Ham On Rye

by Charles Bukowski

  "You poor boy."

  She stood up, came to my desk and slowly took my head in her hands. She bent over and pressed it against her breasts. I reached around and grabbed her legs.

  "Henry, you must stop fighting everybody! We want to help you."

  I grabbed Mrs. Westphal's legs harder. "All right," I said, "let's fuck!"

  Mrs. Westphal pushed me away and stood back.

  " What did you say? "

  "I said, let's fuck!"

  She looked at me a long time. Then she said, "Henry, I am never going to tell anybody what you said, not the principal or your parents or anybody. But I never, never want you to say that to me again, do you understand?"

  "I understand."

  "All right. You can go home now."

  I got up and walked toward the door. When I opened it, Mrs. Westphal said, "Good afternoon, Henry."

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Westphal."

  I walked down the street wondering about it. I felt she wanted to fuck but was afraid because I was too young for her and that my parents or the principal might find out. It had been exciting being in the room with her alone. This thing about.fucking was nice. It gave people extra things to think about.

  There was one large boulevard to' cross on the way home. I entered the crosswalk. Suddenly there was a car coming right at me. It didn't slow down. It was weaving wildly. I tried to run out of its path but it appeared to follow me. I saw headlights, wheels, a bumper. The car hit me and then there was blackness.,.

  14

  Later in the hospital they were dabbing at my knees with pieces of cotton that had been soaked in something. It burned. My elbows burned too.

  The doctor was bending over me with a nurse. I was in bed and the sun came through the window. It seemed very pleasant. The doctor smiled at me. The nurse straightened up and smiled at me. It was nice there.

  "Do you have a name?" the doctor asked.

  "Henry."

  "Henry what?"

  "Chinaski."

  "Polish, eh?"

  "German."

  "How come nobody wants to be Polish?"

  "I was born in Germany."

  "Where do you live?" asked the nurse.

  "With my parents."

  "Really?" asked the doctor. "And where is that?"

  "What happened to my elbows and knees?"

  "A car ran you over. Luckily, the wheels missed you. Witnesses said he appeared to be drunk. Hit and run. But they got his license. They'll get him."

  "You have a pretty nurse…" I said.

  "Well, thank you," she said.

  "Do you want a date with her?" asked the doctor.

  "What's that?"

  "Do you want to go out with her?" the doctor asked.

  "I don't know if I could do it with her. I'm too young."

  "Do what?"

  "You know."

  "Well," the nurse smiled, "come see me after your knees heal up and we'll see what we can do."

  "Pardon me," said the doctor, "but I have to see another accident case." He left the room.

  "Now," said the nurse, "what street do you live on?"

  "Virginia Road."

  "Give me the number, sweetie."

  I told her the house number. She asked if there was a telephone.

  I told her that I didn't know the number.

  "That's all right," she said, "we'll get it. And don't worry. You were lucky. You just got a bump on the head and skinned up a little."

  She was nice but I knew that after my knees healed, she wouldn't want to see me again.

  "I want to stay here," I told her.

  "What? You mean, you don't want to go home to your parents?"

  "No. Let me stay here."

  "We can't do that, sweetie. We need these beds for people who are really sick and injured."

  She smiled and walked out of the room.

  When my father came he walked straight into the room and without a word scooped me out of bed. He carried me out of the room and down the hallway.

  "You little bastard! Didn't I teach you to look BOTH ways before you cross the street?"

  He rushed me down the hall. We passed the nurse.

  "Goodbye, Henry," she said.

  "Goodbye."

  We got into an elevator with an old man in a wheelchair. A nurse was standing behind him. The elevator began to descend.

  "I think I'm going to die," the old man said. "I don't want to die.

  I'm afraid to die…"

  "You've lived long enough, you old fart!" muttered my father. The old man looked startled. The elevator stopped. The door remained closed. Then I noticed the elevator operator. He sat on a small stool. He was a dwarf dressed in a bright red uniform with a red cap.

  The dwarf looked at my father. "Sir," he said, "you are a repugnant fool!"

  "Shortcake," replied my father, "open the fucking door or it's your ass."

  The door opened. We went out the entrance. My father carried me across the hospital lawn. I still had on a hospital gown. My father carried my clothes in a bag in one hand. The wind blew back my gown and I saw my skinned knees which were not bandaged and were painted with iodine. My father was almost running across the lawn.

  "When they catch that son-of-a-bitch," he said, "I'll sue him! I'll sue him for his last penny! He'll support me the rest of his life! I'm sick of that god-damned milk truck! Golden State Creamery.' Golden State, my hairy ass! We'll move to the South Seas. We'll live on coconuts and pineapples!"

  My father reached the car and put me in the front seat. Then he got in on his side. He started the car.

  "I hate drunks! My father was a drunk. My brothers are drunks. Drunks are weak. Drunks are cowards. And hit-and-run drunks should be jailed for the rest of their lives!"

  As we drove toward home he continued to talk to me.

  "Do you know that in the South Seas the natives live in grass shacks? They get up in the morning and the food falls from the trees to the ground. They just pick it up and eat it, coconuts and pineapple. And the natives think that white men are gods! They catch fish and roast boar, and their girls dance and wear grass skirts and rub their men behind the ears. Golden State Creamery, my hairy ass."

