Lonesome Traveler (10 page)

THE SWEETNESS OF THE FIELDS unspeakable—the names themselves bloody edible like Lick Coy
ote Perry Madrone Morgan Hill San Martin Rucker Gilroy o sleepy Gilroy Carnadero Corporal Sargent Chittenden Logan Aromas and Watsonville Junction with the Pajaro River passing thru it and we of the railroad pass over its wooded dry Indian draws at somewhere outside Chittenden where one morning all dew pink I saw a little bird sitting on a piece of stanchion straight up wood in the wild tangle, and it was the Bird of Chittenden, and the meaning of morning.— Sweet enough the fields outside San Jose like at say Lawrence and Sunnyvale and where they have vast harvest and fields with the bentback sad mexicano laborioring in his primavery.— But once past San Jose somehow the whole California opens ever further, at sunset at Perry or Madrone it is like a dream, you see the little rickety farmhouse, the fields, the rows of green planted fruit, and beyond the green pale mist of hills and over that the red aureoles of pacific sunfall and in the silence the bark of a duog and that fine California night dew already rising ere maw's done wiped the hamburg juice off the frying pan and later on tonite beautiful little Carmelita O' Jose will be gomezing along the road with her brown breasts inside cashmere sweater bouncing ever so slightly even with maidenform bra and her brown feet in thonged sandals also brown, and her dark eyes with pools in em of you wonder what mad meaning, and her arms like arms of handmaidens in the Plutonian bible—and ladles for her arms, in the form of trees, with juice, take a peach, take the fulsome orange, bit a hole in in, take the orange throw your head back use all your strength and drink and squeeze out the orange thru the hole, all the juice runs down your lip and on her arms.— She has dust on her toes, and toe nail polish—she has a tiny brown waist, a little soft chin, soft neck like swan,
little
voice, little femi-
mmty
and doesn't know it—her little voice is little
tinkled.— Along comes the tired field hand Jose Camero and he see her in the vast sun red in the fruit field moving queen majesty to the well, the tower, he runs for her, the railroad crashes by he pays no attention standing on the engine student brakeman J. L. Kerouac and old hoghead W. H. Sears 12 years in California since leaving the packed Oklahoma dust farms, his fathered in a broken down okie truck ordered departures from there, for the first nonces they were and tried to be cottonpickers and were mighty good at it but one day somebody told Sears to try railroading which he did and then he was now after several years a young fireman, an engineer—the beautify of the salvation fields of California making no difference to the stone of his eye as with glove framed throttle hand he guides the black beast down the star rail.— Switches rush up and melt into the rail, sidings part from it like lips, return like lover arms.— My mind is on the brown knees of Carmelity, the dark spltot between her thighs where creation hides its majesty and all the boys with eager head do rush suffering and want the whole the hole the works the hair the seekme membrane the lovey sucky ducky workjohn, the equalled you, she never able and down goes the sun and it's dark and they're layin in a grape row, nobody can see, or hear, only the dog hears OOO slowly against the dust of that railroad earth he presses her little behind down to form a little depression in the earth from the force and weight of his tears slowly lunging her downthru and into the portals of her sweetness, and slowly the blood pounds in his indian head and comes to a rise and she softly pants with parted brownly lips and with little pear teeth showing and sticking out just far and just so gently almost biting, burning in the burn of his own, lips—he drives and thrives to pound, the grain, the grape nod in unison, the wine is springing from the
noggin of the ground, bottles will roll on 3rd Street to the sands of Santa Barbara, he's making it with the wouldyou seek it then would and wouldn't you if you too could—the sweet flesh intermingling, the flowing blood wine dry husk leaf bepiled earth with the hard iron passages going oer, the engine's saying K RRRR OOO AAAWWOOOO and the crossing it's ye famous Krrot Krroot Krroo ooooaaaawwww Kroot—2 short one long, one short, ‘sa thing I got to learn as one time the hoghead was busy telling a joke in the fireman's ear and we were coming to a crossing and he yelled at me “Go ahead go ahead” and made a pull sign with his hand and I lookied up and grabbed the string and looked out, big engineer, saw the crossing racing up and girls in sandals and tight ass dresses waiting at the flashby RR crossing boards of Carnadero and I let it to, two short pulls, one long, one short, Krroo Krroo Krrrooooa Krut.—So now it's purple in the sky, the whole rim America falling spilling over the west mountains into the eternal and orient sea, and there's your sad field and lovers twined and the wine is in the earth already and in Watsonville up ahead at the end of my grimy run among a million others sits a bottle of tokay wine which I am going to buy to put some of that earth back in my belly after all this shudder of ferrous knock klock against my soft flesh and bone exultation—in other words, when work's done, I'm gonna have a drink of wine, and rest.—The Gilroy Subdivision this is.

