Doctor Sax (20 page)

“Our good friend Condu,” he said in a burbling aristocratic voice, as though pleased with the recollection of his chi-chi castle friends and enemies.

In back of the Delorge house, where the old man had died and the night G.J. and I were wrestling along in the rain suddenly six men in black carrying a shrouded black box came out and deposited it, with Mr. Delorge in it who’d screamed at us one sunset of puddles over some ball, into the hearse, and with black feet stood in the rain–as Doctor Sax and I hurried under the vines, lattices and darkeries of the yards a car passed on Phebe casting brown thirties headlights towards my house and Sarah Avenue, crunching over the sand road with tufts of sandbank pines leaning within the up-lights dismal and strange in the Saturday Night– Sax coughs, spits, glides on; I see that he’s right in the world, things happen around him, he responds only to his own life in the world–just like an auto mechanic. I’m gliding behind him slanted and leering, at one point, tripping over a rock garden, slanted and leering
like vaudeville comedians shooting drunk into the wings from a matinee performance for forty-seven bums half sleeping in seats— “Moo-hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha” came the long, hollow, sepulchral sound of triumphant Doctor Sax’s profound and hidden laughter. I made my own cackle-laugh, with hands cupped, in the excruciatingly exciting dark shadows of Saturday Night–women were ironing the snow ghost wash in shroudy kitchens. The children screamed a race on the cobblestones of Gershom. A raucous woman who just heard a dirty joke lofts a shrieking big laugh in the humming neighborhood night, a door slams in a shed. Tall weepy Bert Desjardins’ brother is coming up Phebe from work, his footsteps are crunching in the pebbles, he spits, the starlight shines in his spit–they think he’s been to work but he’s been to skew his girl in a dirty barn in the Dracut Woods, they stood against the raw drippy wood of the wall, near some piles of kidshit, and kicked some rocks aside, and he lifted her dress over the goose pimples of her thighs, and they leered together in the dark pant barn–he’s coming from her, where he kissed her goodbye on a windy hill, and came homewards, stopping over only at church where his shoes crunched on grit of basement churchfloor and he did a couple
Notre pères
and looked at backs of sudden devout kneelers preeing in their dark shave, among sad fluttering naves, silence except for echo pew-coughs and distant frabbles of wood benches dragging on stone, frrrrowp, and God broods in the upper hum-air–

Gliding together in the dark shadows of the night Doctor Sax and I knew this and everything about Lowell.

WE CROSS THE BACKYARD IN THE DARK SHADE
of Mrs. Duffy’s cherry tree–in two months, when they run the Kentucky Derby, the cherry blossoms will be in bloom– She wanted to have it cut down, she said, because she didn’t want nobody to hide behind it in the dark. Lounging, hand in pocket, in the day time, as everybody laughed at her, I nodded and agreed she was silly to want that tree cut down. The Doctor flattened into its Shadow like a passing thing; I brought up the rear, shh.

We crossed on tiptoe to the fence and leapt cleanly into the yard of my old Phebe Avenue house– Another family lives there, man and eight kids, I look swiftly as I pass under green porch at haunteds in the brown gloom of rakes, old balls, old papers. Up, I look at my ancient bedroom window where once, within, in light, I had begun my gray and hoary Turf (1934) (Westrope the first Jockey) —the rattling doom glooms of other deaths we’ve died. Triumphant laughter snickered from the immense nasalities of Doctor Sax as he led striding low thru the grass and weeds of the yard–and we vaulted Marquand’s, tiptoed in gardens, came to the gloomy brown side of the Plouffe house and looked in at Gene Plouffe’s window. I saw the Shadow of Sax far ahead, I hurried to follow–he was looking for the wrong room, it turned out, he hurried swiftly to rectify mistakes.

“Ah!” I heard him say (as I fumbled and turned around in circles and he bumped into me coming around the other
way and the force of his bump carried us in one shroud to the window). There we were, chins on the windowsill, looking in under a foot of no-shade at Gene Plouffe reading
Shadow Magazine
in bed.

Poor Gene Plouffe-looking at the dark window to make a speech to an enemy cowboy but realizes void, nobody there–Sax and I were well concealed by his Shroudy Cape. It hung in great black velvet folds in the cubular shadows of the high wall yard. Mr. Plouffe’s house had brown shingle-planks and strange tar alleys he made himself you’d think. He was asleep in his own part of the house that night– It was probably the one or two nights out of the week Gene slept there– A lot of Lowell families had several houses, several bedrooms, and wandered sullenly from one to another under great swishing trees of Eternity’s summer. Gene had the quilt up to his chin, only his wrists stuck out to hold the
Star Western
in his hand–on the cover you can see reddish brown riders shooting bluegray Colt .45’s in a milky snow background sky, with the words Street & Smith that always took your mind away from red-brown buttes of stark West and made you realize a redbrick building, somehow sooty, with big sign STREET & SMITH on it, in white, dirty white, near Street & Smith Street in the downtown section of Pittsburgh New York. Sax chuckled, poked me in the ribs. Gene was engrossedly eyeing a beautiful sentence about “Pete Vaquero Kid riding up a dry arroyo in the mesquite desolations of a flat table near Needle, the road to Needle angling off like a wriggly snake thru the brush humps of the desert below, suddenly ‘Crack-Ow’ a
bullet pinged in the rock and Pete leveled with the dust in a flap of brushbeaten chaps and spurjingles, lay still as a lizard in the sun.”

