I got up one night and couldn’t make it to the can. I heaved blood all over the middle of the floor. I fell down and was too weak to get up. I called for a nurse but the doors to the ward were covered with tin and three to six inches thick and they couldn’t hear. A nurse came by about once every two hours to check for corpses. They rolled a lot of dead out at night. I couldn’t sleep and used to watch them. Slip a guy off the bed and pull him onto the roller and pull the sheet over his head. Those rollers were well-oiled. I hollered, “Nurse!” not knowing especially why. “Shut up!” one of the old men told me, “we want to sleep.” I passed out.
When I came to all the lights were on. Two nurses were trying to pick me up. “I told you not to get out of bed,” one of them said. I couldn’t talk. Drums were in my head. I felt hollowed out. It seemed as if I could hear everything, but I couldn’t see, only flares of light, it seemed. But no panic, fear; only a sense of waiting, waiting for anything and not caring.
“You’re too big,” one of them said, “get in this chair.”
They put me in the chair and slid me along the floor. I didn’t feel like more than six pounds.
Then they were around me: people. I remember a doctor in a green gown, an operating gown. He seemed angry. He was talking to the head nurse.
“Why hasn’t this man had a transfusion? He’s down to…c.c.’s.”
“His papers passed through downstairs while I was upstairs and then they were filed before I saw them. And, besides Doctor, he doesn’t have any blood credit.”
“I want some blood up here and I want it up here NOW!”
“Who the hell is this guy,” I thought, “very odd. Very strange for a doctor.”
They started the transfusions—nine pints of blood and eight of glucose.
A nurse tried to feed me roast beef with potatoes and peas and carrots for my first meal. She put the tray before me.
“Hell, I can’t eat this,” I told her, “this would kill me!”
“Eat it,” she said, “it’s on your list, it’s on your diet.”
“Bring me some milk,” I said.
“You eat that,” she said, and walked away.
I left it there.
Five minutes later she came running into the ward.
“Don’t EAT THAT!” she screamed, “you can’t HAVE THAT!! There’s been a mistake on the list!”
She carried it away and came back with a glass of milk.
As soon as the first bottle of blood emptied into me they sat me up on a roller and took me down to the x-ray room. The doctor told me to stand up. I kept falling over backwards.
“GOD DAMN IT,” he screamed, “YOU MADE ME RUIN ANOTHER FILM! NOW STAND THERE AND DON’T FALL DOWN!”
I tried but I couldn’t stand up. I fell over backwards.
“Oh shit,” he said to the nurse, “take him away.”
Easter Sunday the Salvation Army band played right under our window at 5 a.m. They played horrible religious music, played it badly and loudly, and it swamped me, ran through me, almost murdered me. I felt as close to death that morning as I have ever felt. It was an inch away, a hair away. Finally they left for another part of the grounds and I began to climb back toward life. I would say that that morning they probably killed a half dozen captives with their music.
Then my father showed with my whore. She was drunk and I knew he had given her money for drink and deliberately brought her before me drunk in order to make me unhappy. The old man and I were enemies of long standing—everything I believed in the disbelieved and the other way around. She swayed over my bed, red-faced and drunk.
“Why did you bring her like that?” I asked. “Why didn’t you wait until another day?”
“I told you she was no good! I always told you she was no good!”
“You got her drunk and then brought her here. Why do you keep knifing me?”
“I told you she was no good, I told you, I told you!”
“You son of a bitch, one more word out of you and I’m going to take this needle out of my arm and get up and whip the shit out of you!”
He took her by the arm and they left.
I guess they had phoned them that I was going to die. I was continuing to hemorrhage. That night the priest came.
“Father,” I said, “no offense, but please, I’d like to die without any rites, without any words.”
I was surprised then because he swayed and rocked in disbelief; it was almost as if I had hit him. I say I was surprised because I thought those boys had more cool than that. But then, they wipe their asses too.
“Father, talk to me,” an old man said, “you can talk to me.”
The priest went over to the old man and everybody was happy.
Thirteen days from the night I entered I was driving a truck and lifting packages weighing up to 50 pounds. A week later I had my first drink—the one they said would kill me.
I guess someday I’ll die in that goddamned charity ward. I just can’t seem to get away.
5.
My luck was down again and I was too nervous at this time from excessive wine-drinking; wild-eyed, weak; too depressed to find my usual stop-gap, rest-up job as shipping clerk or stock boy, so I went down to the meat packing plant and walked into the office.
“Haven’t I seen you before?” the man asked.
“No,” I lied.
I’d been there two or three years before, gone through all the paper work, the medical and so forth, and they led me down steps four floors down and it had gotten colder and colder and the floors had been covered with a sheen of blood, green floors, green walls. He had explained the job to me—which was to push a button and then from this hole in the wall there came a noise like the crushing of fullbacks or elephants falling, and here it came—something dead, a lot of it, bloody, and he showed me, you take it and throw it on the truck and push the button and another one comes along. Then he walked away. When he did I took off my smock, my tin hat, my boots (issued three sizes too small) and walked up the stairway and out of there. Now I was back.
