Absence of the Hero

by Charles Bukowski

  She didn’t answer my question. She just sat there in her red dress and white bloomers, looking at me. That’s the way kids are, I guess. I got kind of nervous then. The adult thing wasn’t working.

  “I asked you,” I repeated, “what you were doing down here!”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothing? Aren’t you afraid of spiders?”

  “Naw! I’m bigger’n they are.”

  Well, I hadn’t thought of that. People often make me feel silly like that: I’d say something I’d think was sensible and then they’d say something that would take all the sense out of my statement, and then I couldn’t answer.

  I couldn’t answer the little girl either, so I bent over and went ahead with stacking my cardboard over by the steps so I could drag it out. I didn’t want to stack too much of it against the steps, though, because then me and the little girl would be trapped down in that cellar together all alone. I didn’t want that to happen on account of the spiders and things.

  “You’re a pretty man but you’re awful dirty. Don’t you have a place to wash?”

  Well, I’m telling you, that made me feel sort of funny. It was the first time anybody’d said anything like that to me for a long time. It gave me a real lift, somebody saying something like that.

  Of course, I’d always imagined I was handsome in my way, and the little girl had seen it too.

  “I don’t have any place to wash. I just live in a paper shack,” I told her.

  “Why don’t you use our house?”

  “People don’t do that, little girl. Everybody uses their own place and my place doesn’t have any water.”

  “But I’ll let you use our house. We got water upstairs. And soap. Green soap, pink soap, white soap, towels, washrags . . . everything.”

  “Well, thanks a lot little girl but I have to refuse your offer. And besides, your mother wouldn’t like that.”

  “My mother has gone downtown.”

  “You mean, you’re all alone by yourself, little girl?” I asked her.

  Though I called her a little girl, she looked like a little woman. A little woman in a short dress with white clean legs and white clean bloomers. She was just like her mother.

  “How long’s your mother been gone?”

  “She just left.”

  “How long does she usually stay downtown?”

  “She always stays all day.”

  “And you’re sure you’re all alone?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “Well, that’s all right, but I got no right in your mother’s place.”

  “But she’d never know. And you’re so dirty I feel sorry for you, mister.”

  “And you’d never tell on me, no matter what happens?”

  “No matter what happens.”

  “Promise? Word of honor?”

  “I promise. Word of honor.”

  “You’re a nice little girl,” I told her. “A real nice little girl. . . .”

  Well, we went upstairs and I walked into the bathroom and took off my shirt and let the hot water run into the washbowl. It was real funny to see tile again. It made me feel sort of strong and good again.

  There was no reason I couldn’t have those things again. There was no reason I couldn’t have anything I desired. Maybe it was my lucky day.

  I began to sing the song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” The steam from hot water rose off the bowl and I let it float against and around my face like a big hand cleaning the dirt out of me, cleaning the misused life out of me. It wasn’t too late. I was only 32.

  Some people even considered me handsome.

  “Say, why don’t you get into the bathtub?” the little girl asked me.

  “The bathtub?”

  “Sure! All people do! Go on, get into the bathtub!”

  “Well, O.K.,” I said. “Why not?”

  I put the plug in the tub and let the water run in, meanwhile taking off my shoes and the rest of my clothes. I stood there and looked down at the warm, clean water. It was my lucky day.

  “Oh,” screamed the little girl, “you got a worm, a worm!”

  Well, I knew I was pretty dirty but I’d never had any worms before, and I couldn’t for sure feel any on me.

  “Oh no, I haven’t,” I said.

  “Sure! I can see it!”

  She said it like she meant it. I got a little scared. “Where’s it at then?”

  “In front of you! In front of you there!”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “That’s no worm,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s what I go to the bathroom with.”

  There was no need to say any more about it. She didn’t ask any further questions, just stood there looking at me.

  I got into the tub and sat down in the water. It felt pretty good. It was my lucky day. Yes sir, it was. I felt real funny in a good sort of way. I was just about relaxed when the little girl screamed again.

