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"You must be Mr. Chinaski?"
I nodded.
"You are thirty minutes late."
"Yes."
"Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?"
"No."
"Why not, pray tell?"
"Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding
was mine it would be my funeral." I was always quick with the mouth. I would
never learn.
"My dear sir," said Mr. Hamilton, "we have been listening to Gilbert
and Sullivan in order to learn proper enunciation. Please stand up."
I stood up.
"Now, please sing, Stick close to your desks and never go to sea and
you'll always be the ruler of the Queens Navy."
I stood there.
"Well, go ahead, please!"
I went through it and sat down.
"Mr. Chinaski, I could barely hear you. Couldn't you sing with just a
bit more verve?"
I stood up again. I sucked in a giant sea of air and let go. "IF YA
WANNA BE DA RULLER OF DEY QUEEN'S NABY STICK CLOSE TA YUR DESKS AN NEVA GO
TA SEA!"
I had gotten it backwards.
"Mr. Chinaski," said Mr. Hamilton, "please sit down."
I sat down. It was Baldy's fault.
Everybody had gym period at the same time. Baldy's locker was about
four or five down from mine in the same row. I went to my locker early.
Baldy and I had a similar problem. We hated wool pants because the wool
itched our legs but our parents just loved for us to wear wool. I had solved
the problem, for Baldy and myself, by letting him in on a secret. All you
had to do was to wear your pajamas underneath the wool pants.
I opened my locker and undressed. I got my pants and pajamas off and
then I took the pajamas and hid them on top of the locker. I got into my gym
suit. The other guys were starting to walk in.
Baldy and I had some great pajama stories but Baldy's was the best. He
had been out with his girlfriend one night, they had gone to some dance. In
between dances his girlfriend had said, "What's that?"
"What's what?"
"There's something sticking out of your pant cuff."
"What?"
"My goodness! You're wearing your pajamas underneath your
pants!"
"Oh? Oh, that . . . I must have forgotten . . ."
"I'm leaving right now!"
She never dated him again.
All the guys were changing into their gym clothes. Then Baldy walked in
and opened his locker.
"How ya doing, pal?" I asked him.
"Oh, hello. Hank . . ."
"I've got a 7 a.m. English class. It really starts the day outright.
Only they ought to call it Music Appreciation /."
"Oh yeah. Hamilton. I've heard of him. Hee hee hee . . ."
I walked over to him.
Baldy had unbuckled his pants. I reached over and yanked his pants
down. Underneath were green striped pajamas. He tried to yank his pants back
up but I was too strong for him.
"HEY, FELLOWS, LOOK! JESUS CHRIST, HERE'S A GUY WHO WEARS HIS PAJAMAS
TO SCHOOL!"
Baldy was struggling. His face was florid. A couple of guys walked over
and looked. Then I did the worst. I yanked his pajamas down.
"AND LOOK HERE! THE POOR FUCKER IS NOT ONLY BALD BUT HE DOESN'T HARDLY
HAVE A COCK! WHAT IS THIS POOR EUCKER GOING TO DO WHEN HE CONFRONTS A
WOMAN?"
Some big guy standing nearby said, "Chinaski, you're really a piece of
shit!"
"Yeah," said a couple of other guys. "Yeah . . . yeah . . ." I heard
other voices.
Baldy pulled his pants up. He was actually crying. He looked at the
guys. "Well, Chinaski wears pajamas too! He was the guy who started
me doing it! Look in his locker, just look in his locker!"
Baldy ran down to my locker and ripped the door open. He pulled all my
clothing out. The pajamas weren't in there.
"He's hidden them! He's hidden them somewhere!"
I left my clothes on the floor and walked out on the field for roll
call. I stood in the second row. I did a couple of deep knee bends. I
noticed another big guy behind me. I'd heard his name around, Sholom
Stodolsky.
"Chinaski," he said, "you're a piece of shit."
"Don't mess with me, man, I've got an edgy nature."
"Well, I'm messing with you."
"Don't push me too far, fat boy."
"You know the place between the Biology Building and the tennis
courts?"
"I've seen it."
"I'll meet you there after gym."
"O.K.," I said.
