Ask the Dust

by John Fante

  Chapter Thirteen

  I got back to Los Angeles the next day. The city was the same, but I was afraid. The streets lurked with danger. The tall buildings forming black canyons were traps to kill you when the earth shook. The pavement might open. The street cars might topple. Something had happened to Arturo Bandini. He walked the streets of one-story buildings. He clung to the curbstone, away from the overhanging neon signs. It was inside me, deeply. I could not shake it. I saw men walking through deep, dark alleys. I marveled at their madness. I crossed Hill Street and breathed easier when I entered Pershing Square. No tall buildings in the Square. The earth could shake, but no debris could crush you.

  I sat in the Square, smoked cigarets and felt sweat oozing from my palms. The Columbia Buffet was five blocks away. I knew I would not go down there. Somewhere within me was a change. I was a coward. I said it aloud to myself: you are a coward. I didn’t care. It was better to be a live coward than a dead madman. These people walking in and out of huge concrete buildings—someone should warn them. It would come again; it had to come again, another earthquake to level the city and destroy it forever. It would happen any minute. It would kill a lot of people, but not me. Because I was going to keep out of these streets, and away from falling debris.

  I walked up Bunker Hill to my hotel. I considered every building. The frame buildings could stand a quake. They merely shook and writhed, but they did not come down. But look out for the brick places. Here and there were evidences of the quake; a tumbled brick wall, a fallen chimney. Los Angeles was doomed. It was a city with a curse upon it. This particular earthquake had not destroyed it, but any day now another would raze it to the ground. They wouldn’t get me, they’d never catch me inside a brick building. I was a coward, but that was my business. Sure I’m a coward, talking to myself, sure I’m a coward, but you be brave, you lunatic, go ahead and be brave and walk around under those big buildings. They’ll kill you. Today, tomorrow, next week, next year, but they’ll kill you and they won’t kill me.

  And now listen to the man who was in the earthquake. I sat on the porch of the Alta Loma Hotel and told them about it. I saw it happen. I saw the dead carried out. I saw the blood and the wounded. I was in a six-story building, fast asleep when it happened. I ran down the corridor to the elevator. It was jammed. A woman rushed out of one of the offices and was struck on the head by a steel girder. I fought my way back through the ruins and got to her. I slung her over my shoulders, it was six floors to the ground, but I made it. All night I was with the rescuers, knee deep in blood and misery. I pulled an old woman out whose hand stuck through the debris like a piece of statue. I flung myself through a smoking doorway to rescue a girl unconscious in her bathtub. I dressed the wounded, led battalions of rescuers into the ruins, hacked and fought my way to the dead and dying. Sure I was scared, but it had to be done. It was a crisis, calling for action and not words. I saw the earth open like a huge mouth, then close again over the paved street. An old man was trapped by the foot. I ran to him, told him to be brave while I hacked the pavement with a fireman’s axe. But I was too late. The vise tightened, bit his leg off at the knee. I carried him away. His knee is still there, a bloody souvenir sticking out of the earth. I saw it happen, and it was awful. Maybe they believed me, maybe they didn’t. It was all the same to me.

  I went down to my room and looked for cracks in the wall. I inspected Hellfrick’s room. He was stooped over his stove, frying a pan of hamburger. I saw it happen, Hellfrick. I was atop the highest point of the Roller Coaster when the quake hit. The Coaster jammed in its tracks. We had to climb down. A girl and myself. A hundred and fifty feet to the ground, with a girl on my back and the structure shaking like St. Vitus Dance. I made it though. I saw a little girl buried feet first in debris. I saw an old woman pinned under her car, dead and crushed, but holding her hand out to signal for a right hand turn. I saw three men dead at a poker table. Hellfrick whistled: is that so? Is that so? Too bad, too bad. And would I lend him fifty cents? I gave it to him and inspected his walls for cracks. I went down the halls, into the garage and laundry room. There were evidences of the shock, not serious, but indicative of the calamity that would inevitably destroy Los Angeles. I didn’t sleep in my room that night. Not with the earth still trembling. Not me, Hellfrick. And Hellfrick looked out the window to where I lay on the hillside, wrapped in blankets. I was crazy, Hellfrick said. But Hellfrick remembered that I had been lending him money, so maybe I wasn’t crazy. Maybe you’re right, Hellfrick said. He turned out his light and I heard his thin body settle upon the bed.

