South of No North

by Charles Bukowski

  It was a mile and one sixteenth. Red Charley was reading 20 to one when they came out of the gate and he came out first, you couldn’t miss him in all those bandages, and the boy opened up four lengths on the first turn, he must have thought he was in a quarter horse race. The jock only had two wins out of 40 mounts and you could see why. He had six lengths on the backstretch. The lather was running down Red Charley’s neck; it damn near looked like shaving cream.

  At the top of the turn six lengths had faded to three and the whole pack was gaining on him. At the top of the stretch Red Charley only had a length and a half and my horse Bold Latrine was moving up outside. It looked like I was in. Half way down the stretch I was a neck off. Another lunge and I was in. But they went all the way down to the wire that way. Red Charley still had the neck at the finish. He paid $42.80.

  “I thought he looked best,” said Joe and he went off to collect his money.

  When he came back he asked for the Form again. He looked them over. “How come Big H is 6 to one?” he asked me. “He looks best.”

  “He may look best to you,” I said, “but off the knowledge of experienced horseplayers and handicappers, real pros, he rates about 6 to one.”

  “Don’t get pissed, Hank. I know I don’t know anything about this game. I only mean that to me he looks like he should be the favorite. I gotta bet him anyhow. I might as well go ten win.”

  “It’s your money, Joe. You just lucked it in the first race, the game isn’t that easy.”

  Well Big H won and paid $14.40. Joe started to strut around. We read the Form at the bar and he bought us each a drink and tipped the barkeep a buck. As we left the bar he winked at the barkeep and said, “Barney’s Mole is all alone in this one.” Barney’s Mole was the 6/5 favorite so I didn’t think that was such a fancy announcement. By the time the race went off Barney’s Mole was even money. He paid $4.20 and Joe had $20 win on him.

  “That time,” he told me, “they made the proper horse the favorite.”

  Out of the nine races Joe had eight winners. On the ride back he kept wondering how he had missed in the 7th race. “Blue Truck looked far the best. I don’t understand how he only got 3rd.”

  “Joe you had 8 for 9. That’s beginner’s luck. You don’t know how hard this game is.”

  “It looks easy to me. You just pick the winner and collect your money.”

  I didn’t talk to him the rest of the way in. That night he knocked on my door and he had a fifth of Grandad and the Racing Form. I helped him with the bottle while he read the Form and told me all nine winners the next day, and why. We had ourselves a real expert here. I know how it can go to a man’s head. I had 17 straight winners once and I was going to buy homes along the coast and start a white slavery business to protect my winnings from the income tax man. That’s how crazy you can get.

  I could hardly wait to take Joe to the track the next day. I wanted to see his face when all his predictions ran out. Horses were only animals made out of flesh. They were fallible. It was like the old horse players said, “There are a dozen ways you can lose a race and only one way to win one.”

  All right, it didn’t happen that way. Joe had 7 for 9—favorites, longshots, medium prices. And he bitched all the way in about his two losers. He couldn’t understand it. I didn’t talk to him. The son of a bitch could do no wrong. But the percentages would get him. He started telling me how I was betting wrong, and the proper way to bet. Two days at the track and he was an expert. I’d been playing them 20 years and he was telling me I didn’t know my ass.

  We went all week and Joe kept winning. He got so unbearable I couldn’t stand him anymore. He bought a new suit and hat, new shirt and shoes, and started smoking 50 cent cigars. He told the relief people that he was self-employed and didn’t need their money anymore. Joe had gone mad. He grew a mustache and purchased a wrist watch and an expensive ring. The next Tuesday I saw him drive to the track in his own car, a ’69 black Caddy. He waved to me from his car and flicked out his cigar ash. I didn’t talk to him at the track that day. He was in the clubhouse. When he knocked on my door that night he had the usual fifth of Grandad and a tall blonde. A young blonde, well-dressed, well-groomed, she had a shape and a face. They walked in together.

  “Who’s this old bum?” she asked Joe.

  “That’s my old buddy, Hank,” he told her, “I used to know him when I was poor. He took me to the racetrack one day.”

