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.