Ham on Rye: A Novel

by Charles Bukowski

  Kindergarten was mostly white air…

  Grammar school was different, first grade to sixth grade, some of the kids were twelve years old, and we all came from poor neighborhoods. I began to go to the bathroom, but only to piss. Coming out once I saw a small boy drinking at a water fountain. A larger boy walked up behind him and jammed his face down into the water jet. When the small boy raised his head, some of his teeth were broken and blood came out of his mouth, there was blood in the fountain. “You tell anyone about this,” the older boy told him, “and I’ll really get you.” The boy took out a handkerchief and held it to his mouth. I walked back to class where the teacher was telling us about George Washington and Valley Forge. She wore an elaborate white wig. She often slapped the palms of our hands with a ruler when she thought we were being disobedient. I don’t think she ever went to the bathroom. I hated her.

  Each afternoon after school there would be a fight between two of the older boys. It was always out by the back fence where there was never a teacher about. And the fights were never even; it was always a larger boy against a smaller boy and the larger boy would beat the smaller boy with his fists, backing him into the fence. The smaller boy would attempt to fight back but it was useless. Soon his face was bloody, the blood running down into his shirt. The smaller boys took their beatings wordlessly, never begging, never asking mercy. Finally, the larger boy would back off and it would be over and all the other boys would walk home with the winner. I’d walk home quickly, alone, after holding my shit all through school and all through the fight. Usually by the time I got home I would have lost the urge to relieve myself. I used to worry about that.

  6

  I didn’t have any friends at school, didn’t want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me. During lunch one day I was approached by a new boy. He wore knickers, was cross-eyed and pigeon-toed. I didn’t like him, he didn’t look good. He sat on the bench next to me.

  “Hello, my name’s David.”

  I didn’t answer.

  He opened his lunch bag. “I’ve got peanut butter sandwiches,” he said. “What do you have?”

  “Peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “I’ve got a banana, too. And some potato chips. Want some potato chips?”

  I took some. He had plenty, they were crisp and salty, the sun shone right through them. They were good.

  “Can I have some more?”

  “All right.”

  I took some more. He even had jelly on his peanut butter sandwiches. It dripped out and ran over his fingers. David didn’t seem to notice.

  “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “Virginia Road.”

  “I live on Pickford. We can walk home together after school. Take some more potato chips. Who’s your teacher?”

  “Mrs. Columbine.”

  “I have Mrs. Reed. I’ll see you after class, we’ll walk home together.”

  Why did he wear those knickers? What did he want? I really didn’t like him. I took some more of his potato chips.

  That afternoon, after school, he found me and began walking along beside me. “You never told me your name,” he said.

  “Henry,” I answered.

  As we walked along I noticed a whole gang of boys, first graders, following us. At first they were half a block behind us, then they closed the gap to several yards behind us.

  “What do they want?” I asked David.

  He didn’t answer, just kept walking.

  “Hey, knicker-shitter!” one of them yelled. “Your mother make you shit in your knickers?”

  “Pigeon-toe, ho-ho, pigeon-toe!”

  “Cross-eye! Get ready to die!”

  Then they circled us.

  “Who’s your friend? Does he kiss your rear end?”

  One of them had David by the collar. He threw him onto a lawn. David stood up. A boy got down behind him on his hands and knees. The other boy shoved him and David fell over backwards. Another boy rolled him over and rubbed his face in the grass. Then they stepped back. David got up again. He didn’t make a sound but the tears were rolling down his face. The largest boy walked up to him. “We don’t want you in our school, sissy. Get out of our school!” He punched David in the stomach. David bent over and as he did, the boy brought his knee up into David’s face. David fell. He had a bloody nose.

  Then the boys circled me. “Your turn now!” They kept circling and as they did I kept turning. There were always some of them behind me. Here I was loaded with shit and I had to fight. I was terrified and calm at the same time. I didn’t understand their motive. They kept circling and I kept turning. It went on and on. They screamed things at me but I didn’t hear what they said. Finally they backed off and went away down the street. David was waiting for me. We walked down the sidewalk toward his place on Pickford Street.

  Then we were in front of his house.

  “I’ve got to go in now. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, David.”

  He went in and then I heard his mother’s voice. “David! Look at your knickers and shirt! They’re torn and full of grass stains! You do this almost every day! Tell me, why do you do it?”

  David didn’t answer.

  “I asked you a question! Why do you do this to your clothes?”

  “I can’t help it, Mom…”

  “You can’t help it? You stupid boy!”

  I heard her beating him. David began to cry and she beat him harder. I stood on the front lawn and listened. After a while the beating stopped. I could hear David sobbing. Then he stopped.

  His mother said, “Now, I want you to practice your violin lesson.”

  I sat down on the lawn and waited. Then I heard the violin. It was a very sad violin. I didn’t like the way David played. I sat and listened for some time but the music didn’t get any better. The shit had hardened inside of me. I no longer felt like shitting. The afternoon light hurt my eyes. I felt like vomiting. I got up and walked home.

