Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online

sins of the junkman on Ennell Street, they were vast almost as mine and brother’s—
    In bed that night he lies awake, Gerard, listening to the moan of wind, the flap of shutters—From where he lies he can just see one cold sparkle star—The fences have no hope.
    Like, the protection you’d get tonight huddling against an underpass.
    But Gerard had his holidays, they bruited before his wan smile—New Year’s Eve we’re all in bed upstairs under the wall-papered eaves listening to the racket horns and rattlers below and out the window the dingdong bells and sad horizon hush of all Lowell and towards Kearney Square where we see the red glow embrowned and aura’d in the new (1925) sky and we think: “A new year”—A new year with a new number and a new little boy with candlelight and kitchimise standing radiant in the eternities, as the old, some old termagant with beard and scythe, goes wandering down the darkness field, and on the sofa arms of the parlor chairs even now the fairies are dancing—Gerard and Nin and I are sitting up in the one bed of conclave, with a happy smile he’s trying to explain to us what’s really happening but by and by the drunks come upstairs with wild hats to kiss us—Some sorrow involved in the crinkly ends of pages of old newspapers bound in old readingroom files so that you turn and see the news of that bygone New Year’s day, the advertisements with top hats, the crowds in Hail streets, the snow—The little boy under the quilt who will have X’s in his eyes when the rubber lamppost ushers in his latter New Years Eves, one scythe after another lopping off his freshness juices till he comes to bebibbling them from corny necks of bottles—And the swarm in the darkness, of an ethereal kind, where nobody ever looks, as if if they did look the swarms ethereal would wink off, winking, to wink on again when no one’s watching—Gerard’s bright explanations about dark time, and cowbells—Then we had our Easter.
    Which came with lilies in April, and you had white doves in the fields, and we went seesawing thru Palm Sunday and we’d stare at those pictures of Jesus meek on the little azno entering the city and the palm multitudes, “The Lord has found that nice little animal there and he got up on his back and they rode into the city”—“Look, the people are all glad”—A few chocolate rabbits one way or the other was not the impress of our palmy lily-like Easter, our garland of roses, our muddy-earth Spring sigh when all in new shoes we squeaked to the church and outside you could smell the fragrant cigarettes and see men spit and inside the church was all dormant and adamant like wine with white white flowers everywhere—
    We had our Fourth of July, some firecrackers, some fence sitting pitting of sparks, warm trees of night, boys throwing torpedoes against fences, general wars, oola-oo-ah pop-works at the Common with the big bomb was the finale, and popcorn and Ah Lemonade—
    And Halloween: the Halloween of 1925, when Ma dressed me up as a little Chinaman with a queu and a white robe and Gerard as a Pirate and Nin as a Vamp and old Papa took us by the hand and paraded us down to the corner at Lilley and Aiken, ice cream sodas, swarms of eyes on the sidewalks—
    All the little children of the world keep quickly coming and going to the holidays that only slowly change, but the quality of the brightness of their eyes monotonously reverts—Seeds, seeds, the seed sown everywhere blossoming the fruit of our loom, living-but-to-die—There’s just no fun in holidays when you know.
    All the living and dying creatures of the endless future wont even wanta be forewarned—wherefore, I should shut up and close up shop and bang shutters and broom my own dark and nasty nest.
    At this time my father had gotten sick and moved part of his printing business in the basement