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There was trouble at the house, much fighting between my mother and my
father, and as a consequence, they kind of forgot about me. I got to play
football each Saturday. During one game I broke into the open behind the
last pass defender and I saw Chuck wing the ball. It was a long high spiral
and I kept running. I looked back over my shoulder, I saw it coming, it fell
right into my hands and I held it and was in for the touchdown.
Then I heard my father's voice yell "HENRY!" He was standing in front
of his house. I lobbed the ball to one of the guys on my team so they could
kick off and I walked down to where my father stood. He looked angry. I
could almost feel his anger. He always stood with one foot a little bit
forward, his face flushed, and I could see his pot belly going up and down
with his breathing. He was six feet two and like I said, he looked to be all
ears, mouth and nose when angry. I couldn't look at his eyes.
"All right," he said, "you're old enough to mow the lawn now. You're
big enough to mow it, edge it, water it, and water the flowers. It's time
you did something around here. It's time you got off your dead ass!"
"But I'm playing football with the guys. Saturday is the only real
chance I have."
"Are you talking back to me?"
"No."
I could see my mother watching from behind a curtain. Every Saturday
they cleaned the whole house. They vacuumed the rugs and polished the
furniture. They took up the rugs and waxed the hardwood floors and then
covered the floors with the rugs again. You couldn't even see where they had
been waxed.
The lawn mower and edger were in the driveway. He showed them to me.
"Now, you take this mower and go up and down the lawn and don't miss any
places. Dump the grass catcher here whenever it gets full. Now, when you've
mowed the lawn in one direction and finished, take the mower and mow the
lawn in the other direction, get it? First, you mow it north and south, then
you mow it east and west. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And don't look so god-damned unhappy or I'll really give you something
to be unhappy about! After you've finished mowing, then you take the
edger. You trim the edges of the lawn with the little mower on the edger.
Get under the hedge, get every blade of grass! Then . . . you
take this circular blade on the edger and you cut along the edge of
the lawn. It must be absolutely straight along the edge of the lawn!
Understand?"
"Yes."
"Now when you're done with that, you take these . . ."
My father showed me some shears.
". . . and you get down on your knees and you go around cutting off any
hairs that are still sticking up. Then you take the hose and you
water the hedges and the flower beds. Then you turn on the sprinkler and you
let it run fifteen minutes on each part of the lawn. You do all this on the
front lawn and in the flower garden, and then you repeat it on the rear lawn
and in the flower garden there. Are there any questions?"
"No."
"All right, now I want to tell you this. I am going to come out and
check everything when you're finished, and when you're done I
DON'T WANT TO SEE ONE HAIR STICKING UP IN EITHER THE FRONT OR BACK
LAWN! NOT ONE HAIR! IF THERE IS . . . !"
He turned, walked up the driveway, across his porch, opened the door,
slammed it, and he was gone inside of his house. I took the mower, rolled it
up the drive and began pushing it on its first run, north and south. I could
hear the guys down the street playing football . . .
I finished mowing, edging and clipping the front lawn. I watered the
flower beds, set the sprinkler going and began working my way toward the
backyard. There was a stretch of lawn in the center of the driveway leading
to the back. I got that too. I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too
miserable to be unhappy. It was like everything in the world had turned to
lawn and I was just pushing my way through it all. I kept pushing and
working but then suddenly I gave up. It would take hours, all day, and the
game would be over. The guys would go in to eat dinner, Saturday would be
finished, and I'd still be mowing.
As I began mowing the back lawn I noticed my mother and my father
standing on the back porch watching me. They just stood there silently, not
moving. Once as I pushed the mower past I heard my mother say to my father,
"Look, he doesn't sweat like you do when you mow the lawn. Look how
calm he looks."
"CALM? HE'S NOT CALM, HE'S DEAD!"
When I came by again, I heard him:
"PUSH THAT THING FASTER! YOU MOVE LIKE A SNAIL!"
I pushed it faster. It was hard to do but it felt good. I pushed it
faster and faster. I was almost running with the mower. The grass flew back
so hard that much of it flew over the grass catcher. I knew that would anger
him.
"YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!" he screamed. I saw him run off the back porch and
into the garage. He came out with a two-by-four about a foot long. From the
corner of my eye I saw him throw it. I saw it coming but made no attempt to
avoid it. It hit me on the back of my right leg. The pain was terrible. The
leg knotted up and I had to force myself to walk. I kept pushing the mower,
trying not to limp. When I swung around to cut another section of the lawn
the two-by-four was in the way. I picked it up, moved it aside and kept
mowing. The pain was getting worse. Then my father was standing beside me.
"STOP!"
I stopped.
"I want you to go back and mow the lawn over again where you didn't
catch the grass in the catcher! Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
My father walked back into the house. I saw him and my mother standing
on the back porch watching me.
The end of the job was to sweep up all the grass that had fallen on the
sidewalk, and then wash the sidewalk down. I was finally finished except for
sprinkling each section of the lawn in the back yard for fifteen minutes. I
dragged the hose back to set up the sprinkler when my father stepped out of
the house.
"Before you start sprinkling I want to check this lawn for hairs."
My father walked to the center of the lawn, got down on his hands and
knees and placed the side of his head low against the lawn looking for any
blade of grass that might be sticking up. He kept looking, twisting his
neck, peering around. I waited.
"AH HAH!"
He leaped up and ran toward the house.
"MAMA! MAMA!"
He ran into the house.
"What is it?"
"I found a hair!"
"You did?"
"Come, I'll show you!"
He came out of the house quickly with my mother following.
"Here! Here! I'll show you!"
He got down on his hands and knees.
"I can see it! I can see two of them!"
My mother got down with him. I wondered if they were crazy.
"See them?" he asked her. "Two hairs. See them?"
"Yes, Daddy, I see them . . ."
They both got up. My mother walked into the house. My father looked at
me.
"Inside. . ."
I walked to the porch and inside the house. My father followed me.
"Into the bathroom."
My father closed the door.
"Take your pants down."
I heard him get down the razor strop. My right leg still ached. It
didn't help, having felt the strop many times before. The whole world was
out there indifferent to it all, but that didn't help. Millions of people
were out there, dogs and cats and gophers, buildings, streets, but it didn't
matter. There was only father and the razor strop and the bathroom and me.
He used that strop to sharpen his razor, and early in the mornings I used to
hate him with his face white with lather, standing before the mirror
shaving himself. Then the first blow of the strop hit me. The sound of the
strop was flat and loud, the sound itself was almost as bad as the pain. The
strop landed again. It was as if my father was a machine, swinging that
strop. There was the feeling of being in a tomb. The strop landed again and
I thought, that is surely the last one. But it wasn't. It landed again. I
didn't hate him. He was just unbelievable, I just wanted to get away from
him. I couldn't cry. I was too sick to cry, too confused. The strop landed
once again. Then he stopped. I stood and waited. I heard him hanging up the
strop.
"Next time," he said, "I don't want to find any hairs."
I heard him walk out of the bathroom. He closed the bathroom door. The
walls were beautiful, the bathtub was beautiful, the wash basin and the
shower curtain were beautiful, and even the toilet was beautiful. My father
was gone.
Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We
got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn't need the
other guys much. They had more or less kicked Frank out of the group,
anyway, so he became friends with me. He wasn't like David, who had walked
home from school with me. Frank had a lot more going for him than David had.
I even joined the Catholic church because Frank went there. My parents liked
me going to church. The Sunday masses were very boring. And we had to go to
Catechism classes. We had to study the Catechism book. It was just boring
questions and answers.
One afternoon we were sitting on my front porch and I was reading the
Catechism out loud to Frank. I read the line, "God has bodily eyes and sees
all things."
"Bodily eyes?" Frank asked.
"Yes."
"You mean like this?" he asked.
He clenched his hands into fists and placed them over his eyes.
"He has milk bottles for eyes," Frank said, pushing his fists against
his eyes and turning toward me. Then he began laughing. I began laughing
too. We laughed a long time. Then Frank stopped.
"You think He heard us?"
"I guess so. If He can see everything He can probably hear everything
too."
"I'm scared," said Frank. "He might kill us. Do you think He'll kill
us?"
"I don't know."
"We better sit here and wait. Don't move. Sit still."
We sat on the steps and waited. We waited a long time.
"Maybe He isn't going to do it now," I said.
"He's going to take His time," said Frank. We waited another hour, then
we walked down to Frank's place. He was building a model airplane and I
wanted to take a look at it . . .
The afternoon came when we decided to go to our first confession. We
walked to the church. We knew one of the priests, the main man. We had met
him in an ice cream parlor and he had spoken to us. We had even gone to his
house once. He lived in a place next to the church with an old woman. We
stayed quite a while and asked all sorts of questions about God. Like, how
tall was He? And did He just sit in a chair all day? And did He go to the
bathroom like everybody else? The priest never did answer our questions
directly but still he seemed like a nice guy, he had a nice smile.