I didn't show up. After gym I cut the rest of my classes and took the
streetcars down to Pershing Square. I sat on a bench and waited for some
action. It seemed a long time coming. Finally a Religionist and an Atheist
got into it. They weren't much good. I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't
have much to argue about. I left the park and walked down to 7th and
Broadway. That was the center of town. There didn't seem to be much doing
there, just people waiting for the signals to change so they could cross the
street. Then I noticed my legs were starting to itch. I had left my pajamas
on top of the locker. What a fucking lousy day it had been from beginning to
end. I hopped a "W" streetcar and sat in the back as it rolled along
carrying me back toward home.
I only met one student at City College that I liked, Robert Becker. He
wanted to be a writer. "I'm going to learn everything there is to learn
about writing. It will be like taking a car apart and putting it back
together again."
"Sounds like work," I said.
"I'm going to do it."
Becker was an inch or so shorter than I was but he was stocky, he was
powerfully built, with big shoulders and arms.
"I had a childhood disease," he told me. "I had to lay in bed one time
for a year squeezing two tennis balls, one in each hand. Just from doing
that, I got to be like this."
He had a job as a messenger boy at night and was putting himself
through college.
"How'd you get your job?"
"I knew a guy who knew a guy."
"I'll bet I can kick your ass."
"Maybe, maybe not. I'm only interested in writing."
We were sitting in an alcove overlooking the lawn. Two guys were
staring at me.
Then one of them spoke. "Hey," he asked me, "do you mind if I ask you
something?"
"Go ahead."
"Well, you used to be a sissy in grammar school, I remember you. And
now you're a tough guy. What happened?"
"I don't know."
"Are you a cynic?"
"Probably."
"Are you happy being a cynic?"
"Yes."
"Then you're not a cynic because cynics aren't happy!"
The two guys did a little vaudeville handshake act and ran off,
laughing.
"They made you look bad," said Becker.
"No, they were trying too hard."
"Are you a cynic?"
"I'm unhappy. If I was a cynic it would probably make me feel
better."
We hopped down from the alcove. Classes were over. Becker
wanted to put his books in his locker. We walked there and he
dumped them in. He handed me five or six sheets of paper.
"Here read this. It's a short story."
We walked down to my locker. I opened it and handed him a
paper bag.
"Take a hit..."
It was a bottle of port. Becker took a hit, then I took one.
"You always keep one of these in your locker?" he asked.
"I try to."
"Listen, tonight's my night off. Why don't you come meet some
of my friends?"
"People don't do me much good."
"These are different people."
"Yeah? Where at? Your place?"
"No. Here, I'll write down the address . . ." He began writing
on a piece of paper.
"Listen, Becker, what do these people do?"
"Drink," said Becker. I put the slip into my pocket . . .
That night after dinner I read Becker's short story. It was good and I
was jealous. It was about riding his bike at night and then delivering a
telegram to a beautiful woman. The writing was objective and clear, there
was a gentle decency about it. Becker claimed Thomas Wolfe as an influence
but he didn't wail and ham it up like Wolfe did. The emotion was there but
it wasn't spelled out in neon. Becker could write, he could write better
than I could.
My parents had gotten me a typewriter and I had tried some short
stories but they had come out very bitter and ragged. Not that that was so
bad but the stories seemed to beg, they didn't have their own vitality. My
stories were darker than Becker's, stranger, but they didn't work. Well, one
or two of them had worked -- for me -- but it was more or less as if they
had fallen into place instead of being guided there. Becker was clearly
better. Maybe I'd try painting,
I waited until my parents were asleep. My father always snored loudly.
When I heard him I opened the bedroom screen and slid out over the berry
bush. That put me into the neighbor's driveway and I walked slowly in the
dark. Then I walked up Longwood to 21st Street, took a right, then went up
the hill along Westview to where the "W" car ended its route. I dropped my
token in and walked to the rear of the car, sat down and lit a cigarette. If
Becker's friends were anywhere as good as Becker's short story it was going
to be one hell of a night.
Becker was already there by the time I found the Beacon Street address.
