South of No North

by Charles Bukowski

  “Well, not really. You see, it’s kind of a display piece, a joke.”

  “I want to buy her.”

  “Well, let’s see…” The old Jew went over and began touching the mannequin, touching the dress, the arms. “Let’s see…I think I can let you have this…thing…for $17.50.”

  “I’ll take her.” Robert pulled out a twenty. The storekeeper counted out the change.

  “I’m going to miss it,” he said, “sometimes it seems almost real. Should I wrap it?”

  “No, I’ll take her the way she is.”

  Robert picked up the mannequin and carried her to his car. He laid her down in the back seat. Then he got in and drove off to his place. When he got there, luckily, there didn’t seem to be anybody about and he got her into the doorway unseen. He stood her in the center of the room and looked at her.

  “Stella,” he said, “Stella, bitch!”

  He walked up and slapped her across the face. Then he grabbed the head and kissed it. It was a good kiss. His penis began to harden when the phone rang. “Hello,” he answered.

  “Robert?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “This is Harry.”

  “How you doing, Harry?”

  “O.k., what you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought I’d come over. Bring a couple of beers.”

  “O.k.”

  Robert hung up, picked up the mannequin and carried her to the closet. He pushed her back in the corner of the closet and closed the door.

  Harry really didn’t have much to say. He sat there with his beer-can. “How’s Laura?” he asked.

  “Oh,” said Robert, “it’s all over between me and Laura.”

  “What happened?”

  “The eternal vamp bit. Always on stage. She was relentless. She’d turn on for guys everywhere—at the grocery store, on the street, in cafes, everywhere and to anybody. It didn’t matter who it was as long as it was a man. She even turned on for a guy who dialed a wrong number. I couldn’t go it anymore.”

  “You alone now?”

  “No, I’ve got another one. Brenda. You’ve met her.”

  “Oh yeah. Brenda. She’s all right.”

  Harry sat there drinking beer. Harry never had a woman but he was always talking about them. There was something sickening about Harry. Robert didn’t encourage the conversation and Harry soon left. Robert went to the closet and brought Stella out.

  “You god damned whore!” he said. “You’ve been cheating on me, haven’t you?”

  Stella didn’t answer. She stood there looking so cool and prim. He slapped her a good one. It’d be a long day in the sun before any woman got away with cheating on Bob Wilkenson. He slapped her another good one.

  “Cunt! You’d fuck a four-year-old boy if he could get his pecker up, wouldn’t you?”

  He slapped her again, then grabbed her and kissed her. He kissed her again and again. Then he ran his hands up under her dress. She was well-shaped, very well-shaped. Stella reminded him of an algebra teacher he’d had in high school. Stella didn’t have on panties.

  “Whore,” he said, “who got your panties?”

  Then his penis was pressed against the front of her. There was no opening. But Robert was in a tremendous passion. He inserted it between the upper thighs. It was smooth and tight. He worked away. For just a moment he felt extremely foolish, then his passion took over and he began kissing her along the neck as he worked.

  Robert washed Stella with a dishrag, placed her in the closet behind an overcoat, closed the door and still managed to get in the last quarter of the Detroit Lions vs. L.A. Rams game on T.V.

  It was quite nice for Robert as time went on. He made certain adjustments. He bought Stella several pairs of underpants, a garter belt, sheer long stockings, an ankle bracelet.

  He bought her earrings too, and was quite shocked to learn that his love didn’t have any ears. Under all that hair, the ears were missing. He put the earrings on anyhow with adhesive tape. But there were advantages—he didn’t have to take her to dinner, to parties, to dull movies; all those mundane things that meant so much to the average woman. And there were arguments. There would always be arguments, even with a mannequin. She wasn’t talkative but he was sure she told him once, “You’re the greatest lover of them all. That old Jew was a dull lover. You love with soul, Robert.”

  Yes, there were advantages. She wasn’t like all the other women he had known. She didn’t want to make love at inconvenient moments. He could choose the time. And she didn’t have periods. And he went down on her. He cut some of the hair from her head and pasted it between her thighs.

  The affair was sexual to begin with but gradually he was falling in love with her, he could feel it happening. He considered going to a psychiatrist, then decided not to. After all, was it necessary to love a real human being? It never lasted long. There were too many differences between the species, and what started as love too often ended up as war.

  Then too, he didn’t have to lie in bed with Stella and listen to her talk about all her past lovers. How Karl had such a big thing, but Karl wouldn’t go down. And how Louie danced so well, Louie could have made it in ballet instead of selling insurance. And how Marty could really kiss. He had a way of locking tongues. So on. So forth. What shit. Of course, Stella had mentioned the old Jew. But just that once.

  Robert had been with Stella about two weeks when Brenda phoned.

  “Yes, Brenda?” he answered.

  “Robert, you haven’t phoned me.”

  “I’ve been terribly busy, Brenda. I’ve been promoted to district manager and I’ve had to realign things down at the office.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Robert, something’s wrong…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can tell by your voice. Something’s wrong. What the hell’s wrong, Robert? Is there another woman?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean, not exactly?”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “What is it? What is it? Robert, something’s wrong. I’m coming over to see you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong, Brenda.”