We walked to the church thinking about confession, thinking about what
it would be like. As we got near the church a stray dog began walking along
with us. He looked very thin and hungry. We stopped and petted him,
scratched his back.
"It's too bad dogs can't go to heaven," said Frank.
"Why can't they?"
"You gotta be baptized to go to heaven."
"We ought to baptize him."
"Think we should?"
"He deserves a chance to go to heaven."
I picked him up and we walked into the church. We took him to the bowl
of holy water and I held him there as Frank sprinkled the water on his
forehead.
"I hereby baptize you," said Frank.
We took him outside and put him back on the sidewalk again.
"He even looks different," I said.
The dog lost interest and walked off down the sidewalk. We went back
into the church, stopping first at the holy water, dipping our fingers into
it and making the sign of the cross. We both kneeled at a pew near the
confessional booth and waited. A fat woman came out from behind the curtain.
She had body odor. I could smell her strong odor as she walked past. Her
smell was mixed with the smell of the church, which smelled like piss. Every
Sunday people came to mass and smelled that piss-smell and nobody said
anything. I was going to tell the priest about it but I couldn't. Maybe it
was the candles.
"I'm going in," said Frank.
Then he got up, walked behind the curtain and was gone. He was in there
a long time. When he came out he was grinning.
"It was great, just great! You go in there now!"
I got up, pulled the curtain back and walked in. It was dark. I kneeled
down. All I could see in front of me was a screen. Frank said God was back
in there. I kneeled and tried to think of something bad that I had done, but
I couldn't think of anything. I just knelt there and tried and tried to
think of something but I couldn't. I didn't know what to do.
"Go ahead," said a voice. "Say something!"
The voice sounded angry. I didn't think there would be any voice. I
thought God had plenty of time. I was frightened. I decided to lie.
"All right," I said. "I . . . kicked my father. I . . . cursed my
mother . . . I stole money from my mother's purse. I spent it on candy bars.
I let the air out of Chuck's football. I looked up a little girl's dress. I
kicked my mother. I ate some of my snot. That's about all. Except today I
baptized a dog."
"You baptized a dog?"
I was finished. A Mortal Sin. No use going on. I got up to leave. I
didn't know if the voice recommended my saying some Hail Marys or if the
voice didn't say anything at all. I pulled the curtain back and there was
Frank waiting. We walked out of the church and were back on the street.
"I feel cleansed," said Frank, "don't you?"
"No."
I never went to confession again. It was worse than ten o'clock mass.
Frank liked airplanes. He lent me all his pulp magazines about World
War 1. The best was Flying Aces. The dog-fights were great, the Spads
and the Fokkers mixing it. I read all the stories. I didn't like the way the
Germans always lost but outside of that it was great.
I liked going over to Frank's place to borrow and return the magazines.
His mother wore high heels and had great legs. She sat in a chair with her
legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. And Frank's father sat in another
chair. His mother and father were always drinking. His father had been a
flyer in World War I and had crashed. He had a wire running down inside one
of his arms instead of a bone. He got a pension. But he was all right. When
we came in he always talked to us.
"How are you doing, boys? How's it going?"
Then we found out about the air show. It was going to be a big one.
Frank got hold of a map and we decided to get there by hitch-hiking. I
thought we'd probably never make it to the air show but Frank said we would.
His father gave us the money.
We went down to the boulevard with our map and we got a ride right
away. It was an old guy and his lips were very wet, he kept licking his lips
with his tongue and he had on an old checkered shirt which he had buttoned
to the throat. He wasn't wearing a necktie. He had strange eyebrows which
curled down into his eyes.
"My name's Daniel," he said. Frank said, "This is Henry. And I'm
Frank."
Daniel drove along. Then he took out a Lucky Strike and lit it.
"You boys live at home?"
"Yes," said Frank.
"Yes," I said.
Daniel's cigarette was already wet from his mouth. He stopped the car
at a signal.
"I was at the beach yesterday and they caught a couple of guys under
the pier. The cops caught them and threw them in jail. One guy was sucking
the other guy off. Now what business is that of the cops? It made me mad."
The signal changed and Daniel pulled away.
"Don't you guys think that was stupid? The cops stopping those guys
from sucking-off?"
We didn't answer.
"Well," said Daniel, "don't you think a couple of guys have a right to
a good blow job?"
"I guess so," said Frank.
"Yeah," I said.
"Where are you boys going?" asked Daniel,
"The air show," said Frank.
"Ah, the air show! I like air shows! I'll tell you what, you boys let
me go with you and I'll drive you all the way there."
We didn't answer.
"Well, how about it?"
"All right," said Frank.
Frank's father had given us admission and transportation money, but we
had decided to save the transportation money by hitch-hiking.
"Maybe you boys would rather go swimming," said Daniel.
"No," said Frank, "we want to see the air show."
"Swimming's more fun. We can race each other. I know a place where we
can be alone. I'd never go under the pier."
"We want to go to the air show," said Frank.
"All right," said Daniel, "we'll go to the air show."
When we got to the air show parking lot we got out of the car and while
Daniel was locking it Frank said, "RUN!"
We ran toward the admission gate and Daniel saw us running away.
"HEY, YOU LITTLE PERVERTS! COME BACK HERE! COME BACK!"
We kept running.
"Christ," said Frank, "that son-of-a-bitch is crazy!"
We were almost at the admission gate.
"I'LL GET YOU BOYS!"
We paid and ran inside. The show hadn't started yet but a large crowd
was already there.
"Let's hide under the grandstand so he can't find us," said Frank.
The grandstand was built of temporary planks for the people to sit on.
We went underneath. We saw two guys standing under the center of the
grandstand and looking up. They were about 13 or 14 years old, about two or
three years older than we were.
"What are they looking at?" I asked.
"Let's go see," said Frank.
We walked over. One of the guys saw us coming.
"Hey, you punks, get out of here!"
"What are you guys looking at?" Frank asked.
"I told you punks to get out of here!"
"Ah, hell, Marty, let 'em have a look!"
We walked over to where they were standing. We looked up.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Hell, can't you see it?" one of the big guys asked.
"See what?"
"It's a cunt."
"A cunt? Where?"
"Look, right there! See it?"
He pointed.
There was a woman sitting with her skirt bunched back underneath her.
She didn't have any panties on, and looking up between the planks you could
see her cunt.
"See it?"
"Yeah, I see it. It's a cunt," said Frank.
"All right, now you guys get out of here and keep your mouths shut."
"But we want to look at it a little longer," said Frank. "Just let us
look a little longer."
"All right, but not too long."
We stood there looking up at it.
"I can see it," I said.
"It's a cunt," said Frank.
"It's really a cunt," I said.
"Yeah," said one of the big guys, "that's what it is."
"I'll always remember this," I said.
"All right, you guys, it's time to go."
"What for?" asked Frank. "Why can't we keep looking?"
"Because," said one of the big guys, "I'm going to do something.
Now get out of here!"
We walked off.
"I wonder what he's going to do?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Frank, "maybe he's going to throw a rock at
it."
We got out from under the grandstand and looked around for Daniel. We
didn't see him anywhere.
"Maybe he left," I said.
"A guy like that doesn't like airplanes," said Frank. We climbed up
into the grandstand and waited for the show to begin. I looked around at all
the women.
"I wonder which one she was?" I asked.
"I guess you can't tell from the top," said Frank. Then the air show
began. There was a guy in a Fokker doing stunts. He was good, he looped and
circled, stalled, pulled out of it, skimmed the ground, and did an Immelman.
His best trick consisted of a hook on each wing. Two red handkerchiefs were
fastened to poles about six feet above the ground. The Fokker flew down,
dipped a wing, and picked a handkerchief off the pole with the hook on its
wing. Then it came around, dipped the other wing, and got the other
handkerchief.
Then there were some sky-writing acts which were dull and some balloon
races which were silly, and then they had something good -- a race around
four pylons, close to the ground. The airplanes had to circle the pylons
twelve times and the one that finished first got the prize. The pilot was
automatically disqualified if he circled above the pylons. The racing planes
sat on the ground warming up. They were all built differently. One had a
long slim body with hardly any wings. Another was fat and round, it looked
like a football. Another was almost all wings and no body. Each was
different and each was grandly painted. The prize for the winner was $100.
They sat there warming up, and you knew you were really going to see
something exciting. The motors roared like they wanted to tear away from the
airplanes and then the starter dropped the flag and they were off. There
were six planes and there was hardly room for them as they went around the
pylons. Some of the flyers took them low, others high, some in the middle.
Some went faster and lost ground rounding the pylons; others went slower and
made sharper turns. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Then one of them
lost a wing. The plane bounced along the ground, the engine shooting flame
and smoke. It flipped over on its back and the ambulance and the fire truck
came running up. The other planes kept going. Then the engine just exploded
in another plane, came loose, and the remainder of the plane dropped down
like something lost. It hit the ground and everything came apart. But a
strange thing happened. The pilot just slid back the cockpit cowling and
climbed out and waited for the ambulance. He waved to the crowd and they
applauded like mad. It was miraculous.
