Ham On Rye

by Charles Bukowski

  "No, I can't," she said.

  "Why not?"

  "Those men will see."

  "What men?"

  "There!" she pointed. I looked between the weeds. Maybe half a block away some men were working repairing the street.

  "They can't see us!"

  "Yes, they can!"

  I got up. "God damn it!" I said and I walked out of the lot and went back home.

  I didn't see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn't matter. It was football season and I was - in my imagination - a great quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best running into grown men. I crushed them. It took five or six men to tackle me. Sometimes, like in baseball, I felt sorry for everybody and I allowed myself to be tackled after only gaining 8 or 10 yards. Then I usually got injured, badly, and they had to carry me off the field. My team would fall behind, say 40 to 17, and with 3 or 4 minutes left to play I'd return, angry that I had been injured. Every time I got the ball I ran all the way to a touchdown. How the crowd screamed! And on defense I made every tackle, intercepted every pass. I was everywhere. Chinaski, the Fury! With the gun ready to go off I took the kickoff deep in my own end zone. I ran forward, sideways, backwards. I broke tackle after tackle, I leaped over fallen tacklers. I wasn't getting any blocking. My team was a bunch of sissies. Finally, with five men hanging on to me I refused to fall and dragged them over the goal line for the winning touchdown.

  I looked up one afternoon as a big guy entered our yard through the back gate. He walked in and just stood there looking at me. He was a year or so older than I was and he wasn't from my grammar school. "I'm from Marmount Grammar School," he said.

  "You better get out of here," I told him. "My father will be coming home soon,"

  "Is that right?" he asked. I stood up. "What are you doing here?"

  "I hear you guys from Delsey Grammar think you're tough."

  "We win all the inter-school games."

  "That's because you cheat. We don't like cheaters at Marmount."

  He had on an old blue shirt, half unbuttoned in front. He had a leather thong on his left wrist.

  "You think you're tough?" he asked me.

  "No."

  "What do you have in your garage? I think I'll take something from your garage."

  "Stay out of there."

  The garage doors were open and he walked past me. There wasn't much in there. He found an old deflated beach ball and picked it up.

  "I think I'll take this."

  "Put it down."

  "Down your throat!" he said and then he threw it at my head. I ducked. He came out of the garage toward me. I backed up.

  He followed me into the yard. "Cheaters never prosper!" he said. He swung at me. I ducked. I could feel the wind from his swing. I closed my eyes, rushed him and started punching. I was hitting something, sometimes. I could feel myself getting hit but it didn't hurt. Mostly I was scared. Therewas nothing to do but to keep punching. Then I heard a voice: "Stop it!" It was Lila Jane. She was in my backyard. We both stopped fighting. She took an old tin can and threw it. It hit the boy from Marmount in the middle of the forehead and bounced off. He stood there a moment and then ran off, crying and howling. He ran out the rear gate and down the alley and was gone. A little tin can. I was surprised, a big guy like him crying like that. At Delsey we had a code. We never made a sound. Even the sissies took their beatings silently. Those guys from Marmount weren't much.

  "You didn't have to help me," I told Lila Jane.

  "He was hitting you!"

  "He wasn't hurting me."

  Lila Jane ran off through the yard, out the rear gate, then into her yard and into her house. Lila Jane still likes me, I thought.

  11

  During the second and third grades I still didn't get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I would hit it over the school building. One day I was standing around and a teacher came up to me.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Nothing."

  "This is Physical Education. You should be participating. Are you disabled?"

  "What?"

  "Is there anything wrong with you?"

  "I don't know."

  "Come with me."

  He walked me over to a group. They were playing kickball. Kickball was like baseball except they used a soccer ball. The pitcher rolled it to the plate and you kicked it. If it went on a fly and was caught you were out. If it rolled on through the infield or you kicked it high between the fielders you took as many bases as you could.

  "What's your name?" the teacher asked me.

  "Henry."

  He walked up to the group. "Now," he said, "Henry is going to play shortstop."

  They were from my grade. They all knew me. Shortstop was the toughest position. I went out there. I knew they were going to gang up on me. The pitcher rolled the ball real slow and the first guy kicked it right at me. It came hard, chest high, but it was no problem. The ball was big and I stuck out my hands and caught it. I threw the ball to the pitcher. The next guy did the same thing. It came a little higher this time. And a little faster. No problem. Then Stanley Greenberg walked up to the plate. That was it. I was out of luck. The pitcher rolled the ball and Stanley kicked it. It came at me like a cannonball, head high. I wanted to duck but didn't. The ball smashed into my hands and I held it. I took the ball and rolled it to the pitcher's mound. Three outs. I trotted to the sideline. As I did, some guy passed me and said, "Chinaski, the great shitstop!"

  It was the boy with the vaseline in his hair and the long black nostril hairs. I spun around. "Hey!" I said. He stopped. I looked at him. "Don't ever say anything to me again." I saw the fear in his eyes. He walked out to his position and I went and leaned against the fence while our team came to the plate. Nobody stood near me but I didn't care. I was gaining ground.

