Free Maggie Cassidy by Jack Kerouac Page B

conceded to my sensitivity but insisted I run in the 300-yard relays (with Melis, Mickey McNeal, Kazarakis)—we had the best 300-yard relay in the state and even beat St. John’s Prep older collegians in the Boston finals—So every afternoon I’d have to run the bloody 300 usually in a relay race, just to the clock, against another little kid twenty yards behind me and no footballing on the banks—Sometimes girls would come and watch their boyfriends in track practice, Maggie’d never have dreamed it she was so gloomy and lost in herself.
    Pretty soon it’ll be time for the 600—the 1000—broad jump—shot put—then home we go—for supper—then the phone—and Maggie’s voice. Aftersupper Lowell talking to me—“Can I come tonight?”
    â€œI told you Wednesday.”
    â€œThat’s too far away—”
    â€œYou’re cray-zee .”
    â€”as lonely glooms fall enfolding all the warm organic rooftops of living Lowell—

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    After the last six o’clock shot put, the ball in the fingers delicately against the neck cradled, the kick, the hop, the twist of waist, the push up and out of the ball high and far—this was fun—I’d go in to showers and re-dress to again for the third time in my busy crazy high day stride Moody Street determined, young, and wild—a mile home. In winter darkness, the Baghdad Arabian keenblue deepness of the piercing lovely January winter’s dusk—it used to tear my heart out, one stabbing soft star was in the middle of the magicalest blue, throbbing like love—I saw Maggie’s black hair in this night—In the shelves of Orion her eye shades, borrowed, gleamed a dark and proud vellum somber power brooding rich bracelets of the moon rose from our snow, and surrounded the mystery. Smoke whipped from clean chimneys of Lowell. Now at Worthen, Prince and other old milltown streets as my feet shot me past I saw the redbrick faded into something cold and rose—unspeeched—throat-choking—My father’s ghost in a gray felt hat walked the dirty snows—“ Ti Jean t’en rappelle quand Papa travailla pour le Citizen? — pour L’Etoile? ” (Remember when your father worked for the Citizen, for the Star?)—I hoped my father’d be home that week end—I wished he could give me advice for Maggie—and in the grim mill alleys of ink blue and lost solstice rose he moseyed shades aside moaning my name, big, shadowy, lost—I shot past the Library now brown-windowed for scholars of the winter eve, the reading room bums, the children’s library roundshelved fairytaled and sweet—the profound bloodred bricks of the old Episcopalian church, the brown lawn, the jag of snow, the sign announcing speeches—Then the Royal Theater, crazy movies, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, the French Canadian tenements seen up side streets, the gay winter North—remnant Christmas bulbs—Then Ah the bridge, the sigh of waters, the soothe big roar low wind coming in from Chelmsford, from Dracut, from the north—the orange iron implacable dusk skies pinpointing the steeples, and roofs in a still gloom, the iron arbrous brows of old hills far off—everything engraved and glided upon the eve and that frozen still. . . . My shoes clomped the bridge boards. My nose snuffled. A long and tiresome day and far from finished.
    I passed the Textile Lunch windows, saw the bent fisty eaters through steam panes, and turned smartly into my gloomy rank doorway—736 Moody Street—dank—up four flights in eternity. In.
    â€œ Bon, Ti Jean est arrivez! ” my mother said.
    â€œ Bon! ” my father said, he was home, there was his face peeking around the kitchen door with a big Oriental grin—At table, my mother’s loaded it with food, steamings, goodies, he’s been feasting for an hour—I rush up and kiss his sad rough