Suddenly the worst happened. Two planes tangled wings while circling
the pylons. They both spun down and crashed and both caught on fire. The
ambulance and fire engine ran up again. We saw them pull the two guys out
and put them on stretchers. It was sad, those two brave good guys, both
probably crippled for life or dead.
That left only two planes, number 5 and number 2, going for the grand
prize. Number 5 was the slim plane almost without wings and it was much
faster than number 2. Number 2 was the football, he didn't have much speed,
but he made up a lot of ground on the turns. It didn't help much. The 5 kept
lapping the 2.
"Plane number 5," said the announcer, "is now two laps ahead with two
laps to go."
It looked like number 5 was going to get the grand prize. Then he ran
into a pylon. Instead of making the turn he just ran into the pylon and
knocked the whole thing down. He kept going, straight down the field, lower
and lower, the engine at full throttle, and then he hit the ground. The
wheels hit and the plane bounced high into the air, flipped over, skidded
along the ground. The ambulance and fire engine had a long way to go.
Number 2 just kept circling the three pylons that were left and the one
fallen pylon and then he landed. He had won the grand prize. He climbed out.
He was a fat guy, just like his airplane. I had expected a handsome tough
guy. He had been lucky. Hardly anybody applauded.
To close the show they had a parachute contest. There was a circle
painted on the ground, a big bullseye, and the one who landed the closest
won. It seemed dull to me. There wasn't much noise or action. The jumpers
just bailed out and aimed for the circle.
"This isn't very good," I told Frank.
"Naw," he said.
They kept coming down near the circle. More jumpers bailed out of the
planes overhead. Then the crowd started oohing and ahhhing.
"Look!" said Frank.
One chute had only partially opened. There wasn't much air in it. He
was falling faster than the others. You could see him kicking his legs and
working his arms trying to untangle the parachute.
"Jesus Christ," said Frank.
The guy kept dropping, lower and lower, you could see him better and
better. He kept yanking at the cords trying to untangle the chute but
nothing worked. He hit the ground, bounced just a bit, then fell back and
was still. The half-filled chute came down over him.
They cancelled the remainder of the jumps. We walked out with the
people, still watching out for Daniel.
"Let's not hitch-hike back," I said to Frank.
"All right," he said.
Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the
air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.
The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less
hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn't chosen for the
homeroom teams but I was threatened less. David and his violin had gone
away. The family had moved. I walked home alone. I was often trailed by one
or two guys, of whom Juan was the worst, but they didn't start anything.
Juan smoked cigarettes. He'd walk behind me smoking a cigarette and he
always had a different buddy with him. He never followed me alone. It scared
me. I wished they'd go away. Yet, in another way, I didn't care. I didn't
like Juan. I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I
think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or
looked or talked, but I didn't like my father or mother either. I still had
the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a
slight nausea in my stomach. Juan was dark-skinned and he wore a brass chain
instead of a belt. The girls were afraid of him, and the boys too. He and
one of his buddies followed me home almost every day. I'd walk into the
house and they'd stand outside. Juan would smoke his cigarette, looking
tough, and his buddy would stand there. I'd watch them through the curtain.
Finally, they would walk off.
Mrs. Fretag was our English teacher. The first day in class she asked
us each our names.
"I want to get to know all of you," she said. She smiled.
"Now, each of you has a father, I'm sure. I think it would be
interesting if we found out what each of your fathers does for a living.
We'll start with seat number one and we will go around the class. Now,
Marie, what does your father do for a living?"
"He's a gardener."
"Ah, that's nice! Seat number two . . . Andrew, what does your father
do?"
It was terrible. All the fathers in my immediate neighborhood had lost
their jobs. My father had lost his job. Gene's father sat on his front porch
all day. All the fathers were without jobs except Chuck's who worked in a
meat plant. He drove a red car with the meat company's name on the side.
"My father is a fireman," said seat number two.
"Ah, that's interesting," said Mrs. Fretag. "Seat number three."
"My father is a lawyer."
"Seat number four."
"My father is a . . . policeman . . ."
What was I going to say? Maybe only the fathers in my neighborhood were
without jobs. I'd heard of the stock market crash. It meant something bad.
Maybe the stock market had only crashed in our neighborhood.
"Seat number eighteen."
"My father is a movie actor . . ."
"Nineteen..."
"My father is a concert violinist . . ."
"Twenty . . ."
"My father works in the circus . . ."
"Twenty-one.. ."
"My father is a bus driver . . ."
"Twenty-two..."
"My father sings in the opera . . ."
"Twenty-three.. ."
Twenty-three. That was me.
"My father is a dentist," I said.
Mrs. Fretag went right on through the class until she reached number
thirty-three.
"My father doesn't have a job," said number thirty-three. Shit, I
thought, I wish I had thought of that.
One day Mrs. Fretag gave us an assignment.
"Our distinguished President, President Herbert Hoover, is going to
visit Los Angeles this Saturday to speak. I want all of you to go hear our
President. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about
what you think of President Hoover's speech."
Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to
get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I
got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also
got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do
or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to
go see President Hoover.
So, I didn't go. That Sunday I took some paper and sat down to write
about how I had seen the President. His open car, trailing flowing
streamers, had entered the football stadium. One car, full of secret service
agents went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave
men with guns to protect our President. The crowd rose as the President's
car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was
the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls
circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President. And there were
skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like "Prosperity is
just around the corner." The President stood up in his car, and just as he
did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. It
was almost as if God knew too. Then the cars stopped and our great
President, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker's
platform. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky
and landed on the speaker's platform near him. The President waved to the
bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the
people listened. I couldn't quite hear the speech because I was sitting too
near a popcorn machine which made a lot of noise popping the kernels, but I
think I heard him say that the problems in Manchuria were not serious, and
that at home everything was going to be all right, we shouldn't worry, all
we had to do was to believe in America. There would be enough jobs for
everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough
fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open
again. Our friends in South America would pay their debts. Soon we would all
sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great
country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the
socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever . . .
The President listened to the applause, waved, then went back to his
car, got in, and was driven off followed by carloads of secret service
agents as the sun began to sink, the afternoon turning into evening, red and
gold and wonderful. We had seen and heard President Herbert Hoover.
I turned in my essay on Monday. On Tuesday Mrs. Fretag faced the class.
"I've read all your essays about our distinguished President's visit to
Los Angeles. I was there. Some of you, I noticed, could not attend for one
reason or another. For those of you who could not attend, I would like to
read this essay by Henry Chinaski."
The class was terribly silent. I was the most unpopular member of the
class by far. It was like a knife slicing through all their hearts.
"This is very creative," said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my
essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words
filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and
bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor.
Some of the prettiest girls in the class began to sneak glances at me. All
the tough guys were pissed. Their essays hadn't been worth shit. I drank in
my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them. I saw Juan
sitting there like I'd punched him in the face. I stretched out my legs and
leaned back. All too soon it was over.
"Upon this grand note," said Mrs. Fretag, "I hereby dismiss the class .
. ."
They got up and began packing out.
"Not you, Henry," said Mrs. Fretag. I sat in my chair and Mrs. Fretag
stood there looking at me. Then she said, "Henry, were you there?"
I sat there trying to think of an answer. I couldn't. I said, "No, I
wasn't there."
She smiled. "That makes it all the more remarkable."
"Yes, ma'am . . ."
"You can leave, Henry."
I got up and walked out. I began my walk home. So, that's what they
wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That's what they needed. People were fools. It
was going to be easy for me. I looked around. Juan and his buddy were not
following me. Things were looking up.
There were times when Frank and I were friendly with Chuck, Eddie and
Gene. But something would always happen (usually I caused it) and then I
would be out, and Frank would be partly out because he was my friend. It was
good hanging out with Frank. We hitch-hiked everywhere. One of our
favorite places was this movie studio. We crawled under a fence surrounded
by tall weeds to get in. We saw the huge wall and steps they used in the
King kong movie. We saw the fake streets and the fake buildings. The
buildings were just fronts with nothing behind them. We walked all over that
movie lot many times until the guard would chase us out. We hitch-hiked down
to the beach to the Fun House. We would stay in the Fun House three or four
hours. We memorized that place. It really wasn't that good. People shit and
pissed in there and the place was littered with empty bottles. And there
were rubbers in the crapper, hardened and wrinkled. Bums slept in the Fun
House after it closed. There really wasn't anything funny about the Fun
House. The House of Mirrors was good at first. We stayed in there until we
had memorized how to walk through the maze of mirrors and then it wasn't any
good any more. Frank and I never got into fights. We were curious about
things. There was a movie featuring a Caesarean operation on the pier and we
went in and saw it. It was bloody. Each time they cut into the woman blood
squirted out, gushers of it, and then they pulled out the baby. We went
fishing off the pier and when we caught something we would sell it to the
old Jewish ladies who sat . on the benches. I got some beatings from my
father for running off with Frank but I figured I was going to get the
beatings anyhow so I might as well have the fun.
