Страница:
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?"
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.
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 . . .
I heard my father come in. He always slammed the door, walked heavily,
and talked loudly. He was home. After a few moments the bedroom door opened.
He was six feet two, a large man. Everything vanished, the chair I was
sitting in, the wallpaper, the walls, all of my thoughts. He was the dark
covering the sun, the violence of him made everything else utterly
disappear. He was all ears, nose, mouth, I couldn't look at his eyes, there
was only his red angry face.
"All right, Henry. Into the bathroom."
I walked in and he closed the door behind us. The walls were white.
There was a bathroom mirror and a small window, the screen black and broken.
There was the bathtub and the toilet and the tiles. He reached and took down
the razor strop which hung from a hook. It was going to be the first of many
such bearings, which would recur more and more often. Always, I felt,
without real reason.
"All right, take down your pants."
I took my pants down.
"Pull down your shorts."
I pulled them down.
Then he laid on the strop. The first blow inflicted more shock than
pain. The second hurt more. Each blow which followed increased the pain. At
first I was aware of the walls, the toilet, the tub. Finally I couldn't see
anything. As he beat me, he berated me, but I couldn't understand the words.
I thought about his roses, how he grew roses in the yard. I thought about
his automobile in the garage. I tried not to scream. I knew that if I did
scream he might stop, but knowing this, and knowing his desire for me to
scream, prevented me. The tears ran from my eyes as I remained silent. After
a while it all became just a whirlpool, a jumble, and there was only the
deadly possibility of being there forever. Finally, like something jerked
into action, I began to sob, swallowing and choking on the salt slime that
ran down my throat. He stopped.
He was no longer there. I became aware of the little window again and
the mirror. There was the razor strop hanging from the hook, long and brown
and twisted. I couldn't bend over to pull up my pants or my shorts and I
walked to the door, awkwardly, my clothes around my feet. I opened the
bathroom door and there was my mother standing in the hall.
"It wasn't right," I told her. "Why didn't you help me?"
"The father," she said, "is always right."
Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, dragging my clothing
around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress hurt me.
Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father's roses growing. They
were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun was very low but not
yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window. I felt that even
the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was
shining upon my father's house. I was like his roses, something that
belonged to him and not to me . . .
By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing
and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday.
There were two pillows on my chair. I sat on them but my legs and ass still
burned. My father was talking about his job, as always.
"I told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man go
from each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there . . ."
"They ought to listen to you, Daddy," said my mother.
"Please," I said, "please excuse me but I don't feel like eating . . .
"You'll eat your FOOD!" said my father. "Your mother prepared this
food!"
"Yes," said my mother, "carrots and peas and roast beef."
"And the mashed potatoes and gravy," said my father.
"I'm not hungry."
"You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!" said my father.
He was trying to be funny. That was one of his favorite remarks.
"DADDY!" said my mother in shocked disbelief. I began eating. It was
terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what they believed in,
what they were. I didn't chew any of it, I just swallowed it to get rid of
it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted, how lucky
we were to be eating good food when most of the people in the world, and
many even in America, were starving and poor.
"What's for dessert. Mama?" my father asked. His face was horrible, the
lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure. He acted as if nothing had
happened, as if he hadn't beaten me. When I was back in my bedroom I
thought, these people are not my parents, they must have adopted me and now
they are unhappy with what I have become.
Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn't allowed
to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom
often got dull. I would go out and walk around in the backyard, looking at
things, bugs mostly. Or I would sit on the grass and imagine things. One
thing I imagined was that I was a great baseball player, so great that I
could get a hit every time at bat, or a home run anytime I wanted to. But I
would deliberately make outs just to trick the other team. I got my hits
when I felt like it. One season, going into July, I was hitting only . 139
with one home run. HENRY CHINASKI IS FINISHED, the newspapers said. Then I
began to hit. And how I hit! At one time I allowed myself 16 home runs in a
row. Another time I batted in 24 runs in one game. By the end of the season
I was hitting .523.
Lila Jane was one of the pretty girls I'd seen at school. She was one
of the nicest, and she was living right next door. One day when I was in the
yard she came up to the fence and stood there looking at me.
"You don't play with the other boys, do you?"
I looked at her. She had long red-brown hair and dark brown eyes.
"No," I said, "no, I don't."
"Why not?"
"I see them enough at school."
"I'm Lila Jane," she said.
"I'm Henry."
She kept looking at me and I sat there on the grass and looked at her.
Then she said, "Do you want to see my panties?"
"Sure," I said.
She lifted her dress. The panties were pink and clean. They looked
good. She kept holding her dress up and then turned around so that I could
see her behind. Her behind looked nice. Then she pulled her dress down.
"Goodbye," she said and walked off.
"Goodbye," I said.
It happened each afternoon. "Do you want to see my panties?"
"Sure."
The panties were nearly always a different color and each time they
looked better.
One afternoon after Lila Jane showed me her panties I said,
"Let's go for a walk."
"All right," she said.
I met her in front and we walked down the street together. She was
really pretty. We walked along without saying anything until we came to a
vacant lot. The weeds were tall and green.
