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Gardena, California."
"A lifetime job . . ." said Jimmy.
"A lifetime wife," I added.
"Abe will never be miserable . . ."
"Or happy."
"An obedient man . . ."
"A broom."
"A stiff . . ."
"A wimp."
When the honor students had been taken care of they began on us. I felt
uncomfortable sitting there. I felt like walking out.
"Henry Chinaski!" I was called.
"Public servant," I told Jimmy.
I walked up to and across the stage, took the diploma, shook the
principal's hand. It felt slimy like the inside of a dirty fish bowl. (Two
years later he would be exposed as an embezzler of school funds; he was to
be tried, convicted and jailed.)
I passed Mortenson and the honor group as I went back to my seat. He
looked over and gave me the finger, so only I could see it. That got me. It
was so unexpected. I walked back and sat down next to Jimmy.
"Mortenson gave me the finger!"
"No, I don't believe it!"
'Son-of-a-bitch! He's spoiled my day! Not that it was worth a fuck
anyhow but he's really greased it over now!"
I can't believe he had the guts to finger you."
"It's not like him. You think he's getting some coaching?"
"I don't know what to think."
"He knows that I can bust him in half without even inhaling!"
"Bust him!"
"But don't you see, he's won? It's the way he surprised me!"
"All you gotta do is kick his ass all up and down."
"Do you think that son-of-a-bitch learned something reading all those
books? I know there's nothing in them because I read every fourth page."
"Jimmy Hatcher!" His name was called.
"Priest," he said.
"Poultry farmer," I said.
Jimmy went up and got his. I applauded loudly. Anybody who could live
with a mother like his deserved some accolade. He came back and we sat
watching all the golden boys and girls go up and
get theirs.
"You can't blame them for being rich," Jimmy said.
"No, I blame their fucking parents."
"And their grandparents," said Jimmy.
"Yes, I'd be happy to take their new cars and their pretty
girlfriends and I wouldn't give a fuck about anything like social
justice."
"Yeah," said Jimmy. "I guess the only time most people think about
injustice is when it happens to them."
The golden boys and girls went on parading across the stage. I sat
there wondering whether to punch Abe out or not. I could see him flopping on
the sidewalk still in his cap and gown, the victim of my right cross, all
the pretty girls screaming, thinking, my god, this Chinaski guy must be a
bull on the springs!
On the other hand, Abe wasn't much. He was hardly there. It wouldn't
take anything to punch him out. I decided not to do it. I had already broken
his arm and his parents hadn't sued mine, finally. If I busted his head they
would surely go ahead and sue. They would take my old man's last copper. Not
that I would mind. It was my mother: she would suffer in a fool's way:
senselessly and without reason.
Then, the ceremony was over. The students left their seats and filed
out. Students met with parents, relatives on the front lawn. There was much
bugging, embracing. I saw my parents waiting. I walked up to them, stood
about four feet away.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
My mother was looking at me.
"Henry, I'm so proud of you!"
Then my mother's head turned. "Oh, there goes Abe and his parents!
They're such nice people! Oh, Mrs. Mortenson!"
They stopped. My mother ran over and threw her arms about Mrs.
Mortenson. It was Mrs. Mortenson who had decided not to sue after many, many
hours of conversation upon the telephone with my mother. It had been decided
that I was a confused individual and that my mother had suffered enough that
way.
My father shook hands with Mr. Mortenson and I walked over to Abe.
"O.K., cocksucker, what's the idea of giving me the finger?"
"What?"
"The finger."
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"The finger.'"
"Henry, I really don't know what you're talking about!"
"All right, Abraham, it's time to go!" said his mother. The Mortenson
family walked off together. I stood there watching them. Then we started
walking to our old car. We walked west to the corner and turned south.
"Now that Mortenson boy really knows how to apply himself!"
said my father. "How are you ever going to make it? I've never
even seen you look at a schoolbook, let alone inside of one!"
"Some books arc dull," I said.
"Oh, they're dull, are they? So you don't want to study?
What can you do? What good are you? What can you do? It
has cost me thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose
I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?"
"Catch butterflies."
My mother began to cry. My father pulled her away and down the block to
where their ten-year-old car was parked. As I stood there, the other
families roared past in their new cars, going somewhere.
Then Jimmy Hatcher and his mother walked by. She stopped.
"Hey, wait a minute," she told Timmy, "I want to congratulate Henry."
Jimmy waited and Clare walked over. She put her face close to
"line. She spoke softly so Jimmy wouldn't hear. "Listen, Honey,
any time you really want to graduate, I can arrange to give you
your diploma."
"Thanks, Clare, I might be seeing you."
"I'll rip your balls off, Henry!"
"I don't doubt it, Clare."
She went back to Jimmy and they walked away down the street. A very old
car rolled up, stopped, the engine died. I could see my mother weeping, big
tears were running down her cheeks.
"Henry, get in! Please get in! Your father is right but I love
you!"
"Forget it. I've got a place to go."
"No, Henry, get in!" she wailed. "Get in or I'll die!"
I walked over, opened the rear door, climbed into the rear seat.
The engine started and we were off again. There I sat, Henry Chinaski, Class
of Summer '39, driving into the bright future. No, being driven. At the
first red light the car stalled. As the signal turned green my father was
still trying to start the engine. Somebody behind us hooked. My father got
the car started and we were in motion again. My mother had stopped crying.
We drove along like that, each of us silent.
Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears-
Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone
all around town putting in dozens of applications. There was nothing else to
do. I didn't want a job but I didn't want to live with my parents either.
Mears-Starbuck must have had thousands of applications on hand. I couldn't
believe they had chosen me. It was a department store with branches in many
cities.
The next Monday, there I was walking to work with my lunch in a brown
paper bag. The department store was only a few blocks away from my former
high school.
I still didn't understand why I had been selected. After filling out
the application, the interview had lasted only a few minutes. I must have
given all the right answers.
First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near
the downtown L.A. Public Library.
As I walked along I didn't feel so alone and I wasn't. I noticed a
starving mongrel dog following me. The poor creature was terribly thin; I
could see his ribs poking through his skin. Most of his fur had fallen off.
What remained clung in dry, twisted patches. The dog was beaten, cowed,
deserted, frightened, a victim of Homo sapiens.
I stopped and knelt, put out my hand. He backed off.
"Come here, fellow, I'm your friend . . . Come on, come on . . ."
He came closer. He had such sad eyes.
"What have they done to you, boy?"
He came still closer, creeping along the sidewalk, trembling, wagging
his tail quite rapidly. Then he leaped at me. He was large, what was left of
him. His forelegs pushed me backwards and I was flat on the sidewalk and he
was licking my face, mouth, ears, forehead, everywhere. I pushed him off,
got up and wiped my face.
"Easy now! You need something to eat! FOOD!"
I reached into my bag and took out a sandwich. I unwrapped it and broke
off a portion.
"Some for you and some for me, old boy!"
I put his part of the sandwich on the sidewalk. He came up, sniffed at
it, then walked off, slinking, staring back at me over his shoulder as he
walked down the street away from me.
"Hey, wait, buddy! That was peanut butter! Come here, have some
bologna! Hey, boy, come here! Come back!"
The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich,
ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on
the sidewalk.
I he dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed,
then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated
down the street.
No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper
nourishment.
I walked on toward the department store. It was the same street I had
walked along to go to high school.
I arrived. I found the employees' entrance, pushed the door open and
walked in. I went from bright sunlight into semi- darkness. As my eyes
adjusted I could make out a man standing several feet away in front of me.
Half of his left ear had been sliced off at some point in the past. He was a
tall, very thin man with needlepoint grey pupils centered in otherwise
colorless eyes. A very tall thin man, yet right above his belt, sticking out
over his belt -- suddenly -- was a sad and hideous and strange pot belly.
All his fat had settled there while the remainder of him had wasted away.
"I'm Superintendent Ferris," he said. "I presume that you're Mr.
Chinaski?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're five minutes late."
"I was delayed by . . . Well, I stopped to try to feed a starving
dog," I grinned.
"That's one of the lousiest excuses I've ever heard and I've been
here thirty-five years. Couldn't you come up with a better one
than that?"
"I'm just starting, Mr. Ferris."
"And you're almost finished. Now," he pointed, "the time- clock is over
there and the card rack is over there. Find your card
and punch in."
I found my card. Henry Chinaski, employee #68754. Then I
walked up to the timeclock but I didn't know what to do.
Ferris walked over and stood behind me, staring at the time- clock.
"You're now six minutes late. When you are ten minutes late we
dock you an hour."
"I guess it's better to be an hour late."
"Don't be funny. If I want a comedian I listen to Jack Benny. If
you're an hour late you're docked your whole god-damned job."
"I'm sorry, but I don't know how to use a timeclock. I mean,
how do I punch in?"
Ferris grabbed the card out of my hand. He pointed at it.
"See this slot?"
"Yeah."
"What?"
"I mean, 'yes.'"
"O.K., that slot is for the first day of the week. Today."
"Ah."
"You slip the timecard into here like this . . ."
He slipped it in, then pulled it out.
"Then when your timecard is in there you hit this lever."
Ferris hit the lever but the timecard wasn't in there.
"I understand. Let's begin."
"No, wait."
He held the timecard in front of me.
