Free The Sea is My Brother by Jack Kerouac

ignorant little pittypat who spouted the profound feelings of a Shakespeare, a Keats, a Milton, a Whitman, a Hawthorne, a Melville, a Thoreau, a Robinson as though he knew the terror, fear, agony, and vowing passion of their lives and was brother to them in the dark, deserted old moor of their minds?
    Wesley waited while Everhart stood in indecision, patiently attending to his fingernails. He knew his companion was hesitating.
    At this moment, however, Bill’s sister entered the room smoking a Fatima and still carrying her cup of tea. She and her friend, a middle-aged woman who now stood beaming in the doorway, had been engaged in passing the afternoon telling each other’s fortunes in the tea leaves. Now the sister, a tall woman with a trace of oncoming middle age in her stern but youthful features, spoke reproachfully to her younger brother; “Bill, can’t I do anything to change your mind. This is all so silly? Where are you going, for God’s sake . . . be sensible.”

    â€œI’m only going on a vacation,” growled Bill in a hunted manner. “I’ll be back.” He picked up his bag and leaned to kiss her on the cheek.
    The sister sighed and adjusted his coat lapel. She glanced in a none too friendly fashion at Wesley, while he, in turn, wanted to tell her it was none of his doing and that would she kindly keep her dirty looks to herself?
    In the street, Wesley could still see the old man, Mr. Everhart, as he had been when they had gone past his room on the way out: he was still sitting in the chair, but his pipe had lain unsmoked on the sill, a crest fallen, lonely figure.
    At the subway, Sonny began to sniffle, but Bill gave him a quarter and told him to buy a Superman book. And just as they were going through the turnstiles, an associate of Bill’s, a thin, nervous Englishman carrying two briefcases and a book, shouted brightly above the heads of the subway goers: “I say Everhart! A vacation is it?”
    â€œYes,” answered Bill.
    â€œLucky scoundrel!” was the reply, and the young man swayed off, his long neck loosely fitted to a gangling collar, striding purposefully toward an afternoon lecture.
    In the subway, Bill was frightened; Wesley was so quiet Bill could hardly expect any sort of spiritual sympathy from him. Didn’t the dammed fool know what was going
on? . . . What folly was perhaps being committed? . . . what agony this impetuous change was already assuming? . . . and yet, too, what a coward “shortypants” was proving to be!
    At this point, Everhart almost made up his mind to go back, but just then he remembered Wesley’s date with Polly for that evening.
    â€œWhat about your date with Polly?” Everhart asked half morosely, fiddling nervously with the handle of his suitcase. The train was roaring through its dark tunnel—people were reading their newspapers and chewing with bovine calm on wads of gum.
    Wesley leaned over nearer, placing his hand on Bill’s shoulder: “What d’you say?”
    â€œWhat about your date with Polly?”
    Wesley’s mouth parted and his eyes widened with delight. Smacking Everhart resoundingly on the back, he shouted for the first time since Everhart had known him: “Who gives a good hoppin’ shuckall?!!” he whooped in a rich, good humored, rakish howl. “We’re shippin’ out, man!!”
    Everhart could still feel the sting in his back as the people in the subway peered curiously at Wesley, who now sat returning their stares with a roguish, wide-eyed humor, and quite amused.

    Everhart leaned back and laughed heartily; he couldn’t stop, and in his mind a voice was reproaching him as he laughed and laughed.
    It said: “Is it the damned fool, who, at that dark moment, laughs courage right into you.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    At three o’clock, they were standing at the side of the road near Bronx Park; where cars rushed past fanning hot clouds