And I dump it in baggage and get my baggage ticket.
Spend most of the time talking to big corpulent Breton cabdrivers, what I learned in Brittany is “Dont be afraid to be big, fat, be yourself if you’re big and fat.” Those big fat sonumgun Bretons waddle around as tho the last whore of summer war lookin for her first lay. You cant drive a spike with a tack hammer, say the Polocks, well at least said Stanley Twardowicz which is another country I’ve never seen. You can drive a nail, but not a spike.
So I hang around doodling about, for awhile I sigh to eye clover on top of a cliff where I actually could go take a five-hour nap except a lot of little cheap faggots or poets are watching every move I make, it’s broad afternoon, how can I go lie down in the tall grass if some Seraglio learns about my remaining $100 on my dear sweet arse?
I’m telling you, I’m getting so suspicious of men, and now less of women, it would make Diana weep, or cough laughing, one.
I was really afraid of falling asleep in those weeds, unless nobody saw me sneak into them, to my trapdoor at last, but alas, the Algerians’d found a new home, not to mention Bodhidharma and his boys walking over water from Chaldea (and walking on water wasnt built in a day.)
Why perdure the reader’s might? The train came at eleven and I got on the first firstclass coach and got into the first compartment and was alone and put my feet up on the opposite seat as the train rolled out and I heard somebody say to another guy :–
“Le roi n’est pas amusez.” (The king is not amused.) (“You frigging A!” I shoulda yelled out the window.)
And a sign said:– “Dont throw anything out the window” and I yelled “J’n’ai rien à jeter en dehors du chaussi, ainque ma tête!” (I got nothing to throw out the window, only my head). My bag was with me—I heard from the other car, “Ça c’est un Kérouac,” (Now that’s a Kerouac)—I dont even think I was hearing right, but dont be too sure, about not only Brittany but a land of Druids and Witchcraft and Warlocks and Féeries—(not Lebris) —
Let me just brief you on the last happening that I remember in Brest:– afraid to sleep in those weeds, which were not only at edges of cliffs in full sight of people’s third story windows but as I say in full view of wandering punks, I simply in despair sat with the cabdrivers at the cab stand, me on the stone wall—All of a sudden a ferocious vocal fight broke out between a corpulent blue eyed Breton cabdriver and a thin mustachio’d Spanish or I guess Algerian or maybe Provençal cabdriver, to hear them, their “Come on, if you wanta start something with me start” (the Breton) and the younger mustachio “Rrrratratratra!” (some fight about positions in the cab stand, and there I was a few hours ago couldnt find a cab on Main Street)—I was sitting at this point on the stone curb watching the progress of a lil ole caterpillar in whose fate I was of course particularly fishponded, and I said to the first cab in line at the cab stand:
“In the first place goddamit, cruise, cruise thru town for fares, dont hang around this dead railroad station, there might be an Évêsque wants a ride after a sudden visit to a donor of the church—”
“Well, it’s the union” etc.
I said “See those two son of a bitches fighting over there, I dont like him.”
No answer.
“I dont like the one who’s not the Breton—not the old one, the young one.”
The cabdriver looks away at a new development in front of the railroad station, which is, a young vesperish mother toting an infant in her arms and a non-Breton hoodlum on a motorcycle coming to bring a telegram almost knocking her down, but at least scaring the heart out of her.
“That,” I say to my Breton Brother, “is a voyou” (hoodlum)—“Why did he do it to that lady and her child?”
“To attract all our attention,” he practically leered. He added: “I have a wife and kids on the hill, across the bay you see there, with the boats …”
“Hoodlums are what gave Hitler his start.”
“I’m first in line in this cab stand, let them fight and be hoodlums all they want—When the time comes, the time comes.”
“Bueno,” I said like a Spanish pirate of St. Malo, “Garde a campagne.” (Guard your countryside).
He didnt even have to answer, that big corpulent 220-pound Breton, first in line on the cab stand, his eyes himself would sclowber scubaduba or anything else they wanta throw at ’im, and O most bullshit Jack, the people are not asleep.
And when I say “the people” I dont mean that created-in-the-textbook mass first called at me at Columbia College as “Proletariat,” and not now called at me as “Unemployed Disenchanted Ghetto-Dwelling Misfits,” or in England as “Mods and Rods,” I say, the People are first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth in the cabstand line and if you try to bug them, you may find yourself with a blade of grass in your bladder, which cuts finest.