  But my father's dream was not to be. They caught the man who hit me and put him in jail. He had a wife and three children and didn't have a job. He was a penniless drunkard. The man sat in jail for some time but my father didn't press charges. As he said, "You can't get blood out of a fucking turnip!"

  15

  My father always ran the neighborhood kids away from our house. I was told not to play with them but I walked down the street and watched them anyhow.

  "Hey, Heinie!" they yelled, "Why don't you go back to Germany?"

  Somehow they had found out about my birthplace. The worst thing was that they were all about my age and they not only hung together because they lived in the same neighborhood but because they went to the same Catholic school. They were tough kids, they played tackle football for hours and almost every day a couple of them got into a fist fight. The four main guys were Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank.

  "Hey, Heinie, go back to Krautland!"

  There was no getting in with them…

  Then a red-headed kid moved in next door to Chuck. He went to some kind of special school. I was sitting on the curb one day when he came out of his house. He sat on the curb next to me. "Hi, my name's Red."

  "1m Henry."

  We sat there and watched the guys play football. I looked at Red.

  "How come you got a glove on your left hand?" I asked.

  "I've only got one arm," he said.

  "That hand looks real."

  "It's fake. It's a fake arm. Touch it."

  "What?"

  "Touch it. It's fake."

  I felt it. It was hard, rock hard.

  "How'd that happen?"

  "I was born that way. The arm's fake all the way up to the elbow. I've got to strap it on. I've got little fingers at the end of my elbow, fing
ernails and all, but the fingers aren't any good."

  "You got any friends?" I asked.

  "No."

  "Me neither."

  "Those guys won't play with you?"

  "No."

  "I got a football."

  "Can you catch it?"

  "Straight shit," said Red.

  "Go get it."

  "O.K…"

  Red went back to his father's garage and came out with a football. He tossed it to me. Then he backed across his front lawn.

  "Go on, throw it…"

  I let it go. His good arm came around and his bad arm came around and he caught it. The arm made a slight squeaking sound as he caught the football.

  "Nice catch," I said. "Now wing me one!"

  He cocked his arm and let it fly; it came like a bullet and I managed to hold onto it as it dug into my stomach.

  "You're standing too close," I told him. "Step back some more."

  At last, I thought, some practice catching and throwing. It felt real good.

  Then I was the quarterback. I rolled back, straight-armed an invisible tackier, and let go a spiral fly. It fell short. Red ran forward, leaped, caught the ball, rolled over three or four times and still held onto it.

  "You're good, Red. How'd you get so good?"

  "My father taught me. We practice a lot."

  Then Red walked back and let one sail. It looked to be over my head as I ran back for it. There was a hedge between Red's house and Chuck's house and I fell into the hedge going for the ball. The ball hit the top of the hedge and bounced over. I went around to Chuck's yard to get the ball. Chuck passed the ball to me. "So you got yourself a freak friend, hey, Heinie?"

  It was a couple of days later and Red and I were on his front lawn passing and kicking the football. Chuck and his friends weren't around. Red and I were getting better and better. Practice, that's all it took. All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was always controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

  I caught one over the shoulder, whirled and winged it back to Red who leaped high and came down with it. Maybe some day we'd play for U.S.C. Then I saw five boys walking down the sidewalk toward us. They weren't guys from my grammar school. They were our age and looked like trouble. Red and I kept throwing the ball and they stood watching us. Then one of the guys stepped onto the lawn. The biggest.

  "Throw me the ball," he said to Red.

  "Why?"

  "I wanna see if I can catch it."

  "I don't care if you can catch it or not."

  "Throw me the ball!"

  "He's got one arm," I said. "Leave him alone."

  "Stay out of this, monkey-face!" Then he looked at Red.

  "Throw me the ball."

  "Go to hell!" said Red.

  "Get the ball!" the big guy said to the others. They ran at us. Red turned and threw the ball on the roof of his house. The roof was slanted and the ball rolled back down but managed to stick behind a drain pipe. Then they were on us. Five to two, I thought, there's no chance. I caught a fist on the temple, swung and missed. Somebody kicked me in the ass. It was a good one and burned all the way up the spine. Then I heard a cracking sound, it was almost like a rifle shot and one of them was down on the ground holding his forehead.

  "Oh shit," he said, "my skull is crushed!"

  I saw Red and he was standing in the center of the lawn. He was holding the hand of his fake arm with the hand of his good arm. It was like a club. Then he swung again. There was another loud crack and another of them was down on the lawn. I began to feel brave and I landed a punch right on a guy's mouth. I saw the lip split and the blood began to dribble down his chin. The other two ran off. Then the big guy who had gone down first got up and the other one got up. They held their heads. The guy with the bloody mouth stood there. Then they retreated down the street together. When they got quite a way down the big guy turned around and said, "We'll be back!"

