… He looked from the ancient smudged
back window of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator, long gone
brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, down the street, down Joy Street,
down Beacon Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon
crowd of government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release (at the discretion of their supervisors, although
they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime, if the day’s work
was done), post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until after black Christmas day to bring back those unwanted ties,
toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrive at that time
each year, and watched wistfully an early returning student or two
trying to catch up on some recess-delayed study , as the town prepared for its first First Night.
Closer
at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street Steve and Billy, two wine-soaked
winos, wine-soaked by this hour if he was any judge across from his smudged brownstone
window view appearing, as always, to be arguing
over something from the sound of their voices that could be heard all the way
to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before long wind up on the floor
below his where this pair, when not homeless street-bound, when not too far in
rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not unlike
his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful addicted
service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the public
new fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his own
case, no women crossed the brownstone
front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the single-minded
nature of the listed addictions was that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting
habits, were too distracting to trump such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by him), probably gathered by
some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen local hospitals that
started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy Street downstream river flow
into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumbled and he provided as well, a bureau, a
cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped out every one of the veiled
bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple of changes of this and that,
maybe three, along with the usual stash of undergarments, a small table for
bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional writing like now) and toilet
articles, no cooking (thankfully, thinking about Steve and Billy moving in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom
complete with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and
done.
As he
heard the rough-hewn voices of Steve and
Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best short- sleeved shirt
(simple logic-usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid like from
about 1960 and mother –bought for the first day of school, fresh from the Sally
(Salvation Army) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased
at Sally’s but earlier in the winter
backing up that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length denim jean
jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after hitting the
perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding, deciding against all gambler’s reason, that
he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’
pocket and headed down the stairs,
waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some
argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his
remark pass without comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars in his pocket and the tracks closed for the season, he was going to come up with a
week’s rent to keep the super from his door for a while.
…and hence Jeanbon Kerouac
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