Chasing Moriarity

ean couldn't have been

more than 15 years old

when he wandered in

from the street. It was

only that many years

before, in 1927, that

Dean was born, in Salt

^ Lake City; at a time when

for some godforsaken reason,

some forgotten, pitiably American,

restless reason his father and mother were driving in a jalopy from Iowa to L.A. in search of something, maybe they figured to start an orange grove or find a rich uncle, Dean himself never found out, a reason long buried in the sad heap of the night, a reason that nevertheless in 1927 caused them to fix their eyes anxiously over the sad swath of brokendown headlamps shining brown on the road...the road that sorrowed into the darkness and huge unbelievable American nightland like an arrow.

Dean was born in a charity hospital. A few weeks

later the Model A clanked right on; so that now there were three pairs of eyes watching the unspeakable road roll in on Pa's radiator cap as it steadfastly penetrated the night like the poor shield of themselves, the little Moriarty family, lost, the gaunt crazy father with the floppy slouched hat that made him look like a broken-down Okie Shadow, the dreaming mother in a cotton dress purchased on a happier afternoon in some excited Saturday five-and-10, the frightened infant.

She died in Denver before Dean was old enough to talk to her. Dean grew up with a childhood vision of her standing in the strange antique light of 1929 (which is no different from the light of today or the light when Xerxes's fleets confused the waves, or Agamemnon wailed), apparently at a period in the life of old Moriarty when he was making good money at his barber trade and they had a good home. But after she died he became one of the most tottering bums of Larimer Street, periodically leaving Dean with his wife's people to go to Texas to escape the Colorado winters, beginning a lifetime swirl of hoboing into which little

Dean himself was sucked later on, when at intervals, childlike, he preferred leaving the secu­rity of his Ma's relatives, which included sharing a bedroom with his stepbrother, going to school and altar-boying at a local Catholic church, for going off to live with his father in flophouses.

Dean used to stand in front of alleys begging for nickels while his father, red-eyed, in baggy pants, hid in the back with some old bum crony called Rex who was no king but just an American who had never outgrown the boyish desire to lie down on the sidewalk, which he did the year round from coast to coast; the two of them hiding and sometimes having long excited conversa­tions until the kid had enough nickels to make up a bottle of muscatel, when it was time to

hit the liquor store and go down under ramps and railroad embankments and light a small fire with cardboard boxes and sit on overturned buckets or oily old treestumps, the boy on the outer edges of the fire, the men in its momentous and legendary glow, and drink the wine.

•

It was a Saturday afternoon in Den­ver, October 1942, when Tommy Snark first saw pure-souled Dean sitting on a bench, wearing Levi's jeans, old shoes, no socks, a khaki Army shirt and a big black turtleneck sweater covered with car grease and carrying a brand-new toy accordion in a box he had just found by the side of the road; perched among the usual great number of Saturday onlook­ers, half of whom were waiting for pool. Dean sat there, stunned with excite­ment as whole groups of them shouted across the smoke to other fellows in a tremendous general anticipation of the rapidly approaching almost unbearably important Saturday night, when there would be long preparations before the mirror and then a sharped-up citywide invasion of bars (which already at this moment had begun to roar from old afternoon drinkers who'd swallowed their bar egos long ago), thousands of

young men of Denver hurrying from their homes with arrogant clack and tie-adjustments toward the brilliant cen­ter in an invasion haunted by sorrow because no guy whether he was a big drinker, big fighter or big lover could ever find the center of Saturday night in America, though the undone collar and the dumb stance on empty street-corners on Sunday dawn was easy to find and in fact 15-year-old Dean could have best told them about it; the premonition of this oncoming night together with

the dense excitement of everything around the tables in the shad­owy hall nevertheless failing to hide certain hints of heartbreaking loss that filtered in with chinks of daylight from

the October street and pene­trated all their souls.