"Now, when you punch out for lunch, you hit this slot."
"Yes, I understand."
"Then when you punch back in, you hit the next slot. Lunch is
thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes, I've got it."
"Now, when you punch out, you hit the last slot. That's four punches a
day. Then you go home, or to your room or wherever, sleep, come back and hit
it four more times each working day until you get fired, quit, die or
retire."
"I've got it."
"And I want you to know that you've delayed my indoctrination speech to
our new employees, of which you, at the moment, are one. I am in charge
here. My word is law and your wishes mean nothing. If I dislike anything
about you -- the way you tie your shoes, comb your hair or fart, you're back
on the streets, get it?"
"Yes, sir!"
A young girl came flouncing in, running on her high heels, long brown
hair flowing behind her. She was dressed in a tight red dress. Her lips were
large and expressive with excessive lipstick. She theatrically pulled her.
card out of the rack, punched in, and breathing with minor excitement, she
put her card back in the rack.
She glanced over at Ferris.
"Hi, Eddie!"
"Hi, Diana!"
Diana was obviously a salesgirl. Ferris walked over to her. They stood
talking. I couldn't hear the conversation but I could hear them laughing.
Then they broke off. Diana walked over and waited for the elevator to take
her to her work. Ferris walked back toward me holding my timecard.
"I'll punch in now, Mr. Ferris," I told him.
"I'll do it for you. I want to start you out right."
Ferris inserted my timecard into the clock and stood there. He waited.
I heard the clock tick, then he hit it. He put my card in the rack.
"How late was I, Mr. Ferris?"
"Ten minutes. Now follow me."
I followed along behind him. I saw the group waiting.
Four men and three women. They were all old. They seemed to have
salivary problems. Little clumps of spittle had formed at the corners of
their mouths; the spittle had dried and turned white and then been coated by
new wet spittle. Some of them were too thin, others too fat. Some were near-
sighted; others trembled. One old fellow in a brightly colored shirt had a
hump on his back. They all smiled and coughed, puffing at cigarettes. Then I
got it. The message.
Mears-Starbuck was looking for stayers. The company didn't care
for employee turnover (although these new recruits obviously weren't going
anywhere but to the grave -- until then they'd remain grateful and loyal
employees). And I had been chosen to work alongside of them. The lady in the
employment office had evaluated me as belonging with this pathetic group of
losers.
What would the guys in high school think if they saw me? Me, one of the
toughest guys in the graduating class.
I walked over and stood with my group. Ferris sat on a table facing us.
A shaft of light fell upon him from an overhead transom. He inhaled his
cigarette and smiled at us.
"Welcome to Mears-Starbuck . . ."
Then he seemed to fall into a reverie. Perhaps he was thinking about
when he had first joined the department store thirty-five years ago. He blew
a few smoke rings and watched them rise into the air. His half-sliced ear
looked impressive in the light from above.
The guy next to me, a little pretzel of a man, knifed his sharp little
elbow into my side. He was one of those individuals whose glasses always
seem ready to fall off. He was uglier than I was.
"Hi!" he whispered. "I'm Mewks. Odell Mewks."
"Hello, Mewks."
"Listen, kid, after work let's you and me make the bars. Maybe we can
pick up some girls."
"I can't, Mewks."
"Afraid of girls?"
"It's my brother, he's sick. I've got to watch over him."
"Sick?"
"Worse. Cancer. He has to piss through a tube into a bottle strapped to
his leg."
Then Ferris began again. "Your starting salary is forty-four- and-a-
half cents an hour. We are non-union here. Management believes that what is
fair for the company is fair for you. We are like a family, dedicated to
serve and to profit. You will each receive a ten-percent discount on all
merchandise you purchase from Mears-Starbuck . . ."
"OH, BOY!" Mewks said in a loud voice.
"Yes, Mr. Mewks, it's a good deal. You take care of us, we'll take care
of you."
I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I
could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe
inherit Ferris' job when he retired.
Ferris talked about which holidays we could look forward to and then
the speech was over. We were issued our smocks and our lockers and then we
were directed to the underground storage facilities.
Ferris worked down there too. He manned the phones. Whenever he
answered the phone he would hold it to his sliced left ear with his left
hand and clamp his right hand under his left armpit.
"Yes? Yes? Yes. Coming right up!"
"Chinaski!"
"Yes, sir."
"Lingerie department . . ."
Then he would pick up the order pad, list the items needed and how many
of each. He never did this while on the phone, always afterwards.
"Locate these items, deliver them to the lingerie department, obtain a
signature and return."
His speech never varied.
My first delivery was to lingerie. I located the items, placed
them in my little green cart with its four rubber wheels and pushed it
toward the elevator. The elevator was at an upper floor and I pressed the
button and waited. After some time I could see the bottom of the elevator as
it came down. It was very slow. Then it was at basement level. The doors
opened and an albino with one eye stood at the controls. Jesus. He looked at
me.
"New guy, huh?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"What do you think of Ferris?"
"I think he's a great guy."
They probably lived together in the same room and took turns manning
the hotplate.
"I can't take you up."
"Why not?"
"I gotta take a shit."
He left the elevator and walked off.
There I stood in my smock. This was the way things usually worked. You
were a governor or a garbageman, you were a tight-rope walker or a bank
robber, you were a dentist or a fruit picker, you were this or you were
that. You wanted to do a good job. You manned your station and then you
stood and waited for some asshole. I stood there in my smock next to my
green cart while the elevator man took a shit.
It came to me then, clearly, why the rich, golden boys and girls were
always laughing. They knew. The albino returned.
"It was great. I feel thirty pounds lighter."
"Good. Can we go now?"
He closed the doors and we rose to the sales floor. He opened the
doors.
"Good luck," said the albino.
I pushed my green cart down through the aisles looking for the lingerie
department, a Miss Meadows.
Miss Meadows was waiting. She was slender and classy- looking. She
looked like a model. Her arms were folded. As I approached her I noticed her
eyes. They were an emerald green, there was depth, a knowledge there. I
should know somebody like that. Such eyes, such class. I stopped my cart in
front of her counter.
"Hello, Miss Meadows," I smiled.
"Where the hell have you been?" she asked.
"It just took this long."
"Do you realize I have customers waiting? Do you realize that I'm
attempting to run an efficient department here?"
The salesclerks got ten cents an hour more than we did, plus
commissions. I was to discover that they never spoke to us in a friendly
way. Male or female, the clerks were the same. They took any familiarity as
an affront.
"I've got a good mind to phone Mr. Ferris."
"I'll do better next time. Miss Meadows."
I placed the goods on her counter and then handed her the form to sign.
She scratched her signature furiously on the paper, then instead of handing
it back to me she threw it into my green cart.
"Christ, I don't know where they find people like you!"
I pushed my cart over to the elevator, hit the button and waited. The
doors opened and I rolled on in.
"How'd it go?" the albino asked me.
"I feel thirty pounds heavier," I told him. He grinned, the doors
closed and we descended.
Over dinner that night my mother said, "Henry, I'm so proud of you that
you have a job!"
I didn't answer.
My father said, "Well, aren't you glad to have a job?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? Is that all you can say? Do you realize how many men are
unemployed in this nation now?"
"Plenty, I guess."
"Then you should be grateful."
"Look, can't we just eat our food?"
"You should be grateful for your food, too. Do you know how much this
meal cost?"
I shoved my plate away. "Shit! I can't eat this stuff!"
I got up and walked to my bedroom.
"I've got a good mind to come back there and teach you what is what!"
I stopped. "I'll be waiting, old man."
Then I walked away. I went in and waited. But I knew he wasn't coming.
I set the alarm to get ready for Mears-Starbuck. It was only 7:30 p.m. but I
undressed and went to bed. I switched off the light and was in the dark.
There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. My parents would soon be in bed
with the lights out.
My father liked the slogan, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a
man healthy, wealthy and wise."
But it hadn't done any of that for him. I decided that I might try to
reverse the process.
I couldn't sleep.
Maybe if I masturbated to Miss Meadows? Too cheap. I wallowed there in
the dark, waiting for something,
The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact,
similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system
was an accepted fact. There wasn't a single salesclerk who spoke to a stock-
clerk outside of a perfunctory word or two. And it affected me. I thought
about it as I pushed my cart about. Was it possible that the salesclerks
were more intelligent than the stockclerks? They certainly dressed better.
It bothered me that they assumed that their station meant so much. Perhaps
if I had been a salesclerk I would have felt the same way. I didn't much
care for the other stockclerks. Or the salesclerks.
Now, I thought, pushing my cart along, I have this job. Is this to be
it? No wonder men robbed banks. There were too many demeaning jobs. Why the
hell wasn't I a superior court judge or a concert pianist? Because it took
training and training cost money. But I didn't want to be anything anyhow.
And I was certainly succeeding.
I pushed my cart to the elevator and hit the button. Women wanted men
who made money, women wanted men of mark. I low many classy women were
living with skid row bums? Well, I didn't want a woman anyhow. Not to live
with. How could men live with women? What did it mean? What I wanted was a
cave in Colorado with three-years' worth of foodstuffs and drink. I'd wipe
my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial
and cowardly existence.
The elevator came up. The albino was still at the controls.
"Hey, I hear you and Mewks made the bars last night!"
