Ham on Rye: A Novel

by Charles Bukowski

  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.”

  “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.”

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nbsp; 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.”

  “I’m 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, fingernails 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 tackler, 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.