And there in the middle of it stood melancholy Tom Snark, the habitue, always ready to take anybody on for a game, hunchbacked, meek, dream­ing at his upright cue-stick as naturally as the sentry at his spear, a figure so familiar in the brownness of the room that after a while you didn't see him anymore, like certain drinkers disappear the moment they put their foot on the brass rail, just for the most part standing there chalking his cue in the gesture of poolhall nonchalance he

and all the oth­ers used for quick look-sees. When he saw Dean he raised his eyebrow, interested in the wild-looking

cat, but like an old woman rocking on a porch noting storm clouds before sup­per, placidly, dumbly surprised.

Tom Snark in this lonely earth was a crippled boy who lived in unostentatious pain with his grandmother in a two-story house under great sidestreet trees, sat on the screened porch with her till poolhall time, which was usually midafternoon; en route made the rounds of downtown streets, mild, sincere, dropping a word in the shoeshine shanty, another into the chili joint where his boys worked, then a moment on the sidewalk with that watchful air of all young men of Amer­ican daytime sidewalks (there's more doubt in the night); and then into the poolroom like a man going to work.

Dean sitting there watching this Tom Snark was the enactment of the drama of an American boy for the first time perceiving the existence of an Ameri­can hero, nay an American poet—this Tom Snark so tragically interesting, so diseased, beautiful, potent, because he could beat anybody yet be so obscurely defeated as he slouched down in the press of the crowd, sometimes flashing a languid sad smile in answer to the shouts of dishwashers and dry-clean pressers but usually just enduring eter­nity on the spot he occupied. Snark himself understood from the corner of his eye that this boy wasn't only inter­ested in learning pool from him but everything he knew and would use it for purposes of his own which were so much vaster than anything Snark had ever dreamed that he would have to plead for Dean's guidance in the end. Dean ran over and made the first great con-man proposition of his life.

Snark looked amazed and dropped his superior pose (continued on page 171)

MORIARTY

(continued from page 92) out of sheer perplexity. What was he expected to do with a kid rushing up to him and say­ing "Do you want to learn philosophy from me?" with a wag of the finger, sly eyes, neck popping with muscles like a jack-in-the-box? Dean, his position established, leaped in. "No further than that yet, and of course omitting to discuss the fact because already almost under­stood, i.e., you teach me how to beat pool" (pointing at himself) "and I teach you" (sock­ing Snark in the chest with his forefinger and really hurting him). "I teach you further into psychology and mesta-fit-sics" (Dean mispro­nounced "metaphysics" at this time because he still didn't know how and it caused him tremendous private grief to remember this) "and further beyond all that and in order to cement our relationship and in fact—of course if you agree, and only if you agree, as I do— in fact to establish a blood brother loyalty of our souls, if you wish to use clitchay expres­sions at this time or any other, and again just as you agree, always as you agree. I propose now and without any further shillyshallying, though I can whip a car into a going condi­tion even if it's awful old and I know buddies for free greasejobs plus where to steal cans of oil and even one tankful during the ballroom dance at 11 tonight on Broadway, when I go around the cars parked in my boy's lot with my siphon and mouthsuck up into cans on the average half a gallon per car, which is unno-ticeable but awful hard work, et cetera on, I still have to find the car, you see, huge troubles natcherly, as I consider energy and every and all contingency but listen carefully to me (and I will, no fear, to compensate, find or steal a car, anytime you agree, or say, whatever) if you want to go to the Notre Dame game this Saturday in South Bend Indiana and really want to see it and not just loafing the idea. All week I heard you and the other fellows bet-tin', sayin' 'Well now I sure would like to see that thar Notre Dame game by gawd,' and talkin' like people often do whose wish-plans never do crystallize see because of lazy blocks that multiply on the back road of old delays, yet I'm offering you a real genuine chance and I repeat if you really want to see it I'll get my Uncle Bull's old rattletytrap Graham-Paige if necessary. I can take you to the game and back in record time through chill winters and U.S. mails and all things and really blow the road wide open so long as you provide your ticket of course, after all. What I'm sayin', omigosh a ticket, a ticket to the Notre Dame football game 1,000 miles away, 6 million feet deep with telephones and luminaries I can't begin to even imagine, pity poor me and so I leave it toyou, and also type of car, also anybody you want bring, I be your chauffeur, you teach me pool, snookers, anything you say, be my big brother, I be your helper. So it be! What say?"