"He bought me a few beers. I'm broke."
"You guys get laid?"
"I didn't."
"Why don't you guys take me along next time? I'll show you
how to get some snatch."
"What do you know?"
"I've been around. Just last week I had a Chinese girl. And you
know, it's just like they say."
"What's that?"
We hit the basement and the doors opened.
"Their snatch doesn't run up and down, it runs from side to side."
Ferris was waiting for me.
"Where the hell you been?"
"Home gardening."
"What did you do, fertilize the fuchsias?"
"Yeah, I drop one turd in each pot."
"Listen, Chinaski . . ."
"Yes?"
"The punchlines around here belong to me. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Well, get this. I've got an order here for Men's Wear."
He handed me the order slip.
"Locate these items, deliver them, obtain a signature and return."
Men's Wear was run by Mr. Justin Phillips, Jr. He was well- bred, he
was polite, around twenty-two. He stood very straight, had dark hair, dark
eyes, breeding lips. There was an unfortunate absence of cheekbones but it
was hardly noticeable. He was pale and wore dark clothing with beautifully
starched shirts. The salesgirls loved him. He was sensitive, intelligent,
clever. He was also just a bit nasty as if some forebear had passed down
that right to him. He had only broken with tradition once to speak to me.
"It's a shame, isn't it, those rather ugly scars on your face?"
As I rolled my cart up to Men's Wear, Justin Phillips was standing very
straight, head tilted a bit, staring, as he did most of the time, looking
off and up as if he was seeing things we were not. He saw things out there.
Maybe I just didn't recognize breeding when I saw it. He certainly appeared
to be above his surroundings. It was a good trick if you could do it and get
paid at the same time. Maybe that's what management and the salesgirls
liked. Here was a man truly too good for what he was doing, but he was doing
it anyhow.
I rolled up. "Here's your order, Mr. Phillips."
He appeared not to notice me, which hurt in a sense, and was a good
thing in another. I stacked the goods on the counter as he stared off into
space, just above the elevator door.
Then I heard golden laughter and I looked. It was a gang of guys who
had graduated with me from Chelsey High. They were trying on sweaters,
hiking shorts, various items. I knew them by sight only, as we had never
spoken during our four years of high school. The leader was Jimmy New hall.
He had been the halfback on our football team, undefeated for three years.
His hair was a beautiful yellow, the sun always seemed to be highlighting
parts of it, the sun or the lights in the schoolroom. He had a thick,
powerful neck and above it sat the face of a perfect boy sculpted by some
master sculptor. Everything was exactly as it should be: nose, forehead,
chin, the works. And the body likewise, perfectly formed. The others with
Newhall were not exactly as perfect as he was, but they were close. They
stood around and tried on sweaters and laughed, waiting to go to U.S.C. or
Stanford.
Justin Phillips signed my receipt. I was on my way back to the elevator
when I heard a voice:
"HEY, Ski! Ski, YOU LOOk GREAT IN YOUR LITTLE OUTFIT!"
I stopped, turned, gave them a casual wave of the left hand.
"Look at him! Toughest guy in town since Tommy Dorsey!"
"Makes Gable look like a toilet plunger."
I left my wagon and walked back. I didn't know what I was going to do.
I stood there and looked at them. I didn't like them, never had. They might
look glorious to others but not to me. There was something about their
bodies that was like a woman's body. They were soft, they had never faced
any fire. They were beautiful nothings. They made me sick. I hated them.
They were part of the nightmare that always haunted me in one form or
another.
Jimmy Newhall smiled at me. "Hey, stockboy, how come you never tried
out for the team?"
"It wasn't what I wanted."
"No guts, eh?"
"You know where the parking lot on the roof is?"
"Sure."
"See you there . . ."
They strolled out toward the parking lot as I took my smock off and
threw it into the cart. Justin Phillips, Jr. smiled at me, "My dear boy, you
are going to get your ass whipped."
Jimmy Newhall was waiting, surrounded by his buddies.
"Hey, look, the stockboy!"
"You think he's wearing ladies' underwear?"
Newhall was standing in the sun. He had his shirt off and his
undershirt too. He had his gut sucked in and his chest pushed out. He looked
good. What the hell had I gotten into? I felt my underlip trembling. Up
there on the roof, I felt fear. I looked at Newhall, the golden sun
highlighting his golden hair. I had watched him many times on the football
field. I had seen him break off many 50 and 60 yard runs while I rooted for
the other team,
Now we stood looking at each other. I left my shirt on. We kept
standing. I kept standing.
Newhall finally said, "O.k., I'm going to take you now." He started to
move forward. Just then a little old lady dressed in black came by with many
packages. She had on a tiny green felt hat.
"Hello, boys!" she said.
"Hello, ma'am."
"Lovely day . . ."
The little old lady opened her car door and loaded in the packages.
Then she turned to Jimmy Newhall.
"Oh, what a fine body you have, my boy! I'll bet you could be
Tarzan of the Apes!"
"No, ma'am," I said. "Pardon me, but he's the ape and those with
him are his tribe."
"Oh," she said. She got into her car, started it and we waited as she
backed out and drove off.
"O.K., Chinaski," said Newhall, "all through school you were famous for
your sneer and your big god-damned mouth. And now I'm going to put
the cure on you!"
Newhall bounded forward. He was ready. I wasn't quite ready. All I saw
was a backdrop of blue sky and a flash of body and fists. He was quicker
than an ape, and bigger. I couldn't seem to throw a punch, I only felt his
fists and they were rock hard. Squinting through punched eyes I could see
his fists, swinging, landing, my god, he had power, it seemed endless and
there was no place to go. I began to think, maybe you are a sissy, maybe you
should be, maybe you should quit.
But as he continued to punch, my fear vanished. I felt only
astonishment at his strength and energy. Where did he get it? A swine like
him? He was loaded. I couldn't see anymore -- my eyes were blinded by
flashes of yellow and green light, purple light -- then a terrific shot of
RED . . . I felt myself going down. Is this the way it happens?
I fell to one knee. I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I
was on it. I felt something run over my mouth and chin . . . it was warm
blood running from my nose.
"Let him go, Jimmy, he's finished . . ."
I looked at Newhall. "Your mother sucks cock," I told him.
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Newhall rushed me before I could quite get up. He had me by the throat
and we rolled over and over, under a Dodge. I heard his head hit something.
I didn't know what it hit but I heard the sound. It happened quite quickly
and the others were not as aware of it as I was.
I got up and then Newhall got up.
"I'm going to kill you," he said.
Newhall windmilled in. This time it wasn't nearly so bad. He punched
with the same fury, but something was missing. He was weaker. When he hit me
I didn't see flashes of color, I could see the sky, the parked cars, the
faces of his friends, and him. I had always been a slow starter. Newhall was
still trying but he was definitely weaker. And I had my small hands, I was
blessed with small hands, lousy weapons.
What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need
to live but not the ability.
I dug a hard right to his belly and I heard him gasp so I grabbed him
behind the neck with my left and dug another right to his belly. Then I
pushed him off and cracked him with a one-two, right into that sculpted
face. I saw his eyes and it was great. I was bringing something to him that
he had never felt before. He was terrified. Terrified because he didn't know
how to handle defeat. I decided to finish him slowly.
Then someone slugged me on the back of the head. It was a good hard
shot. I turned and looked. It was his red-headed friend, Cal Evans. I
yelled, pointing at him. "Stay the fuck away from me! I'll take all of you
one at a time! As soon as I'm done with this guy, you're next!"
It didn't take much to finish Jimmy. I even tried some fancy footwork.
I jabbed a bit, played around and then I moved in and started punching. He
took it pretty good and for a while I thought I couldn't finish it but all
of a sudden he gave me this strange look which said, hey, look, maybe we
ought to be buddies and go have a couple of beers together. Then he dropped.
His friends moved in and picked him up, they held him up, talked to
him, "Hey, Jim, you O.K.?"
"What'd the son-of-a-bitch do to you, Jim? We'll clean his drawers,
Jim. Just give us the word."
"Take me home," Jim said.
I watched them go down the stairway, all of them trying to hold him up,
one guy carrying his shirt and undershirt . . .
I went downstairs to get my cart. Justin Phillips was waiting.
"I didn't think you'd be back," he smiled disdainfully.
"Don't fraternize with the unskilled help," I told him. I pushed off.
My face, my clothes -- 1 was pretty badly messed up. I walked to the
elevator and hit the button. The albino came in due time. The doors opened.
"The word's out," he said. "I hear you're the new heavyweight champion
of the world."
News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.
Ferns of the sliced ear was waiting.
"You just don't go around beating the shit out of our customers."
"It was only one."
"We have no way of knowing when you might start in on the others."
"This guy baited me."
"We don't give a damn about that. That's what happens. All we know is
that you were out of line."
"How about my check?"
"It'll be mailed."
"O.K., see you . . ."
"Wait, I'll need your locker key."
I got out my key chain which only had one other key on it, pulled off
the locker key and handed it to Ferris.
Then I walked to the employees' door, pulled it open. It was a heavy
steel door which worked awkwardly. As it opened, letting in the daylight, I
turned and gave Ferris a small wave. He didn't respond. He just looked
straight at me. Then the door closed on him. I liked him, somehow.
"So you couldn't hold a job for a week?"
