one of the after deckhands struggling with ropes, “Where’s the carpenter?”
“Who Blue? the—I’ll see him in a minute.” A few other requests and out comes Deni just as the ship is being winched and secured and the ordinary’s putting out the rat guards and the captain’s blowed his little whistle and that incomprehensible slow huge slowmotion eternity move of ships is done, you hear the churns the backwater churns, the pissing of scuppers—the big ghostly trip is done, the ship is in—the same human faces are on the deck—and here comes Deni in his dungarees and unbelievably in the foggy night he sees his boy standing right there on the quai, just as planned, with hands-a-pockets, almost could reach out and touch him.