"Let's go into the vacant lot," I said.
"All right," said Lila Jane. We walked out into the tall weeds.
"Show me your panties again."
She lifted her dress. Blue panties.
"Let's stretch out here," I said.
We got down in the weeds and I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her.
Then I pulled up her dress and looked at her panties. I put my hand on her
behind and kissed her again. I kept kissing her and grabbing at her behind.
I did this for quite a long time. Then I said, "Let's do it." I wasn't sure
what there was to do but I felt there was more.
"No, I can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"Those men will see."
"What men?"
"There!" she pointed. I looked between the weeds. Maybe half a block
away some men were working repairing the street.
"They can't see us!"
"Yes, they can!"
I got up. "God damn it!" I said and I walked out of the lot and
went back home.
I didn't see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn't
matter. It was football season and I was -- in my imagination -- a great
quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom
had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best running into grown men.
I crushed them. It took five or six men to tackle me. Sometimes, like in
baseball, I felt sorry for everybody and I allowed myself to be tackled
after only gaining 8 or 10 yards. Then I usually got injured, badly, and
they had to carry me off the field. My team would fall behind, say 40 to 17,
and with 3 or 4 minutes left to play I'd return, angry that I had been
injured. Every time I got the ball I ran all the way to a touchdown. How the
crowd screamed! And on defense I made every tackle, intercepted every pass.
I was everywhere. Chinaski, the Fury! With the gun ready to go off I took
the kickoff deep in my own end zone. I ran forward, sideways, backwards. I
broke tackle after tackle, I leaped over fallen tacklers. I wasn't getting
any blocking. My team was a bunch of sissies. Finally, with five men hanging
on to me I refused to fall and dragged them over the goal line for the
winning touchdown.
I looked up one afternoon as a big guy entered our yard through the
back gate. He walked in and just stood there looking at me. He was a year or
so older than I was and he wasn't from my grammar school. "I'm from Marmount
Grammar School," he said.
"You better get out of here," I told him. "My father will be coming
home soon,"
"Is that right?" he asked. I stood up. "What are you doing here?"
"I hear you guys from Delsey Grammar think you're tough."
"We win all the inter-school games."
"That's because you cheat. We don't like cheaters at Marmount."
He had on an old blue shirt, half unbuttoned in front. He had a leather
thong on his left wrist.
"You think you're tough?" he asked me.
"No."
"What do you have in your garage? I think I'll take something from your
garage."
"Stay out of there."
The garage doors were open and he walked past me. There wasn't much in
there. He found an old deflated beach ball and picked it up.
"I think I'll take this."
"Put it down."
"Down your throat!" he said and then he threw it at my head. I ducked.
He came out of the garage toward me. I backed up.
He followed me into the yard. "Cheaters never prosper!" he said. He
swung at me. I ducked. I could feel the wind from his swing. I closed my
eyes, rushed him and started punching. I was hitting something, sometimes. I
could feel myself getting hit but it didn't hurt. Mostly I was scared. There-
was nothing to do but to keep punching. Then I heard a voice: "Stop it!" It
was Lila Jane. She was in my backyard. We both stopped fighting. She took an
old tin can and threw it. It hit the boy from Marmount in the middle of the
forehead and bounced off. He stood there a moment and then ran off, crying
and howling. He ran out the rear gate and down the alley and was gone. A
little tin can. I was surprised, a big guy like him crying like that. At
Delsey we had a code. We never made a sound. Even the sissies took their
beatings silently. Those guys from Marmount weren't much.
"You didn't have to help me," I told Lila Jane.
"He was hitting you!"
"He wasn't hurting me."
Lila Jane ran off through the yard, out the rear gate, then into her
yard and into her house. Lila Jane still likes me, I thought.
During the second and third grades I still didn't get a chance to play
baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever
got a bat in my hands again I knew I would hit it over the school building.
One day I was standing around and a teacher came up to me.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"This is Physical Education. You should be participating. Are you
disabled?"
"What?"
"Is there anything wrong with you?"
"I don't know."
"Come with me."
He walked me over to a group. They were playing kickball. Kickball was
like baseball except they used a soccer ball. The pitcher rolled it to the
plate and you kicked it. If it went on a fly and was caught you were out. If
it rolled on through the infield or you kicked it high between the fielders
you took as many bases as you could.
"What's your name?" the teacher asked me.
"Henry."
He walked up to the group. "Now," he said, "Henry is going to play
shortstop."
They were from my grade. They all knew me. Shortstop was the toughest
position. I went out there. I knew they were going to gang up on me. The
pitcher rolled the ball real slow and the first guy kicked it right at me.
It came hard, chest high, but it was no problem. The ball was big and I
stuck out my hands and caught it. I threw the ball to the pitcher. The next
guy did the same thing. It came a little higher this time. And a little
faster. No problem. Then Stanley Greenberg walked up to the plate. That was
it. I was out of luck. The pitcher rolled the ball and Stanley kicked it. It
came at me like a cannonball, head high. I wanted to duck but didn't. The
ball smashed into my hands and I held it. I took the ball and rolled it to
the pitcher's mound. Three outs. I trotted to the sideline. As I did, some
guy passed me and said, "Chinaski, the great shitstop!"
