Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac Page B

thick muscular neck, frown dark on his brow, hair curly, dark, crisp, nose bulbous, mouth grim but sentimental, kneeling on one knee, examining the sunrise with serious and exact and ponderous officialness, nodding slowly, “I’ll tell ya Bull, there aint never been a mystery of this world I didnt stand in awe of, when standing in front of it, or kneelin on one knee as I am now.” Strangely, rockily, the redness shows on the ridges of his face.
    His head is held slightly on one side, as I say a little like Gerard, but in this case, the father’s sadness is held inside a manly grace, or rather, a manly brace, the philosophicalness abides higher in the cranium here than it can in the recentness-film of the angel child—Experience has made a man of Emil, and you may take man and weigh him on the scales with his weight in goldshit on the other pan, the measurement may come out, legible—If so, write me a letter—I see no reason for Man—But his value, I buy—Dawns white with drunkness I’ve had myself with my boys and after that were boys—And there’ll be more—Brothers that were saints that died on me, that too’s happened a million times in a million repetitudes and reincarnation in Samsara’s sorrow parade—More wine! fewer dead potato bugs! Roll me down the road in a barrel, if I’m lying—(and I’ve been rolled in a barrel down the road, an I’m a liar)—Jesus Child,—But birth and tender years which we take to be actual happeningness in the phenomena of this self belief that something seems to happen, called existence, hath made of Emil’s son Gerard instead of a weighable debatable man, a tender-born and angel of tender years—Emil’s lips pressed together to make the whole face storm, Breton, hot, worried, Emil, leaning his big arms on thick unbreakable knees, thick thighs, he brushes the cigar smoke from the pants of his thigh, he fixes his face in the rising sun (priests are anointing and intoning a quartermile away), he looks like some Medieval wallguard waiting for the Jesus Child, nodding, “I’ll be gol danged . . . aint it a strange world, Bull—here we are, by the side of a river, two men—once upon a time we had a notion we were romeos and gave up our little suspenders and our Saturday night nickelodeons and made googoo eyes at the girls at basketball games and hit hero homeruns and then developed these big endless holes to thrown our money in— money? And all of it!—Like throwing ten dollar bills and flowers in the gad dam ocean, Bull—”
    â€œExpand upon the theme,” says Bull passing the bottle.
    â€œNo I’m through—an ocean, Caesar never had it so good I’m tellin you.”
    Meaningless, they grow solemn and serious.
    â€œIt’s a hell of a world—debts, wives, woman—scissors, meat, do you blame her?”
    â€œWhy hell no?”
    â€œHa?”
    â€œHell No!”
    â€œIn the winter, kiddies—a purple shame, an American shame, a durn Babe Ruth homerun of a shame—Youth gone wild, hung upsidedown—”
    â€œTarzan—”
    â€œEmil, the world is happy!”
    â€œYou damn right.”
    â€œMy best, MY children, I’m not promising anything—”
    â€œEnd, but hole hat or no hole hat and happy sandholes of infantile or not, I predict it, seaweave breezes once in a while, sand most a the time, hot unhappy painful burning sand and right in his throat, and makes his wet yes water more”—(slup, a slug)—“Let the women wash it, I’m through, I’m the culprit officer, O offi sair, sir, but take me away not now, some other time Offi Sair Charley,” as Emil and Charley dance and gesture Cop-and-Innocent Arrest on the red haunted banksides of 8 A M Lowell in the mud and molten snow—Harsh laughter, lighting of cigars, holding of them between fingers outstretched stiff drunk,