His friends were in the breakfast nook. I was introduced. There was Harry,
there was Lana, there was Gobbles, there was Stinky, there was Marshbird,
there was Ellis, there was Dogface and finally there was The Ripper. They
all sat around a large breakfast table. Harry had a legitimate job
somewhere, he and Becker were the only ones employed. Lana was Harry's wife,
Gobbles their baby was sitting in a highchair. Lana was the only woman
there. When we were introduced she had looked right at me and smiled. They
were all young, thin, and puffed at rolled cigarettes.
"Becker told us about you," said Harry. "He says you're a writer."
"I've got a typewriter."
"You gonna write about us?" asked Stinky.
"I'd rather drink."
"Fine. We're going to have a drinking contest. Got any money?" Stinky
asked.
"Two dollars . . ."
"O.K., the ante is two dollars. Everybody up!" Harry said. That made
eighteen dollars. The money looked good laying there. A bottle appeared and
then shot glasses.
"Becker told us you think you're a tough guy. Are you a tough guy?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we're gonna see . . ."
The kitchen light was very bright. It was straight whiskey. A dark
yellow whiskey. Harry poured the drinks. Such beauty. My mouth, my throat,
couldn't wait. The radio was on. Oh,Johnny, oh Johnny, how you can
love! somebody sang.
"Down the hatch!" said Harry.
There was no way I could lose. I could drink for days. I had never had
enough to drink.
Gobbles had a tiny shot glass of his own. As we raised ours and drank
them, he raised his and drank. Everybody thought it was funny. I didn't
think it was so funny for a baby to drink but I didn't say anything. Harry
poured another round.
"You read my short story, Hank?" Becker asked.
"Yeah."
"How'd you like it?"
"It was good. You're ready now. All you need is some luck."
"Down the hatch!" said Harry.
The second round was no problem, we all got it down, including Lana.
Harry looked at me. "You like to duke it, Hank?"
"No."
"Well, in case you do, we got Dogface here."
Dogface was twice my size. It was so wearisome being in the world.
Every time you looked around there was some guy ready to take you on without
even inhaling. I looked at Dogface.
"Hi, buddy!"
"Buddy, my ass," he said. "Just get your next drink down."
Harry poured them all around. He skipped Gobbles in the highchair,
though, which I appreciated. All right, we raised them, we all got that
round down. Then Lana dropped out.
"Somebody's got to clean up this mess and get Harry ready for work in
the morning," she said.
The next round was poured. Just as it was the door banged open and a
large good-looking kid of around 22 came running into the room. "Shit,
Harry" he said, "hide me! I just held up a fucking gas station!"
"My car's in the garage," Harry said. "Get down on the floor in the
back seat and stay there!"
We drank up. The next round was poured. A new bottle appeared. The
eighteen dollars was still in the center of the table. We were still all
hanging in there except Lana. It was going to take plenty of whiskey to do
us in.
"Hey," I asked Harry, "aren't we going to run out of drinks?"
"Show him, Lana , , ."
Lana pulled open some upper cupboard doors. I could see bottles and
bottles of whiskey lined up, all the same brand. It looked like the loot
from a truck hi jack and it probably was. And these were the gang members:
Harry, Lana, Stinky, Marshbird, Ellis, Dogface and The Ripper, maybe Becker,
and most likely the young guy now on the floor in the back seat of Harry's
car. I felt honored to be drinking with such an active part of the
population of Los Angeles. Becker not only knew how to write, Becker knew
his people. I would dedicate my first novel to Robert Becker. And it would
be a better novel than Of Time and the River.
Harry kept pouring the rounds and we kept drinking them down. The
kitchen was blue with cigarette smoke.
Marshbird dropped out first. He had a very large nose, he just shook
his head, no more, no more, and all you could see was this long nose waving
"no" in the blue smoke.
Ellis was the next to drop out. He had a lot of hair on his chest but
evidently not much on his balls.
Dogface was next. He just jumped up and ran to the crapper and puked.
Listening to him Harry got the same idea and leaped up and puked in the
sink.
That left me, Becker, Stinky and The Ripper. Becker quit next. He just
folded his arms on the table, put his head down in his arms and that was it.
"The night's so young," I said. "I usually drink until the sun comes
up."
"Yeah," said The Ripper, "you shit in a basket too!"
"Yeah, and it's shaped like your head."