  It was difficult to understand. We were the children in the poorest school, we had the poorest, least educated parents, most of us lived on terrible food, and yet boy for boy we were much bigger than the boys from other grammar schools around the city. Our school was famous. We were feared.

  Our 6th grade team beat the other 6th grade teams in the city very badly. Especially in baseball. Scores like 14 to I, 24 to 3, 19 to 2. We just could hit the ball.

  One day the City Champion Junior High School team, Miranda Bell, challenged us. Somehow money was raised and each of our players was given a new blue cap with a white "D" in front. Our team looked good in those caps. When the Miranda Bell guys showed up, the 7th grade champs, our 6th grade guys just looked at them and laughed. We were bigger, we looked tougher, we walked differently, we knew something that they didn't know. We younger guys laughed too. We knew we had them where we wanted them.

  The Miranda guys looked too polite. They were very quiet. Their pitcher was their biggest player. He struck out our first three batters, some of our best hitters. But we had Lowball Johnson. Lowball did the same to them. It went on like that, both sides striking out, or hitting little grounders and an occasional single, but nothing else. Then we were at bat in the bottom of the 7th. Beefcake Cappalletti nailed one. God, you could hear the shot! The ball looked like it was going to hit the school building and break a window. Never had I seen a ball take off like that! It hit the flagpole near the top and bounced back in. Easy home run. Cappalletti rounded the bases and our guys looked good in their new blue caps with the white "13."

  The Miranda guys just quit after that. They didn't know how to come back. They came from a wealthy district, they didn't know what it meant to fight back. Our next guy doubled. How we screamed! It was over. There was nothing they could do. The next batter tripled. They changed pitchers. He walked the next guy. The next batter singled. Before the inning was over we had scored nine runs.

  Miranda never got a chance to bat in the 8th. Our 5th graders went over and challeng
ed them to fight. Even one of the 4th graders ran over and picked a fight with one of them. The Miranda guys took their equipment and left. We ran them off, up the street. There was nothing left to do so a couple of our guys got into a fight. It was a good one. They both had bloody noses but were swinging good when one of the teachers who had stayed to watch the game broke it up. He didn't know how close he came to getting jumped himself.

  12

  One night my father took me on his milk route. There were no longer any horsedrawn wagons. The milk trucks now had engines. After loading up at the milk company we drove off on his route. I liked being out in the very early morning. The moon was up and I could see the stars. It was cold but it was exciting. I wondered why my father had asked me to come along since he had taken to beating me with the razor strop once or twice a week and we weren't getting along.

  At each stop he would jump out and deliver a bottle or two of milk. Sometimes it was cottage cheese or buttermilk or butter and now and then a bottle of orange juice. Most of the people left notes in the empty bottles explaining what they wanted.

  My father drove along, stopping and starting, making deliveries.

  "O.K., kid, which direction are we driving in now?"

  "North."

  "You're right. We're going north."

  We went up and down streets, stopping and starting.

  "O.K., which way are we going now?"

  "West."

  "No, we're going south."

  We drove along in silence some more.

  "Suppose I pushed you out of the truck now and left you on the sidewalk, what would you do?"

  "I don't know."

  "I mean, how would you live?"

  "Well, I guess I'd go back and drink the milk and orange juice you just left on the porch steps."

  "Then what would you do?"

  "I'd find a policeman and tell him what you did."

  "You would, hub? And what would you tell him?"

  "I'd tell him that you told me that 'west' was 'south' because you wanted me to get lost."

  It began to get light. Soon all the deliveries were made and we stopped at a cafe to have breakfast. The waitress walked over.

  "Hello, Henry," she said to my father. "Hello, Betty." "Who's the kid?" asked Betty. "That's little Henry." "He looks just like you."

  "He doesn't have my brains, though." "I hope not."

  We ordered. We had bacon and eggs. As we ate my father said,

  "Now comes the hard part."

  "What is that?"

  "I have to collect the money people owe me. Some of them don't want to pay."

  "They ought to pay."

  "That's what I tell them."

  We finished eating and started driving again. My father got out and knocked on doors. I could hear him complaining loudly,

  "HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'M GOING TO EAT? YOU'VE SUCKED UP

  THE MILK, NOW IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO SHIT OUT THE MONEY!"

  He used a different line each time. Sometimes he came back with the money, sometimes he didn't.

  Then I saw him enter a court of bungalows. A door opened and a woman stood there dressed in a loose silken kimono. She was smoking a cigarette. "Listen, baby, I've got to have the money. You're into me deeper than anybody!"

  She laughed at him.

  "Look, baby, just give me half, give me a payment, something to show."

  She blew a smoke ring, reached out and broke it with her finger.

  "Listen, you've got to pay me," my father said. "This is a desperate situation."

  "Come on in. We'll talk about it," said the woman. My father went in and the door closed. He was in there for a long time. The sun was really up. When my father came out his hair was hanging down around his face and he was pushing his shirt tail into his pants. He climbed into the truck.

  "Did that woman give you the money?" I asked.

