the doctor began to listen to his heart. Beckett knocked the stethoscope away. he began to get dressed.
“don’t be hasty, Mr. Beckett. please!”
then he was dressed and out of there. he left the hat, scarf, dark shades. he made it to his place and got his hunting rifle and enough rounds of ammunition to kill a batallion. he found the cutoff on the freeway that led to the knoll. the knoll overlooked a slow turn that cut the speed of the cars down. why he’d ever noticed the knoll he never knew. he got out of the car and climbed to the top of the highest hill. he dusted the telescopic sight, loaded, took off the safety catch and flattened out.
at first he didn’t get it right. each time he fired the shot appeared to hit behind the car. then he practiced leading the cars into the bullet. the speeds of each of the cars were practically the same, but instinctively he varied the lead to the changing speed of each car. the first one he got was very strange. the bullet entered the right forehead and the man seemed to look right up at him, and then the car flipped, it hit the fence, flipped on its side and he shot at the next one coming by, a woman, missed, hit her engine, there was fire, and she just sat in the car screaming and waving her arms and burning. he didn’t want to see her burn. he shot her. the traffic stopped. people got out of their cars. he decided not to shoot any more women. bad taste. or children. bad taste. a doctor from Austria. why didn’t they stay in Austria? weren’t there any sick in Austria? he got four or five more men before they knew a shooting was going on. then the patrol cars came and the ambulances. they blocked off the freeway. he let them load the dead and wounded into the ambulance. he didn’t shoot at the attendants. he shot at the cops. he got one cop. a real bulky one. he lost sense of time. it got dark. he sensed they were moving up the knoll toward him. he didn’t stay in the same position. he moved toward them. he caught two of them in ambush from the left flank. then some firing from his right drove him toward the knoll. they were backing him up. an established position was the worst thing. he tried to make one more break but the fire was too heavy. he slowly backed toward the knoll, saving what ground he could. he could hear them talking and cursing. there were many of them. he stopped firing and waited. he got one more, seeing a pantleg through the brush, he aimed where he thought the trunk of the body would be, heard a scream, then moved further up the knoll. it was getting darker. Gloria would have dumped him. he would have dumped Gloria with a paint job like that. can you imagine taking a purple and gold girl to a concert of Brahms?
then they had him on top of the knoll but there wasn’t any brush coverage for them. jut small-sized boulders. and all of them wanted to go home alive. he decided he could hold for quite a while. they began to shoot flares up on the knoll. he shot some of them off but parts of others remained and soon there were too many flares burning to knock out. they were potting at him, getting closer … shit. shit. well.
a flare lit particularly close and Henry could see his hands on the rifle. he looked again. his hands were WHITE.
WHITE!
it was gone!
he was WHITE, WHITE, WHITE!
“HEY!” he screamed, “I QUIT! I GIVE UP! I QUIT!”
Henry ripped at his shirt, looked at his chest: WHITE.
he took his shirt off, tied it to the end of his rifle, waved it. they stopped firing. the ridiculous mad dream was over, the polka-dot man was finished, the clown gone; what a joke, what shit, had it happened? it couldn’t have happened. it must have been his mind. or had it happened? had Hiroshima happened? had anything ever really happened?
he threw his rifle down toward them, he threw it hard. then he walked slowly down toward them, his hands high over his head, hollering, “I QUIT! I SURRENDER! SURRENDER! I SURRENDER!”
he could hear voices as he moved toward them.
“what are we going to do, man?”
“I don’t know. watch for tricks.”
“he killed Eddie and Weaver. I hate his guts.”
“he’s getting closer.”
“I QUIT! I SURRENDER!”
one of the cops fired five shots. three in the belly, two in the lungs. they left him out there a good minute before anybody moved. then they came out. the one who shot him got there first. he turned the body over with his boot, from the front to the back. he was a black cop, Adrian Thompson, 236 pounds, a home almost paid for near the west side, and he grinned down in the moonlight.
the traffic on the freeway was moving again, as usual.