  “Don’t he have an old lady?”

  “Old Hank ain’t had a woman since 1965. Listen, how about fixing him up with Big Gertie?”

  “Oh hell, Joe, Big Gertie wouldn’t go him! Look, he’s dressed like a rag man.”

  “Have some mercy, baby, he’s my buddy. I know he don’t look like much but we both started out together. I’m sentimental.”

  “Well, Big Gertie ain’t sentimental, she likes class.”

  “Look, Joe,” I said, “forget the women. Just sit down with the Form and let’s have a few drinks and give me some winners for tomorrow.”

  Joe did that. We drank and he worked them out. He wrote nine horses down for me on a piece of paper. His woman, Big Thelma—well, Big Thelma just looked at me like I was dog shit on somebody’s lawn.

  Those nine horses were good for eight wins the next day. One horse paid $62.60. I couldn’t understand it. That night Joe came by with a new woman. She looked even finer. He sat down with the bottle and the Form and wrote me down nine more horses.

  Then he told me, “Listen, Hank, I gotta be moving out of my place. I found me a nice deluxe apartment right outside the track. The travel time to and from the track is a nuisance. Let’s go, baby. I’ll see you around, kid.”

  I knew that was it. My buddy was giving me the brush-off. The next day I laid it heavy on those nine horses. They were good for seven winners. I went over the Form again when I got home trying to figure why he selected the horses he did, but there seemed to be no understandable reason. Some of his selections were truly puzzling to me.

  I didn’t see Joe again for the remainder of the meet, except once. I saw him walk into the clubhouse with two women. Joe was fat and laughing. He wore a two-hundred-dollar suit and he had a diamond ring on his finger. I lost all nine races that day.

  It was two years later. I was at Hollywood Park and it was a particularly hot day, a Thursday, and in the 6th race I happened to land a $26.80 winner. As I was walking away from the payoff window I heard his voice behind me:

  “Hey, Hank! Hank!”

  It was Joe.

  “Jesus Christ, man,” he said, “it’s sure great to see you!”

  “Hello Joe…”

  He still had on his two-hundred-dollar suit in all that heat. The rest of us were in shirt sleeves. He needed a shave and his shoes were scuffed and the suit was wrinkled and dirty. His diamond was gone, his wrist watch was gone.

  “Lemme have a smoke, Hank.”

  I gave him a cigarette and when he lit it I noticed his hands were trembling.

  “I need a drink, man,” he told me.

  I took him over to the bar and we had a couple of whiskeys. Joe studied the Form.

  “Listen, man, I’ve put you on plenty of winners, haven’t I?”

  “Sure, Joe.”

  We stood there looking at the Form. “Now check this race,” said Joe. “Look at Black Monkey. He’s going to romp, Hank. He’s a lock. And at 8 to one.”

  “You like his chances, Joe?”

  “He’s in, man. He’ll win by daylight.”

  We placed our bets on Black Monkey and went out to watch the race. He finished a deep 7th.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Joe. “Look, let me have two more bucks, Hank. Siren Call is in the next, she can’t lose. There’s no way.”

  Siren Call did get up for 5th but that’s not much help when you’re betting on the nose. Joe got me for another $2 for the 9th race and his horse ran out there too. Joe told me he didn’t have a car and would I mind driving him home?

  �
�You’re not going to believe this,” he told me, “but I’m back on the dole.”

  “I believe you, Joe.”

  “I’ll bounce back, though. You know, Pittsburgh Phil went broke half a dozen times. He always sprung back. His friends had faith in him. They lent him money.”

  When I let him off I found he lived in an old rooming house about four blocks from where I lived. I had never moved. When I let Joe out he said, “There’s a hell of a good card tomorrow. You going?”

  “I’m not sure, Joe.”

  “Lemme know if you’re going.”

  “Sure, Joe.”

  That night I heard the knock on my door. I knew Joe’s knock. I didn’t answer. I had the T.V. playing but I didn’t answer. I just laid real still on the bed. He kept knocking.