The Ripper stood up. "You son-of-a-bitch, I'll bust your ass!"
He swung at me from across the table, missed and knocked over the
bottle. Lana got a rag and mopped it up. Harry opened a bottle.
"Sit down, Rip, or you forfeit your bet," Harry said. Harry poured a
new round. We drank them down. The Ripper stood up, walked to the rear door,
opened it and looked out into the night.
"Hey, Rip, what the hell you doing?" Stinky asked.
"I'm checking to see if there's a full moon."
"Well, is there?"
There was no answer. We heard him fall through the door, down the steps
and into the bushes. We left him there. That left me and Stinky.
"I've never seen anybody take Stinky yet," said Harry. Lana had just
put Gobbles to bed. She walked back into the kitchen. "Jesus, there are dead
bodies all over the place."
"Pour 'em, Harry," I said.
Harry filled Stinky's glass, then mine. I knew there was no way I could
get that drink down. I did the only thing I could do. I pretended it was
easy. I grabbed the shot glass and belted it down. Stinky just stared at me.
"I'll be right back. I gotta go to the crapper."
We sat and waited.
"Stinky's a nice guy," I said. "You shouldn't call him Stinky. How'd he
get that name?"
"I dunno," said Harry, "somebody just laid it on him."
"That guy in the back of your car. He ever going to come out?"
"Not till morning."
We sat and waited. "I think," said Harry, "we better take a look."
We opened the bathroom door. Stinky didn't appear to be in there. Then
we saw him. He had fallen into the bathtub. His feet stuck up over the edge.
His eyes were closed, he was down in there, and out. We walked back to the
table. "The money's yours," said Harry.
"How about letting me pay for some of those bottles of whiskey?"
"Forget it."
"You mean it?"
"Yes, of course."
I picked up the money and put it in my right front pocket. Then I
looked at Stinky's drink.
"No use wasting this," I said.
"You mean you're going to drink that?" asked Lana.
"Why not? One for the road . . ."
I gulped it down.
"O.K., see you guys, it's been great!"
"Goodnight, Hank . . ."
I walked out the back door, stepping over The Ripper's body. I found a
back alley and took a left. I walked along and I saw a green Chevy sedan. I
staggered a bit as I approached it. I grabbed the rear door handle to steady
myself. The god-damned door was unlocked and it swung open, knocking me
sideways. I fell hard, skinning my left elbow on the pavement. There was a
full moon. The whiskey had hit me all at once. I felt as if I couldn't get
up. I had to get up. I was supposed to be a tough guy. I rose, fell against
the half-open door, grabbed at it, held it. Then I had the inside handle and
was steadying myself. I got myself into the back seat and then I just sat
there. I sat there for some time. Then I started to puke. It really came. It
came and it came, it covered the rear floorboard. Then I sat for a while.
Then I managed to get out of the car. I didn't feel as dizzy. I took out my
handkerchief and wiped the vomit off my pant legs and off of my shoes as
best I could. I closed the car door and walked on down the alley. I had to
find the "W" streetcar. I would find it.
I did. I rode it in. I made it down Westview Street, walked down 21st
Street, turned south down Longwood Avenue to 2122. I walked up the
neighbor's driveway, found the berry bush, crawled over it, through the open
screen and into my bedroom. I undressed and went to bed. I must have
consumed over a quart of whiskey. My father was still snoring, just as he
had been when I had left, only at the moment it was louder and uglier. I
slept anyhow.
As usual I approached Mr. Hamilton's English class thirty minutes late.
It was 7:30 a.m. I stood outside the door and listened. They were at Gilbert
and Sullivan again. And it was still all about going to the sea and the
Queen's Navy. Hamilton couldn't get enough of that. In high school I'd had
an English teacher and it had been Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan Poe.
I opened the door. Hamilton went over and lifted the needle from the
record. Then he announced to the class, "When Mr. Chinaski arrives we always
know that it is 7:30 a.m. Mr. Chinaski is always on time. The only
problem being that it is the wrong time."
He paused, glancing at the faces in his class. He was very, very
dignified. Then he looked at me.