We were eating meatballs and spaghetti. My problems were always
discussed at dinner time. Dinner time was almost always an unhappy time. I
didn't answer my father's question.
"What happened? Why did they can your ass?"
I didn't answer.
"Henry, answer your father when he speaks to you!" my mother said.
"He couldn't hack it, that's all!"
"Look at his face," said my mother, "it's all bruised and cut. Did your
boss beat you up, Henry?"
"No, Mother . . ."
"Why don't you eat, Henry? You never seem to be hungry."
"He can't eat," said my father, "he can't work, he can't do anything,
he's not worth a fuck!"
"You shouldn't talk that way at the dinner table, Daddy," my mother
told him.
"Well, it's true!" My father had an immense ball of spaghetti rolled on
his fork. He jammed it into his mouth and started chewing and while chewing
he speared a large meatball and plunged it into his mouth, then worked in a
piece of French bread.
I remembered what Ivan had said in The Brothers Karamazov, "Who
doesn't want to kill the father?"
As my father chewed at the mass of food, one long string of spaghetti
dangled from a corner of his mouth. He finally noticed it and sucked it in
noisily. Then he reached, put two large teaspoons of white sugar into his
coffee, lifted the cup and took a giant mouthful, which he immediately spit
out across his plate and onto the tablecloth.
"That shit's too hot!"
"You should be more careful, Daddy," said my mother.
I combed the job market, as they used to say, but it was a dreary and
useless routine. You had to know somebody to get a job even as a lowly bus
boy. Thus everybody was a dishwasher, the whole town was full of unemployed
dishwashers. I sat with them in Pershing Square in the afternoons. The
evangelists were there too. Some had drums, some had guitars, and the bushes
and restrooms crawled with homosexuals.
"Some of them have money," a young bum told me. "This guy took me to
his apartment for two weeks. I had all I could eat and drink and he bought
me 'some clothes but he sucked me dry, I couldn't stand up after a while.
One night when he was asleep I crawled out of there. It was horrible. He
kissed me once and I knocked him across the room. 'You ever do that again,'
I told him, 'and I'll kill you!'"
Clifton's Cafeteria was nice. If you didn't have much money, they let
you pay what you could. And if you didn't have any money, you didn't have to
pay. Some of the bums went in there and ate well. It was owned by some very
nice rich old man, a very unusual person. I could never make myself go in
there and load up. I'd go in for a coffee and an apple pie and give them a
nickel. Sometimes I'd get a couple of weenies. It was quiet and cool in
there and clean. There was a large waterfall and you could sit next to it
and imagine that everything was quite all right. Philippe's was nice too.
You could get a cup of coffee for three cents with all the refills you
wanted. You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked
you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to
bring in their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you
hope when there wasn't much hope.
The men in Pershing Square argued all day about whether there was a God
or not. Most of them didn't argue very well but now and then you got a
Religionist and an Atheist who were well-versed and it was a good show.
When I had a few coins I'd go to the underground bar beneath the big
movie house. I was 18 but they served me. I looked like I could be almost
any age. Sometimes I looked 25, sometimes I felt like 30. The bar was run by
Chinese who never spoke to anyone. All I needed was the first beer and then
the homosexuals would start buying. I'd switch to whiskey sours. I'd bleed
them for whiskey sours and when they started closing in on me. I'd get
nasty, push off and leave. After a while they caught on and the place wasn't
any good anymore.
The library was the most depressing place I went. I had run out of
books to read. After a while I would just grab a thick book and look for a
young girl somewhere. There were always one or two about. I'd sit three or
four chairs away, pretending to read the book, trying to look intelligent,
hoping some girl would pick me up. I knew that I was ugly but I thought if I
looked intelligent enough I might have some chance. It never worked. The
girls just made notes on their pads and then they got up and left as I
watched their bodies moving rhythmically and magically under their clean
dresses. What would Maxim Gorky have done under such circumstances?
At home it was always the same. The question was never asked until
after the first few bites of dinner were partaken. Then my father would ask,
"Did you find a job today?"
"No."
"Did you try anywhere?"
"Many places. I've gone back to some of the same places for the second
or third time."
"I don't believe it."
But it was true. It was also true that some companies put ads in the
papers every day when there were no jobs available. It gave the employment
department in those companies something to do. It also wasted the time and
screwed up the hopes of many desperate people.
"You'll find a job tomorrow, Henry," my mother would always say . . .
I looked for a job all summer and couldn't find one. Jimmy Hatcher
caught on at an aircraft plant. Hitler was acting up in Europe and creating
jobs for the unemployed. I had been with Jimmy that day when we had turned
in our applications. We filled them out in similar fashion, the only
difference being where it said Place of Birth, I put down Germany and
he put down Reading, Pa.
"Jimmy got a job. He came from the same school and he's your age," said
my mother. "Why couldn't you get a job at the aircraft plant?"
"They can tell a man who doesn't have a taste for work," said my
father. "All he wants to do is to sit in the bedroom on his dead ass and
listen to his symphony music!"
"Well, the boy likes music, that's something."
"But he doesn't do anything with it! He doesn't make it USEFUL!"
"What should he do?"
"He should go to a radio station and tell them he likes that kind of
music and get a job broadcasting."
"Christ, it's not done like that, it's not that easy."
"What do you know? Have you tried it?"
"I tell you, it can't be done."
My father put a large piece of pork chop into his mouth. A greasy
portion hung out from between his lips as he chewed. It was as if he had
three lips. Then he sucked it in and looked at my mother. "You see, mama,
the boy doesn't want to work."
My mother looked at me. "Henry, why don't you eat your food?"
It was finally decided that I would enroll at L.A. City College. There
was no tuition fee and second-hand books could be purchased at the Go-op
Book Store. My father was simply ashamed that I was unemployed and by going
to school I would at least earn some respectability. Eli LaCrosse (Baldy)
had already been there a term. He counseled me.
"What's the easiest fucking thing to take?" I asked him.
"Journalism. Those journalism majors don't do anything."
"O.K., I'll be a journalist."
I looked through the school booklet.
"What's this Orientation Day they speak of here?"
"Oh, you just skip that, that's bullshit."
"Thanks for telling me, buddy. We'll go instead to that bar across from
campus and have a couple of beers."
"Damn right!"
"Yeah."
The day after Orientation Day was the day you signed up for classes.
People were running about frantically with papers and booklets. I had come
over on the streetcar. I took the "W" to Vermont and then took the "V" north
to Monroe. I didn't know where everybody was going, or what I should do. I
felt sick.
"Pardon me . . ." I asked a girl.
She turned her head and kept walking briskly. A guy came running by and
I grabbed him by the back of his belt and stopped him.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"Shut up. I want to know what's going on! I want to know what to do!"
"They explained everything to you in Orientation."
"Oh . . ."
I let him go and he ran off. I didn't know what to do. I had imagined
that you just went somewhere and told them you wanted to take Journalism,
Beginning Journalism, and they'd give you a card with a schedule of your
classes. It was nothing like that. These people knew what to do and they
wouldn't talk. I felt as if I was in grammar school again, being mutilated
by the crowd who knew more than I did. I sat down on a bench and watched
them running back and forth. Maybe I'd fake it. I'd just tell my parents I
was going to L.A. City College and I'd come every day and lay on the lawn.
Then I saw this guy running along. It was Baldy. I got him from behind by
the collar.
"Hey, hey. Hank! What's happening?"
"I ought to cream you right now, you little asshole!"
"What's wrong? What's wrong?"
"How do I get a fucking class? What do I do?"
"I thought you knew!"
"How? How would I know? Was I born with this knowledge inside of
me, fully indexed, ready to consult when needed?"
I walked him over to a bench, still holding him by his shirt collar.
"Now, lay it out, nice and clear, everything that needs to be done and how
to do it. Do a good job and I might not cream you at this moment!"
So Baldy explained it all. I had my own Orientation Day right there. I
still held him by the collar. "I'm going to let you go now. But some day I'm
going to even this thing out. You're going to pay for fucking me over. You
won't know when, but it's going to happen."
I let him go. He went running off with the rest of them. There was no
need for me to worry or hurry. I was going to get the worst classes, the
worst teachers and the worst hours. I strolled about leisurely signing up
for classes. I appeared to be the only unconcerned student on campus. I
began to feel superior.
Until my first 7 a.m. English class. It was 7:30 a.m. and I was
hungover as I stood there outside the door, listening. My parents had paid
for my books and I had sold them for drinking money. I had slid out of the
bedroom window the night before and had closed the neighborhood bar. I had a
throbbing beer hangover. I still felt drunk. I opened the door and walked
in. I stood there. Mr. Hamilton, the English instructor, was standing before
the class, singing, A record player was on, loud, and the class was singing
along with Mr. Hamilton. It was Gilbert and Sullivan.
Now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy . . .
I copied all the letters in a big round hand . . .
Now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy . . .
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea . . .
And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navy . . .
I walked to the rear of the class and found an empty seat. Hamilton
walked over and shut off the record player. He was dressed in a black-and-
white pepper suit with a shirt-front of bright orange. He looked like Nelson
Eddy. Then he faced the class, glanced at his wrist watch and addressed me:
"A lifetime job . . ." said Jimmy.
"A lifetime wife," I added.
"Abe will never be miserable . . ."
