…walking,
always walking , never, at least long time never, just running frantically down
some stairs, pulling the keys out of his jeans on the fly, wrestling the front
door open and jumping into the front
seat of some souped-up, some Stewball
Stu zen auto mechanic to the world, year old (broken in, see) 1949 Hudson, but
always just walking down Larkin Street to the bay, ‘Frisco bay for the
interested, to flush out his brain against the japan currents, against the
pacific squalls, against the bay fogs, or whatever was against handy. (Stewball Stu from back in
Olde Saco, podunk Maine days, king of the chicken runs and max daddy of the
streets ever since he took out some Farmer Brown from Arundel overgrown son’s
souped-up Dodge back in 1945. Blew him off the Galway Road in nothing flat and
later when he took on all comers when things moved to early morning deserted
Seal Rock down at the far end of Olde Saco Beach away from prying cop and irate
citizen eyes as well. He had been there that night, and later, riding shotgun,
scared shotgun, in the passenger seat so he knew Stu was not blowing smoke
about his exploits but that ,those Stu stories, were for another time.)
This
night his always walking was to figure out how much longer he was going to have
to wait around this damn old ‘Frisco town for some shipping clerk’s job down at
the dock at the other end of the Embarcadero to open up so he could make some
dough, pay off Carol, Allen, and Bill and blow some transcontinental dough with
Stewball Stu on some lesser version of that dream 1949 Hudson and finally blow
this now old tired out ‘Frisco town. His ticket was up here after a few mishaps
(a couple of small “vag” busts for sleeping over in Golden Gate Park without a
permit, some damn tent fee permit , jesus, was that all that they had to do
over there. Down on the Embarcadero you could hardly walk late at night without
falling over some stumblebum drunk, or guy down on his luck, and no cop ever
bothered you. Jesus. More serious, a possession, a weed
possession bust, for smoking some righteous mex
herb, gold, in
public. Thirty days suspended because he had been young,
well-spoken, and not regular district court traffic surly before the judge. Jesus. So he needed the dock dough
to break his string of bad luck and flee this burg, but he needed that clerk’s job,
arranged by Bill through his father’s connections
with guys down at the wharves who needed a guy who could do the shipping paper
work fast and not steal everything not nailed down on the docks , to come through, needed it bad just
then. And so the fret walk.
As he walked toward the womb bay he could just barely see the fogged-bemused dim spot Alcatraz search lights, eternal search lights against some phantom prison breaks like that search light, or that rock, was what held a man, any man, in thrall to his lesser instincts. His couple of minutes in jail had shaken him up enough to never want to test the outer edge of that theory, or come even close. Spending a few hours, maybe half a day, with stinking winos, pissed over, surly and not just before the judge, begging for a Tokay fix, or Thunderbird if you had it, bumming cigarettes or papers to make their own Bull Durham coffin nails, stinking, earth sweat stinking from some Gilroy onion patch or the fields down south mex braceros picked up for fighting or being mex, who knows, an odd con man or hustler, a street hustler, who worked a wrong john, an unprotected pimp daddy on those occasions when the irate citizens were demanding blood for some foul deed, some tough guy yeggs and assorted armed robbers wised him up to that road. And so the fret walk.
He
laughed as he minute fret pause looked up and saw a couple of kids, really just
kids, maybe sixteen, no more, wobbly, walking across Bay Street as he made his own turn onto the street, one with a bottle ready to be
handed to the other, and from the look of it Tokay, the winos’ choice, and the
“choice” of those too young to buy their own and hence resorting to some
wino-snagged bought and that was what they got. He bet that the wino, in
exchange for that courtesy, right now was sitting down in some
Embarcadero back street, maybe Third, or in some
Mission Street flop, room made up of bed, bureau and chair, not much else, no
memory pictures on the walls, memory pictures in fact banished, if he was in
the chips and not too far behind on his rent, was sipping on his own bottle of
nectar Tokay, and that wino too maybe passing it around to his
jungle campfire brethren.