“How eagerly the youth doth pursue his legends, with a hungry eye,” whispered Doctor Sax much amused. “Would now the Koranns of the grown up gulpitude make keen misery of that hitch. A hitch will disgust your mind in time. A hitch is called time in jail. You’ll come to rages you never dreamed.”

“Me? Why?”

“You’ll come to when you lean your face over the nose will fall with it–that is known as death. You’ll come to angular rages and lonely romages among Beast of Day in hot glary circumstances made grit by the hour of the clock —that is known as Civilization. You’ll roll your feet together in the tense befuddles of ten thousand evenings in company in the parlor, in the pad–that is known as, ah, socializing. You’ll grow numb all over from inner paralytic thoughts, and bad chairs,—that is known as Solitude. You’ll inch along the ground on the day of your death and be pursued by the Editorial Cartoon Russian Bear with a knife, and in his bear hug he will poignard you in the reddy blood back to gleam in the pale Siberian sun–that is known as nightmares. You’ll look at a wall of blank flesh and fritter to explain yourself–that is known as Love. The flesh of your head will recede from the bone, leaving the bulldog Determination pointing thru the pique-jaw tremulo jaw bone point–in other words, you’ll slobber over your morning egg cup–that is known as old age, for which they have benefits. Bye and bye you’ll rise to the sun and propel your
mean bones hard and sure to huge labors, and great steaming dinners, and spit your pits out, aching cocklove nights in cobweb moons, the mist of tired dust at evening, the corn, the silk, the moon, the rail–that is known as Maturity —but you’ll never be as happy as you are now in your quiltish innocent book-devouring boyhood immortal night.”

Gene went on reading–we looked fondly awhile at the way his prognathic jaw stuck up, his hawk nose came down, almost suffocating his ecstatic mouth with its thin round of breath whistling thru it–Gene sure got high on a good magazine story. “Ain’t nothin I like better, podner, than to wrap mah entrails round a good mess of heapin vittlin Star Western or Pete Coyote westerns or The Shadow when dark he come peramgulatin his long soral laff in the Vault of the Bank shade, yes—”(at times Gene, to imitate prose of pulp magazines, began to sound like W.C. Fields). This is what he had said to me the day he led me down to the brown gloom of his father’s drear house cellar and we found
Shadows
and
Thrilling Detectives
and
Argosies
lying around in cobweb bins. “Edify ye mind, me bye,” says Gene, remembering lines from some
Argosy
sea-story.

On go the Shadow Sax and I, to blacker things in the night beyond– We skirt the Paquin house, glide swiftly without transparency but vaguely and without sound along the fence across the street, at the Boongo house, go on under immense roars of the huge tree above (still buzzing with its insect selves over the flood excitement), and pause, only for a moment, to look at and give homage to my house … the lights of which, on Saturday night, were now tragically dark, I knew there was something wrong. There is
nothing worse than the great weeping face of houses, a family house, in the mid night.

“FEAR NOT THE GREEN LOSS
—every twig in your cerebular tree is aching to return to you
now.
No particular loss is there in the use of the loss–by same token no gain by use of gain, habit gain, habit loss–all and every moment is yearning to stay grown to you even as the peerade passes it–you’ll take up your place in the hierarchal racks of vegetabalized heaven with a garland of carrots in your hair and still you won’t know you ever suffered such sweet wishes —in your death you’ll know the
death
part of your life. And re-gain all that green, and browns.”

Thus did Doctor Sax me give counsel as we furled on into the darkness past my house–Ah! there’s my mother now, she’s been out shopping at Parent’s, late, has bought extra subsidiary pork chops to go with the roast beef, the baked beans (with molasses), the boiled ham, the French bread–the holiday weekend walnut bowl–the Saturday morning sausage and eggs and
crepes
with Vermont maple syrup–the big boiled stew of Saturday noon lunch–the beans and ham of Saturday night–but now, at this juncture, she realizes Shammy and Pop are going to have a get together in the house and Blanche is coming, also others, old Joe Fortier, so she rushed hastily to Parent’s to buy latenight snack meats (it’s now 9 P.M.)—she hurries, with big festive packages, on solid peasant feet, no wavering,
like the mothers of Mexico hurrying barefoot in the rain with little babies bundled in little balls in their shawls. Sax and I hide back in the Coongo fence shadows to watch her pass–I feel like running and throwing my arms around her– But in the shroud of Sax I am frozen into objective humility and just stand there looking at my mother, just barely a small, shadowish, but more gleeful cackle escapes me– In the street walking beside her I see her Guardian Angel. It is a huge angel, very solemn, slightly hurt, with lowered mouth, but with great shining wings, that drop rich showers of cool flame rolling and merling in the Gershom cobbles– My mother walks right along, any old guardian angel’ll do and she will bless them when her time comes Holy Mother, Blest on High–