  “Hank! Hank! You in there? HEY, HANK!”

  Then he really beat on the door, the son of a bitch. He seemed frantic. He knocked and he knocked. At last he stopped. I heard him walking down the hall. Then I heard the front door of the apartment house close. I got up, turned off the T.V., went to the refrigerator, made a ham and cheese sandwich, opened a beer. Then I sat down with that, split tomorrow’s Form open and began looking at the first race, a five-thousand-dollar claimer for colts and geldings three years old and up. I liked the 8 horse. The Form had him listed at 5 to one. I’d take that anytime.

  DR. NAZI

  Now, I’m a man of many problems and I suppose that most of them are self-created. I mean with the female, and gambling, and feeling hostile toward groups of people, and the larger the group, the greater the hostility. I’m called negative and gloomy, sullen.

  I keep remembering the female who screamed at me: “You’re so god damned negative! Life can be beautiful!”

  I suppose it can, and especially with a little less screaming. But I want to tell you about my doctor. I don’t go to shrinks. Shrinks are worthless and too contented. But a good doctor is often disgusted and/or mad, and therefore far more entertaining.

  I went to Dr. Kiepenheuer’s office because it was closest. My hands were breaking out with little white blisters—a sign, I felt, either of my actual anxiety or possible cancer. I wore workingman’s gloves so people wouldn’t stare. And I burned through the gloves while smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

  I walked into the doctor’s place. I had the first appointment. Being a man of anxiety I was thirty minutes early, musing about cancer. I walked across the sitting room and looked into the office. Here was the nurse-receptionist squatted on the floor in her tight white uniform, her dress pulled almost up to her hips, gross and thunderous thighs showing through tightly-pulled nylon. I forgot all about the cancer. She hadn’t heard me and I stared at her unveiled legs and thighs, measured the delicious rump with my eyes. She was wiping water from the floor, the toilet had overrun and she was cursing, she was passionate, she was pink and brown and living and unveiled and I stared.

  She looked up. “Yes?”

  “Go ahead,” I said, “don’t let me disturb you.”

  It’s the toilet,” she said, “it keeps running over.”

  She kept wiping and I kept looking over the top of Life magazine. She finally stood up. I walked to the couch and sat down. She went through her appointment book.

  “Are you Mr. Chinaski?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you take your gloves off? It’s warm in here.”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

  “Dr. Kiepenheuer will be in soon.”

  “It’s all right. I can wait.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Cancer?”

  “Yes.”

  The nurse vanished and I read Life and then I read another copy of Life and then I read Sports Illustrated and then I sat staring at paintings of seascapes and landscapes and piped-in music came from somewhere. Then, suddenly, all the lights blinked off, then on again, and I wondered if there would be any way to rape the nurse and get away with it when the doctor walked in. I ignored him and he ignored me, so that went off even.

  He called me into his office. He was sitting on a stool and he looked at me. He had a yellow face and yellow hair and his eyes were lusterless. He was dying. He was about 42. I eyed him and gave him six months.

  “What’s with the gloves?” he asked.

  “I’m a sensitive man, Doctor.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I should tell you that I was once a Nazi.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You don’t mind that I was once a Nazi?”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  “I was captured. They rode us through France in a boxcar with the doors open and the people stood along the way and threw stink bombs and rocks and all sorts of rubbish at us—fishbones, dead plants, excreta, everything imaginable.”

  Then the doctor sat and told me about his wife. She was trying to skin him. A real bitch. Trying to get all his money. The house. The garden. The garden house. The gardener too, probably, if she hadn’t already. And the car. And alimony. Plus a large chunk of cash. Horrible woman. He’d worked so hard. Fifty patients a day at ten dollars a head. Almost impossible to survive. And that woman. Women. Yes, women. He broke down the word for me. I forget if it was woman or female or what it was, but he broke it down into Latin and he broke it down from there to show what the root was—in Latin: women were basically insane.

  As he talked about the insanity of women I began to feel pleased with the doctor. My head nodded in agreement.

