Desolation Angels (30 page)

“Because you hate me and think I'm a shit!”

“You're a no good dago from New York, Raphael,” I yell and smile, to indicate “Now we know Raphael's only hurt, stop the argument.”

But crewcutted McLear wont be insulted, or bested in talk anyway and fights back, and says: “Besides none of you know anything about language—except Jack.”

Okay then if I know all about language let's not use it to fight.

Raphael is delivering his invective Demosthenean speech with those little plicks of fingertips in the air, but every now and then he has to smile to realize—and McLear smiles—it's all a misunderstanding based on the secret worries of poets in pants, as distinguished from poets in robes, like Homer who blindly chanted and wasn't interrupted or edited or put down by listeners one and all—Hoodlums at the front of the bar are attracted by the yells and the quality of the conversation, “Potry,” and we almost get in a fight as we leave but I swear to myself “If I have to fight with the cross to defend the cross I'll fight but O I'd rather go away and let it blow over,” which it does, thank God we go off free in the streets—

But then Simon disappoints me by pissing right in the street in full sight of whole blocks of people, to the point where a man comes and says “Why do you do a thing like that?”

“Because I needed a pee,” says Simon—I hurry along with my pack, they follow laughing—In the cafeteria where we go for coffee Raphael instead bursts into a big loud speech to the whole audience and naturally they wont serve us—It's all about poetry and truth but they think it's mad anarchy (and to judge from the looks of us)—Me with my cross, my rucksack—Irwin with his beard—Simon with his crazy look—Anything Raphael does, Simon'll watch with ecstasy—He notices nothing else, the people horrified, “They've got to learn about beauty,” says Simon to himself decisively.

And in the bus Raphael addresses the whole bus, wa, wa, a big speech about politics now, “Vote for Stevenson!” he yells, (for no known reason), “vote for beauty! Vote for truth! Stand up for your rights!”

When we get off, the bus stops, my beer bottles we've drained roll loudly on the floor of the back of the bus, the Negro driver addresses us a speech before opening our door:—“And dont ever drink beer in my bus again … We ordinary people have troubles in this world, and you just add to it,” he says to Raphael, which isnt entirely true except for just now yes, yet no passenger has objected, it's just a show in a bus—

“It's a dead bus going to death!” says Raphael in the street. “And that driver knows it and wont let it change!”

We rush to meet Cody at the station—Poor Cody, casually entering the station bar to make a phonecall, all attired in uniform, is set upon and backslapped and howled by the gang of crazy poets—Cody looks to me as tho to say: “Cant you quiet them down?”

“What can I do?” I say. “Except advise kindness.”

“O kindness be damned!” yells the world. “Let us have
order!
” Once order comes, the orders come—I say “Let us have forgiveness everywhere—try as hard as you can—forgive—forget—Yes, pray on your knees for the power to forgive and forget—then all will be snowy Heaven.”

Cody hates the thought of taking Raphael and the gang on the train—Says to me “At least comb your hair, I'll tell the conductor who you are” (ex-trainman)—So I comb my hair for Cody. For the sense of order. Just as well. I just wanta pass through, Lord, to you—I'd rather be in your arms than the arms of Cleopatra … till the night when those arms are the same.

So we say goodbye to Simon and Irwin, the train pulls south into the darkness—It's actually the first leg of my three-thousand-mile trip to Mexico and I'm leaving San Francisco.

90

Raphael, at Cody's instigation, talks all about truth and beauty to a blonde, who gets off at Millbrae leaving us no address, then he sleeps in his seat—We're chaggling over rails down into the night.