35.
THE CONDUCTOR SEES ME WITH MY FEET ON THE other seat and yells “Les pieds a terre!” (Feet on the ground!) My dreams of being an actual descendant of the Princes of Brittany are shattered also by the old French hoghead blowing at the crossing whatever they blow at French crossings, and of course shattered also by that conductor’s enjoinder, but then I look up at the plaque over the seat where my feet had been :–
“This seat reserved for those wounded in the service of France.”
So I ups and goes to the compartment next, and the conductor looks in to collect my ticket and I say “I didnt see that sign.”
He says “That’s awright, but take your shoes off.”
This King will ride second fiddle to anyone so long’s he can blow like my Lord.
36.
AND ALL NIGHT ALONG, ALONE IN AN OLD PASSENGER coach, Oh Anna Karenina, O Myshkin, O Rogozhin, I ride back St. Brieuc, Rennes, got my brandy, and there’s Chartres at dawn—
Arriving in Paris in the morning.
By this time, from the cold of Bretagne, I got big flannel shirt on now, with scarf inside collar, no shave, pack silly hat away into suitcase, close it again with teeth and now, with my Air France return trip ticket to Tampa Florida I’se ready as the fattest ribs in old Winn Dixie, dearest God.
37.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, BY THE WAY, AS I marveled at the s’s of darkness and light, a mad eager man of 28 got on the train with an 11-year-old girl and escorted her gainingly to the compartment of the wounded, where I could hear him yelling for hours till she gave him the fish eye and fell asleep on her own seat alone—La Muse de la Départment and Le Provinçial a Paris missed by a coupla years, O Balzac, O in fact Nabokov … (The Poetess of the Provinces and the Hick in Paris.) (Whattayou expect with the Prince of Brittany a compartment away?)
38.
SO HERE WE ARE IN PARIS. ALL’S OVER. FROM NOW on I’m finished with any and all forms of Paris life. Carrying my suitcase I’m accosted at the gates by a cab-hawk. “I wanta go to Orly” I say.
“Come on!”
“But first I need a beer and a cognac across the street!”
“Sorry no time!” and he turns to other customers calling and I realize I might as well get on my horse if I’m gonna be home tonight Sunday night in Florida so I say :–
“Okay. Bon, allons.”
He grabs my bag and lugs it to a waiting cab on the misting sidewalk. A thin-mustached Parisian cabdriver is packing in two ladies with a babe in arms in the back of his hack and meanwhile socking in their luggage in the compartment out back. My fella socks my bag in, asks for 3 or 5 francs, I fergit. I look at the cabdriver as if to say “In front?” and he says with head “Yeah.”
I say to myself “Another thin nosed sonumbitch in Paris-est-Pourri shit, he wouldnt care if you roasted your grandmother over coals long as he could get her earrings and maybe gold teeth.”
In the front seat of the little sports taxi I search vainly for an ashtray at my righthand front door. He whips out a weird ashtray arrangement beneath the dashboard, with a smile. He then turns to the ladi
es in back as he zips through that six-intersection place right outside Toulouse-Lautrec’s loose too-much and pipes :–
“Darling little child! How old is she?”
“Oh, seven months.”
“How many others you have.”
“Two.”
“And that’s your, eh, Mother.”
“No my aunt.”
“I thought so, of course, she doesn’t look like you, of course with my uncanny whatnots—In any case a delightful child, a mother we need speak no further, of, and an aunt make all Auvergne rejoice!”
“How did you know we were Auvergnois?!”
“Instinct, instinct, since I am! How are you there, feller, where going?”
“Me?” I say with dismal Breton breath. “To Florida” (à Floride).
“Ah it must be beautiful there! And you, my dear aunt, how many children did you have?”
“Oh—seven.”
“Tsk, tsk, almost too much. And is the little one giving you any trouble?”
“No—not a mite.”
“Well there you have it. All’s well, really,” swinging in a wide 70-m.p.h.-arc around the Sainte Chapelle where as I said before the piece of the True Cross is kept and was put there by St. Louis of France, King Louis 9th, and I said :–
“Is that la Sainte Chapelle? I meant to see it.”
