“Go on … drink it,” said Tom.
Bob lifted the pint, took a gulp. Then he handed the bottle back, stood there. Suddenly he looked pale, even the red ear began to pale. He coughed. “This stuffs AWFUL! It’s like drinking perfume! Why do you drink it?”
“Because we’re stupid. You’ve got stupid parents. Now, go to the bedroom and take your brother with you …”
“Can we watch the tv in there?” asked Rob.
“All right, but get going …”
They filed out.
“Don’t you go making drunks out of my kids!” Helena said.
“I just hope they have better luck in life than we’ve had.”
Helena took a hit from her bottle. That finished it off.
She got up, took the burnt pot from the stove and slammed it into the sink.
“I don’t need all that god damned noise!” Tom said.
Helena appeared to be crying. “Tom, what are we going to do?”
She turned the hot water into the pot.
“Do?” asked Tom. “About what?”
“About the way we have to live!”
“There’s not a hell of a lot we can do.”
Helena scraped out the burnt food and poured some soap into the pot, then reached into the cupboard and got another pint of gin. She came around, sat down across from Tom, and peeled the bottle. “Got to let the pot soak a while … I’ll get the weenies on soon …”
Tom drank from his bottle, sat it down.
“Baby, you’re just an old sot, an old sot-pot …”
The tears were still there. “Oh yeah, well, who do you think made me this way? ONE GUESS!”
“That’s easy,” answered Tom, “two people: you and me.”
Helena took her first drink from the new bottle. With that, at once, the tears vanished. She gave a little smile. “Hey, I’ve got an idea! I can get a job as a waitress or something … You can rest up awhile, you know … What do you think?”
Tom put his hand across the table, put it on one of Helena’s.
“You’re a good girl, but let’s leave it like it is.”
Then the tears were coming back again. Helena was good with the tears, especially when she was drinking gin. “Tommy, do you still love me?”
“Sure, baby, at your best you’re wonderful.”
“I love you too, Tom, you know that …”
“Sure, baby, here’s to it!”
Tom lifted his bottle. Helena lifted hers.
They clicked their pints of gin in mid-air, then each drank to the other.
In the bedroom, Rob and Bob had the radio on, they had it on loud. There was a laugh-track on and the people on the laugh-track were laughing and laughing and laughing
and laughing.
—SEPTUAGENARIAN STEW
Miami was as far as I could go without leaving the country. I took Henry Miller with me and tried to read him all the way across. He was good when he was good, and vice versa. I had a pint. Then I had another pint, and another. The trip took four days and five nights. Outside of a leg-and-thigh rubbing episode with a young brunette girl whose parents would no longer support her in college, nothing much happened. She got off in the middle of the night in a particularly barren and cold part of the country, and vanished. I had always had insomnia and the only time I could really sleep on a bus was when I was totally drunk. I didn’t dare try that. When we arrived I hadn’t slept or shit for five days and I could barely walk. It was early evening. It felt good to be in the streets again.
ROOMS FOR RENT. I walked up and rang the doorbell. At such times one always places the old suitcase out of the view of the person who will open the door.
“I’m looking for a room. How much is it?”
“$6.50 a week.”
“May I look at it?”
“Surely.”
I walked in and followed her up the stairway. She was about forty-five but her behind swayed nicely. I have followed so many women up stairways like that, always thinking, if only some nice lady like this one would offer to take care of me and feed me warm tasty food and lay out clean stockings and shorts for me to wear, I would accept.
She opened the door and I looked in.
“All right,” I said, “it looks all right.”
“Are you employed?”
“Self-employed.”
“May I ask what you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Oh, have you written books?”
“Oh, I’m hardly ready for a novel. I just do articles, bits for magazines. Not very good really but I’m developing.”
“All right. I’ll give you your key and make out a receipt.”
I followed her down the stairway. The ass didn’t sway as nicely going down the stairway as going up. I looked at the back of her neck and imagined kissing her behind the ears.
“I’m Mrs. Adams,” she said. “Your name?”
“Henry Chinaski.”
As she made out the receipt, I heard sounds like the sawing of wood coming from behind the door to our left—only the rasps were punctuated with gasps for breath. Each breath seemed to be the last yet each breath finally led painfully to another.
“My husband is ill,” said Mrs. Adams and as she handed me the receipt and my key, she smiled. Her eyes were a lovely hazel color and sparkled. I turned and walked back up the stairs.
When I got into my room I remembered I had left my suitcase downstairs. I went down to fetch it. As I walked past Mrs. Adams’ door the gasping sounds were much louder. I took my suitcase upstairs, threw it on the bed, then walked downstairs again and out into the night. I found a main boulevard a little to the north, walked into a grocery store and bought a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I had a pocket knife and would be able to spread the peanut butter on the bread and have something to eat.
When I got back to the roominghouse I stood in the hall and listened to Mr. Adams, and I thought, that’s Death. Then I went up to my room and opened the jar of peanut butter and while listening to the death sounds from below I dug my fingers in. I ate it right off my fingers. It was great. Then I opened the bread. It was green and moldy and had a sharp sour smell. How could they sell bread like that? What kind of a place was Florida? I threw the bread on the floor, got undressed, turned out the light, pulled up the covers and lay there in the dark, listening.