  Red began running toward them and I ran behind Red. They started running and Red and I stopped chasing them after they turned the corner. We walked back, found a ladder in the garage. We got the football down and began throwing it back and forth…

  One Saturday Red and I decided to go swimming at the public pool down on Bimini Street. Red was a strange guy. He didn't talk much but I didn't talk much either and we got along. There was nothing to say anyhow. The only thing I ever really asked him about was his school but he just said it was a special school and that it cost his father some money.

  We arrived at the pool in the early afternoon, got our lockers, and took our clothes off. We had our swimming trunks on underneath. Then I saw Red unhitch his arm and put it in his locker. It was the first time since the fight I had seen him without his fake arm. I tried not to look at his arm which ended at the elbow. We walked to the place where you had to soak your feet in a chlorine solution. It stank but it stopped the spread of athlete's foot or something. Then we walked to the pool and got in. The water stank too and after I was in I pissed in it. There were people of all ages in the pool, men and women, boys and girls. Red really liked the water. He leaped up and down in it. Then he ducked under and came up. He spit water out of his mouth. I tried to swim. I couldn't help noticing Red's half-arm, couldn't help looking at it. I always made sure to look at it when I thought he was occupied with something else. It ended at the elbow, sort of rounded off, and I saw the little fingers. I didn't want to stare real hard, but it seemed as if there were only three or four of them, very tiny, curled up there. They were very red and each of the tiny fingers had a little fingernail. Nothing was going to grow anymore; it had all stopped. I didn't want to think about it. I dove under. I was going to scare Red. I was going to grab his legs from behind. I came up against something soft. My face went right into it. It was a fat woman's ass. I felt her grab me by the hair and she pulled me up out of the water. She had on a blue bathing cap and the strap was tight around her chin, digging into her flesh. Her front teeth were capped with silver and her breath smelled of garlic.

  "You dirty little pervert! Trying for free grabs, are you?"

  I pushed away from her and backed off. As I moved backwards she followed me through the water, her sagging breasts pushing a tidal wave in front of her.

  "You dirty little prick. You wanna suck my titties? You got a dirty mind, huh? You wanna eat my shit? How about some of my shit, little prick?"

  I backed up further into the deeper water. I was now standing on my toes, moving backwards. I swallowed some water. She kept coming, a steamship of a woman. I couldn't retreat any further. She moved right up to me. Her eyes were pale and blank, there wasn't any color in them. I felt her body touching mine.

  'Touch my cunt," she said. "I know you want to touch it, so go ahead, touch my cunt. Touch it, touch it!"

  She waited.

  "If you don't, I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me and you'll be put in jail! Now, touch it!"

  I couldn't do it. Suddenly she reached under and grabbed my parts and yanked. She almost tore my dong off. I fell backwards into the deep water, sank, struggled, and came to the top. I was six feet away from her and began swimming toward shallow water.

  "I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me!" she screamed. Then a man swam between us. "That little son-of-a-bitch!" she pointed at me and screamed at the man. "He grabbed my cunt!"

  "Lady," said the man, "the boy probably thought it was the grate over the drain."

  I swam over to Red.

  "Listen," I said, "we've got to get out of here! That fat lady is going to tell the lifeguard that I touched her cunt!"

  "What'd you do that for?" Red asked.

  "I wanted to see what it felt like."

  "What'd it feel like?"

  We got out of the pool, showered. Red put his arm back on and we dressed. "Did you really do it?" he asked.

  "A guy's got to get started sometime."

  It was a month or so later that Red's family moved. One day they were gone. Just like that. Red never sa
id anything in advance to me. He was gone, the football was gone, and those tiny red fingers with fingernails, they were gone. He was a good guy.

  16

  I didn't know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up and they needed three on a side. I still required more practice to get really good but I was getting better. Saturday was the best day. That's when we had our big games, other guys joined in, and we played football in the street. We played tackle on the lawns but when we played in the street we played touch. There was more passing then because you couldn't get far with a run in touch.

  There was trouble at the house, much fighting between my mother and my father, and as a consequence, they kind of forgot about me. I got to play football each Saturday. During one game I broke into the open behind the last pass defender and I saw Chuck wing the ball. It was a long high spiral and I kept running. I looked back over my shoulder, I saw it coming, it fell right into my hands and I held it and was in for the touchdown.

  Then I heard my father's voice yell "HENRY!" He was standing in front of his house. I lobbed the ball to one of the guys on my team so they could kick off and I walked down to where my father stood. He looked angry. I could almost feel his anger. He always stood with one foot a little bit forward, his face flushed, and I could see his pot belly going up and down with his breathing. He was six feet two and like I said, he looked to be all ears, mouth and nose when angry. I couldn't look at his eyes.

  "All right," he said, "you're old enough to mow the lawn now. You're big enough to mow it, edge it, water it, and water the flowers. It's time you did something around here. It's time you got off your dead ass!"

  "But I'm playing football with the guys. Saturday is the only real chance I have."

  "Are you talking back to me?"

  "No."

  I could see my mother watching from behind a curtain. Every Saturday they cleaned the whole house. They vacuumed the rugs and polished the furniture. They took up the rugs and waxed the hardwood floors and then covered the floors with the rugs again. You couldn't even see where they had been waxed.