THE FIRST RUN I EVER MADE on the Gilroy Subdivision, that night dark and clean, standing by the engine with my lamp and lootbag waiting for the big men to make up their minds here comes this young kid out of the dark, no railroad man but obviously a bummer but on the bum from college or
good family or if not with cleanteeth smile and no broken down datebag river Jack from the bottoms of the world night—said, “This thing going to L.A.?”—“Well it's going about part of the way to there, about 50 miles to Watsonville then if you stick on it they might route you down to San Luis Obispo too and that's about halfway to L.A.”—“Ba what d'l care about halfway to L.A. I want to go all the way to L.A.—what are you a railroad brakebanana?” “Yeah, I'm a student”—“What's a student”—“Well it's a guy learning and getting, well I aint getting paid” (this being my student chain gang run all the way down)—“Ah well I dont like going up and down the same rail, if you ask me goin to sea is the real life, now that's where I'm headed or hitch hike to New York, either way, I wouldnt want to be a railroad man.”—“What you talkin about man it's great and you're moving all the time and you make a lot of money and no body bothers you out there.”—“Neverthefuckingless you keep going up and down the same rail dont you for krissakes?” so I told him what how and where boxcar to get on, “Krissakes dont hurt yourself always remember when you try to go around proving you're a big adventurer of the American night and wanta you hop freights like Joel McCrea heroes of old movies Jesus you dumb son a bitch hang on angel with your tightest hand and dont let your feet drag under that iron round-wheel it'll have less regard for the bone of your leg than it has for this toothpick in my mouty” “Ah you shitt you shit you think I'm afraid of a goddamn railroad train I'm going off to join the goddam navy and be on carriers and there's your iron for you I'll land my airplane half on iron half on water and crashbang and jet to the moon too.” “Good luck to you guy, dont fall off hang tight grip wrists dont fuck up and tout and when you gets to L.A. give my regards to Lana Tur
ner.”—The train was starting to leave and the kid had disappeared up the long black bed and snakeline redcars—I jumped up on the engine with the regular head man who was going to show me how the run runs, and the fireman, and hoghead.— Off we chugged, over the crossing, over to the Del Monte curve and where the head man showed me how you hang on with one hand and lean out and crook your arm and grab the train orders off the string—then out to Lick, the night, the stars.— Never will forget, the fireman wore a black leather jacket and a white skidrow San Frisco seaman Embarcadero cap, with visor, in the ink of this night he looked exactly like a revolutionary Bridges Curran Bryson hero of old waterfront smosh flops, I could see him with meaty hand waving a club in forgotten union publications rotting in gutters of backalley bars, I could see him with hands deep in pocket going angrily thru the uneccentric unworking-bums of 3rd Street to his rendezvous with the fate of the fish at the waterfront gold blue pier edge where boys sit of afternoons dreaming under clouds on bits of piers with the slap of skeely love waters at their feet, white masts of ships, orange masts of ships with black hulls and all your orient trade pouring in under the Golden Gate, this guy I tell you was like a sea dog not a railroad firemen yet there he sat with his snow white cap in the grimeblack night and rode that fireman's seat like a jockey, chug and we were really racing, they were opening her up wanted to make good time to get past Gilroy before any orders would fuck them up, so across the onlitt tintight and with our big pot 3500 style engine headlights throwing its feverish big lick tongue over the wurrling and incurling and outflying track we go swinging and roaring and flying down that line like fucking madmen and the fireman doesnt exactly hold on to his white hat but he has hand on fire throttle and
keeps close eye on valves and tags and steam bubblers and outside looks on the rail and the wind blows his nose back but ee god he bouncing on that seat exactly like a jocket riding a wild horse, why we had a hog-head that night which was my first night so wild he had the throttle opened fullblack and kept yanking at it with one heel against the iron scum of the floor trying to open her up further and if possible tear the locomotive apart to get more out of her and leave the track and fly up in the night over the prune fields, what a magnificent opening night it was for me to ride a fast run like that with a bunch of speed demons and that magnificent fireman with his unpredestined impossible unprecedentable hat white in the black black railroad.— And all the time and the conversations they have, and the visions in his hat I saw of the public hair restaurant on Howard, how I saw that Frisco California white and gray of rain fogs and the back alleys of bottles, breens, derbies, mustachios of beer, oysters, flying seals, crossing hills, bleak bay windows, eye diddle for old churches with handouts for seadogs barkling and snurling in avenues of lost opportunity time, ah—loved it all, and the first night the finest night, the blood, “railroading gets in yr blood” the old hoghead is yelling at me as he bounces up and down in his seat and the wind blows his striped cap visor back and the engine like a huge beast is lurching side to side 70 miles per hour breaking all rulebook rules, zomm, zomm, were crashing through the night and out there Carmelity is coming, Jose is making her electricities mix and interrun with his and the whole earth charged with juices turns up the organo to the flower, the unfoldment, the stars bend to it, the whole world's coming as the big engine booms and balls by with the madmen of the white cap California in there flossing and wow there's just no end to all this wine —