  She was a screaming kid, that one.

  And I’d like to make that clear. The neighbors claimed later that they heard the little girl screaming almost all the time that it was established I was in that house.

  Of course, they didn’t know I was in there then.

  But they tied up that screaming, later, to mean in their minds, that I had been molesting her all during that time.

  Well, I’m telling you what really happened, so don’t pay any attention to them.

  I would have no more of touched that little girl than I would have touched her mother, and you can believe that. She was just like her mother, only just a little lady in a very short skirt with clean white bloomers.

  Just then, the little girl screamed again, and you could see I wasn’t doing anything to her. How could I when I was laying in that bathtub? As man to man, brother, I wanted to get clean. Kids don’t interest me. Though I understand in Mexico, they start pretty young. It’s the hot climate.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” I asked her. “You mustn’t scream. If you scream the neighbors will hear you and they’ll find out I’m here with you and you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

  The little girl screamed again. “You’ll drown the worm!” she screamed. “You’ll drown the worm!”

  “Please go away in another room somewhere, and please stop screaming and let me bathe in peace,” I told the little girl. “This was your idea, after all.”

  (You can see here, by the way I talked to the girl, that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with her.)

  “But the worm will drown.”

  “No, he won’t,” I assured her. “This worm likes water.”

  “No, he don’t! No worms like water, not water that hot. You’ll kill him!”

  “Believe me, kid,” I said, “I wouldn’t kill this worm for anything in the world.”

  I guess the little girl didn’t believe me.

  The kid began to cry.

  She began to make a hell of a noise. (And I guess this is part of what the neighbors mentioned later that they heard.)

  I began to think of the neighbors too. I knew, though I was innocent, it would look bad if I were caught there—so, in desperation, I tried to keep her quiet.

  “Look,” I said, “he won’t drown. I’ll hold him out of the water. See?”

  She came and watched and at last she was quiet. I felt sort of foolish washing with one hand, but it was worth it.

  “O.K.,” she said, “now I’ll hold him up out of the water so you can have both hands to wash.”

  “Nothin’ doin’!” I said.

  The kid stood back, clenched her fists at her sides, and began screaming all over again.

  I got scared. It was more than I could take. I kept thinking about the neighbors.

  “O.K.,” I said.

  So she held him up and I began to use two hands to wash. It was a little awkward but it was my first in years and the kid was keeping quiet, so it was worth it. I guess it was my lucky day.

  I was just about
calm again when the kid let out another screech: “Hey, he’s moving!”

  “Worms move,” I said.

  I kept on washing.

  “I’ll wash the worm,” the little girl said and grabbed an extra piece of soap and began rubbing.

  I began to wish I had never listened to the kid. It all really began when the little girl had called me a pretty man. I thought of her mother downtown, moving up and down shady department store aisles, touching things, buying things, moving around. I was just some sort of animal, some sort of animal outcast. I had no rights. The Mrs. Webers were not for me. Yet, I couldn’t help thinking about her.

  “Hey, he’s growing!” screamed the little girl. “He’s growing real big!”

  I rinsed the soap off of myself, pulled the plug, and stepped out of the tub. I began to dry myself off and the kid was drying off the worm when, so help me, Mrs. Weber stepped into the bathroom. I hadn’t heard her come in at all.

  Of course, she’d never seen me that way before. And I didn’t have time to explain.

  She just stood there and began to scream just like the kid had screamed, only better—I mean, worse: louder and with a trill that sent whirlings up and down my spine.

  I ran up to her and put my hand on her mouth to try to keep her quiet while I explained. I could feel the texture of her new dress against my skin. It felt funny. It felt like another animal or something.

  But under the texture was Mrs. Weber and I was frightened. She bit my hand as I tried to hold it over her mouth and she began to scream again.

  I had to hit her. I knocked her down.