It was the boy with the vaseline in his hair and the long black nostril
hairs. I spun around. "Hey!" I said. He stopped. I looked at him. "Don't
ever say anything to me again." I saw the fear in his eyes. He walked out to
his position and I went and leaned against the fence while our team came to
the plate. Nobody stood near me but I didn't care. I was gaining ground.
It was difficult to understand. We were the children in the poorest
school, we had the poorest, least educated parents, most of us lived on
terrible food, and yet boy for boy we were much bigger than the boys from
other grammar schools around the city. Our school was famous. We were
feared.
Our 6th grade team beat the other 6th grade teams in the city very
badly. Especially in baseball. Scores like 14 to I, 24 to 3, 19 to 2. We
just could hit the ball.
One day the City Champion Junior High School team, Miranda Bell,
challenged us. Somehow money was raised and each of our players was given a
new blue cap with a white "D" in front. Our team looked good in those caps.
When the Miranda Bell guys showed up, the 7th grade champs, our 6th grade
guys just looked at them and laughed. We were bigger, we looked tougher, we
walked differently, we knew something that they didn't know. We younger guys
laughed too. We knew we had them where we wanted them.
The Miranda guys looked too polite. They were very quiet. Their pitcher
was their biggest player. He struck out our first three batters, some of our
best hitters. But we had Lowball Johnson. Lowball did the same to them. It
went on like that, both sides striking out, or hitting little grounders and
an occasional single, but nothing else. Then we were at bat in the bottom of
the 7th. Beefcake Cappalletti nailed one. God, you could hear the shot! The
ball looked like it was going to hit the school building and break a window.
Never had I seen a ball take off like that! It hit the flagpole near the top
and bounced back in. Easy home run. Cappalletti rounded the bases and our
guys looked good in their new blue caps with the white "13."
The Miranda guys just quit after that. They didn't know how to come
back. They came from a wealthy district, they didn't know what it meant to
fight back. Our next guy doubled. How we screamed! It was over. There was
nothing they could do. The next batter tripled. They changed pitchers. He
walked the next guy. The next batter singled. Before the inning was over we
had scored nine runs.
Miranda never got a chance to bat in the 8th. Our 5th graders went over
and challenged them to fight. Even one of the 4th graders ran over and
picked a fight with one of them. The Miranda guys took their equipment and
left. We ran them off, up the street. There was nothing left to do so a
couple of our guys got into a fight. It was a good one. They both had bloody
noses but were swinging good when one of the teachers who had stayed to
watch the game broke it up. He didn't know how close he came to getting
jumped himself.
One night my father took me on his milk route. There were no longer any
horsedrawn wagons. The milk trucks now had engines. After loading up at the
milk company we drove off on his route. I liked being out in the very early
morning. The moon was up and I could see the stars. It was cold but it was
exciting. I wondered why my father had asked me to come along since he had
taken to beating me with the razor strop once or twice a week and we weren't
getting along.
At each stop he would jump out and deliver a bottle or two of milk.
Sometimes it was cottage cheese or buttermilk or butter and now and then a
bottle of orange juice. Most of the people left notes in the empty bottles
explaining what they wanted.
My father drove along, stopping and starting, making deliveries.
"O.K., kid, which direction are we driving in now?"
"North."
"You're right. We're going north."
We went up and down streets, stopping and starting.
"O.K., which way are we going now?"
"West."
"No, we're going south."
We drove along in silence some more.
"Suppose I pushed you out of the truck now and left you on the
sidewalk, what would you do?"
"I don't know."
"I mean, how would you live?"
"Well, I guess I'd go back and drink the milk and orange juice you just
left on the porch steps."
"Then what would you do?"
"I'd find a policeman and tell him what you did."
"You would, hub? And what would you tell him?"
"I'd tell him that you told me that 'west' was 'south' because you
wanted me to get lost."
It began to get light. Soon all the deliveries were made and we stopped
at a cafe to have breakfast. The waitress walked over.
"Hello, Henry," she said to my father. "Hello, Betty." "Who's the kid?"
asked Betty. "That's little Henry." "He looks just like you."
"He doesn't have my brains, though." "I hope not."
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.
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."
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 . , .
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!"
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."
"1m 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
tackier, 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.
I caught one over the shoulder, whirled and winged it back to Red who
leaped high and came down with it. Maybe some day we'd play for U.S.C. Then
I saw five boys walking down the sidewalk toward us. They weren't guys from
my grammar school. They were our age and looked like trouble. Red and I kept
throwing the ball and they stood watching us. Then one of the guys stepped
onto the lawn. The biggest.
"Throw me the ball," he said to Red.
"Why?"
"I wanna see if I can catch it."
"I don't care if you can catch it or not."
"Throw me the ball!"
"He's got one arm," I said. "Leave him alone."
"Stay out of this, monkey-face!" Then he looked at Red.
"Throw me the ball."
"Go to hell!" said Red.
