Doctor Sax (6 page)

Mrs. Hampshire, Dick’s mother, said to me gravely in the eye, “Jack, are
you
the Black Thief?”

“Yes, Mrs. Hampshire,” I replied immediately, hypnotized by the same mystery that once made her say, when I asked her if Dicky was at home or at the show, in a dull, flat, tranced voice as if she was speaking to a Spiritualist, “Dicky … is … gone … far … away …”

“Then bring back Dicky’s things and tell him you’re sorry.” Which I did, and Dicky was wiping his red wet eyes with a handkerchief.

“What foolish power had I discovered and been possessed by?” I asts meself … and not much later my mother and sister came impatiently marching down the street to fetch me from the Ladeau bushes because they were look
ing for the beach cape, a beach party was up. My mother said exasperated:

‘I’m going to stop you from reading them damned Thrilling Magazines if it’s the last thing I do (
Tu va arretez d’lire ca ste mautadite affaire de fou la, tu m’attend tu?)”—

The Black Thief note I printed, by hand, in ink, thickly, on beautiful scraps of glazed paper I got from my father’s printing shop– The paper was sinister, rich, might have scared Dicky–

“I AM TOO FEEBLE TO GO ON,”
says the Wizard in the Castle bending over his papers at night.

“Faustus!” cries his wife from the bath, “what are you doing up so late! Stop fiddling with your desk papers and pen quills in the middle of the night, come to bed, the mist is on the air of night lamps, a dewll come to rest your fevered brow at morning,—you’ll lie swaddled in sweet sleep like a lambikin—l’ll hold you in my old snow-white arms–and all you do’s sit there dreaming—”

“Of Snakes! of Snakes!” answers the Master of Earthly Evil–sneering at his own wife: he has a beak nose and movable jaw-bird beak and front teeth missing and something indefinably young in bone structure but imponderably old in the eyes–horrible old bitch face of a martinet with books, cardinals and gnomes at his spidery behest.

“Would I’d never seen your old fink face and married
you–to sit around in bleak castles all my life, for varmints in the dirt!”

“Flap up you old sot and drink your stinking brandignac and conyoles, fit me an idea for chat, drive me not mad with your fawter toddle in a gloom . . . you with your pendant flesh combs and bawd spots–picking your powderies in a nair–flam off, frish frowse, I want peace to Scholarize my Snakes–let me Baroque be.”

By this time the old lady’s asleep… Wizard Faustus hurries in his wrinkly feet to a meet with Count Condu and the Cardinals in the Cave Room … his footsteps clang along an iron underhall–There stands a gnome with a pass key, a little glucky monster with web feet or some such —heavy rags wrapped around each foot and around the head almost blinding the eyes, a weird crew, their leader sported a Moro saber and had a thin little neck you’d expect from a shrunk head… The Wizard comes to the Parapet to contemplate.

He looks down into the Pit of Night.

He hears the Snake Sigh and Inch.

He moves his hand three times and backs, he waves a bow with his wrists, and walks down the long sand hill of a grisly part of the Castle with shit in the sand and old boards and moisture down the mossy ratty granite walls of an old dongeon–where gnome children masturbated and wrote obscenities with whitewash brushes like advertisements of Presidents in Mexico.

The Wizard, with a loll of his sensual tongue, dislodges a piece of meat from his front teeth, deep in folded-arm meditation at the head of the gutted bird.

He still bears the horrible marks of his strangulation and occupation by the Devil in the 13th century:—a high collar in the old Inquisition style he wears to partially conceal signs of ravages by Satan in the long ago–an ugly twist–

IN THAT ORIGINAL DREAM
of the wrinkly tar corner and the doorway of g.j., lousy, Vinny, scotty and me (Dicky was never in this gang) (moved to Highlands) there stands across Riverside Street the great iron picket fence of Textile running around the entire grounds connected by brick posts with the year of a Class on it, fast losing posts to space and time, and great shrub trees rising clear around the football and track field part of it–huge footballs transpired in bronze autumns in the field, crowds gathered at the fence to peek through the shrubs, others in the grandstand planks of pipe shrill keen afternoons of ruddy football in fog-bloom pinks of fantastic dusk–