  "That was the last stop," said my father. "I can't take it any more. We'll return the truck and go home…"

  I was to see that woman again. One day I came home after school and she was sitting on a chair in the front room of our house. My mother and father were sitting there too and my mother was crying. When my mother saw me she stood up and ran toward me, grabbed me. She took me into the bedroom and sat me on the bed. "Henry, do you love your mother?" I really didn't but she looked so sad that I said, "Yes." She took me back into the other room.

  "Your father says he loves this woman," she said to me.

  "I love both of you! Now get that kid out of here!"

  I felt that my father was making my mother very unhappy.

  "I'll kill you," I told my father.

  "Get that kid out of here!"

  "How can you love that woman?" I asked my father. "Look at her nose. She has a nose like an elephant!"

  "Christ!" said the woman, "I don't have to take this!" She looked at my father: "Choose, Henry! One or the other! Now!"

  "But I can't! I love you both!"

  "I'll kill you!" I told my father.

  He walked over and slapped me on the ear, knocking me to the floor. The woman got up and ran out of the house and my father went after her. The woman leaped into my father's car, started it and drove off down the street. It happened very quickly. My father ran down the street after her and the car. "EDNA! EDNA, COME BACK!" My father actually caught up with the car, reached into the front seat and grabbed Edna's purse. Then the car speeded up and my father was left with the purse.

  "I knew something was going on," my mother told me. "So I hid in the car trunk and I caught them together. Your father drove me back here with that horrible woman. Now she's got his car."

  My father walked back with Edna's purse. "Everybody into the house!" We went inside and my father locked me in the bedroom and my mother and father began arguing. It was loud and very ugly. Then my father began beating my mother. She screamed and he kept beating her. I climbed out a window and tried to get in the front door. It was locked. I tried the rear door, the windows. Everything was locked. I stood in the backyard and listened to the screaming and the beating.

  Then the beating and the screaming stopped and all I could hear was my mother sobbing. She sobbed a long time. It gradually grew less and less and then she stopped.

  13

  I was in the 4th grade when I found out about it. I was probably one of the last to know, because I still didn't talk to anybody. A boy walked up to me while I was standing around at recess.

  "Don't you know how it happens?" he asked.

  "What?"

  "Fucking."

  "What's that?"

  "Your mother has a hole…" - he took the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and made a circle - "and your father has a dong…" - he took his left forefinger and ran it back and forth through the hole. "Then your father's dong shoots juice and sometimes your mother has a baby and sometimes she doesn't."

  "God makes babies," I said.

  "Like shit," the kid said and walked off. It was hard for me to believe. When recess was over I sat in class and thought about it. My mother had a hole and my father had a dong that shot juice. How could they have things like that and walk around as if everything was normal, and talk about things, and then do it and not tell anybody? I really felt like puking when I thought that I had started off as my father's juice.

  That night after the lights were out I stayed awake in bed and listened. Sure enough, I began to hear sounds. Their bed began creaking. I could hear the springs. I got out of bed and tiptoed down to their door and listened. The bed kept making sounds.

  Then it stopped. I hurried back down the hall and into my bedroom. I heard my mother go into the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and then she walked out.

  What a terrible thing! No wonder they did it in secret! And to think, everybody did it! The teachers, the principal, everybody! It was pretty stupid. Then I thought about doing it with Lila Jane and it didn't seem so dumb.

  The next day in class I thought about it all day. I looked at
the little girls and imagined myself doing it with them. I would do it with all of them and make babies. I'd fill the world with guys like me, great baseball players, home run hitters. That day just before class ended the teacher, Mrs. Westphal, said: "Henry, will you stay after class?"

  The bell rang and the other children left. I sat at my desk and waited. Mrs. Westphal was correcting papers. I thought, maybe she wants to do it with me. I imagined pulling her dress up and looking at her hole. "All right, Mrs. Westphal, I'm ready."

  She looked up from her papers. "All right, Henry, first erase all the blackboards. Then take the erasers outside and dust them."

  I did as I was told, then sat back down at my desk. Mrs. Westphal just sat there correcting papers. She had on a tight blue dress, she wore large golden earrings, had a tiny nose and wore rimless glasses. I waited and waited. Then I said, "Mrs. Westphal, why did you keep me after school?"

  She looked up and stared at me. Her eyes were green and deep.

  "I kept you after school because sometimes you're bad."

  "Oh, yeah?" I smiled.

  Mrs. Westphal looked at me. She took her glasses off and kept staring. Her legs were behind the desk. I couldn't look up her dress.

  "You were very inattentive today, Henry."

  "Yeah?"

  "'Yes' is the word. You're addressing a lady!"

  "Oh, I know…"

  "Don't get sassy with me!"

  "Whatever you say."

  Mrs. Westphal stood up and came out from behind her desk.

  She walked down the aisle and sat on the top of the desk across from me. She had nice long legs in silk stockings. She smiled at me, reached out a hand and touched one of my wrists.

  "Your parents don't give you much love, do they?"

  "I don't need that stuff," I told her.

  "Henry, everybody needs love."

  "I don't need anything."