"Get the ball!" the big guy said to the others. They ran at us. Red
turned and threw the ball on the roof of his house. The roof was slanted and
the ball rolled back down but managed to stick behind a drain pipe. Then
they were on us. Five to two, I thought, there's no chance. I caught a fist
on the temple, swung and missed. Somebody kicked me in the ass. It was a
good one and burned all the way up the spine. Then I heard a cracking sound,
it was almost like a rifle shot and one of them was down on the ground
holding his forehead.
"Oh shit," he said, "my skull is crushed!"
I saw Red and he was standing in the center of the lawn. He was holding
the hand of his fake arm with the hand of his good arm. It was like a club.
Then he swung again. There was another loud crack and another of them was
down on the lawn. I began to feel brave and I landed a punch right on a
guy's mouth. I saw the lip split and the blood began to dribble down his
chin. The other two ran off. Then the big guy who had gone down first got up
and the other one got up. They held their heads. The guy with the bloody
mouth stood there. Then they retreated down the street together. When they
got quite a way down the big guy turned around and said, "We'll be back!"
Red began running toward them and I ran behind Red. They started
running and Red and I stopped chasing them after they turned the corner. We
walked back, found a ladder in the garage. We got the football down and
began throwing it back and forth . . .
One Saturday Red and I decided to go swimming at the public pool down
on Bimini Street. Red was a strange guy. He didn't talk much but I didn't
talk much either and we got along. There was nothing to say anyhow. The only
thing I ever really asked him about was his school but he just said it was a
special school and that it cost his father some money.
We arrived at the pool in the early afternoon, got our lockers, and
took our clothes off. We had our swimming trunks on underneath. Then I saw
Red unhitch his arm and put it in his locker. It was the first time since
the fight I had seen him without his fake arm. I tried not to look at his
arm which ended at the elbow. We walked to the place where you had to soak
your feet in a chlorine solution. It stank but it stopped the spread of
athlete's foot or something. Then we walked to the pool and got in. The
water stank too and after I was in I pissed in it. There were people of all
ages in the pool, men and women, boys and girls. Red really liked the water.
He leaped up and down in it. Then he ducked under and came up. He spit water
out of his mouth. I tried to swim. I couldn't help noticing Red's half-arm,
couldn't help looking at it. I always made sure to look at it when I thought
he was occupied with something else. It ended at the elbow, sort of rounded
off, and I saw the little fingers. I didn't want to stare real hard, but it
seemed as if there were only three or four of them, very tiny, curled up
there. They were very red and each of the tiny fingers had a little
fingernail. Nothing was going to grow anymore; it had all stopped. I didn't
want to think about it. I dove under. I was going to scare Red. I was going
to grab his legs from behind. I came up against something soft. My face went
right into it. It was a fat woman's ass. I felt her grab me by the hair and
she pulled me up out of the water. She had on a blue bathing cap and the
strap was tight around her chin, digging into her flesh. Her front teeth
were capped with silver and her breath smelled of garlic.
"You dirty little pervert! Trying for free grabs, are you?"
I pushed away from her and backed off. As I moved backwards she
followed me through the water, her sagging breasts pushing a tidal wave in
front of her.
"You dirty little prick. You wanna suck my titties? You got a dirty
mind, huh? You wanna eat my shit? How about some of my shit, little prick?"
I backed up further into the deeper water. I was now standing on my
toes, moving backwards. I swallowed some water. She kept coming, a steamship
of a woman. I couldn't retreat any further. She moved right up to me. Her
eyes were pale and blank, there wasn't any color in them. I felt her body
touching mine.
'Touch my cunt," she said. "I know you want to touch it, so go ahead,
touch my cunt. Touch it, touch it!"
She waited.
"If you don't, I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me and
you'll be put in jail! Now, touch it!"
I couldn't do it. Suddenly she reached under and grabbed my parts and
yanked. She almost tore my dong off. I fell backwards into the deep water,
sank, struggled, and came to the top. I was six feet away from her and began
swimming toward shallow water.
"I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me!" she screamed. Then a
man swam between us. "That little son-of-a-bitch!" she pointed at me and
screamed at the man. "He grabbed my cunt!"
"Lady," said the man, "the boy probably thought it was the grate
over the drain."
I swam over to Red.
"Listen," I said, "we've got to get out of here! That fat lady is going
to tell the lifeguard that I touched her cunt!"
"What'd you do that for?" Red asked.
"I wanted to see what it felt like."
"What'd it feel like?"
We got out of the pool, showered. Red put his arm back on and we
dressed. "Did you really do it?" he asked.
"A guy's got to get started sometime."
It was a month or so later that Red's family moved. One day they were
gone. Just like that. Red never said anything in advance to me. He was gone,
the football was gone, and those tiny red fingers with fingernails, they
were gone. He was a good guy.
I didn't know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join
them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up
and they needed three on a side. I still required more practice to get
really good but I was getting better. Saturday was the best day. That's when
we had our big games, other guys joined in, and we played football in the
street. We played tackle on the lawns but when we played in the street we
played touch. There was more passing then because you couldn't get far with
a run in touch.
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?"
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.
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 . . .
I heard my father come in. He always slammed the door, walked heavily,
and talked loudly. He was home. After a few moments the bedroom door opened.