"Or happy."
"An obedient man . . ."
"A broom."
"A stiff . . ."
"A wimp."
When the honor students had been taken care of they began on us. I felt
uncomfortable sitting there. I felt like walking out.
"Henry Chinaski!" I was called.
"Public servant," I told Jimmy.
I walked up to and across the stage, took the diploma, shook the
principal's hand. It felt slimy like the inside of a dirty fish bowl. (Two
years later he would be exposed as an embezzler of school funds; he was to
be tried, convicted and jailed.)
I passed Mortenson and the honor group as I went back to my seat. He
looked over and gave me the finger, so only I could see it. That got me. It
was so unexpected. I walked back and sat down next to Jimmy.
"Mortenson gave me the finger!"
"No, I don't believe it!"
'Son-of-a-bitch! He's spoiled my day! Not that it was worth a fuck
anyhow but he's really greased it over now!"
I can't believe he had the guts to finger you."
"It's not like him. You think he's getting some coaching?"
"I don't know what to think."
"He knows that I can bust him in half without even inhaling!"
"Bust him!"
"But don't you see, he's won? It's the way he surprised me!"
"All you gotta do is kick his ass all up and down."
"Do you think that son-of-a-bitch learned something reading all those
books? I know there's nothing in them because I read every fourth page."
"Jimmy Hatcher!" His name was called.
"Priest," he said.
"Poultry farmer," I said.
Jimmy went up and got his. I applauded loudly. Anybody who could live
with a mother like his deserved some accolade. He came back and we sat
watching all the golden boys and girls go up and
get theirs.
"You can't blame them for being rich," Jimmy said.
"No, I blame their fucking parents."
"And their grandparents," said Jimmy.
"Yes, I'd be happy to take their new cars and their pretty
girlfriends and I wouldn't give a fuck about anything like social
justice."
"Yeah," said Jimmy. "I guess the only time most people think about
injustice is when it happens to them."
The golden boys and girls went on parading across the stage. I sat
there wondering whether to punch Abe out or not. I could see him flopping on
the sidewalk still in his cap and gown, the victim of my right cross, all
the pretty girls screaming, thinking, my god, this Chinaski guy must be a
bull on the springs!
On the other hand, Abe wasn't much. He was hardly there. It wouldn't
take anything to punch him out. I decided not to do it. I had already broken
his arm and his parents hadn't sued mine, finally. If I busted his head they
would surely go ahead and sue. They would take my old man's last copper. Not
that I would mind. It was my mother: she would suffer in a fool's way:
senselessly and without reason.
Then, the ceremony was over. The students left their seats and filed
out. Students met with parents, relatives on the front lawn. There was much
bugging, embracing. I saw my parents waiting. I walked up to them, stood
about four feet away.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
My mother was looking at me.
"Henry, I'm so proud of you!"
Then my mother's head turned. "Oh, there goes Abe and his parents!
They're such nice people! Oh, Mrs. Mortenson!"
They stopped. My mother ran over and threw her arms about Mrs.
Mortenson. It was Mrs. Mortenson who had decided not to sue after many, many
hours of conversation upon the telephone with my mother. It had been decided
that I was a confused individual and that my mother had suffered enough that
way.
My father shook hands with Mr. Mortenson and I walked over to Abe.
"O.K., cocksucker, what's the idea of giving me the finger?"
"What?"
"The finger."
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"The finger.'"
"Henry, I really don't know what you're talking about!"
"All right, Abraham, it's time to go!" said his mother. The Mortenson
family walked off together. I stood there watching them. Then we started
walking to our old car. We walked west to the corner and turned south.
"Now that Mortenson boy really knows how to apply himself!"
said my father. "How are you ever going to make it? I've never
even seen you look at a schoolbook, let alone inside of one!"
"Some books arc dull," I said.
"Oh, they're dull, are they? So you don't want to study?
What can you do? What good are you? What can you do? It
has cost me thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose
I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?"
"Catch butterflies."
My mother began to cry. My father pulled her away and down the block to
where their ten-year-old car was parked. As I stood there, the other
families roared past in their new cars, going somewhere.
Then Jimmy Hatcher and his mother walked by. She stopped.
"Hey, wait a minute," she told Timmy, "I want to congratulate Henry."
Jimmy waited and Clare walked over. She put her face close to
"line. She spoke softly so Jimmy wouldn't hear. "Listen, Honey,
any time you really want to graduate, I can arrange to give you
your diploma."
"Thanks, Clare, I might be seeing you."
"I'll rip your balls off, Henry!"
"I don't doubt it, Clare."
She went back to Jimmy and they walked away down the street. A very old
car rolled up, stopped, the engine died. I could see my mother weeping, big
tears were running down her cheeks.
"Henry, get in! Please get in! Your father is right but I love
you!"
"Forget it. I've got a place to go."
"No, Henry, get in!" she wailed. "Get in or I'll die!"
I walked over, opened the rear door, climbed into the rear seat.
The engine started and we were off again. There I sat, Henry Chinaski, Class
of Summer '39, driving into the bright future. No, being driven. At the
first red light the car stalled. As the signal turned green my father was
still trying to start the engine. Somebody behind us hooked. My father got
the car started and we were in motion again. My mother had stopped crying.
We drove along like that, each of us silent.
Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears-
Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone
all around town putting in dozens of applications. There was nothing else to
do. I didn't want a job but I didn't want to live with my parents either.
Mears-Starbuck must have had thousands of applications on hand. I couldn't
believe they had chosen me. It was a department store with branches in many
cities.
The next Monday, there I was walking to work with my lunch in a brown
paper bag. The department store was only a few blocks away from my former
high school.
I still didn't understand why I had been selected. After filling out
the application, the interview had lasted only a few minutes. I must have
given all the right answers.
First paycheck I get, I thought, I'm going to get myself a room near
the downtown L.A. Public Library.
As I walked along I didn't feel so alone and I wasn't. I noticed a
starving mongrel dog following me. The poor creature was terribly thin; I
could see his ribs poking through his skin. Most of his fur had fallen off.
What remained clung in dry, twisted patches. The dog was beaten, cowed,
deserted, frightened, a victim of Homo sapiens.
I stopped and knelt, put out my hand. He backed off.
"Come here, fellow, I'm your friend . . . Come on, come on . . ."
He came closer. He had such sad eyes.
"What have they done to you, boy?"
He came still closer, creeping along the sidewalk, trembling, wagging
his tail quite rapidly. Then he leaped at me. He was large, what was left of
him. His forelegs pushed me backwards and I was flat on the sidewalk and he
was licking my face, mouth, ears, forehead, everywhere. I pushed him off,
got up and wiped my face.
"Easy now! You need something to eat! FOOD!"
I reached into my bag and took out a sandwich. I unwrapped it and broke
off a portion.
"Some for you and some for me, old boy!"
I put his part of the sandwich on the sidewalk. He came up, sniffed at
it, then walked off, slinking, staring back at me over his shoulder as he
walked down the street away from me.
"Hey, wait, buddy! That was peanut butter! Come here, have some
bologna! Hey, boy, come here! Come back!"
The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich,
ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on
the sidewalk.
I he dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed,
then turned and walked off. This time he didn't look back. He accelerated
down the street.
No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn't getting proper
nourishment.
I walked on toward the department store. It was the same street I had
walked along to go to high school.
I arrived. I found the employees' entrance, pushed the door open and
walked in. I went from bright sunlight into semi- darkness. As my eyes
adjusted I could make out a man standing several feet away in front of me.
Half of his left ear had been sliced off at some point in the past. He was a
tall, very thin man with needlepoint grey pupils centered in otherwise
colorless eyes. A very tall thin man, yet right above his belt, sticking out
over his belt -- suddenly -- was a sad and hideous and strange pot belly.
All his fat had settled there while the remainder of him had wasted away.
"I'm Superintendent Ferris," he said. "I presume that you're Mr.
Chinaski?"
"Yes, sir."
"You're five minutes late."
"I was delayed by . . . Well, I stopped to try to feed a starving
dog," I grinned.
"That's one of the lousiest excuses I've ever heard and I've been
here thirty-five years. Couldn't you come up with a better one
than that?"
"I'm just starting, Mr. Ferris."
"And you're almost finished. Now," he pointed, "the time- clock is over
there and the card rack is over there. Find your card
and punch in."
I found my card. Henry Chinaski, employee #68754. Then I
walked up to the timeclock but I didn't know what to do.
Ferris walked over and stood behind me, staring at the time- clock.
"You're now six minutes late. When you are ten minutes late we
dock you an hour."
"I guess it's better to be an hour late."
"Don't be funny. If I want a comedian I listen to Jack Benny. If
you're an hour late you're docked your whole god-damned job."
"I'm sorry, but I don't know how to use a timeclock. I mean,
how do I punch in?"
Ferris grabbed the card out of my hand. He pointed at it.
"See this slot?"
"Yeah."
"What?"
"I mean, 'yes.'"
"O.K., that slot is for the first day of the week. Today."
"Ah."
"You slip the timecard into here like this . . ."
He slipped it in, then pulled it out.
"Then when your timecard is in there you hit this lever."
Ferris hit the lever but the timecard wasn't in there.
"I understand. Let's begin."
"No, wait."
He held the timecard in front of me.