HAVE YOU SEEN A GREAT FREIGHTER slide by in the bay on a dreamy afternoon and as you stretch your eyes along the iron serpentine length in search of people, seamen, ghosts who must be operating this dreaming vessel so softly parting harbor waters off its steel-shin bow with snout pointed to the Four Winds of the World you see nothing, no one, not a soul?

And there it goes in broad daylight, dismal sad hulk faintly throbbing, incomprehensibly jingling and jangling in the engine room, chuffing, gently churning at the rear the buried giant waterscrew onward working out to sea, eternity, stars of the mad mate's sexton at rosy Manzanillan night fall offcoast of the sad surf world—to skeels of other fisher's bays, mysteries, opium nights in the porthole kingdoms, narrow main drags of the Kurd.— Suddenly my God you realize you've been looking at some motionless white specks
on the deck, between decks in the house section, and there they are… the motley messmen in white jackets, they've been leaning all the time motionless like fixed parts of the ship at the galley alleyway hatch.— It's after dinner, the rest of the crew's well fed and fast asleep in fitful bunks of nap—themselves such still watchers of the world as they slide out to Time no watcher of the ship can avoid being fooled and scrutinized long before he sees they're human, they're the only living thing in sight.— Mohammedan Chicos, hideous little Slavs of the sea peering out from witless messcoats—Negroes with cook hats to crown the shiny tortured forehead black—by garbage cans of eternity the Latin fellaheen repose and drowse of lullish noon.—And O the lost insane gulls yowking, falling around in a gray and restless shroud at the moving poop—O the wake slowly roiling in the churn of the wild propeller that from the engine room on a shaft is being wound and wound by combustions and pressures and irritable labors of Germanic Chief Engineers and Greek Wipers with sweat bandanas and only the Bridge can point this restless energy to some Port of Reason across vast lonesome incredible seas of madness.— Who's on the forepeak? Who's on the afterdeck? Who's on the flying bridge, mate?—not a loving soul.— Old bateau negotiates our sleepy retired bay and heads for the Narrows the mouths of Neptune Osh thinning smalling as we watch—past beacon—past point of land—bleak, grimy, gray thin veil of drowsiness flups from the stack, sends heat waves to heaven—flags on shrouds wake up to the first sea wind. We can hardly make out the name of the ship painted mournfully on the bow and on a board along the topdeck bulwark.

Soon the first long waves'll make this ship a swelling sea snake, foam will be pressed unfurling at the solemn mouth.— Where the messboys we saw lean
ing on that homey afterdishes rail, in sun? They'll have gone in by now, closed the shutters on the long jail time of sail at sea time, iron'll be clamped bong and flat dull as wood on the drunken hopes of Port, the fevered raving gladnesses of the Embarcadero night first ten drinks white hats bobbing in a brown pocked bar all blue Frisco wild with seamen people trolleys restaurants hills night is now just the sloping whitehill town behind your Golden Gate bridge, out we go.—