“Tis an odd old saying, my boy–in my travels from one jungle to another in the fetid marshes of the South, and my treks in the Plateaus of the Gold North, I’ve had enough occasion to recognize this truth: women own the earth, women own heaven too–it is a tyranny without words– and without swords—”

And there’s Nin, hurrying down Gershom hill from the brights of Satnite Moody and’s calling my mother
“Hey Ma-a-a, attend mue”—
(Hey Ma-a-a, wait for me)—and her cry rings with the cries of a hundred other daughters in the air, the wild scuffledowns of old eve-sun-down go-mammy-by-the-river-blues, the tired trumpet that must blow in the blues of little boys when they hang their head from a curbstone and hear their Maw’s a callin them–the Bloop Moon shining by a jackpine in Pawtucketville.

And my sister joins Ma, and they hurry home, talking
about Sister Teresa at the convent and Blanche and the price of the new stockings in the window and–in f act–

MA
:
J’achetez des beau poids
—(I bought some beautiful peas)—(fishing)—
gard,
(look)—

NIN:
Oooh je veux le plus belle tite robe aujourdhui Ma!—
(Oh I saw the most beautiful little dress today Mai)—
a l’ava des belles boules d’or sur une epaule—
(it had beautiful golden balls on one shoulder)—

MA:
Way–way—des boule (Tor–pi?
(Yay, yay, golden balls, and?)

MRS. BISSONNETTE
(shaking out her mop from her porch):
Ayooo Madame Duluoz–Angy?—ta achetez ton manger tardl
(Ayooo Mrs. Duluoz, you bought your groceries late!) — Heeyah heeyah! (laughing)

MA
:
Oui Madame Bissonnette–fmai faite jouer un tour
(Yes, Mrs. Bissonnette I got played a turn)—(We later lived in Mrs. Bissonnette’s flat, six rooms) (corner Gershom and Hilltop Fairy town Gamier St.)—Doctor Sax

and I crept on thru the buzzing arletarian tenement night, hearing a thousand voices, a thousand greetings and comments in the March night air–the roll of bowling balls from the alley, there’s my father in the door, talking to Zagg the Pawtucketville own drunk who looked exactly like Hugh Herbert and staggered around saying “Woo Woo!” because he knew it, but was really drunk– There’s Zagg with a mashed cigar in his face protesting with my father about how he won the high score, he bowled 143 and won the high score prize, where was the prize, and my father’s smiling and saying “I know Zagg, goddamit, I know you bowled 143—1 seen it in
every strike you threw down the gutter–I seen it on that Japanese scoresheet you wrote–ha ha ha hal (cough, cough)—Zagg, it’s aw-right, won’t hold against you” and above, in the screen window of the top floor of the Club, old Joe Fortier, Joe’s pop, who’s been playing pool with Senator Jack the Bullshitter, looks down at Emil and Zagg in the yard and yells “Fer crissakes what are you two fuckin bums doin down there! Emil,
poigne le par Tfond d’culotte pis leuve le ici, on va yarrachez la bouteille …
(Emil, grab him by the asspants and lift him here, well take his bottle) … Zagg
vieux chian culotte va’t’couchezW”
(Zagg, you old shittypants, go to bed!)—In Blezan’s store twelve guys are massed at the pinball machine, tilting it-some are scanning thru the
Shadows
and
Operator Fives
and
Masked Detectives
and
Weird Tales—(Weird Tales
were such a wig, there weremoss invasions of the earth, lava rivers of moss were coming to engulf us). The Shadow Sax and I are hard against the alley wall between LeNoire’s and Blezan’s, watching, listening, a thousand ululating distractions in the living human night. In Parent’s across Moody interior glimpses of big Mr. Parent himself wielding his butcher knife at the hock counter, the log choppery, fwap, Mr. Parent with his great benign and rosy face, saying, and smiling, “Owt,
Madame Chevalier, c’est un bon morceau d’boeuf”—
(Yes, Mrs. Chevaher, it’s a good piece of beef). The hanging sausages and joy of the golden inside on Saturday night–I remembered cold, whipping October nights with lamp lights waving and leaves flying, the corner of Moody and Gershom, Parent’s casting its material gold glow across the sidewalk with its
few forlorn packing cases in front–and suddenly you see a little kid is sitting on one of them, eating an Oh Henry and a Powerhouse.