  I felt real sorry for Mrs. Weber as she lay there on the floor, her new dress mussed on the wet, steamy floor. I could see where her rolled stockings ended and the flesh began.

  I was going to help her up but then the little girl began to scream. I ran to the little girl and grabbed her and tried to keep her quiet.

  But then Mrs. Weber began. Then, all I could do, was run back and forth, back and forth, grabbing and hitting, grabbing and hitting, hardly knowing what I was doing.

  And now, I’m in this goddamned jail and I never did get my cardboard.

  I never even got a little drink of wine out of the whole thing.

  They’ve got me up for two counts of rape, child molestation, breaking and entering, and everything else.

  The doctors claim that both of them had been raped. Maybe so. I hardly knew what I was doing, trying to keep them quiet, trying to keep them from screaming.

  I say not guilty. It wasn’t my fault. I never did get my cardboard or even a little drink. I have shown you how it wasn’t my fault. Do you believe me? Or don’t you believe me?

  I keep thinking of myself in high school in a clean blue sweater. I used to have a friend named Jimmy. We would listen to the high school orchestra in the auditorium sometimes during homeroom period. We would go around singing songs later that the orchestra had played. Songs like “Ave Maria” and “When the Deep Purple Falls Over Sleepy Garden Walls” and “God Bless America.”

  Don’t you believe me? Doesn’t anybody believe me?

  80 Airplanes Don’t Put You in the Clear

  When I was a young one, I used to read The Collected Poems of Richard Aldington to my friend Baldy while we were drinking. To me, there was no greater honor (to Aldington) than to sing his things out over wine, under the bright electricity of my cheap room. Baldy did not rise to my enthusiasm—and I could never really understand; Aldington was a clear poet: clear, emotional, and forward. I think he has affected me more than the greater-rated poets, but my friend Baldy never praised R.A., never rejected. He simply sat and drank with Bacchus.

  He praised not Aldington (which I was trying to get him to see) but me. “Jesus,” he’d say the next day, “Hank was really drunk last night! He got out the old book of poetry. He can really read that stuff too! I never heard anybody read poetry the way Hank does!”

  Baldy happened to say just this one day to Helen, a woman who cleaned the rooms.

  So, following with the informality of the situation, I put forth: “How’s about a little snip, Helen?”

  She didn’t answer. They had the damnedest people around there. They never said anything when they were supposed to.

  I poured a goodly portion and she snatched it up off of the dresser.

  “I really got to clean the rooms,” she said.

  Then I had a spot. “Aldington knew Lawrence,” I said. “D.H. Lawrence. Now there was a guy. That son of a bitch could really spin it!”

  “Yes,” Baldy said, “Lawrence.”

  “Out of the coal mines,” I said. “Married Richthofen’s daughter. You know, the guy who shot down 80 airplanes. Or maybe this guy was her brother. Though Lawrence wasn’t exactly out of the coal mines. It was his father.”

  “Do you have another spot of that stuff, honey?” the housecleaner asked.

  I poured her a little refresher.

  “What kind of stuff is this? It tastes so different.”

  “Port.”

  “Port, eh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “ I used to drink muscatel but it dried me up. They put too much sulphur in it.”

  She knocked off her glass. “Ya know, you’re nice boys. I don’t mind drinking with you boys. You’re different.”

  Well, that made me feel pretty good, so I poured a big one for myself and a big one for Baldy and a big one for Helen, to sort of celebrate.

  “This Lawrence and this Aldington buddied around together,” I continued.

  At that moment there was a thunderous knock on the door. Like a Beethoven climax. “Hank! Hank!”

  “Come in, Lou.”

  It was the ex-con and ex-hard-rock miner. He had a bottle with him. Port. Good for the stomach.

  “Sit down, Lou. We were just talking about a guy whose relative shot down 80 planes.”

  “See you got company, Hank.”

  “Yeah, Lou.”