"Now, when you punch out for lunch, you hit this slot."
"Yes, I understand."
"Then when you punch back in, you hit the next slot. Lunch is
thirty minutes."
"Thirty minutes, I've got it."
"Now, when you punch out, you hit the last slot. That's four punches a
day. Then you go home, or to your room or wherever, sleep, come back and hit
it four more times each working day until you get fired, quit, die or
retire."
"I've got it."
"And I want you to know that you've delayed my indoctrination speech to
our new employees, of which you, at the moment, are one. I am in charge
here. My word is law and your wishes mean nothing. If I dislike anything
about you -- the way you tie your shoes, comb your hair or fart, you're back
on the streets, get it?"
"Yes, sir!"
A young girl came flouncing in, running on her high heels, long brown
hair flowing behind her. She was dressed in a tight red dress. Her lips were
large and expressive with excessive lipstick. She theatrically pulled her.
card out of the rack, punched in, and breathing with minor excitement, she
put her card back in the rack.
She glanced over at Ferris.
"Hi, Eddie!"
"Hi, Diana!"
Diana was obviously a salesgirl. Ferris walked over to her. They stood
talking. I couldn't hear the conversation but I could hear them laughing.
Then they broke off. Diana walked over and waited for the elevator to take
her to her work. Ferris walked back toward me holding my timecard.
"I'll punch in now, Mr. Ferris," I told him.
"I'll do it for you. I want to start you out right."
Ferris inserted my timecard into the clock and stood there. He waited.
I heard the clock tick, then he hit it. He put my card in the rack.
"How late was I, Mr. Ferris?"
"Ten minutes. Now follow me."
I followed along behind him. I saw the group waiting.
Four men and three women. They were all old. They seemed to have
salivary problems. Little clumps of spittle had formed at the corners of
their mouths; the spittle had dried and turned white and then been coated by
new wet spittle. Some of them were too thin, others too fat. Some were near-
sighted; others trembled. One old fellow in a brightly colored shirt had a
hump on his back. They all smiled and coughed, puffing at cigarettes. Then I
got it. The message.
Mears-Starbuck was looking for stayers. The company didn't care
for employee turnover (although these new recruits obviously weren't going
anywhere but to the grave -- until then they'd remain grateful and loyal
employees). And I had been chosen to work alongside of them. The lady in the
employment office had evaluated me as belonging with this pathetic group of
losers.
What would the guys in high school think if they saw me? Me, one of the
toughest guys in the graduating class.
I walked over and stood with my group. Ferris sat on a table facing us.
A shaft of light fell upon him from an overhead transom. He inhaled his
cigarette and smiled at us.
"Welcome to Mears-Starbuck . . ."
Then he seemed to fall into a reverie. Perhaps he was thinking about
when he had first joined the department store thirty-five years ago. He blew
a few smoke rings and watched them rise into the air. His half-sliced ear
looked impressive in the light from above.
The guy next to me, a little pretzel of a man, knifed his sharp little
elbow into my side. He was one of those individuals whose glasses always
seem ready to fall off. He was uglier than I was.
"Hi!" he whispered. "I'm Mewks. Odell Mewks."
"Hello, Mewks."
"Listen, kid, after work let's you and me make the bars. Maybe we can
pick up some girls."
"I can't, Mewks."
"Afraid of girls?"
"It's my brother, he's sick. I've got to watch over him."
"Sick?"
"Worse. Cancer. He has to piss through a tube into a bottle strapped to
his leg."
Then Ferris began again. "Your starting salary is forty-four- and-a-
half cents an hour. We are non-union here. Management believes that what is
fair for the company is fair for you. We are like a family, dedicated to
serve and to profit. You will each receive a ten-percent discount on all
merchandise you purchase from Mears-Starbuck . . ."
"OH, BOY!" Mewks said in a loud voice.
"Yes, Mr. Mewks, it's a good deal. You take care of us, we'll take care
of you."
I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I
could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe
inherit Ferris' job when he retired.
Ferris talked about which holidays we could look forward to and then
the speech was over. We were issued our smocks and our lockers and then we
were directed to the underground storage facilities.
Ferris worked down there too. He manned the phones. Whenever he
answered the phone he would hold it to his sliced left ear with his left
hand and clamp his right hand under his left armpit.
"Yes? Yes? Yes. Coming right up!"
"Chinaski!"
"Yes, sir."
"Lingerie department . . ."
Then he would pick up the order pad, list the items needed and how many
of each. He never did this while on the phone, always afterwards.
"Locate these items, deliver them to the lingerie department, obtain a
signature and return."
His speech never varied.
My first delivery was to lingerie. I located the items, placed
them in my little green cart with its four rubber wheels and pushed it
toward the elevator. The elevator was at an upper floor and I pressed the
button and waited. After some time I could see the bottom of the elevator as
it came down. It was very slow. Then it was at basement level. The doors
opened and an albino with one eye stood at the controls. Jesus. He looked at
me.
"New guy, huh?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"What do you think of Ferris?"
"I think he's a great guy."
They probably lived together in the same room and took turns manning
the hotplate.
"I can't take you up."
"Why not?"
"I gotta take a shit."
He left the elevator and walked off.
There I stood in my smock. This was the way things usually worked. You
were a governor or a garbageman, you were a tight-rope walker or a bank
robber, you were a dentist or a fruit picker, you were this or you were
that. You wanted to do a good job. You manned your station and then you
stood and waited for some asshole. I stood there in my smock next to my
green cart while the elevator man took a shit.
It came to me then, clearly, why the rich, golden boys and girls were
always laughing. They knew. The albino returned.
"It was great. I feel thirty pounds lighter."
"Good. Can we go now?"
He closed the doors and we rose to the sales floor. He opened the
doors.
"Good luck," said the albino.
I pushed my green cart down through the aisles looking for the lingerie
department, a Miss Meadows.
Miss Meadows was waiting. She was slender and classy- looking. She
looked like a model. Her arms were folded. As I approached her I noticed her
eyes. They were an emerald green, there was depth, a knowledge there. I
should know somebody like that. Such eyes, such class. I stopped my cart in
front of her counter.
"Hello, Miss Meadows," I smiled.
"Where the hell have you been?" she asked.
"It just took this long."
"Do you realize I have customers waiting? Do you realize that I'm
attempting to run an efficient department here?"
The salesclerks got ten cents an hour more than we did, plus
commissions. I was to discover that they never spoke to us in a friendly
way. Male or female, the clerks were the same. They took any familiarity as
an affront.
"I've got a good mind to phone Mr. Ferris."
"I'll do better next time. Miss Meadows."
I placed the goods on her counter and then handed her the form to sign.
She scratched her signature furiously on the paper, then instead of handing
it back to me she threw it into my green cart.
"Christ, I don't know where they find people like you!"
I pushed my cart over to the elevator, hit the button and waited. The
doors opened and I rolled on in.
"How'd it go?" the albino asked me.
"I feel thirty pounds heavier," I told him. He grinned, the doors
closed and we descended.
Over dinner that night my mother said, "Henry, I'm so proud of you that
you have a job!"
I didn't answer.
My father said, "Well, aren't you glad to have a job?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah? Is that all you can say? Do you realize how many men are
unemployed in this nation now?"
"Plenty, I guess."
"Then you should be grateful."
"Look, can't we just eat our food?"
"You should be grateful for your food, too. Do you know how much this
meal cost?"
I shoved my plate away. "Shit! I can't eat this stuff!"
I got up and walked to my bedroom.
"I've got a good mind to come back there and teach you what is what!"
I stopped. "I'll be waiting, old man."
Then I walked away. I went in and waited. But I knew he wasn't coming.
I set the alarm to get ready for Mears-Starbuck. It was only 7:30 p.m. but I
undressed and went to bed. I switched off the light and was in the dark.
There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. My parents would soon be in bed
with the lights out.
My father liked the slogan, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a
man healthy, wealthy and wise."
But it hadn't done any of that for him. I decided that I might try to
reverse the process.
I couldn't sleep.
Maybe if I masturbated to Miss Meadows? Too cheap. I wallowed there in
the dark, waiting for something,
The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact,
similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system
was an accepted fact. There wasn't a single salesclerk who spoke to a stock-
clerk outside of a perfunctory word or two. And it affected me. I thought
about it as I pushed my cart about. Was it possible that the salesclerks
were more intelligent than the stockclerks? They certainly dressed better.
It bothered me that they assumed that their station meant so much. Perhaps
if I had been a salesclerk I would have felt the same way. I didn't much
care for the other stockclerks. Or the salesclerks.
Now, I thought, pushing my cart along, I have this job. Is this to be
it? No wonder men robbed banks. There were too many demeaning jobs. Why the
hell wasn't I a superior court judge or a concert pianist? Because it took
training and training cost money. But I didn't want to be anything anyhow.
And I was certainly succeeding.
I pushed my cart to the elevator and hit the button. Women wanted men
who made money, women wanted men of mark. I low many classy women were
living with skid row bums? Well, I didn't want a woman anyhow. Not to live
with. How could men live with women? What did it mean? What I wanted was a
cave in Colorado with three-years' worth of foodstuffs and drink. I'd wipe
my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial
and cowardly existence.
The elevator came up. The albino was still at the controls.
"Hey, I hear you and Mewks made the bars last night!"
