Atop an Underwood (13 page)

In the morning, I would awake and go out into the yard, where a cool deep pailful of cold water would stand beside the well. Into this I would thrust my head, following that with a vigorous application of a big towel. Then I would go about chopping wood for the fire, after which I would go back into the shack and prepare breakfast: And, gentlemen, when I say breakfast, I definitely do not mean bacon and eggs and coffee and the New York Times . . . . no, I would have the following: A plate of steaming, sauced beans; some toast plastered with melting butter; three cups of strong, strong coffee; and for dessert, a huge foaming glass of milk and a piece of apple pie—all this to the casual perusal of some Homer, or some Shakespeare, or some Wolfe.

Following this hearty breakfast, I would not pick up my guns and head out with the dogs . . . No gentlemen no! I cannot and will not kill animals. I would merely pick up a heavy staff and head out for a long walk with the dogs. In the afternoon I would study or write, or if I were tired of my loneliness, I would drive down to the airport nearby and fly to Los Angeles for a night at the Trocadero with the fashionable and lovely people of the time. But let me tell you that most of the time I would just sit outside of my shack and do things, build things with my hands, perhaps whittle sticks, or perhaps draw paintings, or perhaps describe the scene with pen, or read; or perhaps go in for a snifter of scotch and soda, or perhaps play my radio or phonograph or perhaps sleep underneath my big tree near the well.

In the evening, with the mountains steeped in absolute silence and blackness, I would make my fire roar and would sit before it smoking, my hands on the two dogs' noble and loyal heads, dreaming away the rest of my days.

One Sunday afternoon in July, I heard the music of a violin coming over the radio in the kitchen. At the time, I was sitting in my room staring at a window shade. The song was “To a Wild Rose,” and the moment I heard it, I knew where I was:

I was standing on the corner of 44th Street and Broadway in New York on a Saturday afternoon, I should say, in the Spring. I was standing near the curb, and everybody was rushing past me, their eyes glued on themselves and not on life. My eyes were glued on life, at that particular moment, because an old man with white hair was standing on the sidewalk playing an old violin. It was “To a Wild Rose.” When he finished that, he played Brahms' “Cradle Song.” When he had finished that, he started again on “To a Wild Rose,” perhaps because those were the only songs he knew, or perhaps the fact that he was blind and would never see a wild rose again accounted for it. At any rate, he played “To a Wild Rose,” actually and literally.

My eyes were glued on life.

And they were full of tears.

I read something by Tess Slesinger, Albert Halper, and James T. Farrell these past few hours. I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man “with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact,” not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why. Out of this strange disease that made my brain reel with hope, and then despair, I thought I had something that would make me an original writer—something apart from the Saturday Evening Post stories and the clever New Yorker stories. But I find myself the brethren of many other poets—and I must confess, what is my next move?

That, I believe, will work itself out in the same inextricably complicated and minute manner of Life itself.

Some of these poets?: Halper, Farrell, Slesinger, Thomas Wolfe the King, Saroyan, Marcus Goodrich, Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Whitman, Faulkner, and a million others including Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Hardy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gide, Sandburg, and Kerouac. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

The nice thing about Hollywood is its personalities, each one of which we can study at our own leisure and privacy in the movie houses: we sit there in the dark, while they cavort in the light of the silver screen—and we have ample opportunities to draw conclusions on them and perhaps dream up stories around them. I would like to write a story about a guy like Gary Cooper, and also Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Joel McRea, Tyrone Power (he would be a dark brooding Romanoff), George Brent, Victor Mature, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, and as for the women there are so many that I can't name them, but preferably Margaret Sullavan, Kay Francis, Garbo (all these have husky voices) and Hedy Lamarr, etc.

[This story is an attempt to bring to the readers the true meaning of slavery for others, in its most despised form. A man cannot impart the true feeling of things to others unless he himself has experienced what he is trying to tell of. I have experienced a day in a cookie factory, and in this story, I shall do my damnedest to show to the readers what it is like to do such a day's work, what a man thinks about in so doing, and what his conclusions should be if he has an ounce of brains.

Though this story may be brushed off as a piece of Communistic pamphleteering against the capitalists, I should like anyone inclined to do so to reflect for a moment. This story, I admit, and am proud to admit, is against the Capitalists. But it is also against the Communists. It is against any form of slavery, the Shavian concept of slavery. In a Communistic state, there can be slavery. The slavery of the masses . . . . better wages, shorter hours, more justified and more pleasant slavery—but still slavery.—Jack Kerouac, The Zagguth, The Zagg]

 

 

Did you ever stand on a street corner in America at five o'clock in the morning?