________
everywhere we hang onto the walls of the world, and in the darkest part of hangover, I think of two friends who advise me on various methods of suicide. what better proof of loving camaraderie? one of my friends has razor scars running all along his left arm. the other jams pills by the bucketloads into a mass of black beard. they both write poetry. there is something about writing poetry that brings a man close to the cliff’s edge. probably, though, all three of us will live into our nineties. can you imagine the world of 2010 a.d.? of course, the way it will look will depend a lot on what is done with the Bomb. I suppose men will still eat eggs for breakfast, have sex problems. write poetry. commit suicide.
I think that it was in 1954 that I last tried suicide. I was living on the third floor in an apartment building on N. Mariposa Avenue. I closed all the windows and turned on the oven and the gas jets, without lighting them, of course. then I stretched out on the bed. escaping unlit gas has this very soothing hiss. I went to sleep. it would have worked too, only inhaling the gas gave me such a headache that the headache awakened me. I got up off the bed, laughing, and saying, “You damn fool, you don’t want to kill yourself!” I turned off the gas and opened up the windows. I kept laughing. it seemed a very funny joke. then too, the automatic pilot on the stove wasn’t working or that little flame would have blasted me right out of my precious little season in Hell.
a few years earlier I awakened from a week’s drunk and pretty determined to kill myself. I was shacked with a sweet little thing at the time and not working. the money was gone, the rent was due, and even if I had been able to find a flunk’s job of some sort, that would have only seemed like another kind of death. I decided to kill myself when she left the room the first time. meanwhile, I went outside on the street, slightly curious, just slightly, as to what day it was. on our drunks, days and nights ran together. we just drank and made love continually. it was about noon and I walked down the hill to check the corner newspaper for the day. Friday, the paper said. well, Friday seemed as good a day as any. then I saw the headline. MILTON BERLE’S COUSIN HIT ON HEAD BY FALLING ROCK. now how the hell are you going to kill yourself when they write headlines like that? I stole a paper and brought it back to the room. “guess what?” I asked. “what?” she said. “Milton Berle’s cousin was hit on the head by a falling rock.” “no SHIT?” “yeah.” “I wonder what kind of rock it was?” “I think it was a kind of round smooth yellow one.” “yeah, I think so too.” “I wonder what color eyes Milton Berle’s cousin has?” “I’d guess they’re a kind of brown, a very pale brown.” “pale brown eyes, light yellow rock.” “CLUNK!” “yeah, CLUNK!” I went out and cuffed a couple of bottles and we had a fairly nice day after all. I think the paper with that headline that day was something called “The Express” or “The Evening Herald.” I’m not sure. anyway, I wish to thank whatever paper it was and also Milton Berle’s cousin and that round smooth yellow rock.
well, since the subject seems to be suicide, I remember once I was working on the docks, we used to eat our lunch on those Frisco docks with our feet hanging over the edge of the pier. well, one day I am sitting there when this guy next to me takes off his shoes and stockings, piles them very neatly by his side. he was sitting next to me. then I heard the splash and he was down in there. it was very strange, he screamed “HELP!” just before his head hit the water. then there was just this little whirling puddle and not feeling very much at all, just watching those air bubbles come up. then a man ran up to me and started screaming at me, “DO SOMETH
ING! HE’S TRYING TO TRY TO COMMIT SUICIDE!” “hell, what’ll I do?” “get a rope, throw him a rope or something!” I jumped up and ran to a shack where an old man wrapped packages and cartons. “GIMME SOME ROPE!” he just looked at me. “GODDAMN IT, GIVE ME SOME ROPE, A MAN’S DROWNING, I GOTTA THROW HIM ROPE!” the old man turned around and got something. then he held it out to me. he held it out between his two fingers — it was a little piece of shriveled white string. “YOU ROTTEN SON OF A BITCH!” I screamed at him.