"Mr. Chinaski, whether you arrive at 7:30 a.m. or whether you arrive at
all will not matter. I am assigning you a 'D' for English 1. "
"A 'D,' Mr. Hamilton?" I asked, flashing my famous sneer.
"Why not an 'F'?"
"Because 'F,' at times, equates with 'Fuck.' And I don't think you're
worth a 'Fuck."'
The class cheered and roared and stomped and stamped. I turned around,
walked out, closed the door behind me. I walked down the hallway, still
hearing them going at it in there.
The war was going very well in Europe, for Hitler. Most of the students
weren't very vocal on the matter. But the instructors were, they were almost
all left-wing and anti-German. There seemed to be no right-wing faction
among the instructors except for Mr. Glasgow, in Economics, and he was very
discreet about it.
It was intellectually popular and proper to be for going to war with
Germany, to stop the spread of fascism. As for me, I had no desire to go to
war to protect the life I had or what future I might have. I had no Freedom.
I had nothing. With Hitler around, maybe I'd even get a piece of ass now and
then and more than a dollar a week allowance. As far as I could rationalize,
I had nothing to protect. Also, having been born in Germany, there was a
natural loyalty and I didn't like to see the whole German nation, the
people, depicted everywhere as monsters and idiots. In the movie theatres
they speeded up the newsreels to make Hitler and Mussolini look like
frenetic madmen. Also, with all the instructors being anti-German I found it
personally impossible to simply agree with them. Out of sheer alienation and
a natural contrariness I decided to align myself against their point of
view. I had never read Mein Kampf and had no desire to do so. Hitler
was just another dictator to me, only instead of lecturing me at the dinner
table he'd probably blow my brains out or my balls off if I went to war to
stop him.
Sometimes as the instructors talked on and on about the evils of nazism
(we were told always to spell "nazi" with a small "n" even at the beginning
of a sentence) and fascism I would leap to my feet and make something up:
"The survival of the human race depends upon selective accountability!"
Which meant, watch out who you go to bed with, but only I knew that. It
really pissed everybody off. I don't know where I got my stuff:
"One of the failures of Democracy is that the common vote guarantees a
common leader who then leads us to a common apathetic predictability!"
I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given
me any trouble. All my troubles had come from white gentiles. Thus, I wasn't
a nazi by temperament or choice; the teachers more or less forced it on me
by being so much alike and thinking so much alike and with their anti-German
prejudice. I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or
understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job,
which gave me a considerable advantage over the teachers.
"Breed a plow horse to a race horse and you get an offspring that is
neither swift nor strong. A new Master Race will evolve from purposeful
breeding!"
"There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is
to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both
sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a
matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best
generals and the better army!"
I loved it. I could make up anything I liked. Of course, I was talking
myself further and further away from any chance with the girls. But I had
never been that close anyhow. I figured because of my wild speeches I was
alone on campus but it wasn't so. Some others had been listening. One day,
walking to my Current Affairs class, I heard somebody walking up behind me.
I never liked anybody walking behind me, not close. So I turned as I walked.
It was the student body president, Boyd Taylor. He was very popular with the
students, the only man in the history of the college to have been elected
president twice.
"Hey, Chinaski, I want to talk to you."
I'd never cared too much for Boyd, he was the typical good- looking
American youth with a guaranteed future, always properly dressed, casual,
smooth, every hair of his black mustache trimmed. What his appeal was to the
student body, I had no idea. He walked along beside me.
"Don't you think it looks bad for you, Boyd, to be seen walking with
me?"
"I'll worry about that."
"All right. What is it?"
"Chinaski, this is just between you and me, got it?"
"Sure."
"Listen, I don't believe in what guys like you stand for or what you're
trying to do."
"So?"
"But I want you to know that if you win here and in Europe I'm willing
to join your side."
I could only look at him and laugh.
He stood there as I walked on. Never trust a man with a perfectly-
trimmed mustache . . .
Other people had been listening as well. Coming out of Current Affairs
I ran into Baldy standing there with a guy five feet tall and three feet
wide. The guy's head was sunk down into his shoulders, he had a very round
head, small ears, cropped hair, pea eyes, tiny wet round mouth. A nut, I
thought, a killer.
"HEY, HANK!" Baldy hollered.