  7

  There were continual fights. The teachers didn’t seem to know anything about them. And there was always trouble when it rained. Any boy who brought an umbrella to school or wore a raincoat was singled out. Most of our parents were too poor to buy us such things. And when they did, we hid them in the bushes. Anybody seen carrying an umbrella or wearing a raincoat was considered a sissy. They were beaten after school. David’s mother had him carry an umbrella whenever it was the least bit cloudy.

  There were two recess periods. The first graders gathered at their own baseball diamond and the teams were chosen. David and I stood together. It was always the same. I was chosen next to last and David was chosen last, so we always played on different teams. David was worse than I was. With his crossed eyes, he couldn’t even see the ball. I needed lots of practice. I had never played with the kids in the neighborhood. I didn’t know how to catch a ball or how to hit one. But I wanted to, I liked it. David was afraid of the ball, I wasn’t. I swung hard, I swung harder than anybody but I could never hit the ball. I always struck out. Once I fouled a ball off. That felt good. Another time I drew a walk. When I got to first, the first baseman said, “That’s the only way you’ll ever get here.” I stood and looked at him. He was chewing gum and he had long black hairs coming out of his nostrils. His hair was thick with vaseline. He wore a perpetual sneer.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked me.

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to conversation.

  “The guys say you’re crazy,” he told me, “but you don’t scare me. I’ll be waiting for you after school some day.”

  I kept looking at him. He had a terrible face. Then the pitcher wound up and I broke for second. I ran like crazy and slid into second. The ball arrived late. The tag was late.

  “You’re out!” screamed the boy whose turn it was to umpire. I got up, not believing it.

  “I said, ‘YOU’RE OUT!’” the umpire screàmed.

  Then I kne
w that I was not accepted. David and I were not accepted. The others wanted me “out” because I was supposed to be “out.” They knew David and I were friends. It was because of David that I wasn’t wanted. As I walked off the diamond I saw David playing third base in his knickers. His blue and yellow stockings had fallen down around his feet. Why had he chosen me? I was a marked man. That afternoon after school I quickly left class and walked home alone, without David. I didn’t want to watch him beaten again by our classmates or by his mother. I didn’t want to listen to his sad violin. But the next day at lunch time, when he sat down next to me I ate his potato chips.

  My day came. I was tall and I felt very powerful at the plate. I couldn’t believe that I was as bad as they wished me to be. I swung wildly but with force. I knew I was strong, and maybe like they said, “crazy.” But I had this feeling inside of me that something real was there. Just hardened shit, maybe, but that was more than they had. I was up at bat. “Hey, it’s the STRIKEOUT KING! MR. WINDMILL!” The ball arrived. I swung and I felt the bat connect like I had wanted it to do for so long. The ball went up, up and HIGH, into left field, ’way OVER the left fielder’s head. His name was Don Brubaker and he stood and watched it fly over his head. It looked like it was never going to come down. Then Brubaker started running after the ball. He wanted to throw me out. He would never do it. The ball landed and rolled onto a diamond where some 5th graders were playing. I ran slowly to first, hit the bag, looked at the guy on first, ran slowly to second, touched it, ran to third where David stood, ignored him, tagged third and walked to home plate. Never such a day. Never such a home run by a first grader! As I stepped on home plate I heard one of the players, Irving Bone, say to the team captain, Stanley Greenberg, “Let’s put him on the regular team.” (The regular team played teams from other schools.)

  “No,” said Stanley Greenberg.

  Stanley was right. I never hit another home run. I struck out most of the time. But they always remembered that home run and while they still hated me, it was a better kind of hatred, like they weren’t quite sure why.

  Football season was worse. We played touch football. I couldn’t catch the football or throw it but I got into one game. When the runner came through I grabbed him by the shirt collar and threw him on the ground. When he started to get up, I kicked him. I didn’t like him. It was the first baseman with vaseline in his hair and the hair in his nostrils. Stanley Greenberg came over. He was larger than any of us. He could have killed me if he’d wanted to. He was our leader. Whatever he said, that was it. He told me, “You don’t understand the rules. No more football for you.”

  I was moved into volleyball. I played volleyball with David and the others. It wasn’t any good. They yelled and screamed and got excited, but the others were playing football. I wanted to play football. All I needed was a little practice. Volleyball was shameful. Girls played volleyball. After a while I wouldn’t play. I just stood in the center of the field where nobody was playing. I was the only one who would not play anything. I stood there each day and waited through the two recess sessions, until they were over.

  One day while I was standing there, more trouble came. A football sailed from high behind me and hit me on the head. It knocked me to the ground. I was very dizzy. They stood around snickering and laughing. “Oh, look, Henry fainted! Henry fainted like a lady! Oh, look at Henry!”

  I got up while the sun spun around. Then it stood still. The sky moved closer and flattened out. It was like being in a cage. They stood around me, faces, noses, mouths and eyes. Because they were taunting me I thought they had deliberately hit me with the football. It was unfair.