“You look a little old for the job.”
“I want to toughen up. I need hard work, good hard work,” I lied.
“Can you handle it?”
“I’m nothing but guts. I used to be in the ring, I’ve fought the best.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Umm, I can see by your face. You must have been in some fierce ones.”
“Never mind my face. I had fast hands. Still have. I had to take some dives, had to make it look good.”
“I follow boxing. I don’t recall your name.”
“I fought under another name, Kid Stardust.”
“Kid Stardust? I don’t recall a Kid Stardust.”
“I fought in South America, Africa, Europe, the islands, I fought in the tank towns. That’s why there’re all these gaps in my employment record—I don’t like to put down boxer because people think I am kidding or lying. I just leave the blanks and to hell with it.”
“All right, show up for your med. at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow and we’ll put you to work. You say you want hard work?”
“Well, if you have something else…”
“No, not right now. You know, you look close to 50 years old. I wonder if I’m doing the right thing? We don’t like you people to waste our time.”
“I’m not people—I’m Kid Stardust.”
“O.k., kid,” he laughed, “we’ll put you to WORK!”
I didn’t like the way he said it.
Two days later I walked through the passgate into the wooden shack where I showed an old man my slip with my name on it: Henry Chinaski and he sent me on to the loading dock—I was to see Thurman. I walked on over. There were a row of men sitting on a wooden bench and they looked at me as if I were a homosexual or a basket case.
I looked at them with what I imagined to be easy disdain and drawled in my best backalley fashion:
“Where’s Thurman. I’m supposed to see th’ guy
.”
Somebody pointed.
“Thurman?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m workin’ for ya.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He looked at me.
“Where’s yor boots?”
“Boots? Got none,” I said.
He reached under the bench and handed me a pair, an old hardened stiff pair. I put them on. Same old story: three sizes too small. My toes were crushed and bent under.
Then he gave me a bloody smock and a tin helmet. I put them on. I stood there while he lit a cigarette, or as the English might say: while he lighted his cigarette. He threw away the match with a calm and manly flourish.
“Come on.”
They were all Negroes and when I walked up they looked at me as if they were Black Muslims. I was over six feet but they were all taller, and if not taller then two or three times as wide.
“Hank!” Thurman hollered.
Hank, I thought. Hank, just like me. That’s nice.
I was already sweating under the tin helmet.
“Put ’im to WORK!!”
Jesus christ o jesus christ. What ever happened to the sweet and easy nights? Why doesn’t this happen to Walter Winchell who believes in the American Way? Wasn’t I one of the most brilliant students in Anthropology? What happened?
Hank took me over and stood me in front of an empty truck a half block long that stood in the dock.
“Wait here.”
Then several of the Black Muslims came running up with the wheel-barrows painted a scabby and lumpy white like whitewash mixed in with henshit. And each wheelbarrow was loaded with mounds of hams that floated in thin, watery blood. No, they didn’t float in the blood, they sat in it, like lead, like cannonballs, like death.
One of the boys jumped into the truck behind me and the other began throwing the hams at me and I caught them and threw them to the guy behind me who turned and threw the ham into the back of the truck. The hams came fast FAST and they were heavy and they got heavier. As soon as I threw one ham and turned, another was already on the way to me through the air. I knew that they were trying to break me. I was soon sweating sweating as if faucets had been turned on, and my back ached, my wrists ached, my arms hurt, everything hurt and I was down to the last impossible ounce of limp energy. I could barely see, barely summon myself to catch one more ham and throw it, one more ham and throw it. I was splashed in blood and kept getting the soft dead heavy flump in my hands, the ham giving a little like a woman’s butt, and I’m too weak to talk and say, “hey, what the HELL’S the matter with you guys?” The hams are coming and I am spinning, nailed like a man on a cross under a tin helmet, and they keep running up barrows full of hams hams hams and at last they are all empty, and I stand there swaying and breathing the yellow electric light. It was night in hell. Well, I always liked night work.
“Come on!”
They took me into another room. Up in the air through a large entrance high in the far wall one half a steer, or it might have been a whole one, yes, they were whole steers, come to think of it, all four legs, and one of them came out of the hole on a hook, having just been murdered, and the steer stopped right over me, it hung right over me there on that hook.
“They’ve just killed it,” I thought, “they’ve killed the damn thing. How can they tell a man from a steer? How do they know that I am not a steer?”
“ALL RIGHT—SWING IT!”
“Swing it?”
“That’s right—DANCE WITH IT!”
“What?”
“O for Christ’s sake! George come here!”
George got under the dead steer. He grabbed it. ONE. He ran forward. TWO. He ran backwards. THREE. He ran far forward. The steer was almost parallel to the ground. Somebody hit a button and he had it. He had it for the meat markets of the world. He had it for the gossiping cranky well-rested stupid housewives of the world at 2 o’clock in the afternoon in their housecoats, dragging at red-stained cigarettes and feeling almost nothing.
They put me under the next steer.
ONE.
TWO.
THREE.