There goes old brakey Cody with his lamp in the dark—He's got a special little lantern used by all conductors and trainmen and switchmen a lot of em use em (that's language, brother), instead of the big cumbersome regular—It fits into the blue coat pocket, but for this move they're making, which I go out on the ground to watch as Raphael sleeps lostchild in the passenger seat (smoke, yards, it's like old dreams of when you're with your father in a railroad train in a big town full of lions)—Cody trots up to the engine and dislocates her air-hoses for her then gives the sign “Go ahead” and they go Dieseling down to the switch pulling the flower car for the morning, Sunday morning—Cody jumps out and throws the switch, in his work I see the furious and believing earnestness of his moves, he wants the men working with him to have complete confidence in him, and that's because he believes in God (God bless him—)—the engineer and fireman watch as his light jiggles in the dark as he's jumping off the front footboard and lighting up to the switch, all on little rocks that turn under your shoes, he unlocks and throws the old mainline switch and in they go to the house (—) track—the track has a special name—which is perfectly logical to all the railroad men, and means nothing to anyone else—but that's their work—and Cody is the Champeen Brakeman on that railroad—I've huddled over the Obispo Bump under boards, I know—The trainmen who are all watching anxiously and staring at their watches will know that Cody wont waste time and foul up the main, he sets out his flower car and that will deliver Bodhisattva to Papa in flowers—his little children will turn over and sigh in their cribs—'Cause Cody comes from the land where they let the children cry—“Passing through!” he says waving his big palm—“Stand aside, apricot tree!”—He comes running back to his footboard and we're off to tie up—I watch, in the cold vaguely fruit-scented night—the stars break your heart, what are they doon there?—Over there is the hill with the bleary lights of sidestreets—

We tie up, Cody rubs and dries his hands in the toilet of the coach and says to me “Boy dont you know that I'm headed for Innisfree! Yessir boy with those horses I'm finally gonna learn to
smile
again. Man I'll just be smilin all the time I'll be so
rich
—You dont believe? Didnt you see what happened the other day?”

“Yeh but that's not important.”

“
What's
not important, mo-ney?” he shows his teeth yelling at me, mad at his brother for bein so Innisfree—

“All right, you'll be a millionaire. Get me no yacht with blondes and champagne, all I want is a shack in the woods. A shack on Desolation Peak.”

“And a chance” tapping me, leaping forward “to play the system with the money I'll send you by Western Union soon's we're ready to expand our business across the country—You cover the New York tracks, I'll stick to the rail here and cover these tracks and we'll set Old Sleepyhead Raphael there a-sailin for them Tropical Park Isles—he can cover Florida—and Irwin New Orleans—”

“And Marlon Brando Santa Anita,” I say—

“And Marl that's right and the whole gang—”

“Simon at Setabustaposk Park in Sardine Russia”

“Semopalae Russia for Lazarus so dear m'boy it's in the bag a dead sure fire headbang
cinch
” whacking his fist, “except I gotta brush the back a my suit, here's the brush, get those specks off the back of me willya?”

And I proudly like an old New Orleans movie porter in old trains, brush his back clean of specks—

“That's fine, me boy,” says Cody, placing the
Racing Form
neatly in the side of his uniform, and now we march on to Sunnyvale—“there's old Sunnyvale out there” says Cody looking out as we clank into a station, and he goes out calling “Sunny-Vale” to the passengers, twice, and some of em yawn and get up—Sunnyvale where Cody and I'd worked together, and the conductor said he talked too much tho Cody did show me how not to get on a diesel footboard—(If you get on the wrong way you're ground under, sometimes it isnt noticed in the dark) (You stand there in the dark on a track and wont see nothing because a low flatcar's sneakin up to ya like a snake)—So Cody is the Conductor of the Heavenly Train, and we'll all get our tickets pinched by him because we were all good lambs believed in roses and lamps and eyes of the moon—

Water from the moon

Comes all too soon

100

But he's mad at me for bringing Raphael to his house for the weekend, tho he doesnt care, he figures Evelyn wont like him, or it—We get off the train at San Jose, wake up Raphael, and get into his new family car, a Rambler Stationwagon, and off we go, he's mad, he slams the car around with vicious twists and yet doesnt make a sound with his tires, he's learned that old trick before—“All right,” he seems to say, “we'll go to the pad and sleep.
And,
” he says out loud, “you two guys enjoy yourselves tomorrow watching the big Pro Football game Packers and Lions, I'll be back bout six, and drive you in Monday dawn to the first train back—that I'm working in, you see, so you dont have to worry about getting on—Now chillun, here's the pad,” turning into a narrow country road, and another, and into a driveway and a garage—“There's the Spanish Mansion Pad and first thing is sleep.”