I walked over. "I thought we were finished, LaCrosse."
"Oh no! There are great things still to do!"
Shit! Baldy was one too!
Why did the Master Race movement draw nothing but mental and physical
cripples?
"I want you to meet Igor Stirnov."
I reached out and we shook hands. He squeezed mine with all his
strength. It really hurt.
"Let go," I said, "or I'll bust your fucking missing neck!"
Igor let go. "I don't trust men with limp handshakes. Why do you have a
limp handshake?"
"I'm weak today. They burned my toast for breakfast and at lunch I
spilled my chocolate milk."
Igor turned to Baldy. "What's with this guy?"
"Don't worry about him. He's got his own ways."
Igor looked at me again.
"My grandfather was a White Russian. During the Revolution the Reds
killed him. I must get even with those bastards!"
"I see."
Then another student came walking toward us. "Hey, Fenster!" Baldy
hollered.
Fenster walked up. We shook hands. I gave him a limp one. I didn't like
to shake hands. Fenster's first name was Bob. There was to be a meeting at a
house in Glendale, the Americans for America Party. Fenster was the campus
representative. He walked off. Baldy leaned over and whispered into my ear,
"They're Nazis!"
Igor had a car and a gallon of rum. We met in front of Baldy's house,
Igor passed the bottle. Good stuff, it really burned the membranes of the
throat, Igor drove his car like a tank, right through stop signals. People
blew their horns and slammed on their brakes and he waved a fake black
pistol at them.
"Hey, Igor," said Baldy, "show Hank your pistol."
Igor was driving. Baldy and I were in the back. Igor passed me his
pistol. I looked at it.
"It's great!" Baldy said. "He carved it out of wood and stained it with
black shoe polish. Looks real, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," I said. "He's even drilled a hole in the barrel."
I handed the gun back to Igor. "Very nice," I said. He handed back the
jug of rum. I took a hit and handed the bottle to Baldy. He looked at me and
said, "Heil Hitler!"
We were the last to arrive. It was a large handsome house. We were met
at the door by a fat smiling boy who looked like he had spent a lifetime
eating chestnuts by the fire. His parents didn't seem to be about. His name
was Larry Kearny. We followed him through the big house and down a long dark
stairway. All I could see was Kearny's shoulders and head. He was certainly
a well-fed fellow and looked to be far saner than Baldy, Igor or myself.
Maybe there would be something to learn here.
Then we were in the cellar. We found some chairs. Fenster nodded to us.
There were seven others there whom I didn't know. There was a desk on a
raised platform. Larry walked up and stood behind the desk. Behind him on
the wall was a large American flag. Larry stood very straight. "We will now
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America!"
My god, I thought, I am in the wrong place! We stood and took the
pledge, but I stopped after "I pledge allegiance . . ." I didn't say to
what.
We sat down. Larry started talking from behind the desk. He explained
that since this was the first meeting, he would preside. After two or three
meetings, after we got to know one another, a president could be elected if
we wished. But meanwhile . . .
"We face here, in America, two threats to our liberty. We face the
communist scourge .and the black takeover. Most often they work hand in
hand. We true Americans will gather here in an attempt to counter this
scourge, this menace. It has gotten so that no decent white girl can walk
the streets anymore without being accosted by a black male!"
Igor leaped up. "We'll kill them!"
"The communists want to divide the wealth for which we have worked so
long, which our fathers labored for, and their fathers before them
worked for. The communists want to give our money to every black man, homo,
bum, murderer and child molester who walks our streets!"
"We'll kill them!"
"They must be stopped."
"We'll arm!"
"Yes, we'll arm! And we'll meet here and formulate a master plan to
save America!"
The fellows cheered. Two or three of them yelled, "Heil Hitler!" Then
the get-to-know-each-other time arrived.
Larry passed out cold beers and we stood around in little groups
talking, not much being said, except we reached a general agreement that we
needed target practice so that we would be expert with our guns when the
time came.
When we got back to Igor's house his parents didn't seem to be about,
either, Igor got out a frying pan, put in four cubes of butter, and began to
melt them. He took the rum, put it in a large pot and warmed it up.
"This is what men drink," he said. Then he looked at Baldy.