But I continued to have trouble with the other kids in the
neighborhood. My father didn't help. For example he bought me an Indian suit
and a bow and arrow when all the other kids had cowboy outfits. It was the
same then as in the schoolyard -- I was ganged-up on. They'd circle me with
their cowboy outfits and their guns, but when it got bad I'd just put an
arrow into the bow, pull it back and wait. That always moved them off. I
never wore that Indian suit unless my father made me put it on.
I kept falling out with Chuck, Eddie and Gene and then we'd get back
together and then we'd fall out all over again.
One afternoon I was just standing around. I wasn't exactly in good or
in bad with the gang, I was just waiting around for them to forget the last
thing I had done that had made them angry. There wasn't anything else to do.
Just white air and waiting. I got tired of standing around and decided to
walk up the hill to Washington Boulevard, east to the movie house and then
back down to West Adams Boulevard. Maybe I'd walk past the church. I started
walking. Then I heard Eddie:
"Hey, Henry, come here!"
The guys were standing in a driveway between two houses. Eddie, Frank,
Chuck and Gene. They were watching something. They were bent over a large
bush watching something.
"Come here, Henry!"
"What is it?"
I walked up to where they were bending over.
"It's a spider getting ready to eat a fly!" said Eddie. I looked. The
spider had spun a web between the branches of a bush and a fly had gotten
caught in there. The spider was very excited. The fly shook the whole web as
it tried to pull free. It was buzzing wildly and helplessly as the spider
wound the fly's wings and body in more and more spider web. The spider went
around and around, webbing the fly completely as it buzzed. The spider was
very big and ugly.
"It's going to close in now!" yelled Chuck. "It's going to sink its
fangs!"
I pushed in between the guys, kicked out and knocked the spider and the
fly out of the web with my foot.
"What the hell have you done?" asked Chuck.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" yelled Eddie. "You've spoiled it!"
I backed off. Even Frank stared at me strangely.
"Let's get his ass!" yelled Gene.
They were between me and the street. I ran down the driveway into the
backyard of a strange house. They were after me. I ran through the backyard
and behind the garage. There was a six-foot lattice fence covered with
vines. I went straight up the fence and over the top. I ran through the next
backyard and up the driveway and as I ran up the driveway I looked back and
saw Chuck just reaching the top of the fence. Then he slipped and fell into
the yard landing on his back. "Shit!" he said. I took a right and kept
running. I ran for seven or eight blocks and then sat down on somebody's
lawn and rested. There was nobody around. I wondered if Frank would forgive
me. I wondered if the others would forgive me. I decided to stay out of
sight for a week or so . . .
And so they forgot. Not much happened for a while. There were many days
of nothing. Then Frank's father committed suicide. Nobody knew why. Frank
told me he and his mother would have to move to a smaller place in another
neighborhood. He said he would write. And he did. Only we didn't write. We
drew cartoons. About cannibals. His cartoons were about troubles with
cannibals and then I'd continue the cartoon story where his left off, about
the troubles with the cannibals. My mother found one of Frank's cartoons and
showed it to my father and our letter writing was over.
5th grade became 6th grade and I began to think about running away from
home but I decided that if most of our fathers couldn't get jobs how in the
hell could a guy under five feet tall get one? John Dillinger was
everybody's hero, adults and kids alike. He took the money from the banks.
And there was Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker and Machine Gun Kelly.
People began going to vacant lots where weeds grew. They had learned
that some of the weeds could be cooked and eaten. There were fist fights
between men in the vacant lots and on street corners. Everybody was angry.
The men smoked Bull Durham and didn't take any shit from anybody. They let
the little round Bull Durham tags hang out of their front shirt pockets and
they could all roll a cigarette with one hand. When you saw a man with a
Bull Durham tag dangling, that meant look out. People went around talking
about 2nd and 3rd mortgages. My father came home one night with a broken arm
and two black eyes. My mother had a low paying job somewhere. And each boy
in the neighborhood had one pair of Sunday pants and one pair of daily
pants. When shoes wore out there weren't any new ones. The department stores
had soles and heels they sold for 15 or 20 cents along with the glue, and
these were glued to the bottoms of the worn out shoes. Gene's parents had
one rooster and some chickens in their backyard, and if some chicken didn't
lay enough eggs they ate it.
As for me, it was the same -- at school, and with Chuck, Gene and
Eddie. Not only did the grownups get mean, the kids got mean, and even the
animals got mean. It was like they took their cue from the people.
One day I was standing around, waiting as usual, not friendly with the
gang, no longer really wanting to be, when Gene rushed up to me, "Hey,
Henry, come on!"
"What is it?"
"COME ON!"
Gene started running and I ran after him. We ran down the driveway and
into the Gibsons' backyard. The Gibsons had a large brick wall all around
their backyard.
"LOOK! HE'S GOT THE CAT CORNERED! HE'S GOING TO KILL IT!"
There was a small white cat backed into a corner of the wall. It
couldn't go up and it couldn't go in one direction or the other. Its back
was arched and it was spitting, its claws ready. But it was very small and
Chuck's bulldog, Barney, was growling and moving closer and closer. I got
the feeling that the cat had been put there by the guys and then the bulldog
had been brought in. I felt it strongly because of the way Chuck and Eddie
and Gene were watching: they had a guilty look.
"You guys did this," I said.
"No," said Chuck, "it's the cat's fault. It came in here. Let it fight
its way out."
"I hate you bastards," I said.
"Barney's going to kill that cat," said Gene.
"Barney will rip it to pieces," said Eddie. "He's afraid of the claws
but when he moves in it will be all over."
Barney was a large brown bulldog with slobbering jaws. He was dumb and
fat with senseless brown eyes. His growl was steady and he kept inching
forward, the hairs standing up on his neck and along his back. I felt like
kicking him in his stupid ass but I figured he would rip my leg off. He was
entirely intent upon the kill. The white cat wasn't even fully grown. It
hissed and waited, pressed against the wall, a beautiful creature, so clean.
The dog moved slowly forward. Why did the guys need this? This wasn't a
matter of courage, it was just dirty play. Where were the grownups? Where
were the authorities? They were always around accusing me. Now where were
they?
I thought of rushing in, grabbing the cat and running, but I didn't
have the nerve. I was afraid that the bulldog would attack me. The knowledge
that I didn't have the courage to do what was necessary made me feel
terrible. I began to feel physically sick. I was weak. I didn't want it to
happen yet I couldn't think of any way to stop it.
"Chuck," I said, "let the cat go, please. Call your dog off."
Chuck didn't answer. He just kept watching. Then he said, "Barney, go
get him! Get that cat!"
Barney moved forward and suddenly the cat leaped. It was a furious blur
of white and hissing, claws and teeth. Barney backed off and the cat
retreated to the wall again.
"Go get him, Barney," Chuck said again.
"God damn you, shut up!" I told him.
"Don't talk to me that way," Chuck said. Barney began to move in again.
"You guys set this up," I said.
I heard a slight sound behind us and looked around. I saw old Mr.
Gibson watching from behind his bedroom window. He wanted the cat to get
killed too, just like the guys. Why?
Old Mr. Gibson was our mailman with the false teeth. He had a wife who
stayed in the house all the time. She only came out to empty the garbage.
Mrs. Gibson always wore a net over her hair and she was always dressed in a
nightgown, bathrobe and slippers. Then as I watched, Mrs. Gibson, dressed as
always came and stood next to her husband, waiting for the kill. Old Mr.
Gibson was one of the few men in the neighborhood with a job but he still
needed to see the cat killed. Gibson was just like Chuck, Eddie and Gene.
There were too many of them.
The bulldog moved closer. I couldn't watch the kill. I felt a great
shame at leaving the cat like that. There was always the chance that the cat
might try to escape, but I knew that they would prevent it. That cat wasn't
only facing the bulldog, it was facing Humanity.
I turned and walked away, out of the yard, up the driveway and to the
sidewalk. I walked along the sidewalk toward where I lived and there in the
front yard of his home, my father stood waiting.
"Where have you been?" he asked. I didn't answer.
"Get inside," he said, "and stop looking so unhappy or I'll give you
something that will really make you unhappy!"
Then I started attending Mt. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from
Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another
gang of giants came from other schools. Our 7th grade class was bigger than
the 9th grade class. When we lined up for gym it was funny, most of us were
bigger than the gym teachers. We would stand there for roll call, slouched,
our guts hanging out, heads down, shoulders slumped.
"Jesus Christ," said Wagner, the gym teacher, "pull your shoulders
back, stand straight!"
