The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac Page B

Thoreau before the mast.
Conviction had lead Wesley to the sea; confusion had lead Everhart to the sea.
    A confused intellectual, Everhart, the oldest weed in society; beyond that, an intelligent modern minus the social conscience of that class. Further, a son without a conscience—a lover without a wife! A prophet without confidence, a teacher of men without wisdom, a sorry mess of man thereat!
    Well, things would be different from now on . . . a change of life might give him the proper perspective. Surely, it had not been folly to take a vacation from his bookish, bearish life, as another side of his nature might deny! What wrong was there in treating his own life, within the bounds of moral conscience, as he chose and as he freely wished? Youth was still his, the world might yet open its portals as it had done that night at Carnegie Hall in 1927 when he first heard the opening bars of Brahms’ first symphony! Yes! As it opened its doors for him so many times in his teens and closed them firmly, as though a stern and hostile master were its doorman, during his enraged twenties.
    Now he was thirty-two years old and it suddenly occurred to him that he had been a fool, yes, even though a lovable fool, the notorious “short pants” with the erudite theories and the pasty pallor of a teacher of life . . . and
not a liver of life. Wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe who had struck a brief spark in him at twenty-six and filled him with new love for life until it slowly dawned on him that Tom Wolfe—as his colleagues agreed in delighted unison—was a hopeless romanticist? What of it? What if triumph were Wolfe’s only purpose? . . . if life was essentially a struggle, then why not struggle toward triumph, why not, in that case, achieve triumph! Wolfe had failed to add to whom triumph was liege . . . and that, problem though it was, could surely be solved, solved in the very spirit of his cry for triumph. Wolfe had sounded the old cry of a new world. Wars come, wars go! Elated Bill to himself, this cry is an insurgence against the forces of evil, which creeps in the shape of submission to evil, this cry is a denial of the not-good and a plea for the good. Would he, then, William Everhart plunge his whole being into a new world? Would he love? Would he labor? Would he, by God, fight?
    Bill sat up and grinned sheepishly.
    â€œBy George,” he mumbled aloud, “I might at that!”
    â€œMight what?” asked the other seaman, who was awake and sitting up with his legs dangling over the bunk rail.
    Bill turned a bashful face, laughing.
    â€œOh I was only muttering to myself.”

    The young seaman said nothing. After a strained pause, he at length spoke up.
    â€œThis your first trip?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat the hell time is it?” asked the youth.
    â€œAbout nine o’clock.”
    There was another silence. Bill felt he had better explain his strange behavior before his focastle mate should take him for a madman, but he couldn’t conceive of any explanation. The young seaman apparently overlooked the incident, for he wanted to know why in hell they weren’t ashore getting drunk.
    Everhart explained that he was waiting to go out with two other seamen in a half-hour.
    â€œWell, I’ll be in the mess. Pick me up on the way out,” directed the youth. “My name’s Eathington.”
    â€œAll right, we’ll do that; my name’s Everhart.”
    The youngster shuffled off lazily: “Glad t’ meetcha,” he said, and was gone.
    Bill vaulted down from his bunk and went to the sink for a drink of water. He leaned over and thrust his head [out] of the porthole, peering aft along the shed wall. The harbor was still and dark, except for a cluster of lights far across where a great drydock was illumined for its night shift. Two small lights, a red and a blue one, chased one
another calmly across the dark face of the bay, the sound of the launch’s