  “You son of a bitch, you’re holding out on me! Something’s going on. I’m coming to see you! Now!”

  Brenda hung up and Robert walked over and picked up Stella and put her in the closet, well back in one corner. He took the overcoat off the hanger and hung it over Stella. Then he came back, sat down and waited.

  Brenda opened the door and rushed in. “All right, what the hell’s wrong? What is it?”

  “Listen, kid,” he said, “it’s o.k. Calm down.”

  Brenda was nicely built. Her breasts sagged a bit, but she had fine legs and a beautiful ass. Her eyes always had a frantic, lost look. He could never cure her eyes of that. Sometimes after love-making a temporary calm would fill her eyes but it never lasted.

  “You haven’t even kissed me yet!”

  Robert got up from his chair and kissed Brenda.

  “Christ, that was no kiss! What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong!”

  “It’s nothing, nothing at all…”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’m going to scream!”

  “I tell you, it’s nothing.”

  Brenda screamed. She walked to the window and screamed. You could hear her all over the neighborhood. Then she stopped.

  “God, Brenda, don’t do that again! Please, please!”

  “I’ll do it again! I’ll do it again! Tell me what’s wrong, Robert, or I’ll do it again!”

  “All right,” he said, “wait.”

  Robert went to the closet, took the overcoat off Stella and lifted her out of the closet.

  “What’s that?” asked Brenda, “what’s that?”

  “A mannequin.”

  “A mannequin? You mean?…”

  “I mean, I’m in love with her.”

  “Oh, my god! You mean? That thing? That thing?�
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  “Yes.”

  “You love that thing more than me? That hunk of celluloid, or whatever the shit she’s made of? You mean you love that thing more than me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you take it to bed with you? I suppose you do things to…with that thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh…”

  Then Brenda really screamed. She just stood there and screamed. Robert thought she would never stop. Then she leaped at the mannequin and started to claw and beat at it. The mannequin toppled and fell against the wall. Brenda ran out the door, got in her car and drove off wildly. She crashed into the side of a parked car, glanced off, drove on.

  Robert walked over to Stella. The head had broken off and rolled under a chair. There were spurts of chalky material on the floor. One arm hung loosely, broken, two wires protruding. Robert sat down in a chair. He just sat there. Then he got up and went into the bathroom, stood there a minute, and came back out. He stood in the hallway and could see the head under the chair. He began to sob. It was terrible. He didn’t know what to do. He remembered how he had buried his mother and his father. But this was different. This was different. He just stood in the hallway, sobbing and waiting. Both of Stella’s eyes were open and cool and beautiful. They stared at him.

  A COUPLE OF WINOS

  I was in my 20’s and although I was drinking heavily and not eating, I was still strong. I mean, physically, and that’s some luck for you when not much else is going right. My mind was in riot against my lot and life, and the only way I could calm it was to drink and drink and drink. I was walking up the road, it was dusty and dirty and hot, and I believe the state was California, but I’m no longer sure. It was desert land. I was walking along the road, my stockings hard and rotted and stinking, the nails were coming up through the soles of my shoes and into my feet and I had to keep cardboard in my shoes—cardboard, newspaper, anything that I could find. The nails worked through that, and you either got some more or you turned the stuff around, or upsidedown, or reshaped it.

  The truck stopped alongside of me. I ignored it and kept walking. The truck started up again and the guy rode along beside me.

  “Kid,” the guy said, “you want a job?”

  “Who’ve I got to kill?’ I asked.

  “Nobody,” said the guy, “come on, get in.”

  I went around to the other side and when I got there the door was open. I stepped up on the running board, slid in, pulled the door shut and leaned back in the leather seat. I was out of the sun.

  “You wanna suck me,” said the guy, “you get five bucks.”

  I put the right hand hard into his gut, got the left somewhere in between the ear and the neck, came back with the right to the mouth and the truck ran off the road. I grabbed the wheel and steered it back. Then I cut the motor and braked. I climbed out and continued to walk along the road. About five minutes later the truck was running along next to me again.

  “Kid,” said the guy, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean you were a homo. I mean, though, you kind of half-look like a homo. Is there anything wrong with being a homo?”

  “I guess if you’re a homo there’s not.”

  “Come on,” said the guy, “get in. I got a real honest job for you. You can make some money, get on your feet.”

  I climbed in again. We drove off.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “you got a real tough face, but look at your hands. You got ladies’ hands.”

  “Don’t worry about my hands,” I said.

  “Well, it’s a tough job. Loadin’ ties. You ever loaded ties?

  “No.”

  “It’s hard work.”

  “I’ve done hard work all my life.”

  “O.k.,” said the guy, “o.k.”

  We drove along not talking, the truck rocking back and forth. There was nothing but dust, dust and desert. The guy didn’t have much of a face, he didn’t have much of anything. But sometimes small people who stay in the same place for a long time achieve minor prestige and power. He had the truck and he was hiring. Sometimes you have to go along with that.

