Poem about Allie

He was called Allie
He died of Leukaemia
He was the nicest

Allie/Ackley

I wrote about my brother Allie's baseball mitt. It was a very descriptive subject. It really was. My brother Allie had this left-handed fielders mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it was that it had poems written all over the fingers and the pockets and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobodywas up to bat. He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in maine, on July 18 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. His teachers were always writting letters to my mother telling her it was a preasure having a boy like Allie in the class. And they weren't just shooting the crap. They really ment it. He was also the nicest in lots of ways. People with red hair are supposed to get mad easily but Allie never did. God he was a nice kid though. I slep in the garage that night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows just for the hell of it. My hand still hurts once in a while. I cant really make a fist, but I dont care much. I mean I'm not going to be a goddam surgeon or a violinist or anything anyway. Anyway, thats what I wrote Stradlater's composition about. I couldn't think of anything else descriptive. It was around ten-thirty, when I finished it. You could hear old Ackley snoring. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch.

Movie

I didn't have a date or anything, so I and this friend of mine, Mal Brossard, that was on the wrestling team, decided to take a bus into Agerstown and have a hamburger and maybe see a lousy movie. Neither of us felt like sitting around on our ass all night. I asked Mal if he minded if Ackley came along with us. The reason i asked was because Ackley never did anything on Saturday night. He came through the goddam curtains, and stood on the shower ledge and asked who was going beside me. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you were rescued him in a goddam boat, he'd want to know who the guy was that was rowing it before he'd even get in. Bossard and Ackley both had seen the picture that was playing, so all we did, we just had a couple of hamburgers and played the pinball machine for a little while, then took the bus back to Pencey. I didn't care about seeing the movie. It was supposed to be a comedy, and all that crap. It was ony quarter to nine when we got back to the dorm. Ackley lay down on my bed. All he did was keep talking in this monotonous voice about some babe he was supposed to have had sexual intercourse with the summer before. He was a virgin if ever I saw one.

Chapter 5 Food

We always had the same meal on Saturday nights at Pencey. It was supposed to be a big deal, because they gave you steak. I'll bet a thousand bucks the reason they did that was because a lot of guys' parents came up to school on Sunday, and old Thurmer probably figured everybody's mother would ask their darling boy what he had for dinner last night, and he'd say 'steak'. They were these little hard, dry jobs that you could hardly cut. You always got these very lumpy mashed potatoes on steak night. For desert you got Brown Betty, which nobody ate, except maybe the little kids in the lower school that didn't know any better - and guys like Ackley that ate everything.

Jane

He went back into the room, but I stuck around in the can for a while, thinking about old Jane.
I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stradlater having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was.

Stradlater's date

Who is your date if it isn't Fitzgerald. I sat down on the washbowl next to him again. That Phyllis Smith babe? I got Bud Thaw's girl's rommate. She knows you. whats her name Jean Gallagher. Boy, I nearly dropped dead when he said that. She practically lived next door to me. She has this big damn Doberman pinscher. She's a dancer, Ballet and all. She used to practise about two hours every day, right in the middle of the hottest weather and all. She was worried that it might make her legs lousy-think and all. I used to play checkers with her all the time. I used to play checkers with her all the time. She wouldn't move any of her kings. What she'd do, when she'd get a king, she wouldn't move it. She'd just leave it in the back row. She'd get them all lined up in the back row. Then she'd never used them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row. Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound. Skinny guy with hairy legs. He wore shorts all the time. He was supposed to be a playwright or some goddam thing. All he ever did was listen to every goddam mystery program on the radio. And run around the house naked. With Jane around. That really interested him. Stradlater was a very sexy bastard. Only sexy stuff interested him.

Horsing around

I got bored sitting at the washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I started imitating one of those guys in the movies. In one of those musicals. All I need's an audience. I'm an exhibitionist. I'm the goddam Governors son. He doesn't want me to be a tap dancer. He wants me to go the Oxford. But its in my goddam blood, tap-dancing. It's the opening night of the ziegfeld follies. The leading man can't go on. He's drunk as a bastard. So who do they get to take his place? Me, that's who. The little ole goddam Governor's son.