But at night the waving trees made a swish of black ghosts flaming on all sides in a fire of black arms and sinuosities in the gloom–million moving deeps of leaf night–It’s a fear to walk along it (on Riverside, no sidewalk, just leaves on ground at roadside) (pumpkins in the dew of Halloween hint, voting time in the empty classroom of November afternoon)- In that field … Textile let us play in it, one time a friend of mine masturbated in a bottle in the back field and strung it out with jerks of the jar into the air, I scaled a rock at the Textile windows, Joe Fortier
slingshot twenty out of existence, tremendous ingratitude to the authorities of the school, at supper summer dusk we rushed out for games of scrub and sometimes double play right on the diamond . . . high grass waved in the redness, Lousy piped from third base, flung me the double play ball, I pivoted on a hinch and flung around back to first with a hitch and dip of my shoulders and a whomp into first high hard straight,—Scotty at short on the next tap scoops up his grasscutter with a motion as still as an Indian about to shit, holds the ball gravely in his meat hand before I know it and is flipping me a softie over the keystone which I have to come in charging synchronized with the Scotty ball a foot off ground, which I do with meat hand and still running (and with passing foot-tap at sack) flick under my left side with all my might to join the firstbaseman’s mitt with my straightline loop of reasoning hurl–which he (G.J., eyes semiclosed, cussin, “That fuckin Jack sinks me on purpose with his dusters”) scoops mid of earth with a flop of his long leftleg and his other bent in for stretch, a pretty play highlighted by Scotty’s calm and his understanding that I would appreciate a
place
on second soft and loopy-

Then we–I invented–I took apart the old Victrola we had, just lifted motor out, intact, and pasted paper around turntable, measured “seconds” and theoretical time-laws of my own related to “seconds” and took it outside to the park, crank and all, to time the athletes of my track meet: G.J., Lousy, Scotty, Vinny, Dicky, even old Iddiboy Bisson-nette who’d sometimes join our play with grave seriousness and iddyboy joy (“Hey Iddiboy!”)— others–semiseriously grunting out 30-yard dashes to see their “time” (which I
had as close to 4 seconds and 3.9 seconds as possible) and to amuse, or cater, to me–to mollify me, I was always giving orders and called the ‘big punk’ by both Billy Artaud (who is now a loudmouth union leader) and Dicky Hampshire (dead on Bataan)— Dicky wrote “Jack is a big punk” in chalk on the boardfence of a French Canadian Salem street alley as we walked home for noon recess from Bartlett Junior High–

A school which has since burned down–rich trees–on Wannalancitt Street, name of a King–an Indian chief– Pawtucket Boulevard, name of a brave nation– The tragic ice house that burned down also and me and Jean Four-chette offered to help the firemen, we moved hoses, we had walked all the way from Dracut in pyro-maniacal excitement, drooling, “Gee I bet it a good fire, hoh?”
(“Boy mon boy, m’a vaw dire, c’est un bon feu, ce feu la, tu va woir, oui, mautadit, moo hoo hoo ha ha ha
”)—he had a maniac laugh, he was an idiot, underdeveloped mentality, sweet and kind, tremendously dirty, saintly, goofly, hardworking, willing, did chores I guess, a monster idiot Frenchman from the woods– He used to watch those Textile games on Saturday October afternoons through the trees —”moo hoo hoo ha ha, boy mon boy, he sure smear that guy, moo hee hee hee–hoh?”—

I had so (finally) perfected my timing-clock we grew more–we held great gloomy track meets in Textile field at sunset with the last event after dark–a regular cinder racetrack circled the field– I see G. J.—I’m on the sidelines timing him–he’s running the Five Lap “Mile”—I see his tragic white shirttails bobbing in the flapshroud of 9’o clock at
summernight far across Textile field somewhere in the shadows of the orange brick castle of its halls and laboratories (with broken windows from Textile homeruns)—G.J. is lost in Eternity, when he rounds (when he flaps on straining in his heartbreaking void trying to catch time with feeble tired boy legs hell—) I-Ah G.J., he’s rounding the last turn, we hear him huffing horribly in the dark, he’ll die at the tape, the winds of evening ripple hugely through the shrub trees of the Textile fence and on out over the dump, the river and the summer houses of Lowell–the streets of flashing shadows, the streetlamps–the halls of Textile half-cut in a huge stab of Moody Street light through traceries and mockeries of star and shadow and twining limb, comes clover from Pawtucketville scenting, the Cow Field dusts of ballgames have settled down for the Pawtucketville summernight love of huddled standers– and fallers–G.J. comes twapping down the cinders, his time is miserably slow, he’s done all that running for nothing-