It was too completely mad for flabbergasted dumb old Tom Snark, one of the kindest fel­lows in the world, who in any case could never be expected to have the energy and health to face 1,000 miles of deliberately absurd travel in an old car, no, Snark's first impulse was to quiet Dean down. "My land," he said to himself, "he must be crazy from being hungry I guess."

He took him home that afternoon to his

grandmother's house. They had a big snack from the icebox, Dean drinking two and a half quarts of milk in fear that he'd never see diat much for several more years, and mak­ing sure not to tear the bread when he folded it over the butter, clutching his chest, actually clutching his chest when he realized Snark's grandmother was only standing over them to refill dieir glasses from a fresh bottle of milk, not pleased or displeased but just a nice old woman with a rosy moon face, making Dean marvel and joy (always high at 15) to be in a real home that had lace curtains and little feminine lonely frills in it to beat harsh nature. From a closet next to a dark wood dresser with carved iron grips that swung on litde hinges in rich significant clicks, and next to the right front bedpost of Snark's four-post manorial boxspring bed, Snark pulled out a fairly good brown tweed suit and, with a slight bow like a Viennese nobleman, like the Bela Lugosi vampire bowing to the young hero at the door of the Rainy Casde, he presented it to Dean to keep, Dean in turn offering his toy accordion as collateral anyway, with a smile and still bowing Snark saying he'd keep it for him. It was Dean's first suit.

Dean had to be led stupidly and stiffly down the street by Snark as they hurried back to the pool parlor to meet the entire gang. It was going to be a big night, suit and all. It didn't take long for Dean to quicken his steps with Snark's and soon they had pinpointed downstreet and were swinging around the corner to a big trolley line thoroughfare, hurrying for the big-traffic, ever-more-exciting, all-of-it-pouring-into-town Saturday night, both of them with the same bright fresh gleam in their eyes that you see on the shiny fender of a new automobile when it turns in from the darkness and outskirts of town and immediately reflects Saturday night Main Street neons: Dean finally forget­ting he was wearing a suit, gesturing out of the shiny round starch his big grimy cracked hands that were not at all the hands of an absorbed banker in the street but more like a dirt farmer's at a funeral and worse like horny toads in a basket of wash.

In the poolhall the hour was roaring. It was so crowded that spectators were stand­ing obscuring everything from the street and somebody had die back door open. To Dean it was a vision, the moment of his arrival that everybody was waiting for, yet even though he stood in the door at the side of great cool Tom Snark the Virgil of this big Inferno, wearing not only his clothes but the same gorgeously sophisticated robe of dieir afternoon's adven­ture which was already undergoing a rich change to evening and the lazy explorations that were to come, a decadent refinement that all the dumb rats in this dimness would have to struggle to understand.

Ed Dunkel, Roy Johnson and Bob Evans were the nucleus of Tom Snark's gang at the time. They were grouped around a table in the usual ritual get-together game of rotation they had every Saturday evening as a kind of preliminary tactical conference on the night's action. The program tonight featured two girls who were babysitting for the weekend in a house up near the Wyoming line. But this

night without knowing it they were grouped around with hotheaded dumbness the pur­pose of which is always to be ignorant of what's about to happen, the only sure thing you can remember when you look back to see what people were doing during an important his­torical moment, the poor souls actually sitting in that mysterious godlike stuff that later makes them say, "Listen, I was there the night Tom Snark came in with Dean the day he found him, 1942, autumn, they had the Army-Columbia game that day, I bet on it and heard it on the radio too, we were all playing pool me and Ed Dunkel and Roy Johnson and Jackoff and I dunno who the hell else. We all drove to Wyo­ming that night, sure, it was a great, mad night!"

Dean was introduced around. He stood there with his weather-beaten face growing more excited and redder by the hour, look­ing bashfully at his new friends and planning deep in his mind from everything they said and did, helplessly impressing everyone and winning over their favor so conclusively that eventually of course they would all turn to him for love and advice; mad Dean, who eventually did run the gang, who was now just being merely coy quiet knowing instinc­tively the best way to start despite the fact that he never knew a gang before.