  We drove along and there was an old guy walking along the road. He must have been in his mid-forties. That’s old for the road. This Mr. Burkhart, he’d told me his name, slowed his truck and asked the old guy. “Hey, buddy, you want to make a couple of bucks?”

  “Oh, yes sir!” said the old guy.

  “Move over. Let him in,” said Mr. Burkhart.

  The old guy got in and he really stank—of booze and sweat and agony and death. We drove on until we came to a small group of buildings. We got out with Burkhart and walked into a store. There was a guy in a green sunshade with a bunch of rubber bands around his left wrist. He was bald but his arms were covered with sickly long blond hair.

  “Hello, Mr. Burkhart,” he said, “I see you found yourself a couple more winos.”

  “Here’s the list, Jesse,” said Mr. Burkhart, and Jesse walked about filling orders. It took some time. Then he was finished. “Anything else, Mr. Burkhart? A couple cheap bottles of wine?”

  “No wine for me,” I said.

  “O.k.,” said the old guy, “I’ll take both bottles.”

  “It’ll come off your pay,” Burkhart told the old guy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the old guy, “take it off the pay.”

  “You sure you don’t want a bottle?” Burkhart asked me.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll take a bottle.”

  We had a tent and that night we drank the wine and the old guy told me his troubles. He’d lost his wife. He still loved his wife. He thought about her all the time. A great woman. He used to teach mathematics. But he’d lost his wife. Never a woman like her. Blah blah blah.

  Christ, when we woke up the old guy was sick and I wasn’t feeling much better and the sun was up and out and we went to do our job: stacking railroad ties. You had to stack them into ricks. The bottom stacking was easy. But as we got higher we had to count. “One, two three,” I’d count and then we’d let her go.

  The old guy had a bandanna tied around his head and the booze poured out of his head and into the bandanna and the bandanna got soaked and dark. Every now and then a sliver from one of the railroad ties would knife through the rotten glove and into my hand. Ordinarily the pain would have been unbearable and I would have quit but fatigue dulled the senses, really properly dulled them. I just got angry when it happened—like I wanted to kill somebody, but when I looked around there was only sand and cliffs and the oven dry bright yellow sun and no place to go.

  Every now and then the railroad company would rip up the old ties and replace them with new ones. They left the old ties laying beside the tracks. There wasn’t much wrong with the old ties but the railroad left them laying around and Burkhart had guys like us stack them into ricks which he toted off in his truck and sold. I guess they had a lot of uses. On some of the ranches you’d see them stuck into the ground and strung with barbed wire and used as fences. I suppose there were other uses too. I wasn’t much interested.

  It was like any other impossible job, you got tired and you wanted to quit and then you got more tired and forgot to quit, and the minutes didn’t move, you lived forever inside of one minute, no hope, no out, trapped, too dumb to quit and nowhere to go if you did quit.

  “Kid, I lost my wife. She was such a wonderful woman. I keep thinking of her. A good woman is the greatest thing on earth.”

  “Yeh.”

  “If we only had a little wine.”

  “We don’t have any wine. We gotta wait until tonight.”

  “I wonder if anybody understands winos?”

  “Just other winos.”

  “Do you think those slivers in our hands will creep to our hearts?”

  “No chance; we’ve never been lucky.”

  Two Indians came by and watched us. They watched us a long time. When the old guy and I sat down on a tie for a smoke one of the Indians walked over.
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  “You guys are doing it all wrong,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’re working at the height of the desert heat. What you do is get up early in the morning and get your work done while it’s cool.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “thanks.”

  The Indian was right. I decided we’d get up early. But we never made it. The old guy was always too sick from the night’s drinking and I could never get him up on time.

  “Five minutes more,” he’d say, “just five minutes more.”

  Finally, one day, the old man gave out. He couldn’t lift another tie. He kept apologizing about it.

  “It’s all right, Pops.”

  We got back to the tent and waited for evening. Pops layed there talking. He kept talking about his ex-wife. I heard about his ex-wife all through the day and into the evening. Then Burkhart arrived.

  “Jesus Christ, you guys didn’t do much today. You figure to live off the fat of the land?”

  “We’re through, Burkhart,” I said, “we’re waiting to get paid.”

  “I got a good mind not to pay you guys.”

  “If you got a good mind,” I said, “you’ll pay.”

  “Please, Mr. Burkhart,” said the old guy, “please, please, we worked so god damned hard, honest we did!”

  “Burkhart knows what we’ve done,” I said, “he’s got a count of the ricks and so have I.”

  “72 ricks,” said Burkhart.

  “90 ricks,” I said.

  “76 ricks,” said Burkhart.

  “90 ricks,” I said.

  “80 ricks,” said Burkhart.

  “Sold,” I said.

  Burkhart got out his pencil and paper and charged us for wine and food, transport and lodging. Pops and I each came up with $18 for five day’s work. We took it. And got a free ride back to town. Free? Burkhart had fucked us from every angle. But we couldn’t holler law because when you didn’t have any money the law stopped working.

  “By god,” said the old guy, “I’m really going to get drunk. I’m going to get good and drunk. Aren’t you, kid?”

  “I don’t think so.”