I found a job through the newspaper. I was hired by a clothing store but it wasn’t in Miami it was in Miami Beach, and I had to take my hangover across the water each morning. The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that’s all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There’s deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgment he’ll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that I would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn’t a real man in the whole shitload. I always got to work sick but safe. Which demonstrates why Schumann was more relative than Shostakovich …
I was hired as what they called the extra ball-bearing. The extra ball-bearing is the man who is simply turned loose without specific duties. He is supposed to know what to do after consulting some deep well of ancient instinct. Instinctively one is supposed to know what will best keep things running smoothly, best maintain the company,
the Mother, and meet all her little needs which are irrational, continual and petty.
A good extra ball-bearing man is faceless, sexless, sacrificial; he is always waiting at the door when the first man with the key arrives. Soon he is hosing off the sidewalk, and he greets each person by name as they arrive, always with a bright smile and in a reassuring manner. Obeisant. That makes everybody feel a little better before the bloody grind begins. He sees that toilet paper is plentiful, especially in the lathes’ crapper. That wastebaskets never overflow. That no grime coats the windows. That small repairs are promptly made on desks and office chairs. That doors open easily. That clocks are set. That carpeting remains tacked down. That overfed powerful women do not have to carry small packages.
I wasn’t very good. My idea was to wander about doing nothing, always avoiding the boss, and avoiding the stoolies who might report to the boss. I wasn’t all that clever. It was more instinct than anything else. I always started a job with the feeling that I’d soon quit or be fired, and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.
It was a completely self-sufficient, self-contained clothing store, factory and retail business combined. The showroom, the finished product and the salesmen were all downstairs, and the factory was up above. The factory was a maze of catwalks and runways that even the rats couldn’t crawl, long narrow lofts with men and women sitting and working under thirty watt bulbs, squinting, treading pedals, threading needles, never looking up or speaking, bent and quiet, doing it.
At one time one of my jobs in New York City had been to take bolts of fabric up to lofts like this. I would roll my hand truck in the busy street, pushing it through traffic, then into an alley behind some grimy building. There would be a dark elevator and I’d have to pull on ropes with stained round wooden spools attached. One rope meant up, another rope signalled down. There was no light and as the elevator climbed slowly I’d watch in the dark for white numbers written on the bare walls—3, 7, 9, scrawled in chalk by some forgotten hand. I’d reach my floor, tug on another rope with my fingers and using all my strength slowly slide open the heavy old metal door, revealing row upon row of old Jewish ladies at their machines, laboring over piecework; the number one seamstress at the #1 machine, bent on maintaining her place; the number two girl at the #2 machine, ready to replace her should she falter. They never looked up or in any way acknowledged my presence as I entered.
In this clothing factory and store in Miami Beach, no deliveries were necessary. Everything was on hand. My first day I walked around the maze of lofts looking at people. Unlike New York, most of the workers were black. I walked up to a black man, quite small—almost tiny, who had a more pleasant face than most. He was doing some close work with a needle. I had a half pint in my pocket. “You got a rotten job there. Care for a drink?”
“Sure,” he said. He took a good hit. Then handed the bottle back. He offered me a cigarette. “You new in town?” “Yeah.” “Where you from?” “Los Angeles.” “Movie star?” “Yes, on vacation.” “You shouldn’t be talking to the help.” “I know.” He fell silent. He looked like a little monkey, an old graceful monkey. For the boys downstairs, he was a monkey. I took a hit. I was feeling good. I watched them all working quietly under their thirty watt bulbs, their hands moving delicately and swiftly. “My name’s Henry,” I said. “Brad,” he answered. “Listen, Brad, I get the deep deep blues watching you people work. Suppose I sing you guys and gals a little song?” “Don’t.” “You’ve got a rotten job there. Why do you do it?” “Shit, ain’t no other way.” “The Lord said there was.” “You believe in the Lord?” “No.” “What do you believe in?” “Nothing.” “We’re even.”
I talked to some of the others. The men were uncommunicative, some of the women laughed at me. “I’m a spy,” I laughed back. “I’m a company spy. I’m watching everybody.”
I took another hit. Then I sang them my favorite song, “My Heart Is a Hobo.” They kept working. Nobody looked up. When I finished they were still working. It was quiet for some time. Then I heard a voice: “Look, white boy, don’t come down on us.”
I decided to go hose off the front sidewalk.