Nobody would change position. We were the way we were, and we didn't
want to be anything else. We all came from Depression families and most of
us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I
think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or
father, and as a consequence, they kind of forgot about me. I got to play
football each Saturday. During one game I broke into the open behind the
last pass defender and I saw Chuck wing the ball. It was a long high spiral
and I kept running. I looked back over my shoulder, I saw it coming, it fell
right into my hands and I held it and was in for the touchdown.
Then I heard my father's voice yell "HENRY!" He was standing in front
of his house. I lobbed the ball to one of the guys on my team so they could
kick off and I walked down to where my father stood. He looked angry. I
could almost feel his anger. He always stood with one foot a little bit
forward, his face flushed, and I could see his pot belly going up and down
with his breathing. He was six feet two and like I said, he looked to be all
ears, mouth and nose when angry. I couldn't look at his eyes.
"All right," he said, "you're old enough to mow the lawn now. You're
big enough to mow it, edge it, water it, and water the flowers. It's time
you did something around here. It's time you got off your dead ass!"
"But I'm playing football with the guys. Saturday is the only real
chance I have."
"Are you talking back to me?"
"No."
I could see my mother watching from behind a curtain. Every Saturday
they cleaned the whole house. They vacuumed the rugs and polished the
furniture. They took up the rugs and waxed the hardwood floors and then
covered the floors with the rugs again. You couldn't even see where they had
been waxed.
The lawn mower and edger were in the driveway. He showed them to me.
"Now, you take this mower and go up and down the lawn and don't miss any
places. Dump the grass catcher here whenever it gets full. Now, when you've
mowed the lawn in one direction and finished, take the mower and mow the
lawn in the other direction, get it? First, you mow it north and south, then
you mow it east and west. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And don't look so god-damned unhappy or I'll really give you something
to be unhappy about! After you've finished mowing, then you take the
edger. You trim the edges of the lawn with the little mower on the edger.
Get under the hedge, get every blade of grass! Then . . . you
take this circular blade on the edger and you cut along the edge of
the lawn. It must be absolutely straight along the edge of the lawn!
Understand?"
"Yes."
"Now when you're done with that, you take these . . ."
My father showed me some shears.
". . . and you get down on your knees and you go around cutting off any
hairs that are still sticking up. Then you take the hose and you
water the hedges and the flower beds. Then you turn on the sprinkler and you
let it run fifteen minutes on each part of the lawn. You do all this on the
front lawn and in the flower garden, and then you repeat it on the rear lawn
and in the flower garden there. Are there any questions?"
"No."
"All right, now I want to tell you this. I am going to come out and
check everything when you're finished, and when you're done I
DON'T WANT TO SEE ONE HAIR STICKING UP IN EITHER THE FRONT OR BACK
LAWN! NOT ONE HAIR! IF THERE IS . . . !"
He turned, walked up the driveway, across his porch, opened the door,
slammed it, and he was gone inside of his house. I took the mower, rolled it
up the drive and began pushing it on its first run, north and south. I could
hear the guys down the street playing football . . .
I finished mowing, edging and clipping the front lawn. I watered the
flower beds, set the sprinkler going and began working my way toward the
backyard. There was a stretch of lawn in the center of the driveway leading
to the back. I got that too. I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too
miserable to be unhappy. It was like everything in the world had turned to
lawn and I was just pushing my way through it all. I kept pushing and
working but then suddenly I gave up. It would take hours, all day, and the
game would be over. The guys would go in to eat dinner, Saturday would be
finished, and I'd still be mowing.
As I began mowing the back lawn I noticed my mother and my father
standing on the back porch watching me. They just stood there silently, not
moving. Once as I pushed the mower past I heard my mother say to my father,
"Look, he doesn't sweat like you do when you mow the lawn. Look how
calm he looks."
"CALM? HE'S NOT CALM, HE'S DEAD!"
When I came by again, I heard him:
"PUSH THAT THING FASTER! YOU MOVE LIKE A SNAIL!"
I pushed it faster. It was hard to do but it felt good. I pushed it
faster and faster. I was almost running with the mower. The grass flew back
so hard that much of it flew over the grass catcher. I knew that would anger
him.
"YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!" he screamed. I saw him run off the back porch and
into the garage. He came out with a two-by-four about a foot long. From the
corner of my eye I saw him throw it. I saw it coming but made no attempt to
avoid it. It hit me on the back of my right leg. The pain was terrible. The
leg knotted up and I had to force myself to walk. I kept pushing the mower,
trying not to limp. When I swung around to cut another section of the lawn
the two-by-four was in the way. I picked it up, moved it aside and kept
mowing. The pain was getting worse. Then my father was standing beside me.
"STOP!"
I stopped.
"I want you to go back and mow the lawn over again where you didn't
catch the grass in the catcher! Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
My father walked back into the house. I saw him and my mother standing
on the back porch watching me.
The end of the job was to sweep up all the grass that had fallen on the
sidewalk, and then wash the sidewalk down. I was finally finished except for
sprinkling each section of the lawn in the back yard for fifteen minutes. I
dragged the hose back to set up the sprinkler when my father stepped out of
the house.
"Before you start sprinkling I want to check this lawn for hairs."
My father walked to the center of the lawn, got down on his hands and
knees and placed the side of his head low against the lawn looking for any
blade of grass that might be sticking up. He kept looking, twisting his
neck, peering around. I waited.
"AH HAH!"
He leaped up and ran toward the house.
"MAMA! MAMA!"
He ran into the house.
"What is it?"
"I found a hair!"
"You did?"
"Come, I'll show you!"
He came out of the house quickly with my mother following.
"Here! Here! I'll show you!"
He got down on his hands and knees.
"I can see it! I can see two of them!"
My mother got down with him. I wondered if they were crazy.
"See them?" he asked her. "Two hairs. See them?"
"Yes, Daddy, I see them . . ."
They both got up. My mother walked into the house. My father looked at
me.
"Inside. . ."
I walked to the porch and inside the house. My father followed me.
"Into the bathroom."
My father closed the door.
"Take your pants down."
I heard him get down the razor strop. My right leg still ached. It
didn't help, having felt the strop many times before. The whole world was
out there indifferent to it all, but that didn't help. Millions of people
were out there, dogs and cats and gophers, buildings, streets, but it didn't
matter. There was only father and the razor strop and the bathroom and me.
He used that strop to sharpen his razor, and early in the mornings I used to
hate him with his face white with lather, standing before the mirror
shaving himself. Then the first blow of the strop hit me. The sound of the
strop was flat and loud, the sound itself was almost as bad as the pain. The
strop landed again. It was as if my father was a machine, swinging that
strop. There was the feeling of being in a tomb. The strop landed again and
I thought, that is surely the last one. But it wasn't. It landed again. I
didn't hate him. He was just unbelievable, I just wanted to get away from
him. I couldn't cry. I was too sick to cry, too confused. The strop landed
once again. Then he stopped. I stood and waited. I heard him hanging up the
strop.
"Next time," he said, "I don't want to find any hairs."
I heard him walk out of the bathroom. He closed the bathroom door. The
walls were beautiful, the bathtub was beautiful, the wash basin and the
shower curtain were beautiful, and even the toilet was beautiful. My father
was gone.
Of all the guys left in the neighborhood, Frank was the nicest. We
got to be friends, we got to going around together, we didn't need the
other guys much. They had more or less kicked Frank out of the group,
anyway, so he became friends with me. He wasn't like David, who had walked
home from school with me. Frank had a lot more going for him than David had.
I even joined the Catholic church because Frank went there. My parents liked
me going to church. The Sunday masses were very boring. And we had to go to
Catechism classes. We had to study the Catechism book. It was just boring
questions and answers.
One afternoon we were sitting on my front porch and I was reading the
Catechism out loud to Frank. I read the line, "God has bodily eyes and sees
all things."
"Bodily eyes?" Frank asked.
"Yes."
"You mean like this?" he asked.
He clenched his hands into fists and placed them over his eyes.
"He has milk bottles for eyes," Frank said, pushing his fists against
his eyes and turning toward me. Then he began laughing. I began laughing
too. We laughed a long time. Then Frank stopped.
"You think He heard us?"
"I guess so. If He can see everything He can probably hear everything
too."
"I'm scared," said Frank. "He might kill us. Do you think He'll kill
us?"
"I don't know."
"We better sit here and wait. Don't move. Sit still."
We sat on the steps and waited. We waited a long time.
"Maybe He isn't going to do it now," I said.
"He's going to take His time," said Frank. We waited another hour, then
we walked down to Frank's place. He was building a model airplane and I
wanted to take a look at it . . .
The afternoon came when we decided to go to our first confession. We
walked to the church. We knew one of the priests, the main man. We had met
him in an ice cream parlor and he had spoken to us. We had even gone to his
house once. He lived in a place next to the church with an old woman. We
stayed quite a while and asked all sorts of questions about God. Like, how
tall was He? And did He just sit in a chair all day? And did He go to the
bathroom like everybody else? The priest never did answer our questions
directly but still he seemed like a nice guy, he had a nice smile.