He
remembered his own virgin voyage down that gofer road. He, and a schoolboy
corner boy, Spider, from back up in Olde Saco, had gotten in that corner boy’s
souped- up 1939 Plymouth and driven to stardust Boston, down by the Commons, in the early 1940s looking for beat (although he would not have called it that then but that was the only unnamed name
for the feeling, that beat down feeling, looking for what they had heard was a new breeze blowing in this wicked
old world, hell, mainly looking for beat chicks away from put-off prim and
prissy Gallic (French-Canadian forbears from up
in Gaspe mostly) Catholic girls that ran amok in that town if the truth was known.
Of
course like in Frisco town in those days
every hustler, con man (and a few women), and everybody who had
sense enough to cash in on the rube explosion was on the Common on
any given Friday or Saturday teen break-out night ready to do business, to do wrong gee business. That night he and Spider had been walking through the Common working their way to Charles Street when a young guy, maybe
twenty-five, came up to them and asked them if they wanted him to get them some
booze to while away the evening (this was the part of the ‘40s before dope,
weed, mary jane was the elixir of choice). Sure thing, brother, thanks. A bottle of Southern Comfort, large. This guy, explaining the city rules of the road, said how about a bottle for him.
They said whatever was right and anted up the dough. About ten minutes later
the guy came back with a brown bag with a bottle sticking out of the top.
Thanks brother, as he left. They went over by the Public Gardens under the pond bridge to get a quick swig. Surprise,
surprise that bottle was filled with plain old ordinary water. Yah, rubes. Then
he remembered his own oath when it came his time to play teen gofer. He would
always remember that night and while most times he would do the chore gratis,
except when he was down on his luck and needed to
pull that scam,
he always gave what was asked for. He wished he could say that about some other
things but such is life.
He
looked back one last time as those boys veered off into their good night as he
thought, thought too for just a minute about Sammy, Sid, Andre, and the Spider
from back in his own old Southern Comfort days in sitting in front river , sitting in front ocean Olde Saco a few years back, and of some
wino pete who got their Friday night booze from LaCroix’s Package Store in
order to make them “rum brave,” girl-flirting rum brave, for the dance over at
the Starlight Ballroom where, god, Benny, Benny Goodman was playing and of that
Benny-blessed night, he had finally twisted old Sheila around his finger, if
you know what he meant. Sheila (Capet) who
broke the death of sex put-off prim and prissy Gallic Catholic girls that ran
amok mode (keep this between us okay) and went, one Friday night, down to Seal
Rock, the local lovers’ lane, in the back of Spider’s Plymouth with him and
made him smile. And it was that same Sheila who, later, gave him the skinny about what was said on
those school day Monday mornings before school girls’ “lav” talks of
who did what with whom, and who didn’t.
And the dids outnumbered the didn’ts.
An earful. Women.
As he
walked some more down Bay toward the chocolate smell of Beach he began
taking that ancient thought out of his head as he passed the Red Fez for the
ninety-ninth time (about ninety of them straight into the front door and
low-shelf scotches and scored teas and, on occasion, bindles for the soul)
since he hit ‘Frisco a couple of months back with some jack, a sweet girl,
Lulu, all blonde, Iowa corn-fed and willing, and some idea that he would write
the great American novel, a great American novel, or an American novel
(depending on his mood), if he could just get his head in the right place, be
in the right place, and have his
freaking ‘Frisco golden-gate rust colored muse , his now completely fog-bound
muse, working his corner.