I had it. Its dead bones against my living bones, its dead flesh against my living flesh, and the bone and the weight cut in, I thought of a sexy cunt sitting across from me on a couch with her legs crossed high and me with a drink in my hand, slowly and surely talking my way toward and into the blank mind of her body, and Hank hollered, “HANG HER IN THE TRUCK!”
I ran toward the truck. The shame of defeat taught me in American schoolyards as a boy told me that I must not drop the steer to the ground because this would prove that I was a coward and not a man and that I didn’t therefore deserve much, just sneers and laughs, you had to be a winner in America, there wasn’t any way out, you had to learn to fight for nothing, don’t question, and besides if I dropped the steer I might have to pick it up, and I knew I could never pick it up. Besides it would get dirty. I didn’t want it to get dirty, or rather—they didn’t want it to get dirty.
I ran it into the truck.
“HANG IT!”
The hook which hung from the roof was dull as a man’s thumb without a fingernail. You let the bottom of the steer slide back and went for the top, you poked the top part against the hook again and again but the hook would not go through. Mother ass!! It was all gristle and fat, tough, tough.
“COME ON! COME ON!”
I gave it my last reserve and the hook came through, it was a beautiful sight, a miracle, that hook coming through, that steer hanging there by itself completely off my shoulder, hanging for the housecoats and butchershop gossip.
“MOVE ON!”
A 285 pound Negro, insolent, sharp, cool, murderous, walked in, hung his meat with a snap, looked down at me.
“We stays in line here!”
“O.k., ace.”
I walked out in front of him. Another steer was waiting for me. Each time I loaded one I was sure that was the last one I could handle but I kept saying
one more
just one more
then I
quit.
Fuck
it.
They were waiting for me to quit, I could see the eyes, the smiles when they thought I wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to give them victory. I went for another steer. The player. One last lunge of the big-time washed-up player. I went for the meat.
Two hours I went on then somebody hollered, “BREAK.”
I had made it. A ten minute rest, some coffee, and they’d never make me quit. I walked out behind them toward a lunch wagon. I could see the steam rising in the night from the coffee; I could see the doughnuts and cigarettes and coffeecakes and sandwiches under the electric lights.
“HEY, YOU!”
It was Hank. Hank like me.
“Yeah, Hank?”
“Before you take your break, get in that truck and move it out and over to stall 18.”
It was the truck we had just loaded, the one a half block long. Stall 18 was across the yard.
I managed to open the door and get up inside the cab. It had a soft leather seat and the seat felt so good that I knew if I didn’t fight it I would soon be asleep. I wasn’t a truck driver. I looked down and saw a half-dozen gear shifts, breaks, pedals and so forth. I turned the key and managed to start the engine. I played with pedals and gear shifts until the truck started to roll and then I drove it across the yard to stall 18, thinking all the while—by the time I get back the lunch wagon will be gone. This was tragedy to me, real tragedy. I parked the truck, cut the engine and sat there a minute feeling the soft goodness of that leather seat. Then I opened the door and got out. I missed the step or whatever was supposed to be there and I fell to the ground in my bloody smock and christ tin helmet like a man shot. It didn’t hurt, I didn’t feel it. I got up just in time to see the lunch wagon driving off through the gate and down the street. I saw them walking back in toward the dock laughing and lighting cigarettes.
I took off
my boots, I took off my smock, I took off my tin helmet and walked to the shack at the yard entrance. I threw the smock, helmet and boots across the counter. The old man looked at me:
“What? You quittin’ this GOOD job?”
“Tell ’em to mail me my check for two hours or tell ’em to stick it up their ass, I don’t give a damn!”
I walked out. I walked across the street to a Mexican bar and drank a beer and then got a bus to my place. The American schoolyard had beat me again.
6.
The next night I was sitting in a bar between a woman with a rag on her head and a woman without a rag on her head, and it was just another bar—dull, imperfect, desperate, cruel, shitty, poor, and the small men’s room reeked to make you heave, and you couldn’t crap there, only piss, vomiting, turning your head away, looking for light, praying for the stomach to hold just one more night.
I had been in there about three hours drinking and buying drinks for the one without the rag on her head. She didn’t look bad: expensive shoes, good legs and tail; just on the edge of falling apart, but then that’s when they look the sexiest—to me.
I bought another drink, two more drinks.
“That’s it,” I told her, “I’m broke.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“You got a place to stay?”
“Two more days on the rent.”
“You working?”
“No.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean, how have you made it?”
“I was a jockey’s agent for a while. Had a good boy but they caught him carrying a battery into the starting gate twice. They barred him. Did a little boxing, gambling, even tried chicken farming—used to sit up all night guarding them from the wild dogs in the hills, it was tough, and then one day I left a cigar burning in the pen and I burned up half of them plus all my good roosters. I tried panning gold in Northern California, I was a barker at the beach, I tried the market, I tried selling short—nothing worked, I’m a failure.”
“Drink up, she said, and come with me.”
That “come with me” sounded good. I drank up and followed her out. We walked up the street and stopped in front of a liquor store.
South of No North Page 18