We walked to the church thinking about confession, thinking about what
it would be like. As we got near the church a stray dog began walking along
with us. He looked very thin and hungry. We stopped and petted him,
scratched his back.
"It's too bad dogs can't go to heaven," said Frank.
"Why can't they?"
"You gotta be baptized to go to heaven."
"We ought to baptize him."
"Think we should?"
"He deserves a chance to go to heaven."
I picked him up and we walked into the church. We took him to the bowl
of holy water and I held him there as Frank sprinkled the water on his
forehead.
"I hereby baptize you," said Frank.
We took him outside and put him back on the sidewalk again.
"He even looks different," I said.
The dog lost interest and walked off down the sidewalk. We went back
into the church, stopping first at the holy water, dipping our fingers into
it and making the sign of the cross. We both kneeled at a pew near the
confessional booth and waited. A fat woman came out from behind the curtain.
She had body odor. I could smell her strong odor as she walked past. Her
smell was mixed with the smell of the church, which smelled like piss. Every
Sunday people came to mass and smelled that piss-smell and nobody said
anything. I was going to tell the priest about it but I couldn't. Maybe it
was the candles.
"I'm going in," said Frank.
Then he got up, walked behind the curtain and was gone. He was in there
a long time. When he came out he was grinning.
"It was great, just great! You go in there now!"
I got up, pulled the curtain back and walked in. It was dark. I kneeled
down. All I could see in front of me was a screen. Frank said God was back
in there. I kneeled and tried to think of something bad that I had done, but
I couldn't think of anything. I just knelt there and tried and tried to
think of something but I couldn't. I didn't know what to do.
"Go ahead," said a voice. "Say something!"
The voice sounded angry. I didn't think there would be any voice. I
thought God had plenty of time. I was frightened. I decided to lie.
"All right," I said. "I . . . kicked my father. I . . . cursed my
mother . . . I stole money from my mother's purse. I spent it on candy bars.
I let the air out of Chuck's football. I looked up a little girl's dress. I
kicked my mother. I ate some of my snot. That's about all. Except today I
baptized a dog."
"You baptized a dog?"
I was finished. A Mortal Sin. No use going on. I got up to leave. I
didn't know if the voice recommended my saying some Hail Marys or if the
voice didn't say anything at all. I pulled the curtain back and there was
Frank waiting. We walked out of the church and were back on the street.
"I feel cleansed," said Frank, "don't you?"
"No."
I never went to confession again. It was worse than ten o'clock mass.
Frank liked airplanes. He lent me all his pulp magazines about World
War 1. The best was Flying Aces. The dog-fights were great, the Spads
and the Fokkers mixing it. I read all the stories. I didn't like the way the
Germans always lost but outside of that it was great.
I liked going over to Frank's place to borrow and return the magazines.
His mother wore high heels and had great legs. She sat in a chair with her
legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. And Frank's father sat in another
chair. His mother and father were always drinking. His father had been a
flyer in World War I and had crashed. He had a wire running down inside one
of his arms instead of a bone. He got a pension. But he was all right. When
we came in he always talked to us.
"How are you doing, boys? How's it going?"
Then we found out about the air show. It was going to be a big one.
Frank got hold of a map and we decided to get there by hitch-hiking. I
thought we'd probably never make it to the air show but Frank said we would.
His father gave us the money.
We went down to the boulevard with our map and we got a ride right
away. It was an old guy and his lips were very wet, he kept licking his lips
with his tongue and he had on an old checkered shirt which he had buttoned
to the throat. He wasn't wearing a necktie. He had strange eyebrows which
curled down into his eyes.
"My name's Daniel," he said. Frank said, "This is Henry. And I'm
Frank."
Daniel drove along. Then he took out a Lucky Strike and lit it.
"You boys live at home?"
"Yes," said Frank.
"Yes," I said.
Daniel's cigarette was already wet from his mouth. He stopped the car
at a signal.
"I was at the beach yesterday and they caught a couple of guys under
the pier. The cops caught them and threw them in jail. One guy was sucking
the other guy off. Now what business is that of the cops? It made me mad."
The signal changed and Daniel pulled away.
"Don't you guys think that was stupid? The cops stopping those guys
from sucking-off?"
We didn't answer.
"Well," said Daniel, "don't you think a couple of guys have a right to
a good blow job?"
"I guess so," said Frank.
"Yeah," I said.
"Where are you boys going?" asked Daniel,
"The air show," said Frank.
"Ah, the air show! I like air shows! I'll tell you what, you boys let
me go with you and I'll drive you all the way there."
We didn't answer.
"Well, how about it?"
"All right," said Frank.
Frank's father had given us admission and transportation money, but we
had decided to save the transportation money by hitch-hiking.
"Maybe you boys would rather go swimming," said Daniel.
"No," said Frank, "we want to see the air show."
"Swimming's more fun. We can race each other. I know a place where we
can be alone. I'd never go under the pier."
"We want to go to the air show," said Frank.
"All right," said Daniel, "we'll go to the air show."
When we got to the air show parking lot we got out of the car and while
Daniel was locking it Frank said, "RUN!"
We ran toward the admission gate and Daniel saw us running away.
"HEY, YOU LITTLE PERVERTS! COME BACK HERE! COME BACK!"
We kept running.
"Christ," said Frank, "that son-of-a-bitch is crazy!"
We were almost at the admission gate.
"I'LL GET YOU BOYS!"
We paid and ran inside. The show hadn't started yet but a large crowd
was already there.
"Let's hide under the grandstand so he can't find us," said Frank.
The grandstand was built of temporary planks for the people to sit on.
We went underneath. We saw two guys standing under the center of the
grandstand and looking up. They were about 13 or 14 years old, about two or
three years older than we were.
"What are they looking at?" I asked.
"Let's go see," said Frank.
We walked over. One of the guys saw us coming.
"Hey, you punks, get out of here!"
"What are you guys looking at?" Frank asked.
"I told you punks to get out of here!"
"Ah, hell, Marty, let 'em have a look!"
We walked over to where they were standing. We looked up.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Hell, can't you see it?" one of the big guys asked.
"See what?"
"It's a cunt."
"A cunt? Where?"
"Look, right there! See it?"
He pointed.
There was a woman sitting with her skirt bunched back underneath her.
She didn't have any panties on, and looking up between the planks you could
see her cunt.
"See it?"
"Yeah, I see it. It's a cunt," said Frank.
"All right, now you guys get out of here and keep your mouths shut."
"But we want to look at it a little longer," said Frank. "Just let us
look a little longer."
"All right, but not too long."
We stood there looking up at it.
"I can see it," I said.
"It's a cunt," said Frank.
"It's really a cunt," I said.
"Yeah," said one of the big guys, "that's what it is."
"I'll always remember this," I said.
"All right, you guys, it's time to go."
"What for?" asked Frank. "Why can't we keep looking?"
"Because," said one of the big guys, "I'm going to do something.
Now get out of here!"
We walked off.
"I wonder what he's going to do?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Frank, "maybe he's going to throw a rock at
it."
We got out from under the grandstand and looked around for Daniel. We
didn't see him anywhere.
"Maybe he left," I said.
"A guy like that doesn't like airplanes," said Frank. We climbed up
into the grandstand and waited for the show to begin. I looked around at all
the women.
"I wonder which one she was?" I asked.
"I guess you can't tell from the top," said Frank. Then the air show
began. There was a guy in a Fokker doing stunts. He was good, he looped and
circled, stalled, pulled out of it, skimmed the ground, and did an Immelman.
His best trick consisted of a hook on each wing. Two red handkerchiefs were
fastened to poles about six feet above the ground. The Fokker flew down,
dipped a wing, and picked a handkerchief off the pole with the hook on its
wing. Then it came around, dipped the other wing, and got the other
handkerchief.
Then there were some sky-writing acts which were dull and some balloon
races which were silly, and then they had something good -- a race around
four pylons, close to the ground. The airplanes had to circle the pylons
twelve times and the one that finished first got the prize. The pilot was
automatically disqualified if he circled above the pylons. The racing planes
sat on the ground warming up. They were all built differently. One had a
long slim body with hardly any wings. Another was fat and round, it looked
like a football. Another was almost all wings and no body. Each was
different and each was grandly painted. The prize for the winner was $100.
They sat there warming up, and you knew you were really going to see
something exciting. The motors roared like they wanted to tear away from the
airplanes and then the starter dropped the flag and they were off. There
were six planes and there was hardly room for them as they went around the
pylons. Some of the flyers took them low, others high, some in the middle.
Some went faster and lost ground rounding the pylons; others went slower and
made sharper turns. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Then one of them
lost a wing. The plane bounced along the ground, the engine shooting flame
and smoke. It flipped over on its back and the ambulance and the fire truck
came running up. The other planes kept going. Then the engine just exploded
in another plane, came loose, and the remainder of the plane dropped down
like something lost. It hit the ground and everything came apart. But a
strange thing happened. The pilot just slid back the cockpit cowling and
climbed out and waited for the ambulance. He waved to the crowd and they
applauded like mad. It was miraculous.
