The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online

“He’s a great old buck.”
    â€œMy old man used to be a shipyard worker,” Everhart supplied, “but now he’s old and feeble; he’s sixty-two. I take care of him and my kid brother financially, while my married sister, who lives in my place with her crum of a husband, feeds and cares [for] them. The kid goes to public school—he’s a doughty little brat.”
    Wesley listened to this without comment.
    â€œI’d like to make a change; spread my wings and see if they are ready for flight,” confessed Bill. “Know something? . . . I’d like to try the Merchant Marine for a spell!”
    â€œHow about your draft status?” Wesley asked.

    â€œJust registered so far, unless my notification came in this morning’s mail,” pondered Bill. “But by heavens I really would like the idea!” Everhart lapsed into a musing silence while the other lit up a cigarette and inspected the glowing tip. He could use a little money, considering that the old man would soon require a hernia operation. What was it the doctor had said? . . . seven months? And the kid might want to go to Columbia in five or six years.
    â€œHow much money can you make on a trip?” asked Bill at length.
    Wesley, with a mouthful of beer, held it for a moment, tasting it with relish.
    â€œWell,” he answered, “depends. You’d make a bit less as ordinary seaman. The Russian run would net you around fourteen hundred bucks in five or six months, with pay, sea bonus, port bonus, and overtime. But a short run, like the Iceland or coastwise to Texas or South American run wouldn’t add up to that much in one trip.”
    Well, two or three short trips, or one long one would certainly make a tidy sum. Everhart, who made thirty dollars a week at Columbia, sharing the rent with his sister’s husband, had always had enough money, but never enough to realize any savings or lay the foundations for future security. He often managed to make a few extra dollars tutoring private students at examination time. But
since 1936, when he was awarded his master’s degree in English and was fortunate enough to land an assistant professorship in the university, he had more or less coasted along, spending whatever money he kept for himself and living out a life of harangue with students, professors, and people like George Day; living, in short, a casually civilized New York City existence. He had studied hard and proved a brilliant student. But the restlessness which had festered in his loquacious being through the years as assistant professor in English, a vague prod in the course of his somehow sensationless and self-satisfied days, now came to him in a rush of accusal. What was he doing with his life? He had never grown attached to any woman, outside of the gay and promiscuous relations he carried on with several young ladies in the vicinity of his circle. Others at the university, he now considered with a tinge of remorse, had grown properly academic, worn good clothes with the proud fastidiousness of young professors, gotten themselves wives, rented apartments on or near the campus, and set about to lead serious, purposeful lives with an eye to promotions and honorary degrees and a genuine affection for their wives and children.
    But he had rushed around for the past six years clad in his cloak of genius, an enthusiastic young pedant with loud theories, shabby clothing, and a barefaced conviction
in the art of criticism. He’d never paused to appraise anything but the world. He had never really paid any attention to his own life, except to use his own freedom as a means to discuss the subject of freedom. Yes, he was Everhart who had told his classes, one triumphant morning when the snow lashed against the windows, that art was the revolt of the free. . . .
    Theories! Lectures! Talk! Thirty dollars per week; home in the evening, while the old man snored in his chair, correcting