He was six feet two, a large man. Everything vanished, the chair I was
sitting in, the wallpaper, the walls, all of my thoughts. He was the dark
covering the sun, the violence of him made everything else utterly
disappear. He was all ears, nose, mouth, I couldn't look at his eyes, there
was only his red angry face.
"All right, Henry. Into the bathroom."
I walked in and he closed the door behind us. The walls were white.
There was a bathroom mirror and a small window, the screen black and broken.
There was the bathtub and the toilet and the tiles. He reached and took down
the razor strop which hung from a hook. It was going to be the first of many
such bearings, which would recur more and more often. Always, I felt,
without real reason.
"All right, take down your pants."
I took my pants down.
"Pull down your shorts."
I pulled them down.
Then he laid on the strop. The first blow inflicted more shock than
pain. The second hurt more. Each blow which followed increased the pain. At
first I was aware of the walls, the toilet, the tub. Finally I couldn't see
anything. As he beat me, he berated me, but I couldn't understand the words.
I thought about his roses, how he grew roses in the yard. I thought about
his automobile in the garage. I tried not to scream. I knew that if I did
scream he might stop, but knowing this, and knowing his desire for me to
scream, prevented me. The tears ran from my eyes as I remained silent. After
a while it all became just a whirlpool, a jumble, and there was only the
deadly possibility of being there forever. Finally, like something jerked
into action, I began to sob, swallowing and choking on the salt slime that
ran down my throat. He stopped.
He was no longer there. I became aware of the little window again and
the mirror. There was the razor strop hanging from the hook, long and brown
and twisted. I couldn't bend over to pull up my pants or my shorts and I
walked to the door, awkwardly, my clothes around my feet. I opened the
bathroom door and there was my mother standing in the hall.
"It wasn't right," I told her. "Why didn't you help me?"
"The father," she said, "is always right."
Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, dragging my clothing
around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress hurt me.
Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father's roses growing. They
were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun was very low but not
yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window. I felt that even
the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was
shining upon my father's house. I was like his roses, something that
belonged to him and not to me . . .
By the time they called me to dinner I was able to pull up my clothing
and walk to the breakfast nook where we ate all our meals except on Sunday.
There were two pillows on my chair. I sat on them but my legs and ass still
burned. My father was talking about his job, as always.
"I told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man go
from each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there . . ."
"They ought to listen to you, Daddy," said my mother.
"Please," I said, "please excuse me but I don't feel like eating . . .
"You'll eat your FOOD!" said my father. "Your mother prepared this
food!"
"Yes," said my mother, "carrots and peas and roast beef."
"And the mashed potatoes and gravy," said my father.
"I'm not hungry."
"You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!" said my father.
He was trying to be funny. That was one of his favorite remarks.
"DADDY!" said my mother in shocked disbelief. I began eating. It was
terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what they believed in,
what they were. I didn't chew any of it, I just swallowed it to get rid of
it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted, how lucky
we were to be eating good food when most of the people in the world, and
many even in America, were starving and poor.
"What's for dessert. Mama?" my father asked. His face was horrible, the
lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure. He acted as if nothing had
happened, as if he hadn't beaten me. When I was back in my bedroom I
thought, these people are not my parents, they must have adopted me and now
they are unhappy with what I have become.
Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn't allowed
to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom
often got dull. I would go out and walk around in the backyard, looking at
things, bugs mostly. Or I would sit on the grass and imagine things. One
thing I imagined was that I was a great baseball player, so great that I
could get a hit every time at bat, or a home run anytime I wanted to. But I
would deliberately make outs just to trick the other team. I got my hits
when I felt like it. One season, going into July, I was hitting only . 139
with one home run. HENRY CHINASKI IS FINISHED, the newspapers said. Then I
began to hit. And how I hit! At one time I allowed myself 16 home runs in a
row. Another time I batted in 24 runs in one game. By the end of the season
I was hitting .523.
Lila Jane was one of the pretty girls I'd seen at school. She was one
of the nicest, and she was living right next door. One day when I was in the
yard she came up to the fence and stood there looking at me.
"You don't play with the other boys, do you?"
I looked at her. She had long red-brown hair and dark brown eyes.
"No," I said, "no, I don't."
"Why not?"
"I see them enough at school."
"I'm Lila Jane," she said.
"I'm Henry."
She kept looking at me and I sat there on the grass and looked at her.
Then she said, "Do you want to see my panties?"
"Sure," I said.
She lifted her dress. The panties were pink and clean. They looked
good. She kept holding her dress up and then turned around so that I could
see her behind. Her behind looked nice. Then she pulled her dress down.
"Goodbye," she said and walked off.
"Goodbye," I said.
It happened each afternoon. "Do you want to see my panties?"
"Sure."
The panties were nearly always a different color and each time they
looked better.
One afternoon after Lila Jane showed me her panties I said,
"Let's go for a walk."
"All right," she said.
I met her in front and we walked down the street together. She was
really pretty. We walked along without saying anything until we came to a
vacant lot. The weeds were tall and green.
"Let's go into the vacant lot," I said.