Right away the biggest fellow in the gang took a liking to Dean, six-foot-four

Ed Dunkel all shiny handsome in his Sat­urday night suit, who was always looming over everybody with a long grave calm that was half comical because it seemed to come from the loneliness of his great height.

So when the gang gave up the precious table and let their empty Cokes plop in a floorbox with a "So long fellas" and left the hall to jump in the car, a 1937 Ford belong­ing to Evans, for the ride north to Wyoming about 80 miles, the sun just then going down in vast unobserved event above the mad­dening souls of people, and Dean above the objections of everyone else insisted on driving to show his skill, but then really fantastically wheeled the car out of town with beautiful spot-shot neatness and speed, the boys who were prepared to criticize his driving and give pointers or stage false hysterical scenes forgot they were in a car and fell to gabbing happily.

And suddenly out on East Colfax Bou­levard bound for Fort Collins Dean saw a football game going on among kids in a field, stopped hard at the curb, said "I was quar­terback at Mesa Grande!" (reform school), ran out leaping madly among kids, got the ball, told one boy to run like hell, clear to the goalpost, which the kid did, but Dean said "Further, further," and the kid halfway doubt­ing to get the ball that far edged on back and now he was 70 yards and Dean unleashed

a tremendous soaring wobbling pass that dropped beyond the kid's most radical esti­mate, the pass being so high and powerful the boy completely lost it in eyrieal spaces of heaven and dusk and circled foolishly but screaming with glee—when this happened everyone was amazed except Roy Johnson, who rushed out of the car in his sharp blue suit, leapt around frantically in a mix-up of kids, got the ball and commanded the same uncomplaining noble boy to run across the field and unfurled a long pass but Dean appeared out of nowhere in the mad lower­ing dusk and intercepted it with the sudden frantic action of a wildfaced maniac jumping into a roomful of old ladies; spun, heaving a prodigious sky pass back over Johnson's head that Johnson sneered at as he raced back, he'd never been outdone by anybody ("Hey whee!" they yelled in the car); such a tre­mendous pass it was bound to be carried by the wind, fall in the road out on East Colfax, yet Johnson ran out there dodging traffic. Circling in the road, almost being murdered by a car, Johnson made a sensational finger­tip sprawling-on-knees catch instantly and breathtakingly overshadowed by the fact that dramatic fantastic Dean had actually gone chasing his own pass and was now in the road screaming with outstretched hands from the agony that he was barely going to miss, him­self sprawling as terror-stricken motorists swerved and screeched on all sides.

Roy Johnson wanted to throw a pass to Dean and Dean challenged him and said "Run with the ball and let's see if I tackle you before you reach that Studebaker where the man's standing," and Johnson laughed because he had been the outstanding run­ner everywhere, at 15 could do the hundred in 10:6, track star speed; so took off. And so that Dean furiously, as if running for his life, not only caught up with him but caught up with him easily, in his sheer excitement, with his tremendous unprecedented raw athletic power he could run the hundred in almost 10 flat (actually and no lie) and a sad, remote tackle took place in the field, for a moment everybody saw Dean fly­ing tackling horizontally in the dark air with his neck bulled on to prove, his head down, both arms outstretched in a tackling clamp, outstretched with a particular kind of unspeakable viciousness that's always so surprising when you see it leaping out of the decent suits of men in sudden side­walk fights, the cosmopolitan horror of it, this savagery explosively leaping now out of Dean's new suit with the same rage of shoulderpads and puffy arms, yet arms that also were outstretched with an unspeakable mute prophesied and profound humility like that of a head-down Christ shot out of a cannon on a cross for nothing, agonized. Johnson was tackled. Dean, like Johnson with his knees all bruised and pants torn, had established his first great position of leadership in Tom Snark's famous gang.

Long ago in the red sun...that wow-mad Dean who went on the road with me.

It was a Satur­day afternoon in Denver, Octo­ber 1942, when

Tommy Snark first saw pure-souled Dean Moriarty

sitting on a bench, wearing LevVs jeans, a khaki

Army shirt and a

black turtleneck

sweater.

Excerpted from Before the Road, which appeared in the December 1959 issue of playboy.