"He bought me a few beers. I'm broke."
"You guys get laid?"
"I didn't."
"Why don't you guys take me along next time? I'll show you
how to get some snatch."
"What do you know?"
"I've been around. Just last week I had a Chinese girl. And you
know, it's just like they say."
"What's that?"
We hit the basement and the doors opened.
"Their snatch doesn't run up and down, it runs from side to side."
Ferris was waiting for me.
"Where the hell you been?"
"Home gardening."
"What did you do, fertilize the fuchsias?"
"Yeah, I drop one turd in each pot."
"Listen, Chinaski . . ."
"Yes?"
"The punchlines around here belong to me. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Well, get this. I've got an order here for Men's Wear."
He handed me the order slip.
"Locate these items, deliver them, obtain a signature and return."
Men's Wear was run by Mr. Justin Phillips, Jr. He was well- bred, he
was polite, around twenty-two. He stood very straight, had dark hair, dark
eyes, breeding lips. There was an unfortunate absence of cheekbones but it
was hardly noticeable. He was pale and wore dark clothing with beautifully
starched shirts. The salesgirls loved him. He was sensitive, intelligent,
clever. He was also just a bit nasty as if some forebear had passed down
that right to him. He had only broken with tradition once to speak to me.
"It's a shame, isn't it, those rather ugly scars on your face?"
As I rolled my cart up to Men's Wear, Justin Phillips was standing very
straight, head tilted a bit, staring, as he did most of the time, looking
off and up as if he was seeing things we were not. He saw things out there.
Maybe I just didn't recognize breeding when I saw it. He certainly appeared
to be above his surroundings. It was a good trick if you could do it and get
paid at the same time. Maybe that's what management and the salesgirls
liked. Here was a man truly too good for what he was doing, but he was doing
it anyhow.
I rolled up. "Here's your order, Mr. Phillips."
He appeared not to notice me, which hurt in a sense, and was a good
thing in another. I stacked the goods on the counter as he stared off into
space, just above the elevator door.
Then I heard golden laughter and I looked. It was a gang of guys who
had graduated with me from Chelsey High. They were trying on sweaters,
hiking shorts, various items. I knew them by sight only, as we had never
spoken during our four years of high school. The leader was Jimmy New hall.
He had been the halfback on our football team, undefeated for three years.
His hair was a beautiful yellow, the sun always seemed to be highlighting
parts of it, the sun or the lights in the schoolroom. He had a thick,
powerful neck and above it sat the face of a perfect boy sculpted by some
master sculptor. Everything was exactly as it should be: nose, forehead,
chin, the works. And the body likewise, perfectly formed. The others with
Newhall were not exactly as perfect as he was, but they were close. They
stood around and tried on sweaters and laughed, waiting to go to U.S.C. or
Stanford.
Justin Phillips signed my receipt. I was on my way back to the elevator
when I heard a voice:
"HEY, Ski! Ski, YOU LOOk GREAT IN YOUR LITTLE OUTFIT!"
I stopped, turned, gave them a casual wave of the left hand.
"Look at him! Toughest guy in town since Tommy Dorsey!"
"Makes Gable look like a toilet plunger."
I left my wagon and walked back. I didn't know what I was going to do.
I stood there and looked at them. I didn't like them, never had. They might
look glorious to others but not to me. There was something about their
bodies that was like a woman's body. They were soft, they had never faced
any fire. They were beautiful nothings. They made me sick. I hated them.
They were part of the nightmare that always haunted me in one form or
another.
Jimmy Newhall smiled at me. "Hey, stockboy, how come you never tried
out for the team?"
"It wasn't what I wanted."
"No guts, eh?"
"You know where the parking lot on the roof is?"
"Sure."
"See you there . . ."
They strolled out toward the parking lot as I took my smock off and
threw it into the cart. Justin Phillips, Jr. smiled at me, "My dear boy, you
are going to get your ass whipped."
Jimmy Newhall was waiting, surrounded by his buddies.
"Hey, look, the stockboy!"
"You think he's wearing ladies' underwear?"
Newhall was standing in the sun. He had his shirt off and his
undershirt too. He had his gut sucked in and his chest pushed out. He looked
good. What the hell had I gotten into? I felt my underlip trembling. Up
there on the roof, I felt fear. I looked at Newhall, the golden sun
highlighting his golden hair. I had watched him many times on the football
field. I had seen him break off many 50 and 60 yard runs while I rooted for
the other team,
Now we stood looking at each other. I left my shirt on. We kept
standing. I kept standing.
Newhall finally said, "O.k., I'm going to take you now." He started to
move forward. Just then a little old lady dressed in black came by with many
packages. She had on a tiny green felt hat.
"Hello, boys!" she said.
"Hello, ma'am."
"Lovely day . . ."
The little old lady opened her car door and loaded in the packages.
Then she turned to Jimmy Newhall.
"Oh, what a fine body you have, my boy! I'll bet you could be
Tarzan of the Apes!"
"No, ma'am," I said. "Pardon me, but he's the ape and those with
him are his tribe."
"Oh," she said. She got into her car, started it and we waited as she
backed out and drove off.
"O.K., Chinaski," said Newhall, "all through school you were famous for
your sneer and your big god-damned mouth. And now I'm going to put
the cure on you!"
Newhall bounded forward. He was ready. I wasn't quite ready. All I saw
was a backdrop of blue sky and a flash of body and fists. He was quicker
than an ape, and bigger. I couldn't seem to throw a punch, I only felt his
fists and they were rock hard. Squinting through punched eyes I could see
his fists, swinging, landing, my god, he had power, it seemed endless and
there was no place to go. I began to think, maybe you are a sissy, maybe you
should be, maybe you should quit.
But as he continued to punch, my fear vanished. I felt only
astonishment at his strength and energy. Where did he get it? A swine like
him? He was loaded. I couldn't see anymore -- my eyes were blinded by
flashes of yellow and green light, purple light -- then a terrific shot of
RED . . . I felt myself going down. Is this the way it happens?
I fell to one knee. I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I
was on it. I felt something run over my mouth and chin . . . it was warm
blood running from my nose.
"Let him go, Jimmy, he's finished . . ."
I looked at Newhall. "Your mother sucks cock," I told him.
"I'LL KILL YOU!"
Newhall rushed me before I could quite get up. He had me by the throat
and we rolled over and over, under a Dodge. I heard his head hit something.
I didn't know what it hit but I heard the sound. It happened quite quickly
and the others were not as aware of it as I was.
I got up and then Newhall got up.
"I'm going to kill you," he said.
Newhall windmilled in. This time it wasn't nearly so bad. He punched
with the same fury, but something was missing. He was weaker. When he hit me
I didn't see flashes of color, I could see the sky, the parked cars, the
faces of his friends, and him. I had always been a slow starter. Newhall was
still trying but he was definitely weaker. And I had my small hands, I was
blessed with small hands, lousy weapons.
What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need
to live but not the ability.
I dug a hard right to his belly and I heard him gasp so I grabbed him
behind the neck with my left and dug another right to his belly. Then I
pushed him off and cracked him with a one-two, right into that sculpted
face. I saw his eyes and it was great. I was bringing something to him that
he had never felt before. He was terrified. Terrified because he didn't know
how to handle defeat. I decided to finish him slowly.
Then someone slugged me on the back of the head. It was a good hard
shot. I turned and looked. It was his red-headed friend, Cal Evans. I
yelled, pointing at him. "Stay the fuck away from me! I'll take all of you
one at a time! As soon as I'm done with this guy, you're next!"
It didn't take much to finish Jimmy. I even tried some fancy footwork.
I jabbed a bit, played around and then I moved in and started punching. He
took it pretty good and for a while I thought I couldn't finish it but all
of a sudden he gave me this strange look which said, hey, look, maybe we
ought to be buddies and go have a couple of beers together. Then he dropped.
His friends moved in and picked him up, they held him up, talked to
him, "Hey, Jim, you O.K.?"
"What'd the son-of-a-bitch do to you, Jim? We'll clean his drawers,
Jim. Just give us the word."
"Take me home," Jim said.
I watched them go down the stairway, all of them trying to hold him up,
one guy carrying his shirt and undershirt . . .
I went downstairs to get my cart. Justin Phillips was waiting.
"I didn't think you'd be back," he smiled disdainfully.
"Don't fraternize with the unskilled help," I told him. I pushed off.
My face, my clothes -- 1 was pretty badly messed up. I walked to the
elevator and hit the button. The albino came in due time. The doors opened.
"The word's out," he said. "I hear you're the new heavyweight champion
of the world."
News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.
Ferns of the sliced ear was waiting.
"You just don't go around beating the shit out of our customers."
"It was only one."
"We have no way of knowing when you might start in on the others."
"This guy baited me."
"We don't give a damn about that. That's what happens. All we know is
that you were out of line."
"How about my check?"
"It'll be mailed."
"O.K., see you . . ."
"Wait, I'll need your locker key."
I got out my key chain which only had one other key on it, pulled off
the locker key and handed it to Ferris.
Then I walked to the employees' door, pulled it open. It was a heavy
steel door which worked awkwardly. As it opened, letting in the daylight, I
turned and gave Ferris a small wave. He didn't respond. He just looked
straight at me. Then the door closed on him. I liked him, somehow.