"All right," said Lila Jane. We walked out into the tall weeds.
"Show me your panties again."
She lifted her dress. Blue panties.
"Let's stretch out here," I said.
We got down in the weeds and I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her.
Then I pulled up her dress and looked at her panties. I put my hand on her
behind and kissed her again. I kept kissing her and grabbing at her behind.
I did this for quite a long time. Then I said, "Let's do it." I wasn't sure
what there was to do but I felt there was more.
"No, I can't," she said.
"Why not?"
"Those men will see."
"What men?"
"There!" she pointed. I looked between the weeds. Maybe half a block
away some men were working repairing the street.
"They can't see us!"
"Yes, they can!"
I got up. "God damn it!" I said and I walked out of the lot and
went back home.
I didn't see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn't
matter. It was football season and I was -- in my imagination -- a great
quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom
had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best running into grown men.
I crushed them. It took five or six men to tackle me. Sometimes, like in
baseball, I felt sorry for everybody and I allowed myself to be tackled
after only gaining 8 or 10 yards. Then I usually got injured, badly, and
they had to carry me off the field. My team would fall behind, say 40 to 17,
and with 3 or 4 minutes left to play I'd return, angry that I had been
injured. Every time I got the ball I ran all the way to a touchdown. How the
crowd screamed! And on defense I made every tackle, intercepted every pass.
I was everywhere. Chinaski, the Fury! With the gun ready to go off I took
the kickoff deep in my own end zone. I ran forward, sideways, backwards. I
broke tackle after tackle, I leaped over fallen tacklers. I wasn't getting
any blocking. My team was a bunch of sissies. Finally, with five men hanging
on to me I refused to fall and dragged them over the goal line for the
winning touchdown.
I looked up one afternoon as a big guy entered our yard through the
back gate. He walked in and just stood there looking at me. He was a year or
so older than I was and he wasn't from my grammar school. "I'm from Marmount
Grammar School," he said.
"You better get out of here," I told him. "My father will be coming
home soon,"
"Is that right?" he asked. I stood up. "What are you doing here?"
"I hear you guys from Delsey Grammar think you're tough."
"We win all the inter-school games."
"That's because you cheat. We don't like cheaters at Marmount."
He had on an old blue shirt, half unbuttoned in front. He had a leather
thong on his left wrist.
"You think you're tough?" he asked me.
"No."
"What do you have in your garage? I think I'll take something from your
garage."
"Stay out of there."
The garage doors were open and he walked past me. There wasn't much in
there. He found an old deflated beach ball and picked it up.
"I think I'll take this."
"Put it down."
"Down your throat!" he said and then he threw it at my head. I ducked.
He came out of the garage toward me. I backed up.
He followed me into the yard. "Cheaters never prosper!" he said. He
swung at me. I ducked. I could feel the wind from his swing. I closed my
eyes, rushed him and started punching. I was hitting something, sometimes. I
could feel myself getting hit but it didn't hurt. Mostly I was scared. There-
was nothing to do but to keep punching. Then I heard a voice: "Stop it!" It
was Lila Jane. She was in my backyard. We both stopped fighting. She took an
old tin can and threw it. It hit the boy from Marmount in the middle of the
forehead and bounced off. He stood there a moment and then ran off, crying
and howling. He ran out the rear gate and down the alley and was gone. A
little tin can. I was surprised, a big guy like him crying like that. At
Delsey we had a code. We never made a sound. Even the sissies took their
beatings silently. Those guys from Marmount weren't much.
"You didn't have to help me," I told Lila Jane.
"He was hitting you!"
"He wasn't hurting me."
Lila Jane ran off through the yard, out the rear gate, then into her
yard and into her house. Lila Jane still likes me, I thought.
During the second and third grades I still didn't get a chance to play
baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever
got a bat in my hands again I knew I would hit it over the school building.
One day I was standing around and a teacher came up to me.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"This is Physical Education. You should be participating. Are you
disabled?"
"What?"
"Is there anything wrong with you?"
"I don't know."
"Come with me."
He walked me over to a group. They were playing kickball. Kickball was
like baseball except they used a soccer ball. The pitcher rolled it to the
plate and you kicked it. If it went on a fly and was caught you were out. If
it rolled on through the infield or you kicked it high between the fielders
you took as many bases as you could.
"What's your name?" the teacher asked me.
"Henry."
He walked up to the group. "Now," he said, "Henry is going to play
shortstop."
They were from my grade. They all knew me. Shortstop was the toughest
position. I went out there. I knew they were going to gang up on me. The
pitcher rolled the ball real slow and the first guy kicked it right at me.
It came hard, chest high, but it was no problem. The ball was big and I
stuck out my hands and caught it. I threw the ball to the pitcher. The next
guy did the same thing. It came a little higher this time. And a little
faster. No problem. Then Stanley Greenberg walked up to the plate. That was
it. I was out of luck. The pitcher rolled the ball and Stanley kicked it. It
came at me like a cannonball, head high. I wanted to duck but didn't. The
ball smashed into my hands and I held it. I took the ball and rolled it to
the pitcher's mound. Three outs. I trotted to the sideline. As I did, some
guy passed me and said, "Chinaski, the great shitstop!"