“Ladies,” he says to the back seat, “you’re going where? Oh yes, Gare St. Lazare, yes, here we are—Just another minute”—Zip—
“There we are” and he leaps out as I sit there dumbfounded and blagdenfasted and hauls out their suitcases, whistles for a boy, has them whisked off baby and all, and leaps back into the cab alone with me saying: “Orly was it?”
“Aye, mais, but, Monsieur, a glassa beer for the road.”
“Bah—it’ll take me ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes is too long.”
He looks at me seriously.
“Well, I can stop off at a cafe on the way where I can double park and you throw it down real fast ’cause I’m working this Sunday morning, ah, Life.”
“You have one with me.”
Zip
“Here it is. Out.”
We jump out, run into this cafe thru the now-rain, and duck up to the bar and order two beers. I tell him :–
“If you’re in a real hurry I’ll show you how to chukalug a beer down!”
“No necessity,” he says sadly, “we have a minute.”
He suddenly reminds me of Fournier the bookie in Brest.
He tells me his name, of Auvergne, I mine, of Brittany.
At the spot instant when I know he’s ready to fly I open my gullet and let a halfbottle of beer fall down a hole, a trick I learned in Phi Gamma Delta fraternity now I see for no small reason (holding up kegs at dawn, and with no pledge cap because I refused it and besides I was on the football team), and in the cab we jump like bankrob-bers and ZAM! we’re going 90 in the rain slick highway to Orly, he tells me how many kilometers fast he’s going, I look out the window and figure it’s our cruising speed to the next bar in Texas.
We discuss politics, assassinations, marriages, celebrities, and when we get to Orly he hauls my bag out the back and I pay him and he jumps right back in and says (in French) : “Not to repeat myself, me man, but today Sunday I’m working to support my wife and kids—And I heard what you told me about families in Quebec that had kids by the twenties and twenty-fives, that’s too much, that is—Me I’ve only got two—But, work, yes, yowsah, this and that, or as you say Monsieur thissa and thatta, in any case, thanks, be of good heart, I’m going.”
“Adieu, Monsieur Raymond Baillet,” I say.
The Satori taxidriver of page one.
When God says “I Am Lived,” we’ll have forgotten what all the parting was about.
Pic
DEDICATED TO DR. DANNY DESOLE
CONTENTS
1. Me and Grandpa
2. What Happened
3. Aunt Gastonia’s House
4. Brother Come To Fetch Me
5. Some Argufyin
6. I Go Thu the Window
7. We Come to Town
8. The Bus Go Up North
9. First Night in New York
10. How Slim Lost Two Jobs in One Day
11. Packin for Californy
12. Times Square and the Mystery of Television
13. The Ghost of the Susquehanna
14. How We Finally Got to Californy
1. ME AND GRANDPA
AIN’T NEVER NOBODY LOVED ME like I love myself, cept my mother and she’s dead. (My grandpa, he’s so old he can remember a hunnerd years back but what happened last week and the day before, he don’t know.) My pa gone away so long ago ain’t nobody remember what his face like. My brother, ever’ Sunday afternoon in his new suit in front of the house, out on that old road, and grandpa and me just set on the porch rockin and talkin, but my brother paid it no mind and one day he was gone and ain’t never been back.
Grandpa, when we was alone, said he’d ten’ the pigs and I go mend the fence yonder, and said, “I seed the Lawd come thu that fence a hunnerd years ago and He shall come again.” My Aunt Gastonia come by buttin and puffin said that it was all right, she believed it too, she’d seen the Lord more times than they could ever count, and hallelujahed and hallelujahed, said “While’s all this the Gospel word and true, little Pictorial Review Jackson” (that’s me) “must go to school to learn and read and write,” and grandpa looked at her plum in the eye like if’n to spit tobacco juice in it, and answered, “Thass awright wif me,” jess like that, “but that ain’t the Lawd’s school he’s goin’ to and he shall never mend his fences.”
So I went to school, and came on home from school the afternoon after it and seed nobody would ever know where I come from, if what they called it was North Carolina. It didn’t feel like no North Carolina to me. They said I was the darkest, blackest boy ever come to that school. I always knowed that, cause I seen white boys come by my house, and I seed pink boys, and I seed blue boys, and I seed green boys, and I seed orange boys, then black, but never seed one so black as me.