I did.

The sun wasn't even up yet, and the street was grey with the last sallow vestiges of brooding, disappearing night. I was standing on the corner smoking a cigarette. My eyes were still heavy, and in the cold morning air, my legs seemed to quiver with unnatural weakness.

I wasn't standing on this street corner in America at five o'clock in the morning because I wanted to see what it was like. No, I was waiting to be picked up by a car which was to take me to work in a factory. It was to be my first day of work in this factory, and for that matter, the first day of work in my whole life.

And there I was, standing on that corner and shivering inside my leather jacket. And in the East, the sun was just poking its top over the trees. There was vapor coming from my mouth, even though it was June. But an early morning in New England, Northeasternmost part of America, is pretty chilly, even in June.

While waiting, I lit up another cigarette.

Holy suffering cows, I say to myself, I wish I could have stayed in bed. Why did I ever get myself into this!

The street begins to assume a gilded glow, as the sun rises above the trees. The delicate little pipe of the birds rings through the dewy air. You feel immediately the hope of a new day, even though you are headed for a factory.

Across the street walks a mill-worker. He has been doing this for years, I say to myself, while this is only my first day. Look at him. He is middle-aged, and his face is resolute and tired in the early morning mists. He carries the lunchbox under his arm and trudges onward. He is on his way to the mill for another day of roaring heat. He is not afraid. He has been told that man's natural duty is work. So he is not afraid, and hasn't been for fifteen years. But has he ever been uncertain? He turns around the corner and disappears from my gaze.

His natural habitat, after fifteen years, is the mill. It is too late.

The car arrives, and I jump in, slamming the door after me. The driver is a friend of mine. His eyes are puffed from the early hour, and he smokes a cigarette nervously as he wheels the car through the empty streets.

Empty streets!

Gentlemen, I retract that statement!

Going up the main street, we skirt a stream of people—at five o'clock in the morning—all heading for the maw of the mills. The Maw! Young girls, tired mothers, old men, kids fresh from High School who should be reading Tolstoi or Whitman. All of them are walking to the mill, and there now! The mill-whistle shrieks across the slumbering rooftops of the city, beckoning the millworkers with a tinge of irascibility, and with just enough smug tyranny to make my blood boil.

Yes, my blood boil.

For years, at five o'clock in the morning, my blood had always been peacefully coursing through my slumbering body. But on this morning, riding up the street and seeing the faces of those poor people of my own beloved city, my blood boiled for them.

And, gentlemen, my blood shall always boil for them . . . even though it may be too late for all of them.

Leo wheels the car into the driveway of our factory.

How the hell, he tells me, did you ever manage to get up at 4:30?

I laugh.

I did it for the sake of science, I tell him.

We enter the factory. We leave the morning coolness and are suddenly hit full in the face by an unbearable, stuffy heat. This is a cracker factory—cookies, etc. The heat is saccharine, cloying, sweet. It is hot and specked with flour. The place vibrates madly with the machine lust of mighty motors.

Holy Hell, I say to myself.

We put on our white ducks and sweatshirts, in the locker rooms, and light up a cigarette.

Leo says: You'll get used to the smell in here after a while. I don't smell anything myself after two years.

I take a drag on the cigarette and say: Well, I won't mind the smell. It's pretty nice.

I look around. The other employees are seated about, smoking and listening to the little radio that is propped up on a shelf. The announcer is telling us about a big German drive into vast, mysterious, Asiatic Russia.

Napoleon—Borodino—Burnt Moscow: These words flash in my mind, but I'm not very aware of them. The thing at hand is this factory in America, for $20 a week. It is my first day.

There is a whistle. They all get up and go to work.

I walk toward my machine, and note its mad tangle of belts and screws and wheels and cranks and shafts and brakes and iron plates. There is a huge tubful of sticky substance waiting beside this machine.

Shovel this dough, says the foreman, like this.

He digs into the thick paste with a shovel, forming a square. He picks up this 70-pound lump of substance and puts it onto an apron on the machine. He spreads out this substance with his hands till it is now in small lumps, ready to go through the rollers and emerge on the other side a neatly cut ribbon of hot, steaming dough. With curiosity, I follow the machine and see what happens to the ribbon. It is a wide ribbon, and it reached a part of the machine where it is punctured by a down-coming cutter, forming small cookie shapes. The residue goes back above the machine, returning to my apron. The little ovals continue along the machine into the terrific heat of a long oven. I imagine that it emerged at the other end of the factory a full-fledged cookie, where it was ready to be packed into boxes by a host of young ladies who should be home planting the beans in the garden.