  The world was dust, and dust it would become. I began going to Mass in the mornings. I went to Confession. I received Holy Communion. I picked out a little frame church, squat and solid, down near the Mexican quarter. Here I prayed. The new Bandini. Ah life! Thou sweet bitter tragedy, thou dazzling whore that leadeth me to destruction! I gave up cigarets for a few days. I bought a new rosary. I poured nickels and dimes into the Poor Box. I pitied the world.

  Dear Mother back home in Colorado. Ah, beloved character, so like the Virgin Mary. I only had ten dollars left, but I sent her five of it, the first money I ever sent home. Pray for me, Mother dear. The vigil of your rosaries is all that keeps my blood astir. These are dark days, Mother. The world is so full of ugliness. But I have changed, and life has begun anew. Long hours I spend glorying thee before God. Ah mother, be with me in these miseries! But I must hasten to close this epistle, Oh, beloved Mother Darling, for I am making a novena these days, and each afternoon at five I am to be found prostrate before the figure of Our Blessed Savior as I offer prayers for His sweet Mercy. Farewell, O Mother! Heed my plea for your aspirations. Remember me to Him that giveth all and shineth in the skies.

  So off to mail the letter to my mother, to drop it in the box and walk down Olive Street, where there were no brick buildings, and then across an empty lot and down another street that was barren of buildings to a street where only a low fence marked the spot, and then a block to a section of town where high buildings rose to the sky; but there was no escaping that block, save to walk across the street from the high buildings, walk very fast, sometimes run. And at the end of the street was the little church, and here I prayed, making my novena.

  An hour later I come out, refreshed, soothed, spirits high. I take the same route home, hurry past the high buildings, stroll along the fence, dawdle through the empty lot, taking note of God’s handiwork in a line of palm trees near the alley. And so up to Olive Street, past the drab frame houses. What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? And then that little poem: Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, multiply them by endless years, one minute of heaven is worth them all. How true! How true! I thank thee, Oh heavenly light, for showing the way.

  A knock on the window. Someone was knocking on the window of that house obscured by heavy vines. I turned and found the window, saw a head; the flash of teeth, the black hair, the leer, the gesturing long fingers. What was that thunder in my belly? And how shall I prevent that paralysis of thought, and that inundation of blood making my senses reel? But I want this! I shall die without it! So I’m coming you woman in the window; you fascinate me, you kill me dead with delight and shudder and joy, and here I come, up these rickety stairs.

  So what’s the use of repentence, and what do you care for goodness, and what if you should die in a quake, so who the hell cares? So I walked downtown, so these were the high buildings, so let the earthquake come, let it bury me and my sins, so who the hell cares? No good to God or man, die one way or another, a quake or a hanging, it didn’t matter why or when or how.

  And then, like a dream it came. Out of my desperation it came—an idea, my first sound idea, the first in my entire life, full-bodied and clean and strong, line after line, page after page. A story about Vera Rivken.

  I tried it and it moved easily. But it was not thinking, not cogitation. It simply moved of its own accord, spurted out like blood.
This was it. I had it at last. Here I go, leave me be, oh boy do I love it, Oh God do I love you, and you Camilla and you and you. Here I go and it feels so good, so sweet and warm and soft, delicious, delirious. Up the river and over the sea, this is you and this is me, big fat words, little fat words, big thin words, whee whee whee.

  Breathless, frantic, endless thing, going to be something big, going on and on, I hammered away for hours, until gradually it came upon me in the flesh, stole over me, haunted my bones, dripped from me, weakened me, blinded me. Camilla! I had to have that Camilla! I got up and walked out of the hotel and down Bunker Hill to the Columbia Buffet.

  “Back again?”

  Like film over my eyes, like a spider web over me.

  “Why not?”