It was the boy with the vaseline in his hair and the long black nostril
hairs. I spun around. "Hey!" I said. He stopped. I looked at him. "Don't
ever say anything to me again." I saw the fear in his eyes. He walked out to
his position and I went and leaned against the fence while our team came to
the plate. Nobody stood near me but I didn't care. I was gaining ground.
It was difficult to understand. We were the children in the poorest
school, we had the poorest, least educated parents, most of us lived on
terrible food, and yet boy for boy we were much bigger than the boys from
other grammar schools around the city. Our school was famous. We were
feared.
Our 6th grade team beat the other 6th grade teams in the city very
badly. Especially in baseball. Scores like 14 to I, 24 to 3, 19 to 2. We
just could hit the ball.
One day the City Champion Junior High School team, Miranda Bell,
challenged us. Somehow money was raised and each of our players was given a
new blue cap with a white "D" in front. Our team looked good in those caps.
When the Miranda Bell guys showed up, the 7th grade champs, our 6th grade
guys just looked at them and laughed. We were bigger, we looked tougher, we
walked differently, we knew something that they didn't know. We younger guys
laughed too. We knew we had them where we wanted them.
The Miranda guys looked too polite. They were very quiet. Their pitcher
was their biggest player. He struck out our first three batters, some of our
best hitters. But we had Lowball Johnson. Lowball did the same to them. It
went on like that, both sides striking out, or hitting little grounders and
an occasional single, but nothing else. Then we were at bat in the bottom of
the 7th. Beefcake Cappalletti nailed one. God, you could hear the shot! The
ball looked like it was going to hit the school building and break a window.
Never had I seen a ball take off like that! It hit the flagpole near the top
and bounced back in. Easy home run. Cappalletti rounded the bases and our
guys looked good in their new blue caps with the white "13."
The Miranda guys just quit after that. They didn't know how to come
back. They came from a wealthy district, they didn't know what it meant to
fight back. Our next guy doubled. How we screamed! It was over. There was
nothing they could do. The next batter tripled. They changed pitchers. He
walked the next guy. The next batter singled. Before the inning was over we
had scored nine runs.
Miranda never got a chance to bat in the 8th. Our 5th graders went over
and challenged them to fight. Even one of the 4th graders ran over and
picked a fight with one of them. The Miranda guys took their equipment and
left. We ran them off, up the street. There was nothing left to do so a
couple of our guys got into a fight. It was a good one. They both had bloody
noses but were swinging good when one of the teachers who had stayed to
watch the game broke it up. He didn't know how close he came to getting
jumped himself.
One night my father took me on his milk route. There were no longer any
horsedrawn wagons. The milk trucks now had engines. After loading up at the
milk company we drove off on his route. I liked being out in the very early
morning. The moon was up and I could see the stars. It was cold but it was
exciting. I wondered why my father had asked me to come along since he had
taken to beating me with the razor strop once or twice a week and we weren't
getting along.
At each stop he would jump out and deliver a bottle or two of milk.
Sometimes it was cottage cheese or buttermilk or butter and now and then a
bottle of orange juice. Most of the people left notes in the empty bottles
explaining what they wanted.
My father drove along, stopping and starting, making deliveries.
"O.K., kid, which direction are we driving in now?"
"North."
"You're right. We're going north."
We went up and down streets, stopping and starting.
"O.K., which way are we going now?"
"West."
"No, we're going south."
We drove along in silence some more.
"Suppose I pushed you out of the truck now and left you on the
sidewalk, what would you do?"
"I don't know."
"I mean, how would you live?"
"Well, I guess I'd go back and drink the milk and orange juice you just
left on the porch steps."
"Then what would you do?"
"I'd find a policeman and tell him what you did."
"You would, hub? And what would you tell him?"
"I'd tell him that you told me that 'west' was 'south' because you
wanted me to get lost."
It began to get light. Soon all the deliveries were made and we stopped
at a cafe to have breakfast. The waitress walked over.
"Hello, Henry," she said to my father. "Hello, Betty." "Who's the kid?"
asked Betty. "That's little Henry." "He looks just like you."
"He doesn't have my brains, though." "I hope not."
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.
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."
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 . , .
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!"
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."
"1m 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
tackier, 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.
I caught one over the shoulder, whirled and winged it back to Red who
leaped high and came down with it. Maybe some day we'd play for U.S.C. Then
I saw five boys walking down the sidewalk toward us. They weren't guys from
my grammar school. They were our age and looked like trouble. Red and I kept
throwing the ball and they stood watching us. Then one of the guys stepped
onto the lawn. The biggest.
"Throw me the ball," he said to Red.
"Why?"
"I wanna see if I can catch it."
"I don't care if you can catch it or not."
"Throw me the ball!"
"He's got one arm," I said. "Leave him alone."
"Stay out of this, monkey-face!" Then he looked at Red.
"Throw me the ball."
"Go to hell!" said Red.