  “Here, have some of my stuff folks.”

  “Pour away, Lou!”

  “I really should clean the rooms, but you boys are so nice.”

  “Where’s your husband, dearie?”

  “Oh, he sailed away in the Merchant Marine and when he came back he wasn’t worth a damn. He’d gotten all these women and he was never satisfied anymore.”

  “But you still got me, Helen,” Lou said, putting his hand on her knee. “What’s say you and I—” He leaned over and finished the sentence in her ear. He might as well, of course, have spoken it aloud.

  “You bastard you, why can’t you be nice like these other boys? They’re not that way! Why can’t you be nice?”

  “But I am nice, baby! Wait ‘til you get to know me! Wait ’til you see what I got!”

  “For Christ’s Sake, Lou!” I screamed. “Keep your pants buttoned!” (I was sensitive in those days). “This is a literary discussion!”

  Everybody settled back for a moment then and I rose and went about replenishing their glasses.

  “One time this Lawrence wanted to form a colony, a colony just of his friends. You know: start a new world somewhere. I thought it was a pretty good idea, myself. If I hadda been there I would have shoved off with him right away and considered it a great honor. But all these people turned him down. He asked them one at a time: ‘Are you coming with me to this island or not?’ And everybody backed down. Except Aldington. No, maybe it was Huxley. Anyhow, Lawrence got disgusted and he got drunk and sick and the whole thing fell through.”

  “Where was this island?” the ex-con asked. “Maybe there was nothing to eat there. And maybe they couldn’t take women. You can’t tell. There might have been something fishy about this Lawrence guy.”

  “No, no,” I said, “it was straight. They were to colonize, to make a new world.”

  “How about the grub? How about the broads?”

  “Everything was set,” I said. “Everything was worked out beforehand.”

  “And they still wouldn’t go?”

 
“No.”

  The ex-con turned to the scrubwoman, hand on knee. “Helen, would you go to an island with me? I could show you something you’d never forget.”

  “Lou,” I said, “stay in line, please.”

  “That’s right, Hank, keep the bastard off me! I’m just here for a friendly drink.”

  “But I’m tryin’ to be friendly, real friendly,” protested the ex-con.

  “Take it easy, Lou.”

  “Sure, Hank, sure.”

  “Hank,” Baldy woke up, “who do you think was the greatest writer of all time?”

  “Shakespeare,” the ex-con said.

  “I think Robert Louis Stevenson or Mark Twain,” said the scrubwoman.

  “What do you think, Hank?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Baldy.”

  “Shakespeare, beyond a doubt,” the ex-con maintained, draining his glass. “Nobody could touch old Shakey, but nobody!”

  “Some claim Shakespeare died in a barroom brawl,” I disclosed.

  “Sure! Shakey was a man!”

  “Dearie,” the scrubwoman asked me, “could I have a bit more port?”

  “Let’s sing something!” Baldy suggested. “The Gypsy Song. You know: sing gypsy, laugh gypsy, love while you may. I like that one.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve had multitudinous warnings about the gypsy song already.”

  “Keep your hands off me, you bastard!”

  “Lou!” I shouted. “Anymore of that and I’m kicking you out!”

  “You’re not man enough!”

  “I’m warning you, Lou.”

  “I used to be a hard-rock miner. Once I fought a guy with pick-handles. He broke my left arm with the first blow and I still went on to kill the son of a bitch with one hand! Go on: you hit me first! You get first knock! Go on, Hank buddy! I like you, Hank! You’re a man, a real man! Let’s fight! Let’s you and me fight, Hank!”

  “Calm down, Lou. I don’t want to get kicked out of here.”

  “Maybe you’d better read some poetry,” the scrubwoman suggested.

  “This Lawrence, what’d he write about?” Baldy asked.

  “Well, he probed around a lot. Like a lot of us he wanted to keep the Inner Man as unpolluted as possible. He was preoccupied, much of the time, with sex.”