Bathroom

He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny in a way. Stradlater wanted me to write a composition for Monday. It was very ironical. It really was. Suspense is good for some bastards like Stradlater. 'Anything descriptive a room or a house'. He gave a big yawn while he said that. Which is someting that give me a royal pain in the ass. Thats something else that gives me a royal pain. I mean if you're good at writing compostions and somebody starts talking about commas. He wanted you to think that the only reason he was lousy at writing compositions was because he stuck all the commas in the wrong place. He was a little bit like Ackley, in that way.

Chapter 4 Stradlater

I went down to the can and chewed the rag with him while he was shaving. We were the only ones in the can, because everyone was still down at the game. Stradlater kept whistling 'Song of India' while he shaved. He had one of those piercing whistles that were practically never in tune. You remember I said before that Ackley was a slob in his personal habits? well, so was Stradlater, but in a different way. He was more of a secret slob. You should've seen the razor he shaved himself with. It was always rusty as hell and full of lather and hairs and crap. He never cleaned it of anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway. He was madly in love with himself. He thought he was the handsomest guy in the Western Hemisphere. He was pretty handsome, too- I'll admit it. I mean he was mostly a year book kind of handsome guy. I knew a lot of other guys at Pencey that I thought were a lot handsomer than Stradlater.

Stradlater

He is very generous in some things. Suppose, for intance he was wearing a tie you liked. Say he had a tie on that you like a helluva lot, he'd probably take it off and give it to you. He really would. Hw was always in a big hurry. Everything was a very big deal. He came over to me ad gave me two playful slaps on both cheeks- which can sometimes be very annoying. We were practically the same height, but he weighed about twice as much as i did. He has very broad shoulders. He was t least a pretty friendly guy, stradlater. He had a pretty heavy beard he really did. He alwys walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build, he did too, i have to admit it.

Robert Ackley

I'd only read about two pages, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains. Evev without looking up I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley this gut who roomed next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior. He was one of these very, very tall round-shouldered guys - he was about six four - with lousy teeth. He had a lot a pimples. Not just on his forehead or on his chin, like most other guys, but all over his face, and not only that he had a terrible personality. He was a sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't to crazy about him, to tell you the truth. He always made you say the everything twice. He didn't like it when you called him 'Ackley kid'. He was always telling me I was a goddam kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him 'Ackley kid'. That guy Ackley would pick up anything. He did'nt care if you'd packed something or not and had it way in the top of the closet. 'you have a damn good sence of humour Ackley kid,' I told him. He had lousy manners. The only way he did anything was if you yelled at him. He could be really aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen.

Book

I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs. The book I was reading was this book i took out of the libary by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book. I'm Quite illiterate, but I read a lot.

Red hunting hat

It was nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and the heat was in our room for a change. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar, and then then I put on this hat i'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after i noticed i'd lost all the goddam foils. It only coat me a buck. They way a wore it, i swung the old peak way around to the back- very corny, i'll admit, but i liked it that way.

Chapter 3

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym to get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
I live in the Ossenburger Memorial wing of the new dorms. It was for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pency. What he did, he started these undertaking business after parlors all over the country that you could get your family buried for about five bucks a piece. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in a river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and the named our wing after him.

School

I have carried five subjects, and I am failing in four. I'd only written that god damn note so he wouldn't feel bad in flunking me. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they flew away. I'm lucky I could shoot the bukk to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. You don't have to think to hard when you talk to a teacher. I didnt have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills, I didnt flunk out i jus sort or quit. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded be phonies. I couldnt stand to stay in there any longer, the way we were on opposite side of the pole, the way he kept missing the bed whenever he chucked something at it, and that grippe smell of vicks nose drops all over the place, and his sad bathrobe with his chest showing. I'd never yell 'good luck' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

Me

This is about the fourth school i've gone to. I shake my head quiet a lot. I have a lousy volcabulary. Grand there's a word I really hate I could puke everytime I here it. It's a phony.

Chapter 2 Old Spencer

He was bout seventy years old. He was al stooped over and had very terrible posture, and in class whenever he dropped a piece of chalk some guy had to pick it up and hand it to him. He showed me some old beat-up navajo blanket that he and Mrs Spencer'd bought off some indian in Yellowstone Park. You tke someone as old as hell, like old Spencer, and they get a big bang out of buying a blanket. Old Spencer had on this sad, ratty bathrobe that he was probably born in or something, I dont like to see old guys and pajamas and bathrobes anyway. You never seen anybody nod as much in your life aas old Spencer.