50 Years Gone The Father We
Almost Knew One Jack Kerouac Out Of Merrimack River Nights-Searching For
The Father We Never Knew-Scenes In Search Of The Blue-Pink Great American West
Night- “The Bay Street Night”- With
“October in the Railroad Earth” In Mind
By Seth Garth, known as
Charles River Blackie for no other reason than he slept along those banks, the
Cambridge side and some raggedy ass wino who tried to cut him under the
Anderson Bridge one night called him that and it stuck. Those wino-sapped bums,
piss leaky tramps and poet-king hoboes all gone to some graven spot long ago
from drink, drug, or their own hubris which they never understood gone and the
moniker too.
…walking,
always walking , never, at least long time never, just running frantically down
some stairs, pulling the keys out of his jeans on the fly, wrestling the front
door open and jumping into the front
seat of some souped-up, some Stewball
Stu zen auto mechanic to the world, year old (broken in, see) 1949 Hudson, but
always just walking down Larkin Street to the bay, ‘Frisco bay for the
interested, to flush out his brain against the japan currents, against the
pacific squalls, against the bay fogs, or whatever was against handy. (Stewball Stu from back in
Olde Saco, podunk Maine days, king of the chicken runs and max daddy of the
streets ever since he took out some Farmer Brown from Arundel overgrown son’s
souped-up Dodge back in 1945. Blew him off the Galway Road in nothing flat and
later when he took on all comers when things moved to early morning deserted
Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach away from prying cop and irate
citizen eyes as well. He had been there that night, and later, riding shotgun,
scared shotgun, in the passenger seat so he knew Stu was not blowing smoke
about his exploits but that stuff, those
Stu stories, were for another time.)
This
night his always walking was to figure out how much longer he was going to have
to wait around this damn old ‘Frisco town for some shipping clerk’s job down at
the dock at the other end of the Embarcadero to open up so he could make some
dough, pay off Carol, Allen, and Bill and blow some transcontinental dough with
Stewball Stu on some lesser version of that dream 1949 Hudson and finally blow
this now old tired out ‘Frisco town. His ticket was up here after a few mishaps
(a couple of small “vag” busts for sleeping over in Golden Gate Park without a
permit, some damn tent fee permit, jesus, was that all that they had to do over
there. Down on the Embarcadero you could hardly walk late at night without
falling over some stumblebum drunk, or guy down on his luck, and no cop ever
bothered you. Jesus. More serious, a possession, a weed possession bust, for
smoking some righteous mex herb, gold, in public. Thirty days suspended because he had been
young, well-spoken, and not regular district court traffic surly before the
judge. Jesus. So he needed the dock
dough to break his string of bad luck and flee this burg, but he needed that
clerk’s job, arranged by Bill through his father’s connections with guys down
at the wharves who needed a guy who could do the shipping paper work fast and
not steal everything not nailed down on the docks , to come through, needed it
bad just then. And so the fret walk.
As he
walked toward the womb bay he could just barely see the fogged-bemused dim spot
Alcatraz search lights, eternal search lights against some phantom prison
breaks like that search light, or that rock, was what held a man, any man, in
thrall to his lesser instincts. His couple of minutes in jail had shaken him up
enough to never want to test the outer edge of that theory or come even close. Spending a few hours, maybe half a day, with stinking
winos, pissed over, surly and not just before the judge, begging for a Tokay
fix, or Thunderbird if you had it, bumming cigarettes or papers to make their
own Bull Durham coffin nails, stinking, earth sweat stinking from some Gilroy
onion patch or the fields down south mex braceros picked up for fighting or
being mex, who knows, an odd con man or hustler, a street hustler, who worked a
wrong john, an unprotected pimp daddy on those occasions when the irate
citizens were demanding blood for some foul deed, some tough guy yeggs and
assorted armed robbers wised him up to that road. And so the fret walk.
He
laughed as he minute fret pause looked up and saw a couple of kids, really just
kids, maybe sixteen, no more, wobbly, walking across Bay Street as he made his
own turn onto the street, one with a bottle ready to be handed to the other,
and from the look of it Tokay, the winos’ choice, and the “choice” of those too
young to buy their own and hence resorting to some wino-snagged bought and that
was what they got. He bet that the wino, in exchange for that courtesy, right
now was sitting down in some Embarcadero back street, maybe Third, or in some
Mission Street flop, if he was in the chips and not too far behind on his rent,
room made up of bed, bureau and chair, not much else, no memory pictures on the
walls, memory pictures in fact banished, sipping on his own bottle of nectar Tokay, and
maybe that wino was passing it around to his jungle campfire brethren.
