Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac Page B

climactic (for some reason) day on which my biggest handicaps and derbies were run in the Turf I conducted as a child in Lowell, the racing marbles—It was also the Augustcool end of summer, when trees of starry nights swished with a special richness outside my screen window and when the sand of the bank got cool to the touch and little clamshells glistened therein and across the face of the moon the Shadow of Doctor Sax flew—Mohican Springs racetrack was a special raw western Massachusetts misty track with cheaper purses and older railbirds and hardboots and seasoned horses and grooms from East Texas and Wyoming and old Arkansas—In the Spring it ran the Mohican Derby which was for plugs of age three usually but the big ’Cap of August was a hoi polloi event that had the best society of Boston and New York flocking and it was then Ah then that the summer being over, the results of the race, the name of the winner, would have an Autumn flavor like the flavor of the apples now begathered in baskets of the Valley and the flavor of cider and of tragic finality, with the sun going down over the old stalls of Mohican on the last warm night and now the moon’s shining sadfaced through the first iron and massed concentrates of Fall cloud and soon it will be cold and all done—.
    Dreams of a kid, and this whole world is nothing but a big sleep made of reawakened material (soon to reawake)—What could be more beautiful—
    To complete, cap, and tragedize my August 22, it was upon that date, the day Paris was liberated in 1944, that I was let out of jail for 10 hours to marry my first wife in a hot New York afternoon around Chambers Street, complete with bestman detective with holstered gun—how far the cry from sad-side-pensive Ti Pousse with his migs, his carefully printed Mohican Springs entries, his innocent room, to the rugged evil-looking seaman in tow of a policeman being married in a judge’s chamber (because the D.A. thought the fiancée to be pregnant)—Far cry, I was so degraded in level in that time, that August month, my father wouldnt even talk to me let alone bail me out—Now the August moon shines through ragged new clouds that are not August cool but August cold and Fall is in the look of the firs as they silhouette to the far-down lake at after-dusk, the sky all snow silver and ice and breathing fog of frost, it will soon be over—Fall in the Skagit Valley, but how can I ever forget even madder Fall in the Merrimac Valley where it would whip the silver ooing moon with slavers of cold mist, smelling of orchards, and tar rooftops with night-ink colors that smelled as rich as frankincense, woodsmoke, leafsmoke, river rain, the smell of the cold on your kneepants, the smell of doors opening, the door of Summer’s opened and let in brief glee-y fall with his apple smile, behind him old sparkly winter hobbles—The tremendous secrecy of alleys between houses in Lowell on the first Fall nights, as though amens were falling by the sisters in there—Indians in the mouths of trees, Indians in the sole of earth, Indians in the roots of trees, Indians in the clay, Indians in there—Something shoots by fast, no bird—Canoe paddles, moonlit lake, wolf on the hill, flower, loss—Woodpile, barn, horse, rail, fence, boy, ground—Oil lamp, kitchen, farm, apples, pears, haunted houses, pines, wind, midnight, old blankets, attic, dust—Fence, grass, tree trunk, path, old withered flowers, old corn husks, moon, colorated clouts of cloud, lights, stores, road, feet, shoes, voices, windows of stores, doors opening and closing, clothes, heat, candy, chill, thrill, mystery—
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    As far as I can see and as I am concerned, this so-called Forest Service is nothing but a front, on the one hand a vague Totalitarian governmental effort to restrict the use of the forest to people, telling them they cant camp here or piss there, it’s illegal to do this and