Well, I gave this no never mind, and ’joyed myself and made some purty pies when I was awful little till I seed it rully did smell awful bad; and all that, and grandpa a-grinnin from the porch, and smokin his old green pipe. One day two white boys came by seed me and said I was verily black as nigger chiles go. Well, I said that I knowed that in-deedy. They said they seed I was too small for what they was about, which I now forget, and I said it was a mighty fine frog peekin from his hand. He said it was no frog, but a TOAD, and said TOAD like to make me jump a hunnerd miles high, he said it so plain and loud, and they skedaddled over the hill back of my grandpa’s property. So I knew they was a North Carolina, and they was a toad, and I dreamed of it ’at night.
On the crossroads Mr. Dunaston let me and old hound dog sit on the steps of his store ever’ blessed evenin and I heard the purty singin on the radio just as plain, and just as good, and learned me two, th’ee, seben songs and sing them. Here come Mr. Otis one time in his big old au-to, bought me two bottles Dr. Pepper, en I took one home to grandpa: he said Mr. Otis was a mighty fine man and he knowed his pappy and his pappy’s pappy clear back a hunnerd years, and they was good folks. Well, I knowed that: and we ’greed, and ’greed Dr. Pepper allus did make a spankin’ good fizzle for folkses’ moufs. Y’all can tell how I ’joyed myself then.
Well here’s all where it was laid out. My grandpa’s house, it was all lean-down and ’bout to break, made of sawed planks sawed when they was new from the woods and here they was all wore out like poor dead stumplewood and heavin out in the middle. The roof was like to slip offen its hinges and fall on my grandpa’s head. He make it no mind and set there, rockin. The inside of the house was clean like a ear of old dry corn, and jess as crinkly and dead and good for me barefoot as y’all seed if you tried it. Grandpa and me sleep in the big old tinkle-bed and gots room all over, it’s so big. Hound dog
sleep in the door. Never did close that door till winter come. I cut the wood, grandpa light it into stove. Set there eatin peas and greens and sassmeat and here’s a BIG spoon and eat a lot till my belly’s all out—when they was a lot. Well, Aunt Gastonia, she bring us food, here, there, last week, next month. Bring us sassmeat, storebread, streak-a-lean. Grandpa grow the peas in the field, and grow the corn field by the fence, and then we fetched the pigs what we grind outen our moufs cause we no cain’t chaw it. Hound dog, eat too. House set in the middle of the field. Yonder’s the road, sand road all wore hard and pebbly, and the mules comin by and every now’n then a big au-to thrown up a fine cloud a mile high and me smellin it ever’where and sayin to myself, “Now what fo the Lawd don’t make hisself mo clean?” Then I snups out me nose, Shah! Well, over yonder is Mr. Dunaston’s store at the crossroads, and then the piney woods wif old crow set-tin ever’ mornin on the branch jess cra-a-cra-a-kin, to beat hisself, and me say cra-cra-cra-cra jess like he do, and I gotsa laugh, ever’ morning, hee hee hee, it tickle me so. Then yonder th’ other way is Mr. Dunaston’s brother’s tobacco, n’a big, big house Mr. Otis live in, and Miz Bell’s house in the middler the field and Miz Bell she like to be as old as grandpa and smoke the pipe jess like he do. Well, she like me. Ever’ night ever’body sleep in this house and that house and ever’ house, and the only thing you can hear is a old owl—hooo! hooo! —out in the woods, and yek! yek! yek! all the bats, and the yowlin hound dogs, ’n the cricket-bugs a-creekin’ in the dark. Then there’s the choo-choo out by TOWN, y’know. Only thing you can’t hear is a old spider spinnin his cobweb. I go on in the shanty and break a cobweb—after I wipe myself that old spider, he make ’nother cobweb for me. Up yonder in the sky, they’s a hunnerd motion stars and here on the ground hit’s as wet, as like to’d rain. I gets me in the bed and grandpa say, “Boy, keep your big wet feet from me!” but in a little bitty while my feets is dry and I’se tucked in good. Then I see the stars thu the window n’ I sleep good.