He
remembered his own virgin voyage down that gofer road. He, and a schoolboy
corner boy, Spider, from back up in Olde Saco, had gotten in that corner boy’s
souped- up 1939 Plymouth and driven to stardust Boston, down by the Commons, in
the early 1940s looking for beat (although he would not have called it that
then but that was the only unnamed name for the feeling, that beat down
feeling, looking for what they had heard was a new breeze blowing in this
wicked old world, hell, mainly looking for beat chicks away from put-off prim
and prissy Gallic (French-Canadian forbears from up in Gaspe mostly) Catholic
girls that ran amok in that town if the truth was known.
Of
course like in Frisco town in those days every hustler, con man (and a few
women), and everybody who had sense enough to cash in on the rube explosion was
on the Common on any given Friday or Saturday teen break-out night ready to do
business, to do wrong gee business. That night he and Spider had been walking
through the Common working their way to Charles Street when a young guy, maybe
twenty-five, came up to them and asked them if they wanted him to get them some
booze to while away the evening (this was the part of the ‘40s before dope,
weed, mary jane was the elixir of choice). Sure thing, brother, thanks. A bottle of Southern Comfort, large. This
guy, explaining the city rules of the road, said how about a bottle for him.
They said whatever was right and anted up the dough. About ten minutes later
the guy came back with a brown bag with a bottle sticking out of the top. Thanks
brother, as he left. They went over by the Public Gardens under the pond bridge
to get a quick swig. Surprise, surprise that bottle was filled with plain old
ordinary water. Yah, rubes. Then he remembered his own oath when it came his
time to play teen gofer. He would always remember that night and while most
times he would do the chore gratis, except when he was down on his luck and
needed to pull that scam, he always gave what was asked for. He wished he could
say that about some other things but such is life.
He
looked back one last time as those boys veered off into their good night as he
thought, thought too for just a minute about Sammy, Sid, Andre, and the Spider
from back in his own old Southern Comfort days in sitting in front of the river
, sitting in front of ocean Olde Saco a few years back, and of some wino pete
who got their Friday night booze from LaCroix’s Package Store for them in order to make them “rum brave,”
girl-flirting rum brave, for the dance over at the Starlight Ballroom where,
god, Benny, Benny Goodman was playing and of that Benny-blessed night, he had
finally twisted old Sheila around his finger, if you know what he meant. Sheila
(Capet) who broke the death of sex put-off prim and prissy Gallic Catholic
girls that ran amok mode (keep this between us okay) and went, one Friday
night, down to Seal Rock, the local lovers’ lane, in the back of Spider’s
Plymouth with him and made him smile. And it was that same Sheila who, later, gave
him the skinny about what was said on those school day Monday mornings before
school girls’ “lav” talks of who did what with whom, and who didn’t. And the dids outnumbered the didn’ts. An earful. Women.
As he
walked some more down Bay toward the
chocolate smell of Beach he began taking that ancient thought out of his head
as he passed the Red Fez for the ninety-ninth time (about ninety of them
straight into the front door and low-shelf scotches and scored teas and, on
occasion, bindles for the soul) since he hit ‘Frisco a couple of months back
with some jack, a sweet girl, Lulu, all blonde, Iowa corn-fed and willing, and
some idea that he would write the great American novel, a great American novel,
or an American novel (depending on his mood), if he could just get his head in
the right place, be in the right place,
and have his freaking ‘Frisco golden-gate rust colored muse , his now
completely fog-bound muse, working his corner.