"So you couldn't hold a job for a week?"
We were eating meatballs and spaghetti. My problems were always
discussed at dinner time. Dinner time was almost always an unhappy time. I
didn't answer my father's question.
"What happened? Why did they can your ass?"
I didn't answer.
"Henry, answer your father when he speaks to you!" my mother said.
"He couldn't hack it, that's all!"
"Look at his face," said my mother, "it's all bruised and cut. Did your
boss beat you up, Henry?"
"No, Mother . . ."
"Why don't you eat, Henry? You never seem to be hungry."
"He can't eat," said my father, "he can't work, he can't do anything,
he's not worth a fuck!"
"You shouldn't talk that way at the dinner table, Daddy," my mother
told him.
"Well, it's true!" My father had an immense ball of spaghetti rolled on
his fork. He jammed it into his mouth and started chewing and while chewing
he speared a large meatball and plunged it into his mouth, then worked in a
piece of French bread.
I remembered what Ivan had said in The Brothers Karamazov, "Who
doesn't want to kill the father?"
As my father chewed at the mass of food, one long string of spaghetti
dangled from a corner of his mouth. He finally noticed it and sucked it in
noisily. Then he reached, put two large teaspoons of white sugar into his
coffee, lifted the cup and took a giant mouthful, which he immediately spit
out across his plate and onto the tablecloth.
"That shit's too hot!"
"You should be more careful, Daddy," said my mother.
I combed the job market, as they used to say, but it was a dreary and
useless routine. You had to know somebody to get a job even as a lowly bus
boy. Thus everybody was a dishwasher, the whole town was full of unemployed
dishwashers. I sat with them in Pershing Square in the afternoons. The
evangelists were there too. Some had drums, some had guitars, and the bushes
and restrooms crawled with homosexuals.
"Some of them have money," a young bum told me. "This guy took me to
his apartment for two weeks. I had all I could eat and drink and he bought
me 'some clothes but he sucked me dry, I couldn't stand up after a while.
One night when he was asleep I crawled out of there. It was horrible. He
kissed me once and I knocked him across the room. 'You ever do that again,'
I told him, 'and I'll kill you!'"
Clifton's Cafeteria was nice. If you didn't have much money, they let
you pay what you could. And if you didn't have any money, you didn't have to
pay. Some of the bums went in there and ate well. It was owned by some very
nice rich old man, a very unusual person. I could never make myself go in
there and load up. I'd go in for a coffee and an apple pie and give them a
nickel. Sometimes I'd get a couple of weenies. It was quiet and cool in
there and clean. There was a large waterfall and you could sit next to it
and imagine that everything was quite all right. Philippe's was nice too.
You could get a cup of coffee for three cents with all the refills you
wanted. You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked
you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to
bring in their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you
hope when there wasn't much hope.
The men in Pershing Square argued all day about whether there was a God
or not. Most of them didn't argue very well but now and then you got a
Religionist and an Atheist who were well-versed and it was a good show.
When I had a few coins I'd go to the underground bar beneath the big
movie house. I was 18 but they served me. I looked like I could be almost
any age. Sometimes I looked 25, sometimes I felt like 30. The bar was run by
Chinese who never spoke to anyone. All I needed was the first beer and then
the homosexuals would start buying. I'd switch to whiskey sours. I'd bleed
them for whiskey sours and when they started closing in on me. I'd get
nasty, push off and leave. After a while they caught on and the place wasn't
any good anymore.
The library was the most depressing place I went. I had run out of
books to read. After a while I would just grab a thick book and look for a
young girl somewhere. There were always one or two about. I'd sit three or
four chairs away, pretending to read the book, trying to look intelligent,
hoping some girl would pick me up. I knew that I was ugly but I thought if I
looked intelligent enough I might have some chance. It never worked. The
girls just made notes on their pads and then they got up and left as I
watched their bodies moving rhythmically and magically under their clean
dresses. What would Maxim Gorky have done under such circumstances?
At home it was always the same. The question was never asked until
after the first few bites of dinner were partaken. Then my father would ask,
"Did you find a job today?"
"No."
"Did you try anywhere?"
"Many places. I've gone back to some of the same places for the second
or third time."
"I don't believe it."
But it was true. It was also true that some companies put ads in the
papers every day when there were no jobs available. It gave the employment
department in those companies something to do. It also wasted the time and
screwed up the hopes of many desperate people.
"You'll find a job tomorrow, Henry," my mother would always say . . .
I looked for a job all summer and couldn't find one. Jimmy Hatcher
caught on at an aircraft plant. Hitler was acting up in Europe and creating
jobs for the unemployed. I had been with Jimmy that day when we had turned
in our applications. We filled them out in similar fashion, the only
difference being where it said Place of Birth, I put down Germany and
he put down Reading, Pa.
"Jimmy got a job. He came from the same school and he's your age," said
my mother. "Why couldn't you get a job at the aircraft plant?"
"They can tell a man who doesn't have a taste for work," said my
father. "All he wants to do is to sit in the bedroom on his dead ass and
listen to his symphony music!"
"Well, the boy likes music, that's something."
"But he doesn't do anything with it! He doesn't make it USEFUL!"
"What should he do?"
"He should go to a radio station and tell them he likes that kind of
music and get a job broadcasting."
"Christ, it's not done like that, it's not that easy."
"What do you know? Have you tried it?"
"I tell you, it can't be done."
My father put a large piece of pork chop into his mouth. A greasy
portion hung out from between his lips as he chewed. It was as if he had
three lips. Then he sucked it in and looked at my mother. "You see, mama,
the boy doesn't want to work."
My mother looked at me. "Henry, why don't you eat your food?"
It was finally decided that I would enroll at L.A. City College. There
was no tuition fee and second-hand books could be purchased at the Go-op
Book Store. My father was simply ashamed that I was unemployed and by going
to school I would at least earn some respectability. Eli LaCrosse (Baldy)
had already been there a term. He counseled me.
"What's the easiest fucking thing to take?" I asked him.
"Journalism. Those journalism majors don't do anything."
"O.K., I'll be a journalist."
I looked through the school booklet.
"What's this Orientation Day they speak of here?"
"Oh, you just skip that, that's bullshit."
"Thanks for telling me, buddy. We'll go instead to that bar across from
campus and have a couple of beers."
"Damn right!"
"Yeah."
The day after Orientation Day was the day you signed up for classes.
People were running about frantically with papers and booklets. I had come
over on the streetcar. I took the "W" to Vermont and then took the "V" north
to Monroe. I didn't know where everybody was going, or what I should do. I
felt sick.
"Pardon me . . ." I asked a girl.
She turned her head and kept walking briskly. A guy came running by and
I grabbed him by the back of his belt and stopped him.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" he asked.
"Shut up. I want to know what's going on! I want to know what to do!"
"They explained everything to you in Orientation."
"Oh . . ."
I let him go and he ran off. I didn't know what to do. I had imagined
that you just went somewhere and told them you wanted to take Journalism,
Beginning Journalism, and they'd give you a card with a schedule of your
classes. It was nothing like that. These people knew what to do and they
wouldn't talk. I felt as if I was in grammar school again, being mutilated
by the crowd who knew more than I did. I sat down on a bench and watched
them running back and forth. Maybe I'd fake it. I'd just tell my parents I
was going to L.A. City College and I'd come every day and lay on the lawn.
Then I saw this guy running along. It was Baldy. I got him from behind by
the collar.
"Hey, hey. Hank! What's happening?"
"I ought to cream you right now, you little asshole!"
"What's wrong? What's wrong?"
"How do I get a fucking class? What do I do?"
"I thought you knew!"
"How? How would I know? Was I born with this knowledge inside of
me, fully indexed, ready to consult when needed?"
I walked him over to a bench, still holding him by his shirt collar.
"Now, lay it out, nice and clear, everything that needs to be done and how
to do it. Do a good job and I might not cream you at this moment!"
So Baldy explained it all. I had my own Orientation Day right there. I
still held him by the collar. "I'm going to let you go now. But some day I'm
going to even this thing out. You're going to pay for fucking me over. You
won't know when, but it's going to happen."
I let him go. He went running off with the rest of them. There was no
need for me to worry or hurry. I was going to get the worst classes, the
worst teachers and the worst hours. I strolled about leisurely signing up
for classes. I appeared to be the only unconcerned student on campus. I
began to feel superior.
Until my first 7 a.m. English class. It was 7:30 a.m. and I was
hungover as I stood there outside the door, listening. My parents had paid
for my books and I had sold them for drinking money. I had slid out of the
bedroom window the night before and had closed the neighborhood bar. I had a
throbbing beer hangover. I still felt drunk. I opened the door and walked
in. I stood there. Mr. Hamilton, the English instructor, was standing before
the class, singing, A record player was on, loud, and the class was singing
along with Mr. Hamilton. It was Gilbert and Sullivan.
Now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy . . .
I copied all the letters in a big round hand . . .
Now I am the ruler of the Queen's Navy . . .
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea . . .
And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navy . . .
I walked to the rear of the class and found an empty seat. Hamilton
walked over and shut off the record player. He was dressed in a black-and-
white pepper suit with a shirt-front of bright orange. He looked like Nelson
Eddy. Then he faced the class, glanced at his wrist watch and addressed me: