The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac

Author:Jack Kerouac
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504033961
Publisher: Open Road Media

[7]

It was Saturday afternoon. The huge crowd filled the stadium and the ocean-roar of their jubilation was carried on radios all over America. The batteries of newsreel cameras clicked mysteriously high atop the pressbox. In the pressboxes men trained fieldglasses on the battered plain below as if they were generals of war. In the closing moments of the final period the piteous songs of the losing side were raised by choirs of faithful alumni, and fifes blew on the field, and muffled drums dolorously beat out the doom of certain hopes and certain destiny.

Young Peter sat on the bench, a new sophomore halfback, hooded among the others in the shades of historic day, aching and burning in every bone to run out into the middle of the field which was like the middle of the world’s life, and stand there among these great sanctifications which, for his soul, were like the Tribute of the Angels in the great arcades of Judgment Day.

In the last minutes of the fourth quarter, his turn came. He removed his hood and ran out among the echoing hums and roars of the game’s sad completion. He did not dare raise his eyes to the multitudes.

There were dazzling final plays in the gloom, mysterious reverses and sudden rips of speedy backs through the Navy line, sprawlings, convergences of tumbled bodies, flash passes, short gains. Suddenly, in the smoky dusk amid roars, there were two penetrations deep into the Navy backfield by some strange ghostly Peter who was almost impossible to see. He seemed so small and so furiously diffuse in his diving and ducking through tormented bodies—all in the shady dimness as drums boomed mournfully.

Hundreds of miles away in New England his father sat wild-eyed at a small pitiable radio. There, too, it was dusky and dim at the windows, raw October night was rattling at the panes, and the announcer was shouting remotely:

“Another long gain by Pete Martin of Penn! Straight through the middle and down the side, and out of bounds on the thirty yard line! First down and ten to go! Peter George Martin from Galloway, Massachusetts, he’s a sophomore, five foot nine, a hundred sixty five pounds. How he GOES! Another one of Penn’s great new backs … O’Connell, Singer, Angelone, Martin … auguring badly, wouldn’t you think, Bill, for Notre Dame next month? And, oh, that Penn line, it’s like a battering ram. Navy have their backs to the wall now!… Shift now to the right, single wing, six-three-two defense for the Middies—and there’s the gun! The game is over! Penn wins! The game is over!”

And sadly the game is over, there are great movements and departures in the gloom, the last music of brass-bands and drums, the lamentation of alma mater song sung by choristers with whiskey bottles and battered hats, the last echoes of the huge darkened stadium that is slowly emptied of all its eager life. The game is over.

The lights of Philadelphia burn in oncoming night beyond. Everyone is going off to eat, there will be drinking in bars, and parties, and wild hilarities.

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