"Are you a man, Baldy?"
Baldy was already drunk. He stood very straight, hands down at his
sides. "YES, I'M A MAN!" He started to weep. The tears came rolling down.
"I'M A MAN!" He stood very straight and yelled, "HEIL HITLER!" the tears
rolling. Igor looked at me. "Are you a man?"
"I don't know. Is that rum ready?"
"I'm not sure I trust you. I'm not so sure that you are one of us. Are
you a counter-spy? Are you an enemy agent?"
"No."
"Are you one of us?"
"I don't know. Only one thing I'm sure of."
"What's that?"
"I don't like you. Is the rum ready?"
"You see?" said Baldy. "I told you he was mean!"
"We'll see who is the meanest before the night is ended," said Igor.
Igor poured the melted butter into the boiling rum, then shut off the
flame and stirred. I didn't like him but he certainly was different and I
liked that. Then he found three drinking cups, large, blue, with Russian
writing on them. He poured the buttered rum into the cups.
"O.K.,"he said, "drink up!"
"Shit, it's about time," I said and I let it slide down. It was a
little too hot and it stank.
I watched Igor drink his. I saw his little pea eyes over the rim of his
cup. He managed to get it down, driblets of golden buttered rum leaking out
of the corners of his stupid mouth. He was looking at Baldy. Baldy was
standing, staring down into his cup. I knew from the old days that Baldy
just didn't have a natural love of drinking.
Igor stared at Baldy. "Drink up!"
"Yes, Igor, yes . . ."
Baldy lifted the blue cup. He was having a difficult time. It was too
hot for him and he didn't like the taste. Half of it ran out of his mouth
and over his chin and onto his shirt. His empty cup fell to the kitchen
floor.
Igor squared himself in front of Baldy.
"You're not a man!"
"I AM A MAN, IGOR! I AM A MAN!"
"YOU LIE!"
Igor backhanded him across the face and as Baldy's head jumped to one
side, he straightened him up with a slap to the other side of his face.
Baldy stood at attention with his hands rigidly at his sides.
"I'm . . . a man . . ,"
Igor continued to stand in front of him.
"I'll make a man out of you!"
"O.K.," I said to Igor, "leave him alone."
Igor left the kitchen. I poured myself another rum. It was dreadful
stuff but it was all there was.
Igor walked back in. He was holding a gun, a real one, an old six-
shooter.
"We will now play Russian roulette," he announced.
"Your mother's ass," I said.
"I'll play, Igor," said Baldy, "I'll play! I'm a man!"
"All right," said Igor, "there is one bullet in the gun. I will spin
the chamber and hand the gun to you."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to Baldy. Baldy took it and
pointed it at his head. "I'm a man . . . I'm a man . . . I'll do it!"
He began crying again. "I'll do it . . . I'm a man . . ."
Baldy let the muzzle of the gun slip away from his temple. He pointed
it away from his skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
Igor took the gun, spun the chamber and handed it to me. I handed it
back.
"You go first."
Igor spun the chamber, held the gun up to the light and looked through
the chamber. Then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There
was a click.
"Big deal," I said. "You checked the chamber to see where the bullet
was."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to me. "Your turn..."
I handed the gun back. "Stuff it," I told him. I walked over to pour
myself another rum. As I did there was a shot. I looked down. Near my foot,
in the kitchen floor, there was a bullet hole. I turned around.
"You ever point that thing at me again and I'll kill you, Igor."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He stood there smiling. He slowly began to raise the gun. I waited.
Then he lowered the gun. That was about it for the night. We went out to the
car and Igor drove us home. But we stopped first at Westlake Park and rented
a boat and went out on the lake to finish off the rum. With the last drink,
Igor loaded up the gun and shot holes in the bottom of the boat. We were
forty yards from shore and had to swim in . . .
It was late when I got home. I crawled over the old berry bush and
through the bedroom window. I undressed and went to bed while in the next
room my father snored.
I was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any
books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by
guessing at the answers. I never had to cram for exams. I could get my
"C's." And as I was coming down the hill I ran into a giant spider web. I
was always doing that. I stood there pulling the sticky web from myself and
looking for the spider. Then I saw him: a big fat black son-of-a-bitch. I
crushed him. I had learned to hate spiders. When I went to hell I would be
eaten by a spider.