Nada,
nothing, no go, got it. And then like something from out of some mid-1940s film
noir movie where an unnamed band, unnamed until you read the credits to find
out why you spent the rest of the film with that sound in your brain, fired up
the night in the middle of the movie out of nowhere, he heard a sound, a high
white note, blown pure by some unseen sex tenor sax(not a Johnny Hodges,
Duke’s’ boy Johnny , all fluffy around the edges pure, all satin and silk with
a bow on it pure, mulatto pure, maybe black and tan pure , to keep the lid on
for the paying customers, the paying white customers, the uptown mayfair swells
out for weekly kicks, a little spindle tea to take the edge off, the cabaret café society crowd, a backing Billie
swaying lilt crowd, who would freak out, who would call every variety of hell
down on the player’s head, at what was played mex opium dream or tea high back
to proud earth mother Africa times after hours) now coming steamed, sweaty
jungle-steamed, out toward the bay from
deep within the Red Fez (blown, he knew from other nights, from other highs,
blown deep in the bowels of the club up against the back bar by angel Cody
Reed, black, black as a starless night, black who devoured negro and had no
regrets, blasting safe, fashionable negro safe, blasting flash, wide-brimmed
white fedora, open shirt, white lapel suit, midnight sunglasses, negro pimp
walking daddy and pink Cadillac with one hip-hop note, blasting back to
primordial black Africa mother homeland, blasting apart first, middle and last
passages in a foreign land, blasting, cool as a cucumber, plantation miseries, plantation
lashes, blasting too jim crow, get back in your place, brother , old ‘Frisco
Mister James Crow.
A guy on
the other corner, dark, brown, brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, brown soul
too, angel mex fellaheen (wearing a kind of out of fashion zoot suit looking a
little frayed on the edges, maybe from L.A., maybe a little too much loco weed
down south, maybe too some hard-ass bracero up-bringing, father and mother
working sweated lettuce, or you name the produce , fields, and then back to
some brown shack, and sixteen kids, jesus), maybe a flip, a Filipino, benny
high, tea high more likely (but high, high from an expert eye high) was
be-bopping words, night, fright, fight, bite, throwing out one after another
trying, trying like hell, to match his palabras (some en espanol, some in
English a tough task) with that Cody
Reed high white note that he was chasing, finally catching some of it, some
vicious moloch fight to blast words and notes, some shake the bracero dust off
of himself in the fellahin world that he was in his dreams fighting to break
out of , making words slowly to match that floating note and passed . In the
end he was not successful, reached for something, something for his head, in
his pocket, threw it in his mouth and moved along Bay Street.
Nice try
brother but it will probably take some gringo fellaheen warrior, some mill-town
boy all river torrent bound, all fretting about his place in the sun, fretting
about damn some damn woman-child or woman hell (his own F-C or Irish version of
that Olde Saco madness, those prissy girls run amok are universal), fretting
about his corner boy muses, some improbable combination of hulky hero all
muddied from schoolboy playing fields but also library-bound reading Homer,
Plato, Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, and the boys, listening to be-bop, endlessly
humming some refrain in the river night, be-bop, be-bop, be-bop before be-bop
bopped, endlessly searching for the jail breakout night on forsaken frozen
wind-swept ships, in midnight veering route 6, 66, 666 cars driven by golden
boy cowboy punk desperados, and driving million word exploits. Or it will
probably be some street bandito from New Jack City, some prophet gangster risen
all in white, all in holy garb, from
among the pimps, the whores working those mean streets for nickels and dimes,
the seventy-seven varieties of hustlers, the winos stealing dough and wine from
each other or from young rubes, con men (and women, okay) hustling constantly
hustling and looking out of forlorn drugstore windows from forlorn red vinyl
stools, guys in need of fixes, yeggs, second- story men, drifters, grifters,
midnight sifters, all the angels of the dark night. Yah, a street bandito risen
in the night, beat beatified. Or some fag kid (sorry queer, with queer shoulderings
against the storm , fag slang from corner boy Olde Saco hazy nights) from
Hoboken, maybe Paterson, some death mill-town anyway, too small for his one
million ideas and his two million curiosities in an age that banished
curiosity, a slightly off-kilter kid who sang kaddish, or maybe better
plainsong, yah, plainsong against the death-brought night, against all the not
straight eyes forward, against all the
banishments, yah, some fag kid with time on his hands, to capture the words to
the high white note.
Meanwhile that note then floated down though the
jazz-infiltrated streets pass wino jungles and wharf rough trade taverns to the
bay and mixed and matched with the foam-flecked waves, the search light of the
eternal rock, and his dreams. He had an idea…
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