  “Who kicked that ball?” I asked.

  “You wanna know who kicked the ball?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do when you find out?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “It was Billy Sherril,” somebody said.

  Billy was a round fat boy, really nicer than most, but he was one of them. I began walking toward Billy. He stood there. When I got close he swung. I almost didn’t feel it. I hit him behind his left ear and when he grabbed his ear I hit him in the stomach. He fell to the ground. He stayed down. “Get up and fight him, Billy,” said Stanley Greenberg. Stanley lifted Billy up and pushed him toward me. I punched Billy in the mouth and he grabbed his mouth with both hands.

  “O.K.,” said Stanley, “I’ll take his place!”

  The boys cheered. I decided to run, I didn’t want to die. But then a teacher came up. “What’s going on here?” It was Mr. Hall.

  “Henry picked on Billy,” said Stanley Greenberg.

  “Is that right, boys?” asked Mr. Hall.

  “Yes,” they said.

  Mr. Hall took me by the ear all the way to the principal’s office. He pushed me into a chair in front of an empty desk and then knocked on the principal’s door. He was in there for some time and when he came out he left without looking at me. I sat there five or ten minutes before the principal came out and sat behind the desk. He was a very dignified man with a mass of white hair and a blue bow tie. He looked like a real gentleman. His name was Mr. Knox. Mr. Knox folded his hands and looked at me without speaking. When he did that I was not so sure that he was a gentleman. He seemed to want to humble me, treat me like the others.

  “Well,” he said at last, “tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “You hurt that boy, Billy Sherril. His parents are going to want to know why.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you think you can take matters into your own hands when something happens you don’t like?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you think you’re better than other people?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Knox sat there. He had a long letter opener and he slid it back and forth on the green felt padding of the desk. He had a large bottle of green ink on his desk and a pen holder with four pens. I wondered if he would beat me.

  “Then why did you do what you did?”

  I didn’t answer. Mr. Knox slid the letter opener back and forth. The phone rang. He picked it up.

  “Hello? Oh, Mrs. Kirby? He what? What? Listen, can’t you administer the discipline? I’m busy now. All right, I’ll phone you when I’m done with this one…”

  He hung up. He brushed his fine white hair back out of his eyes with one hand and looked at me.

  “Why do you cause me all this trouble?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “You think you’re tough, huh?”

  I kept silent.

  “Tough kid, huh?”

  There was a fly circling Mr. Knox’s desk. It hovered over his green ink bottle. Then it landed on the black cap of the ink bottle and sat there rubbing its wings.

  “O.K., kid, you’re tough and I’m tough. Let’s shake hands on that.”

  I didn’t think I was tough so I didn’t give him my hand.

  “Come on, give me your hand.”

  I stretched my hand out and he took it and began shaking it. Then he stopped shaking it and looked at me. He had blue clear eyes lighter than the blue of his bow tie. His eyes were almost beautiful. He kept looking at me and holding my hand. His grip began to tighten.

  “I want to congratulate you for being a tough guy.”

  His grip tightened some more.

  “Do you think I’m a tough guy?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He crushed the bones of my fingers together. I could feel the bone of each finger cutting like a blade into the flesh of the finger next to it. Shots of red flashed before my eyes.

  “Do you think I’m a tough guy?” he asked.

  “I’ll kill you,” I said.

  “You’ll what?”

  Mr. Knox tightened his grip. He had a hand like a vise. I could see every pore in his face.

  “Tough guys don’t scream, do they?”

&nbs
p; I couldn’t look at his face anymore. I put my face down on the desk.

  “Am I a tough guy?” asked Mr. Knox.

  He squeezed harder. I had to scream, but I kept it as quiet as possible so no one in the classes could hear me.

  “Now, am I a tough guy?”

  I waited. I hated to say it. Then I said, “Yes.”

  Mr. Knox let go of my hand. I was afraid to look at it. I let it hang by my side. I noticed that the fly was gone and I thought, it’s not so bad to be a fly. Mr. Knox was writing on a piece of paper.

  “Now, Henry, I’m writing a little note to your parents and I want you to deliver it to them. And you will deliver it to them, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He folded the note into an envelope and handed it to me. The envelope was sealed and I had no desire to open it.

  8

  I took the envelope home to my mother and handed it to her and walked into the bedroom. My bedroom. The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with the covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing. My mother often found me in bed in the daytime.

  “Henry, get up! It’s not good for a young boy to lay in bed all day! Now, get up! Do something!”

  But there was nothing to do.

  I didn’t go to bed that day. My mother was reading the note. Soon I heard her crying. Then she was wailing. “Oh, my god! You’ve disgraced your father and myself! It’s a disgrace! Suppose the neighbors find out? What will the neighbors think?”

  They never spoke to their neighbors.

  Then the door opened and my mother came running into the room: “How could you have done this to your mother?”

  The tears were running down her face. I felt guilty.

  “Wait until your father gets home!”

  She slammed the bedroom door and I sat in the chair and waited. Somehow I felt guilty…