Читать книгу Dr. Sax - Jack Kerouac - Страница 23

AND YET DESPITE ALI THIS RACKETY GRAY when I grew to the grave maturity of 11 or 12 I saw, one crisp October morning, in the back Textile field, a great pitching performance by a husky strangely old looking 14-year-older, or 13,—a very heroic looking boy in the morning, I liked him and hero-worshipped him immediately but never hoped to rise high enough to meet him in those athletic scuffles of the windy fields (when hundreds of less important little kids make a crazy army benighted by individual twitchings in smaller but not less tremendous dramas, for instance that morning I rolled over in the grass and cut my right small finger, on a rock, with a scar that stays vivid and grows with me even now)—there was Scotty Boldieu on the high mound, king of the day, taking his signal from the catcher with a heavy sullen and insulting look of skepticism and native French Canadian Indian-like dumb calm—; the catcher was sending him nervous messages, one finger (fast ball), two fingers (curve), three fingers (drop), four fingers (walk him) (and Paul Boldieu had enough great control to walk em, as if unintentionally, never changing expression) (off the mound he may grin on the bench)— Paul turned aside the catcher’s signals (shake of head) with his French Canadian patient scorn, he just waited till the fingers three (signal for drop), settled back, looked to first base, spit, spit again in his glove and rub it in, pluck at the dust for his fingertips, bending thoughtfully but not slowly, chewing on his inside lip in far meditation (may be thinking about his mother who made him oatmeal and beans in the gloomy gray midwinter dawns of Lowell as he stood in the dank hall closet puttin on his overshoes), looks briefly to 2nd base with a frown from the memory of someone having reached there in the 2nd inning drat it (he sometimes said “Drat it!” in imitation of B movie Counts of England), now it’s the 8th inning and Scotty’s given up two hits, nobody beyond second base, he’s leading 8-0, he wants to strike out the batter and get into the ninth inning, he takes his time–I’m watching him with a bleeding hand, amazed–a great Grover C. Alexander of the sandlots blowing one of his greatest games—(later he was bought by the Boston Braves but went home to sit with his wife and mother-in-law in a bleak brown kitchen with a castiron stove covered with brass scrolls and a poem in a tile panel, and Catholic French Canadian calendars on the wall). —Now he winds up, leisurely, looking off towards third base and beyond even as he’s rearing back to throw with an easy, short, effortless motion, no fancy dan imitations and complications and phoniness, blam, he calmly surveys the huge golden sky all sparkle-blue rearing over the hedges and iron pickets of Textile Main Field and the great Merrimac Valley high airs of heaven shining in the commercial Saturday October morning of markets and delivery men, with one look of the eye Scotty has seen that, is in fact looking towards his house on Mammoth Road, at Cow Field–blam, he’s come around and thrown his drop home, perfect strike, kid swinging, thap in the catcher’s mitt, “You’re out,” end of the top of the 8th inning.

Scotty’s already walking to the bench when the umpire’s called it—”Ha, ha,” they laugh on the bench knowing him so well, Scotty never fails. In the bottom of the 8th Scot comes to bat for his licks, wearing his pitching jacket, and swinging the bat around loosely in his powerful hands, without much effort, and again in short, unostentatious movements, pitcher throws in a perfect strike after 2 and 0 and Scotty promptly belts it clean-drop into left over the shortstop’s glove–he trots to first like Babe Ruth, he was always hitting neat singles, he didn’t want to run when he was pitching.

I saw him thus in the morning, his name was Boldieu, it immediately stuck in my mind with Beaulieu–street where I learned to cry and be scared of the dark and of my brother for many years (till almost 10)—this proved to me all my life wasn’t black.

Scotty, named that for his thrift among 5¢ candy bars and 11¢ movies, sat in that wrinkly tar doorway with G.J., Lousy and me–and Vinny.