“Where do I sleep?” says Raphael.

“You sleep on the sofa in the parlor,” I say, “and I'll sleep in the grass in my sleepingbag. I've got my spot out there in the backyard.”

Okay, we get out and I go in the back of the huge yard among bushes, and spread out my sack, from the rucksack, on dewy grass, and the stars are cold—But that star air hits me and as I slip into my bag it's like a prayer—To sleep is like a prayer, but under the stars, if you wake up at night, at 3
A.M.
, you'll see what a big beautiful Heavenly Milky Way room you're sleeping in, cloudy-milk with a hundred thousand myriads of universes, and more, the number is unbelievably milky, no Univac Machine with the brainwash mind can measure that extent of our reward that we can see up there—

And the sleep is delicious under stars, even if the ground is humpy you adjust your limbs to it, and you feel the earth-damp but it only lulls you to sleep, it's the Palaeolithic Indian in all of us—The Cro-Magnon or Grimaldi Man, who slept on the ground, naturally, and often in the open, and looked at the stars on his back and tried to calculate the dipankara number of them, or the hoodoo oolagoo mystery of them blearing there—No doubt he asked “Why?” “Why, name?”—Lonely lips of Palaeolithic men under the stars, the nomad night—the crackle of his campfire—

Aye, and the zing of his bow—

Cupid Bow me, I just sleep there, tight—When I wake up it's dawn, and gray, and frosty, and I just burrow under and sleep on—In the house Raphael is having another sleeping experience, Cody another, Evelyn another, the three children another, even the doggy another—It will all dawn on tender paradise, though.

101

I wake up to the delicious little voices of two little girls and a little boy, “Wake up Jack,
breakfast is ready.
” They sorta chant “breakfast is ready” because they've been told to but then they explore around my bushes a minute then leave and I get up and leave my pack right there in the straw grass of Autumn and go into the house to wash up—Raphael is up brooding at the corner chair—Evelyn is all radiant blonde in the morning. We grin at each other and talk—She'll say “Why didn't you sleep in the kitchen couch?” and I'll say “O I love to sleep out in that yard, I always get such good dreams”—She says “Well it's nice to have people who have good dreams nowadays.” She brings me my coffee.

“Raphael what are you brooding about?”

“I'm brooding about your good dreams,” he says absently gnawing his fingernail.

Cody is all a-bustle in the bedroom jumping around changing the Television set and lighting cigarettes and running to the toilet to do his morning toilet between programs and scenes—“Oh isnt she darling?” he'll say as a woman comes on to advertise soap, and from the kitchen Evelyn will hear him and say something, “She must be an old
hag.
”

“Hag, shmag,” 'll say Cody, “I'll let her climb into my bed any tam.”—“Oh poo,” she'll say, and let it go at that.

All day long nobody likes Raphael, he gets hungry and asks me for food, I ask Evelyn for some jelly sandwiches, which I make—The children and I go off on a magic walk through the little Kingdom of The Cats—it's all prune trees, that I eat out of, and we go through roads and fields to a magic tree with a magic little hut under it built by a boy—

“What does he do in there I say?”

“Oh,” says Emily, 9, “he just sits and sings.”

“What does he sing?”

“Anything he likes.”

“And,” says Gaby, 7, “he is a very nice boy. You should see him. He's very funny.”

“Yes, tee hee, he's very funny,” says Emily.

“He is
very
funny!” says Timmy, 5, and so low to the ground down there holding my hand I'd forgot all about him—All of a sudden I'm wandering around in desolation with little angels—

“We'll take the secret trail.”

“The short trail.”

“Tell us a story.”

“Nah.”

“Where does this path lead?”

“It leads to the Kings,” I say.

“
Kings?
Humph.”

“Trapdoors and ooboons,” I say.

“O Emily,” announces Gaby, “isnt Jack
funny?
”

“He sure is,” almost sighs Emily, dead serious.

Timmy says: “I have fun with my hands,” and he shows us mystic mudra birds—

“And there's a bird singing in the tree,” I advise them.

“Oh I hear
him,
” says Emily—“I'm going to explore further.”