  Arturo Bandini, author of The Little Dog Laughed and a certain plagiarization from Ernest Dowson, and a certain telegram proposing marriage. Could that be laughter in her eyes? But forget it, and remember the dark flesh under her smock. I drank beer and watched her at work. I sneered when she laughed with those men near the piano. I cackled when one of them put his hand on her hip. This Mexican! Trash, I tell you! I signalled her. She came at her leisure, fifteen minutes later. Be nice to her, Arturo. Fake it.

  “You want something else?”

  “How are you, Camilla?”

  “Alright, I guess.”

  “I’d like to see you after work.”

  “I have another engagement.”

  Gently: “Could you postpone it, Camilla? It’s very important that I see you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please, Camilla. Just tonight. It’s so important.”

  “I can’t, Arturo. Really, I can’t.

  “You’ll see me,” I said.

  She walked away. I pushed back my chair. I pointed my finger at her, yelled it out: “You’ll see me! You little insolent beerhall twirp! You’ll see me!”

  You’re goddamn right she’d see me. Because I was going to wait. Because I walked out to the parking lot and sat on the running board of her car and waited. Because she wasn’t so good that she could excuse herself from a date with Arturo Bandini. Because, by God, I hated her guts.

  Then she came into the lot, and Sammy the bartender was with her. She paused when she saw me get to my feet. She put her hand on Sammy’s arm, restraining him. They whispered. Then it was going to be a fight. Fine. Come you, you stupid scarecrow of a bartender, just you make a pass at me and I’ll break you in half. And I stood there with both fists hard and waiting. They approached. Sammy didn’t speak. He walked around me and got into the car. I stood beside the driver’s seat. Camilla looked straight ahead, opened the car door. I shook my head.

  “You’re going with me, Mexican.”

  I seized her wrist.

  “Let go!” she said. “Get your filthy hands off!”

  “You’re going with me.”

  Sammy leaned over.

  “Maybe she doesn’t feel like it, kid.”

  I had her with my right hand. I raised my left fist and shoved it against Sammy’s face. “Listen,” I said. “I don’t like you. So keep that lousy trap shut.”

  “Be sensible,” he said. “What for you want to get all burned up about a dame?”

  “She’s going with me.”

  “I’m not going with you!”

  She tried to pass. I grabbed her arms and flung her like a dancer. She went spinning across the lot, but she did not fall. She screamed, charged me. I caught her in my arms and pinned her elbows down. She kicked and tried to scratch my legs. Sammy watched with disgust. Sure I was disgusting, but that was my affair. She cried and fought, but she was helpless, her legs dangling, her arms held tight. Then she tired a little, and I released her. She straightened her dress, her teeth chattering her hatred.

  “You’re going with me,” I said.

  Sammy got out of the car.

  “This is terrible,” he said. He took Camilla’s arm and led her toward the street. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I watched them go. He was right. Bandini, the idiot, the dog, the skunk, the fool. But I couldn’t help it. I looked at the car certificate and found her address. It was a place near 24th and Alameda. I couldn’t help it. I walked to Hill Street and got aboard an Alameda trolley. This interested me. A new side to my character, the bestial, the darkness, the unplumbed depth of a new Bandini. But after a few blocks the mood evaporated. I got off the car near the freight yards. Bunker Hill was two miles away, but I walked back. When I got home I said I was through with Camilla Lopez forever. And you’ll regret it, you little fool, because I’m going to be famous. I sat before my typewriter and worked most of the night.

  I worked hard. It was supposed to be Autumn, but I couldn’t tell the difference. We had sun every day, blue skies every night. Sometimes there was fog. I was eating fruit again. The Japanese gave me credit and I had the pick of their stalls. Bananas, oranges, pears, plums. Once in a while I ate celery. I had a full can of tobacco and a new pipe. There wasn’t any coffee, but I didn’t mind. Then my new story hit the magazine stands. The Long Lost Hills! It was not as exciting as The Little Dog Laughed. I scarcely looked at the free copy Hackmuth sent me. This pleased me nevertheless. Some day I would have so many stories written I wouldn’t remember where they appeared. “Hi there, Bandini! Nice story you had in The Atlantic Monthly this month.” Bandini puzzled. “Did I have one in the Atlantic? Well, well.”