by then a young man had peeled down to his shorts and dived in and brought our suicide up. the young man was given the rest of the day off with pay. our suicide claimed he had fallen in by accident but he couldn’t explain away the taking off of the shoes and stockings bit. I never saw him again. maybe he finished the job that night. you can never tell what is troubling a man. even trivial things can become terrible when you get into a certain mind-state. and the worst worry/fear/agony tiredness of them all is the one you can’t explain or understand or even think out. it just lays on you like a slab of sheet metal and there’s no getting it off. not even for $25 an hour. I know. suicide? suicide seems incomprehensible unless you yourself are thinking about it. you don’t have to belong to the Poet’s Union in order to join the club. I was living in this cheap hotel when I was a younger man and my friend was an older man, an ex-con, who had a job scrubbing out the insides of candy-making machines. it doesn’t seem like much to live for, does it? anyhow we drank together some nights and he seemed a good sort, a kind of big 45-year-old kid, loose and easy, not vicious at all. Lou was his name. x-hard rock miner. nose like a hawk. big, mangled hands, scuffed shoes, uncombed hair, not as good with the ladies as I was — at that time. anyhow, he missed a day’s work because of drinking and the big rock candy boys let him go. he came in and told me about it. I told him to forget it — a job just ate up a man’s good hours anyhow. I didn’t seem to impress him very much with my home-spun stuff and he left. I went down to his door a couple of hours later to bum a couple of smokes. he didn’t answer my knock so I figured he was in there drunk. I tried the door and it opened. there he was on the bed with the gas jets going. I guess the Southern California Gas Co. just doesn’t realize how many people they serve. anyhow, I opened the windows and turned off the gas hotplate and his gas heater. he didn’t have a stove. just an x-con who had lost his candy-machine scrubbing job because he had missed one day’s work. “the boss tells me I’m the best worker he ever had. the thing is I miss too many days — 2 last month. he tells me if I miss another I’m finished.”
I walked over to the bed and shook him. “you rotten mother!”
“wha’?”
“you rotten mother, you ever do that again I’m going to kick your ass all over this rotten town!”
“hey, Ski, you SAVED MY LIFE! I OWE YOU MY LIFE! YOU SAVED MY LIFE!”
he kept on this “you-saved-my-life” bit all through a couple of weeks of drunks. he’d lean toward my girl friend with that hawknose, put his big mangled hand on her hand or, worse, her knee, and say, “Hey, this rotten son of a bee saved my LIFE! YA KNOW THAT?”
“you’ve told me many times, Lou.”
“YEAH, HE SAVED MY LIFE!”
a couple of days later he left, two weeks behind in the rent. I never saw him again.
this has been some hangover but talking about suicide beats doing it. or does it? I am down to my last beer and my radio on the floor plays music from Japan. the phone just rang. some drunk. long distance. from New York. “listen, man, as long as they trot out one Bukowski every fifty years, I’m gonna make it.” I allow myself to enjoy this, to manipulate it in my favor because I have the deep blue skies, the honed-edge fever. “remember those drunks we used to go on, man?” he asks. “yeah, I remember.” “whatcha doin’ now, ya still writing?” “yeah, right now I’m writing about suicide.” “suicide?” “yeah, I have this column, kind of, in a new paper that’s starting, OPEN CITY.” “they’ll print the suicide thing?” “I dunno.” we talk awhile and then he hangs up. some hangover. some column. I remember when I was a kid, they used to have a song BLUE MONDAY. they played it in Hungary, I believe. and everytime they played BLUE MONDAY somebody took the suicide way. they finally barred the song from being played. but they are playing something from the floor on my radio that sounds just as bad. if you don’t see this column next week it may not be because of subject matter. meanwhile, I doubt if I put Coates or Weinstock out of business.
________
it was last Monday a.m. I had worked all Sunday until midnight and then drove to this place with the lights on. I brought in a 6-pack and this tended to get them started. somebody went out and got some more.
“you shoulda seen Bukowski last week,” this one guy said. “he was dancing with the ironing board. then he said he was going to screw the ironing board.”
“yeah?”
“yeah. then he read us his poems. we had to snatch the book from his hands or he would have read us his poems all night.”
I told them there was this virgin-eyed woman sitting there looking at me — woman, hell, girl, girl she was — and it was hard to stop.
“lemme see,” I told them, “now this is mid-July and I haven’t had a piece of ass this year.”
they laughed. they thought it was funny. people who are getting ass always think it is funny when somebody else isn’t.
then they talked about the young blond god guy who was now shacking with three chicks at the same time. I warned them that when this kid got to be 33 years old he’d have to go find himself a job. this seemed like a kind of flat and vengeful warning. nothing for me to do but drain the beer can and wait for the bomb to drop.