"Get the ball!" the big guy said to the others. They ran at us. Red
turned and threw the ball on the roof of his house. The roof was slanted and
the ball rolled back down but managed to stick behind a drain pipe. Then
they were on us. Five to two, I thought, there's no chance. I caught a fist
on the temple, swung and missed. Somebody kicked me in the ass. It was a
good one and burned all the way up the spine. Then I heard a cracking sound,
it was almost like a rifle shot and one of them was down on the ground
holding his forehead.
"Oh shit," he said, "my skull is crushed!"
I saw Red and he was standing in the center of the lawn. He was holding
the hand of his fake arm with the hand of his good arm. It was like a club.
Then he swung again. There was another loud crack and another of them was
down on the lawn. I began to feel brave and I landed a punch right on a
guy's mouth. I saw the lip split and the blood began to dribble down his
chin. The other two ran off. Then the big guy who had gone down first got up
and the other one got up. They held their heads. The guy with the bloody
mouth stood there. Then they retreated down the street together. When they
got quite a way down the big guy turned around and said, "We'll be back!"
Red began running toward them and I ran behind Red. They started
running and Red and I stopped chasing them after they turned the corner. We
walked back, found a ladder in the garage. We got the football down and
began throwing it back and forth . . .
One Saturday Red and I decided to go swimming at the public pool down
on Bimini Street. Red was a strange guy. He didn't talk much but I didn't
talk much either and we got along. There was nothing to say anyhow. The only
thing I ever really asked him about was his school but he just said it was a
special school and that it cost his father some money.
We arrived at the pool in the early afternoon, got our lockers, and
took our clothes off. We had our swimming trunks on underneath. Then I saw
Red unhitch his arm and put it in his locker. It was the first time since
the fight I had seen him without his fake arm. I tried not to look at his
arm which ended at the elbow. We walked to the place where you had to soak
your feet in a chlorine solution. It stank but it stopped the spread of
athlete's foot or something. Then we walked to the pool and got in. The
water stank too and after I was in I pissed in it. There were people of all
ages in the pool, men and women, boys and girls. Red really liked the water.
He leaped up and down in it. Then he ducked under and came up. He spit water
out of his mouth. I tried to swim. I couldn't help noticing Red's half-arm,
couldn't help looking at it. I always made sure to look at it when I thought
he was occupied with something else. It ended at the elbow, sort of rounded
off, and I saw the little fingers. I didn't want to stare real hard, but it
seemed as if there were only three or four of them, very tiny, curled up
there. They were very red and each of the tiny fingers had a little
fingernail. Nothing was going to grow anymore; it had all stopped. I didn't
want to think about it. I dove under. I was going to scare Red. I was going
to grab his legs from behind. I came up against something soft. My face went
right into it. It was a fat woman's ass. I felt her grab me by the hair and
she pulled me up out of the water. She had on a blue bathing cap and the
strap was tight around her chin, digging into her flesh. Her front teeth
were capped with silver and her breath smelled of garlic.
"You dirty little pervert! Trying for free grabs, are you?"
I pushed away from her and backed off. As I moved backwards she
followed me through the water, her sagging breasts pushing a tidal wave in
front of her.
"You dirty little prick. You wanna suck my titties? You got a dirty
mind, huh? You wanna eat my shit? How about some of my shit, little prick?"
I backed up further into the deeper water. I was now standing on my
toes, moving backwards. I swallowed some water. She kept coming, a steamship
of a woman. I couldn't retreat any further. She moved right up to me. Her
eyes were pale and blank, there wasn't any color in them. I felt her body
touching mine.
'Touch my cunt," she said. "I know you want to touch it, so go ahead,
touch my cunt. Touch it, touch it!"
She waited.
"If you don't, I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me and
you'll be put in jail! Now, touch it!"
I couldn't do it. Suddenly she reached under and grabbed my parts and
yanked. She almost tore my dong off. I fell backwards into the deep water,
sank, struggled, and came to the top. I was six feet away from her and began
swimming toward shallow water.
"I'm going to tell the lifeguard you molested me!" she screamed. Then a
man swam between us. "That little son-of-a-bitch!" she pointed at me and
screamed at the man. "He grabbed my cunt!"
"Lady," said the man, "the boy probably thought it was the grate
over the drain."
I swam over to Red.
"Listen," I said, "we've got to get out of here! That fat lady is going
to tell the lifeguard that I touched her cunt!"
"What'd you do that for?" Red asked.
"I wanted to see what it felt like."
"What'd it feel like?"
We got out of the pool, showered. Red put his arm back on and we
dressed. "Did you really do it?" he asked.
"A guy's got to get started sometime."
It was a month or so later that Red's family moved. One day they were
gone. Just like that. Red never said anything in advance to me. He was gone,
the football was gone, and those tiny red fingers with fingernails, they
were gone. He was a good guy.
I didn't know exactly why but Chuck, Eddie, Gene and Frank let me join
them in some of their games. I think it started when another guy showed up
and they needed three on a side. I still required more practice to get
really good but I was getting better. Saturday was the best day. That's when
we had our big games, other guys joined in, and we played football in the
street. We played tackle on the lawns but when we played in the street we
played touch. There was more passing then because you couldn't get far with
a run in touch.