  Hellfrick the meat-eater, the man who never paid his just debts. So much I had lent him during that lush period, but now that I was poor again he tried to barter with me. An old raincoat, a pair of slippers, a box of fancy soap—these he offered me for payment. I refused them. “My God, Hellfrick. I need money, not secondhand goods.” His meat craze had got out of hand. All day I heard him frying cheap steaks, the odor creeping under my door. It gave me a mad desire for meat. I would go to Hellfrick. “Hellfrick,” I would say. “How about sharing that steak with me?” The steak would be so large it filled the skillet. But Hellfrick would lie brazenly. “I haven’t had a thing for two days.” I would call him violent names; soon I lost all respect for him. He would shake his red, bloated face, big eyes staring pitifully. But he never offered me so much as the scraps from his plate. Day after day I worked, writhing from the tantalizing odor of fried pork chops, grilled steaks, fried steaks, breaded steaks, liver and onions, and all manner of meats.

  One day his craze for meat was gone, and the craze for gin returned. He was steadily drunk for two nights. I could hear him stumbling about, kicking bottles and talking to himself. Then he went away. He was gone another night. When he returned, his pension check was spent, and he had somehow, somewhere, he did not remember it, bought a car. We went behind the hotel and looked at this car. It was a huge Packard, more than twenty years old. It stood there like a hearse, the tires worn, the cheap black paint bubbling in the hot sun. Somebody down on Main Street had sold it to him. Now he was broke, with a big Packard on his hands.

  “You want to buy it?” he said.

  “Hell, no.”

  He was dejected, his head bursting from a hangover.

  That night he walked into my room. He sat on the bed, his long arms dangling to the floor. He was homesick for the middle-west. He talked of rabbit-hunting, of fishing, of the good old days when he was a kid. Then he began on the subject of meat. “How would you like a big thick steak?” he said, his lips loose. He opened two fingers. “Thick as that. Broiled. Lots of butter over it. Burned just enough to give it a tang. How would you like it?”

  “I’d love it.”

  He got up.

  “Then come on, and we’ll get one.”

  “You got money?”

  “We don’t need any money. I’m hungry.”

  I grabbed my sweater and followed him down the hall to the alley. He got into his car. I hesitated. “Where you going, Hellfrick?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

  I got in beside him.

  “N
o trouble,” I said.

  “Trouble!” he sneered. “I tell you I know where to get us a steak.”

  We drove in moonlight out Wilshire to Highland, then out Highland over Cahuenga Pass. On the other side lay the flat plain of the San Fernando Valley We found a lonely road off the pavement and followed it through tall eucalyptus trees to scattered farmhouses and pasture lands. After a mile the road ended. Barbed wire and fence posts appeared in the glare of headlights. Hellfrick laboriously turned the car around, faced it toward the pavement from which we had detoured. He got out of the front seat, opened the rear door, and fumbled with car tools under the rear cushion.

  I leaned over and watched him.

  “What’s up, Hellfrick?”

  He stood up, a jackhammer in his hand.

  “You wait here.”

  He stopped under a loop in the barbed wire and crossed the pasture. A hundred yards away a barn loomed in the moonlight. Then I knew what he was after. I jumped out of the car and called to him. He shushed me angrily. I watched him tiptoe toward the barn door. I cursed him and waited tensely. In a little while I heard the mooing of a cow. It was a piteous cry. Then I heard a thud and a scuffle of hoofs. Out of the barn door came Hellfrick. Across his shoulder lay a dark mass, weighing him down. Behind him, mooing continually, a cow followed. Hellfrick tried to run, but the dark mass beat him down to a fast walk. Still the cow pursued, pushing her nose into his back. He turned around, kicked wildly. The cow stopped, looked toward the barn, and mooed again.

  “You fool, Hellfrick. You goddamn fool!”

  “Help me,” he said.

  I raised the loose barbed wire to a width that would permit him and his burden to pass under. It was a calf, blood spurting from a gash between the ears. The calf’s eyes were wide open. I could see the moon reflected in them. It was coldblooded murder. I was sick and horrified. My stomach twisted when Hellfrick dumped the calf into the back seat. I heard the body thump, and then the head. I was sick, very sick. It was plain murder.