Nada,
nothing, no go, got it. And then like something from out of some mid-1940s film
noir movie where an unnamed band, unnamed until you read the credits to find
out why you spent the rest of the film with that sound in your brain, fired up
the night in the middle of the movie out of nowhere, he heard a sound, a high
white note, blown pure by some unseen sex tenor sax(not
a Johnny Hodges, Duke’s’ boy Johnny , all fluffy around the edges pure, all
satin and silk with a bow on it pure, mulatto pure, maybe black and tan pure ,
to keep the lid on for the paying customers, the paying white customers, the
uptown mayfair swells out for weekly kicks, a little spindle tea to take the
edge off, the cabaret café society
crowd, a backing Billie swaying lilt crowd, who would freak out, who would call
every variety of hell down on the player’s head, at what was played mex opium
dream or tea high back to proud earth mother
Africa times after hours) now coming steamed, sweaty jungle-steamed, out toward the bay from deep within the Red
Fez (blown, he knew from other nights, from other highs, blown deep in the
bowels of the club up against the back bar by angel Cody Reed, black, black as
a starless night, black who devoured negro and had not regrets, blasting safe,
fashionable negro safe, blasting flash, wide-brimmed white fedora, open shirt,
white lapel suit, midnight sunglasses, negro pimp walking daddy and pink
Cadillac with one hip-hop note, blasting back to primordial black Africa mother
homeland, blasting apart first, middle and last passages in a foreign land,
blasting, cool as a cucumber, plantation miseries, plantation lashes, blasting
too jim crow, get back in your place, brother , old ‘Frisco Mister James
Crow.
A guy on
the other corner, dark, brown, brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes, brown soul
too, angel mex fellaheen (wearing a kind of out of fashion zoot suit looking a
little frayed on the edges, maybe from L.A., maybe a little too much loco weed
down south, maybe too some hard-ass bracero up-bringing, father and mother
working sweated lettuce, or you name the produce , fields, and then back to
some brown shack, and sixteen kids, jesus), maybe a flip, a Filipino, benny high, tea high more likely (but high, high from an expert eye high)
was be-bopping words, night, fright, fight, bite, throwing out one after
another trying, trying like hell, to match his palabras (some en espanol, some
in English a tough task) with that Cody Reed high white note that he was chasing, finally catching some of it, some
vicious moloch fight to blast words and notes, some shake the bracero dust off
of himself in the fellahin world that he was in his dreams
fighting to break out of , making words slowly to match that floating note and
passed . In the end he was not successful, reached for something, something for his head, in his pocket, threw it in his mouth and moved along Bay
Street.
Nice try
brother but it will probably take some gringo fellaheen warrior, some mill-town
boy all river torrent bound, all fretting about his place in the sun, fretting
about damn some damn woman-child or woman hell (his own F-C or Irish version of that Olde Saco
madness, those prissy girls run amok are universal), fretting about his corner boy muses,
some improbable combination of hulk hero all muddied from schoolboy playing
fields but also library-bound reading Homer, Plato, Jack London,
Thomas Wolfe, and the boys, listening to be-bop, endlessly humming some refrain
in the river night, be-bop, be-bop, be-bop before be-bop bopped, endlessly
searching for the jail breakout night on forsaken frozen wind-swept ships, in
midnight veering route 6, 66, 666 cars driven by golden boy cowboy punk
desperados, and driving million word exploits. Or it will probably be some street bandito from New Jack City, some prophet gangster
risen all in white, all in holy garb,
from among the pimps, the whores working those mean streets for nickels
and dimes, the seventy-seven varieties of hustlers, the winos stealing dough
and wine from each other or from young rubes, con men (and women, okay)
hustling constantly hustling and looking out of forlorn
drugstore windows from forlorn red vinyl
stools, guys in
need of fixes, yeggs, second- story men, drifters, grifters,
midnight sifters, all the angels of the dark night. Yah, a street bandito risen
in the night, beat beatified. Or some fag kid (sorry queer, with queer
shoulderings against the storm , fag slang from corner boy Olde Saco hazy
nights) from Hoboken, maybe Paterson, some death mill-town anyway, too small
for his one million ideas and his two million curiosities in an age that
banished curiosity, a slightly off-kilter kid who sang kaddish, or maybe better
plainsong, yah, plainsong against the death-brought night, against all the not
straight eyes forward, against all the
banishments, yah, some fag kid with time on his hands, to
capture the words to the high white note. Meanwhile that note then floated down
though the jazz-infiltrated streets pass wino jungles and wharf rough trade
taverns to the bay and mixed and matched with the foam-flecked waves, the
search light of the eternal rock, and his dreams. He had an idea…
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