I took a little piece of paper from somewhere and when nobody was looking I wrote down:
love is a way with some meaning; sex is meaning enough.
soon all the young ones got tired and had to go to sleep. I was left with an old-timer, a man about my age. we are bred to go on all night — drinking, that is. after the beer was gone he found a fifth of whiskey. he was an old newspaper man, now an editor on some big city rag back east. the talk was pleasant — two old dogs agreeing on too much. morning came fast. around 6:15 a.m. I said I had to leave. I decided not to drive my car. the walk in was about 8 blocks. old-timer walked with me down to Hollywood Blvd. by the bowling alley. then an old-fashioned handshake and we parted.
As I got about two blocks from my place, I noticed a woman in a car trying to get it started, trying to get it away from the curbing. she was having her troubles. it would leap forward a few feet, then stall. she would start it immediately in what I sensed to be a rather erratic and panicky fashion. it was a late model car. I stood on the corner and watched her. soon the car stalled right next to me, right where I was standing on the curbing. I looked in. there sat this woman. she had on high heels, long dark stockings, blouse, earrings, wedding ring and panties. no skirt, just these light pink panties. I inhaled the morning air. she had this old woman’s face and these young big unwrinkled girl’s legs and thighs.
the car jumped forward again, stalled again. I walked on down and stuck my head in the window:
“lady, you’d better park that thing. the police are pretty busy this time of the morning. you might get into trouble.”
“all right.”
she maneuvered it into the curbing, then climbed out. under the blouse were young girl’s breasts too. there she stood in her pink panties and long dark stockings and highheels at 6:25 a.m. on a Los Angeles morning. a 55 year-old face with an 18 year-old body.
“are you sure you’re all right?” I said.
“sure I’m all right,” she said.
“are you really sure?” I asked.
“sure I’m sure,” she said. then she turned and walked away from me. and I stood there watching the whirling of the buttocks under that pink tight sheen. it was walking away from me, down the street between rows of houses, and nobody in sight, no police, no humans, not even a bird. just tho
se whirling pink young buttocks walking away from me. I was too high to groan; I just felt the eating and wild sadness of another good thing lost forever. I hadn’t said the right words. I hadn’t said the right combination of words, I hadn’t even tried. I deserved an ironing board, so what the hell, just some nut running around in pink panties at 6 a.m. in the morning.
I stood there watching it walk off. the boys would never believe this one — the one that got away. then, as I watched, she turned around and walked back toward me. she looked pretty good from the front too. in fact, the closer she got the better she looked — throwing out the face. but you had to throw out my face too. the face is the first thing you throw out when the luck gets bad. the remaining decay follows in slower order.
she got right up to me. there still wasn’t anybody around. there are times when insanity becomes so real that it isn’t insanity anymore. here was pink panties back breathing against me, and not a cruise car anywhere, and nobody anywhere between Venice Italy and Venice California, between the sniffboards of hell and the last vacant lot in Palos Verdes.
“good, you came back,” I said.
“I just wanted to see if the back of the car was sticking into the driveway.”
then she bent over. I couldn’t bear up anymore. I grabbed her arm.
“come on, we’re going to my place. it’s just around the corner. let’s catch a few drinks and get off the street.”
she looked at me with that fallen-apart face. I still couldn’t place the head upon the body. I was throbbing like a stinking beast. then she said, “o.k., let’s go.”
so we walked around the corner. I didn’t touch her. I offered her a cigarette I found in my shirt pocket. we stood outside a church as I lit it for her. I expected, at any moment, a voice from one of the neighboring houses: “HEY, WOMAN, GET OFF THE STREETS WITH YOUR GODDAMNED PANTIES OR I’M GONNA CALL THE FUZZ!” maybe it paid to live on the outskirts of Hollywood. there were probably three or four guys peeking through the curtains as the wife got breakfast ready, meanwhile giving themselves whiplash handjobs.
Notes of a Dirty Old Man Page 10