Suddenly the worst happened. Two planes tangled wings while circling
the pylons. They both spun down and crashed and both caught on fire. The
ambulance and fire engine ran up again. We saw them pull the two guys out
and put them on stretchers. It was sad, those two brave good guys, both
probably crippled for life or dead.
That left only two planes, number 5 and number 2, going for the grand
prize. Number 5 was the slim plane almost without wings and it was much
faster than number 2. Number 2 was the football, he didn't have much speed,
but he made up a lot of ground on the turns. It didn't help much. The 5 kept
lapping the 2.
"Plane number 5," said the announcer, "is now two laps ahead with two
laps to go."
It looked like number 5 was going to get the grand prize. Then he ran
into a pylon. Instead of making the turn he just ran into the pylon and
knocked the whole thing down. He kept going, straight down the field, lower
and lower, the engine at full throttle, and then he hit the ground. The
wheels hit and the plane bounced high into the air, flipped over, skidded
along the ground. The ambulance and fire engine had a long way to go.
Number 2 just kept circling the three pylons that were left and the one
fallen pylon and then he landed. He had won the grand prize. He climbed out.
He was a fat guy, just like his airplane. I had expected a handsome tough
guy. He had been lucky. Hardly anybody applauded.
To close the show they had a parachute contest. There was a circle
painted on the ground, a big bullseye, and the one who landed the closest
won. It seemed dull to me. There wasn't much noise or action. The jumpers
just bailed out and aimed for the circle.
"This isn't very good," I told Frank.
"Naw," he said.
They kept coming down near the circle. More jumpers bailed out of the
planes overhead. Then the crowd started oohing and ahhhing.
"Look!" said Frank.
One chute had only partially opened. There wasn't much air in it. He
was falling faster than the others. You could see him kicking his legs and
working his arms trying to untangle the parachute.
"Jesus Christ," said Frank.
The guy kept dropping, lower and lower, you could see him better and
better. He kept yanking at the cords trying to untangle the chute but
nothing worked. He hit the ground, bounced just a bit, then fell back and
was still. The half-filled chute came down over him.
They cancelled the remainder of the jumps. We walked out with the
people, still watching out for Daniel.
"Let's not hitch-hike back," I said to Frank.
"All right," he said.
Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the
air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.
The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less
hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn't chosen for the
homeroom teams but I was threatened less. David and his violin had gone
away. The family had moved. I walked home alone. I was often trailed by one
or two guys, of whom Juan was the worst, but they didn't start anything.
Juan smoked cigarettes. He'd walk behind me smoking a cigarette and he
always had a different buddy with him. He never followed me alone. It scared
me. I wished they'd go away. Yet, in another way, I didn't care. I didn't
like Juan. I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I
think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or
looked or talked, but I didn't like my father or mother either. I still had
the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a
slight nausea in my stomach. Juan was dark-skinned and he wore a brass chain
instead of a belt. The girls were afraid of him, and the boys too. He and
one of his buddies followed me home almost every day. I'd walk into the
house and they'd stand outside. Juan would smoke his cigarette, looking
tough, and his buddy would stand there. I'd watch them through the curtain.
Finally, they would walk off.
Mrs. Fretag was our English teacher. The first day in class she asked
us each our names.
"I want to get to know all of you," she said. She smiled.
"Now, each of you has a father, I'm sure. I think it would be
interesting if we found out what each of your fathers does for a living.
We'll start with seat number one and we will go around the class. Now,
Marie, what does your father do for a living?"
"He's a gardener."
"Ah, that's nice! Seat number two . . . Andrew, what does your father
do?"
It was terrible. All the fathers in my immediate neighborhood had lost
their jobs. My father had lost his job. Gene's father sat on his front porch
all day. All the fathers were without jobs except Chuck's who worked in a
meat plant. He drove a red car with the meat company's name on the side.
"My father is a fireman," said seat number two.
"Ah, that's interesting," said Mrs. Fretag. "Seat number three."
"My father is a lawyer."
"Seat number four."
"My father is a . . . policeman . . ."
What was I going to say? Maybe only the fathers in my neighborhood were
without jobs. I'd heard of the stock market crash. It meant something bad.
Maybe the stock market had only crashed in our neighborhood.
"Seat number eighteen."
"My father is a movie actor . . ."
"Nineteen..."
"My father is a concert violinist . . ."
"Twenty . . ."
"My father works in the circus . . ."
"Twenty-one.. ."
"My father is a bus driver . . ."
"Twenty-two..."
"My father sings in the opera . . ."
"Twenty-three.. ."
Twenty-three. That was me.
"My father is a dentist," I said.
Mrs. Fretag went right on through the class until she reached number
thirty-three.
"My father doesn't have a job," said number thirty-three. Shit, I
thought, I wish I had thought of that.
One day Mrs. Fretag gave us an assignment.
"Our distinguished President, President Herbert Hoover, is going to
visit Los Angeles this Saturday to speak. I want all of you to go hear our
President. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about
what you think of President Hoover's speech."
Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to
get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I
got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also
got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do
or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to
go see President Hoover.
So, I didn't go. That Sunday I took some paper and sat down to write
about how I had seen the President. His open car, trailing flowing
streamers, had entered the football stadium. One car, full of secret service
agents went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave
men with guns to protect our President. The crowd rose as the President's
car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was
the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls
circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President. And there were
skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like "Prosperity is
just around the corner." The President stood up in his car, and just as he
did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. It
was almost as if God knew too. Then the cars stopped and our great
President, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker's
platform. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky
and landed on the speaker's platform near him. The President waved to the
bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the
people listened. I couldn't quite hear the speech because I was sitting too
near a popcorn machine which made a lot of noise popping the kernels, but I
think I heard him say that the problems in Manchuria were not serious, and
that at home everything was going to be all right, we shouldn't worry, all
we had to do was to believe in America. There would be enough jobs for
everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough
fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open
again. Our friends in South America would pay their debts. Soon we would all
sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great
country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the
socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever . . .
The President listened to the applause, waved, then went back to his
car, got in, and was driven off followed by carloads of secret service
agents as the sun began to sink, the afternoon turning into evening, red and
gold and wonderful. We had seen and heard President Herbert Hoover.
I turned in my essay on Monday. On Tuesday Mrs. Fretag faced the class.
"I've read all your essays about our distinguished President's visit to
Los Angeles. I was there. Some of you, I noticed, could not attend for one
reason or another. For those of you who could not attend, I would like to
read this essay by Henry Chinaski."
The class was terribly silent. I was the most unpopular member of the
class by far. It was like a knife slicing through all their hearts.
"This is very creative," said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my
essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words
filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and
bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor.
Some of the prettiest girls in the class began to sneak glances at me. All
the tough guys were pissed. Their essays hadn't been worth shit. I drank in
my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them. I saw Juan
sitting there like I'd punched him in the face. I stretched out my legs and
leaned back. All too soon it was over.
"Upon this grand note," said Mrs. Fretag, "I hereby dismiss the class .
. ."
They got up and began packing out.
"Not you, Henry," said Mrs. Fretag. I sat in my chair and Mrs. Fretag
stood there looking at me. Then she said, "Henry, were you there?"
I sat there trying to think of an answer. I couldn't. I said, "No, I
wasn't there."
She smiled. "That makes it all the more remarkable."
"Yes, ma'am . . ."
"You can leave, Henry."
I got up and walked out. I began my walk home. So, that's what they
wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That's what they needed. People were fools. It
was going to be easy for me. I looked around. Juan and his buddy were not
following me. Things were looking up.
There were times when Frank and I were friendly with Chuck, Eddie and
Gene. But something would always happen (usually I caused it) and then I
would be out, and Frank would be partly out because he was my friend. It was
good hanging out with Frank. We hitch-hiked everywhere. One of our
favorite places was this movie studio. We crawled under a fence surrounded
by tall weeds to get in. We saw the huge wall and steps they used in the
King kong movie. We saw the fake streets and the fake buildings. The
buildings were just fronts with nothing behind them. We walked all over that
movie lot many times until the guard would chase us out. We hitch-hiked down
to the beach to the Fun House. We would stay in the Fun House three or four
hours. We memorized that place. It really wasn't that good. People shit and
pissed in there and the place was littered with empty bottles. And there
were rubbers in the crapper, hardened and wrinkled. Bums slept in the Fun
House after it closed. There really wasn't anything funny about the Fun
House. The House of Mirrors was good at first. We stayed in there until we
had memorized how to walk through the maze of mirrors and then it wasn't any
good any more. Frank and I never got into fights. We were curious about
things. There was a movie featuring a Caesarean operation on the pier and we
went in and saw it. It was bloody. Each time they cut into the woman blood
squirted out, gushers of it, and then they pulled out the baby. We went
fishing off the pier and when we caught something we would sell it to the
old Jewish ladies who sat . on the benches. I got some beatings from my
father for running off with Frank but I figured I was going to get the
beatings anyhow so I might as well have the fun.