  Suddenly he ordered me to the scales, weighed me, then he listened to my heart and to my chest. He roughly removed my gloves, washed my hands in some kind of shit and opened the blisters with a razor, still talking about the rancor and vengeance that all women carried in their hearts. It was glandular. Women were directed by their glands, men by their hearts. That’s why only the men suffered.

  He told me to bathe my hands regularly and to throw the god damned gloves away. He talked a little more about women and his wife and then I left.

  My next problem was dizzy spells. But I only got them when I was standing in line. I began to get very terrified of standing in line. It was unbearable.

  I realized that in America and probably everyplace else it came down to standing in line. We did it everywhere. Driver’s license: three or four lines. The racetrack: lines. The movies: lines. The market: lines. I hated lines. I felt there should be a way to avoid them. Then the answer came to me. Have more clerks. Yes, that was the answer. Two clerks for every person. Three clerks. Let the clerks stand in line.

  I knew that lines were killing me. I couldn’t accept them, but everybody else did. Everybody else was normal. Life was beautiful for them. They could stand in line without feeling pain. They could stand in line forever. They even liked to stand in line. They chatted and grinned and smiled and flirted with each other. They had nothing else to do. They could think of nothing else to do. And I had to look at their ears and mouths and necks and legs and asses and nostrils, all that. I could feel death-rays oozing from their bodies like smog, and listening to their conversations I felt like screaming “Jesus Christ, somebody help me! Do I have to suffer like this just to buy a pound of hamburger and a loaf of rye bread?”

  The dizziness would come, and I’d spread my legs to keep from falling down; the supermarket would whirl, and the faces of the supermarket clerks with their gold and brown mustaches and their clever happy eyes, all of them going to be supermarket managers someday, with their white scrubbed contented faces, buying homes in Arcadia and nightly mounting their pale blond grateful wives.

  I made an appointment with the doctor again. I was given the first appointment. I arrived half an hour early and the toilet was fixed. The nurse was dusting in the office. She bent and straightened and bent halfway and then bent right and then bent left, and she turned her ass toward me and bent over. That white uniform twitched and hiked, climbed, lifted; her
e was dimpled knee, there was thigh, here was haunch, there was the whole body. I sat down and opened a copy of Life.

  She stopped dusting and stuck her head out at me, smiling. “You got rid of your gloves, Mr. Chinaski.”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor came in looking a bit closer to death and he nodded and I got up and followed him in.

  He sat down on his stool.

  “Chinaski: how goes it?”

  “Well, doctor…”

  “Trouble with women?”

  “Well, of course, but…”

  He wouldn’t let me finish. He had lost more hair. His fingers twitched. He seemed short of breath. Thinner. He was a desperate man.

  His wife was skinning him. They’d gone to court. She slapped him in court. He’d liked that. It helped the case. They saw through that bitch. Anyhow, it hadn’t come off too badly. She’d left him something. Of course, you know lawyer’s fees. Bastards. You ever noticed a lawyer? Almost always fat. Especially around the face. “Anyhow, shit, she nailed me. But I got a little left. You wanna know what a scissors like this costs? Look at it. Tin with a screw. $18.50. My God, and they hated the Nazis. What is a Nazi compared to this?”

  “I don’t know Doctor. I’ve told you that I’m a confused man.”

  “You ever tried a shrink?”

  “It’s no use. They’re dull, no imagination. I don’t need the shrinks. I hear they end up sexually molesting their female patients. I’d like to be a shrink if I could fuck all the women; outside of that, their trade is useless.”

  My doctor hunched up on his stool. He yellowed and greyed a bit more. A giant twitch ran through his body. He was almost through. A nice fellow though.

  “Well, I got rid of my wife,” he said, “that’s over.”

  “Fine,” I said, “tell me about when you were a Nazi.”

  “Well, we didn’t have much choice. They just took us in. I was young. I mean, hell, what are you going to do? You can only live in one country at a time. You go to war, and if you don’t end up dead you end up in an open boxcar with people throwing shit at you…”