He gets sore and sick of my machine– He and Lousy start wrestling— (Meanwhile little George Bouen has started off on his 5 Flap Mile and I started machine and directed takeoff but now I turn from my duties as track official and inventor and leader of commands and puffings) —in this sorrowful huge summer dark with its millionfold stars milking up the pit of night so steep and inky deep with dew– Somewhere in Lowell at this moment my father, big fat Pop, is driving his old Plymouth home from work or an afternoon at Suffolk Downs or in the Jockey Club at Daumier’s–my sister, with a tennis racket, is 1935
in the swisheries of tree-haunted courts when tennis is over and the tennis ghosts pad whitefoot to the home, by water fountains and waterfalls of foliage– The Huge Trees of Lowell lament the July evening in a song begins in meadow apple lands up above Bridge Street, the Bunker Hill farms and cottages of Centralville–to the sweet night that flows along the Concord in South Lowell where railroads cry the roundroll–to the massive lake like archeries and calms of the Boulevard lover lanes of cars, nightslap, and fried clams and Pete’s and Glennie’s ice cream–to the pines of Farmer Ubrecht Dracut way, to the last craw call crow in the Pine Brook heights, the flooded wilds and Swamps and swims of Mill Pond, the little bridge of Rosemont fording a Waterloo mouth of her backwood Brook in eve remnant mists–highway lights are flashing, I hear a song from a passing radio, the crunch of gravel in the road, hot tar stars, apples to pop signs with crabapples for posts– In the gloom of all Lowell I rush up to wrestle with G.J. and Lousy–finally I have Lousy on my shoulder like a sack, whirling him–he gets tremendously mad, never get Lousy mad, remember the balls, hanging helplessly in my grip upsidedown he bites my ass and I drop him like a hot worm— “Fucking Lousy bit Jack’s ass, did he bite his ass!” (sadly)—’lie bit his ass–did he
bite
!”—as we laugh and wrangle, here comes Georgie Bouen finishing his mile, unknown, ungreeted at the tape, comes puffing to the finish line in solitary glooms of destiny and death (we never saw him again) as ghosts wrestle–goof—laugh–all mystery Huge dripping on our heads in the Antiquity of the Universe which has a giant radar machine haunting its flying
cloud brown night spaces of dull silence in the Hum and Dynamo of the Tropic–though then my dream of the Universe was not so “accurate,” so modem–it was all black and Saxish–

Tragedies of darkness hid in the shadows all around Textile–the waving hedges hid a ghost, a past, a future, a shuddering spirit specter full of anxious blackish sinuous twiny night torture–the giant orangebrick smokestack rose to the stars, a little black smoke came out–below, a million tittering twit leaves and jumping shadows–I have such a hopeless dream of walking or being there at night, nothing happens, I just pass,
everything is unbearably over with
(I stole a football helmet from Textile field once, with G.J., the tragedy is in the haunt and guilt of Textile field) (where also someone hit me in the brow with a rock)—

In the fall my sister would come see me play football with the gang, sock, crash bang, tackle,—I’d spin touchdowns for her, for her cheers–this was behind the grandstand as the Textile team scrimmaged with Coach Rusty Yarvell–great iron reds in the sky, falling leaves flying, whistles–raw scuffed cold horn chapped sidehands–

But at night, and in summer, or in an April windy rain wetly waving, this field, these trees, that terror of pickets and brickposts,—the brooding silence–the density of the Pawtucketville night, the madness of the dream,—the race being concluded in a vat gloom, there is evil in the flashing green round of brown night– Doctor Sax was everywhere in this–his glee supported us and made us run and jump and grab leaves and roll in the grass when we went home– Doctor Sax gets into the blood of children by his cape …
his laughter is hidden in the black hoods of the darkness where you can suck him up with air, the glee of night in kids is a message from the dark, there is a telepathic shadow in this void bowl slant.

I SLEPT AT JOE FORTTER’s
—many’s the time I could feel the goose pimples of his cold legs or the leather of his tar black heel, as we lay in dank barns and attics of his various homes in the Doctor Sax midnights of ghost stories and strange sounds–

I first met Joe when he lived on Bunker Hill Street a stone’s throw practically from West Sixth and Boisvert where the brown bathrobe warmed me in the sky at my mother’s neck– His mother and my mother worked side by side at the great St. Louis Paroisse bazaar–together they once visited the stone mansion castle on the Lakeview hill near Lupine Road that is symmetrical to Snake Hill Castle (and among the serried black pines of whose slope-grounds Gerard had slid in snows of my infancy, I remember I was afraid he’d hit a pine tree)— His mother and mine went in the “Castle” to see about some church affair, they came out saying the place was too spooky for the bazaar–my mother said there were niches of stone in the halls (the old sun must have shone red through hallway dusts on these stone hollows in the Hook, as I was being born across the pines outside)—