But I continued to have trouble with the other kids in the
neighborhood. My father didn't help. For example he bought me an Indian suit
and a bow and arrow when all the other kids had cowboy outfits. It was the
same then as in the schoolyard -- I was ganged-up on. They'd circle me with
their cowboy outfits and their guns, but when it got bad I'd just put an
arrow into the bow, pull it back and wait. That always moved them off. I
never wore that Indian suit unless my father made me put it on.
I kept falling out with Chuck, Eddie and Gene and then we'd get back
together and then we'd fall out all over again.
One afternoon I was just standing around. I wasn't exactly in good or
in bad with the gang, I was just waiting around for them to forget the last
thing I had done that had made them angry. There wasn't anything else to do.
Just white air and waiting. I got tired of standing around and decided to
walk up the hill to Washington Boulevard, east to the movie house and then
back down to West Adams Boulevard. Maybe I'd walk past the church. I started
walking. Then I heard Eddie:
"Hey, Henry, come here!"
The guys were standing in a driveway between two houses. Eddie, Frank,
Chuck and Gene. They were watching something. They were bent over a large
bush watching something.
"Come here, Henry!"
"What is it?"
I walked up to where they were bending over.
"It's a spider getting ready to eat a fly!" said Eddie. I looked. The
spider had spun a web between the branches of a bush and a fly had gotten
caught in there. The spider was very excited. The fly shook the whole web as
it tried to pull free. It was buzzing wildly and helplessly as the spider
wound the fly's wings and body in more and more spider web. The spider went
around and around, webbing the fly completely as it buzzed. The spider was
very big and ugly.
"It's going to close in now!" yelled Chuck. "It's going to sink its
fangs!"
I pushed in between the guys, kicked out and knocked the spider and the
fly out of the web with my foot.
"What the hell have you done?" asked Chuck.
"You son-of-a-bitch!" yelled Eddie. "You've spoiled it!"
I backed off. Even Frank stared at me strangely.
"Let's get his ass!" yelled Gene.
They were between me and the street. I ran down the driveway into the
backyard of a strange house. They were after me. I ran through the backyard
and behind the garage. There was a six-foot lattice fence covered with
vines. I went straight up the fence and over the top. I ran through the next
backyard and up the driveway and as I ran up the driveway I looked back and
saw Chuck just reaching the top of the fence. Then he slipped and fell into
the yard landing on his back. "Shit!" he said. I took a right and kept
running. I ran for seven or eight blocks and then sat down on somebody's
lawn and rested. There was nobody around. I wondered if Frank would forgive
me. I wondered if the others would forgive me. I decided to stay out of
sight for a week or so . . .
And so they forgot. Not much happened for a while. There were many days
of nothing. Then Frank's father committed suicide. Nobody knew why. Frank
told me he and his mother would have to move to a smaller place in another
neighborhood. He said he would write. And he did. Only we didn't write. We
drew cartoons. About cannibals. His cartoons were about troubles with
cannibals and then I'd continue the cartoon story where his left off, about
the troubles with the cannibals. My mother found one of Frank's cartoons and
showed it to my father and our letter writing was over.
5th grade became 6th grade and I began to think about running away from
home but I decided that if most of our fathers couldn't get jobs how in the
hell could a guy under five feet tall get one? John Dillinger was
everybody's hero, adults and kids alike. He took the money from the banks.
And there was Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker and Machine Gun Kelly.
People began going to vacant lots where weeds grew. They had learned
that some of the weeds could be cooked and eaten. There were fist fights
between men in the vacant lots and on street corners. Everybody was angry.
The men smoked Bull Durham and didn't take any shit from anybody. They let
the little round Bull Durham tags hang out of their front shirt pockets and
they could all roll a cigarette with one hand. When you saw a man with a
Bull Durham tag dangling, that meant look out. People went around talking
about 2nd and 3rd mortgages. My father came home one night with a broken arm
and two black eyes. My mother had a low paying job somewhere. And each boy
in the neighborhood had one pair of Sunday pants and one pair of daily
pants. When shoes wore out there weren't any new ones. The department stores
had soles and heels they sold for 15 or 20 cents along with the glue, and
these were glued to the bottoms of the worn out shoes. Gene's parents had
one rooster and some chickens in their backyard, and if some chicken didn't
lay enough eggs they ate it.
As for me, it was the same -- at school, and with Chuck, Gene and
Eddie. Not only did the grownups get mean, the kids got mean, and even the
animals got mean. It was like they took their cue from the people.
One day I was standing around, waiting as usual, not friendly with the
gang, no longer really wanting to be, when Gene rushed up to me, "Hey,
Henry, come on!"
"What is it?"
"COME ON!"
Gene started running and I ran after him. We ran down the driveway and
into the Gibsons' backyard. The Gibsons had a large brick wall all around
their backyard.
"LOOK! HE'S GOT THE CAT CORNERED! HE'S GOING TO KILL IT!"
There was a small white cat backed into a corner of the wall. It
couldn't go up and it couldn't go in one direction or the other. Its back
was arched and it was spitting, its claws ready. But it was very small and
Chuck's bulldog, Barney, was growling and moving closer and closer. I got
the feeling that the cat had been put there by the guys and then the bulldog
had been brought in. I felt it strongly because of the way Chuck and Eddie
and Gene were watching: they had a guilty look.
"You guys did this," I said.
"No," said Chuck, "it's the cat's fault. It came in here. Let it fight
its way out."
"I hate you bastards," I said.
"Barney's going to kill that cat," said Gene.
"Barney will rip it to pieces," said Eddie. "He's afraid of the claws
but when he moves in it will be all over."
Barney was a large brown bulldog with slobbering jaws. He was dumb and
fat with senseless brown eyes. His growl was steady and he kept inching
forward, the hairs standing up on his neck and along his back. I felt like
kicking him in his stupid ass but I figured he would rip my leg off. He was
entirely intent upon the kill. The white cat wasn't even fully grown. It
hissed and waited, pressed against the wall, a beautiful creature, so clean.
The dog moved slowly forward. Why did the guys need this? This wasn't a
matter of courage, it was just dirty play. Where were the grownups? Where
were the authorities? They were always around accusing me. Now where were
they?
I thought of rushing in, grabbing the cat and running, but I didn't
have the nerve. I was afraid that the bulldog would attack me. The knowledge
that I didn't have the courage to do what was necessary made me feel
terrible. I began to feel physically sick. I was weak. I didn't want it to
happen yet I couldn't think of any way to stop it.
"Chuck," I said, "let the cat go, please. Call your dog off."
Chuck didn't answer. He just kept watching. Then he said, "Barney, go
get him! Get that cat!"
Barney moved forward and suddenly the cat leaped. It was a furious blur
of white and hissing, claws and teeth. Barney backed off and the cat
retreated to the wall again.
"Go get him, Barney," Chuck said again.
"God damn you, shut up!" I told him.
"Don't talk to me that way," Chuck said. Barney began to move in again.
"You guys set this up," I said.
I heard a slight sound behind us and looked around. I saw old Mr.
Gibson watching from behind his bedroom window. He wanted the cat to get
killed too, just like the guys. Why?
Old Mr. Gibson was our mailman with the false teeth. He had a wife who
stayed in the house all the time. She only came out to empty the garbage.
Mrs. Gibson always wore a net over her hair and she was always dressed in a
nightgown, bathrobe and slippers. Then as I watched, Mrs. Gibson, dressed as
always came and stood next to her husband, waiting for the kill. Old Mr.
Gibson was one of the few men in the neighborhood with a job but he still
needed to see the cat killed. Gibson was just like Chuck, Eddie and Gene.
There were too many of them.
The bulldog moved closer. I couldn't watch the kill. I felt a great
shame at leaving the cat like that. There was always the chance that the cat
might try to escape, but I knew that they would prevent it. That cat wasn't
only facing the bulldog, it was facing Humanity.
I turned and walked away, out of the yard, up the driveway and to the
sidewalk. I walked along the sidewalk toward where I lived and there in the
front yard of his home, my father stood waiting.
"Where have you been?" he asked. I didn't answer.
"Get inside," he said, "and stop looking so unhappy or I'll give you
something that will really make you unhappy!"
Then I started attending Mt. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from
Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another
gang of giants came from other schools. Our 7th grade class was bigger than
the 9th grade class. When we lined up for gym it was funny, most of us were
bigger than the gym teachers. We would stand there for roll call, slouched,
our guts hanging out, heads down, shoulders slumped.
"Jesus Christ," said Wagner, the gym teacher, "pull your shoulders
back, stand straight!"
Nobody would change position. We were the way we were, and we didn't
want to be anything else. We all came from Depression families and most of
us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I
think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or