It took four days and five nights for the bus to reach Los Angeles. As usual I neither slept nor defecated during the trip. There was some minor excitement when a big blonde got on somewhere in Louisiana. That night she started selling it for $2, and every man and one woman on the bus took advantage of her generosity except me and the bus driver. Business was transacted at night in the back of the bus. Her name was Vera. She wore purple lipstick and laughed a lot. She approached me during a brief stop in a coffee and sandwich shop. She stood behind me and asked, “Whatsa matter, you too good for me?” I didn’t reply. “A fag,” I heard her mutter disgustedly as she sat down next to one of the regular guys …
In Los Angeles I toured the bars in our old neighborhood looking for Jan. I didn’t get anywhere until I found Whitey Jackson working behind the bar in the Pink Mule. He told me that Jan was working as a chambermaid in the Durham Hotel at Beverly and Vermont. I walked on over. I was looking for the manager’s office when she stepped out of a room. She looked good, like getting away from me for a while had helped her. Then she saw me. She just stood there, her eyes got very blue and round and she stood there. Then she said it, “Hank!” She rushed over and we were in each others arms. She kissed me wildly, I tried to kiss back. “Jesus,” she said, “I thought I’d never see you again!” “I’m back.” “Are you back for good?” “L.A.’s my town.” “Step back,” she said, “let me look at you.” I stepped back, grinning. “You’re thin. You’ve lost weight,” Jan said. “You’re looking good,” I said, “are you alone?” “Yes.” “There’s nobody?” “Nobody. You know I can’t stand people.” “I’m glad you’re working.” “Come to my room,” she said.
I followed her. The room was very small but there was a good feel to it. You could look out the window and see the traffic, watch the signals working, see the paperboy on the corner. I liked the place. Jan threw herself on the bed. “Come on, lay down,” she said. “I’m embarrassed.” “I love you, you idiot,” she said, “we’ve fucked eight hundred times, so relax.” I took my shoes off and stretched out. She lifted a leg. “Still like my legs?” “Hell yes. Jan, have you finished your work?” “All but Mr. Clark’s room. And Mr. Clark doesn’t care. He leaves me tips.” “Oh?” “I’m not doing anything. He just leaves tips.” “Jan …” “Yes?” “The bus fare took all my money. I need a place to stay until I find a job.” “I can hide you here.” “Can you?” “Sure.” “I love you, baby,” I said. “Bastard,” she said. We began to go at it. It felt good. It felt very very good.
Afterwards Jan got up and opened a bottle of wine. I opened my last pack of cigarettes and we sat in bed drinking and smoking. “You’re all there,” she said. “What do you mean?” “I mean, I never met a man like you.” “Oh yeah?” “The others are only ten per cent there or twenty per cent, you’re all there, all of you is very there, it’s so different.” “I don’t know anything about it.” “You’re a hooker, you can hook women.” That made me feel good. After we finished our cigarettes we made love again. Then Jan sent me out for another bottle. I came back. I had to.
I got hired immediately at a fluorescent light fixture company. It was up on Alameda Street, to the north, in a cluster of warehouses. I was the shipping clerk. It was quite easy, I took the orders out of a wire basket, filled them, packed the fixtures in cartons, and stacked the cartons on skids out on the loading dock, each carton labeled and numbered. I weighed the cartons, made out a bill of lading, and phoned the trucking companies to come pick the stuff up.
The first day I was there, in the afternoon, I heard a loud crash behind me near the assembly line. The old wooden racks that housed the finished parts were pulling away from the wall and crashing to the floor—metal and glass were hitting the cement floor, smashing, making a terrible racket. The assembly line workers ran
to the other side of the building. Then it was silent. The boss, Mannie Feldman, stepped out of the office.
“What the hell’s going on here?”
Nobody answered.
“All right, shut down the assembly line! Everybody get a hammer and nails and get those fucking racks back up there!”
Mr. Feldman walked back into his office. There was nothing for me to do but to get in and help them. None of us were carpenters. It took us all afternoon and half the next morning to nail the racks back up. As we finished Mr. Feldman walked out of his office.
“So, you did it? All right, now listen to me—I want the 939’s stacked on top, the 820’s next on down, and the louvers and glass on the bottom shelves, get it? Now, does everybody get it?”
There wasn’t any answer. The 939’s were the heaviest fixtures—they were really heavy mothers—and he wanted them on top. He was the boss. We went about it. We stacked them up there, all that weight, and we stacked the light stuff on the bottom racks. Then we went back to work. Those racks held up the rest of the day and through the night. In the morning we began to hear creaking sounds. The racks were starting to go. The assembly line workers began to edge away, they were grinning. About ten minutes before the morning coffee break everything came down again. Mr. Feldman came running out of his office:
“What the hell’s going on here?”
Feldman was trying to collect his insurance and go bankrupt at the same time. The next morning a dignified looking man came down from the Bank of America. He told us not to build any more racks. “Just stack that shit on the floor,” was the way he put it. His name was Jennings, Curtis Jennings. Feldman owed the Bank of America a lot of money and the Bank of America wanted its money back before the business went under. Jennings took over management of the company. He walked around watching everybody. He went through Feldman’s books; he checked the locks and the windows and the security fence around the parking lot. He came up to me: “Don’t use Sieberling Truck Lines any more. They had four thefts while running one of your shipments through Arizona and New Mexico. Any particular reason you been using those boys?” “No, no reason.” The agent from Sieberling had been slipping me ten cents for each five hundred pounds of freight shipped out.
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 14