All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs,
I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything
was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and
bitchy. It was either unbearably hot for weeks on end, or it rained, and
when it rained it rained for five or six days. The water came up over the
lawns and poured into the houses. Who'd ever planned the drainage system had
probably been well paid for his ignorance about such matters.
And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born.
The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never
often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever
stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking
away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and
careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of
my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their
mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as
horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through
their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds
running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and
hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to
get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as
a dishwasher.
Maybe I'd be a bank robber. Some god-damned thing. Something with
flare, fire. You only had one shot. Why be a window washer?
I lit a cigarette and walked further down the hill. Was I the only
person who was distracted by this future without a chance?
I saw another one of those big black spiders. He was about face-high,
in his web, right in my path. I took my cigarette and placed it against him.
The tremendous web shook and leaped as he jumped, the branches of the bush
trembled. He leaped out of the web and fell to the sidewalk. Cowardly
killers, the whole bunch of .them. I crushed him with my shoe. A worthwhile
day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature -- now we
would all be eaten up by the bugs and the Hies.
I walked further down the hill, I was near the bottom when a large bush
began to shake. The King Spider was after me. I strode forward to meet it.
My mother leaped out from behind the bush. "Henry, Henry, don't
go home, don't go home, your father will kill you!"
"How's he going to do that? I can whip his ass."
"No, he's furious, Henry! Don't go home, he'll kill you! I've
been waiting here for hours!"
My mother's eyes were wide with fear and quite beautiful, large and
brown.
"What's he doing home this early?"
"He had a headache, he got the afternoon off!"
"I thought you were working, that you'd found a new job?"
She'd gotten a job as a housekeeper.
"He came and got me! He's furious.' He'll kill you."
"Don't worry, Mom, if he messes with me I'll kick his goddamned ass, I
promise you."
"Henry, he found your short stories and he read them!"
"I never asked him to read them."
"He found them in a drawer! He read them, he read all of them!"
I had written ten or twelve short stories. Give a man a typewriter
and he becomes a writer. I had hidden the stories under the paper lining of
my shorts-and-stockings drawer.
"Well," I said, "the old man poked around and he got his fingers
burned."
"He said that he was going to kill you! He said that no son of his
could write stories like that and live under the same roof with him!"
I took her by the arm. "Let's go home. Morn, and see what he does
..."
"Henry, he's thrown all your clothes out on the front lawn, all your
dirty laundry, your typewriter, your suitcase and your stories!"
"My stories?"
"Yes, those too . . ."
"I'll kill him!"
I pulled away from her and walked across 21st Street and toward
Longwood Avenue. She went after me.
"Henry, Henry, don't go in there."
The poor woman was yanking at the back of my shirt.
"Henry, listen, get yourself a room somewhere! Henry, I have ten
dollars! Take this ten dollars and get yourself a room somewhere!"
I turned. She was holding out the ten.
"Forget it," I said. "I'll just go."
"Henry, take the money! Do it for me! Do it for your mother!"
"Well, all right . . ."
I took the ten, put it in my pocket.
"Thanks, that's a lot of money."
"It's all right, Henry. I love you, Henry, but you must go."
She ran ahead of me as I walked toward the house. Then I saw it:
everything was strewn across the lawn, all my dirty and clean clothes, the
suitcase flung there open, socks, shirts, pajamas, an old robe, everything
flung everywhere, on the lawn and into the street. And I saw my manuscripts
being blown in the wind, they were in the gutter, everywhere.
My mother ran up the driveway to the house and I screamed after her so
he could hear me, "TELL HIM TO COME OUT HERE AND I'LL KNOCK HIS GOD-DAMNED
HEAD OFF!"
I went after my manuscripts first. That was the lowest of the blows,
doing that to me. They were the one thing he had no right to touch. As I
picked up each page from the gutter, from the lawn and from the street, I
began to feel better. I found every page I could, placed them in the
suitcase under the weight of a shoe, then rescued the typewriter. It had
broken out of its case but it looked all right. I looked at my rags
scattered about. I left the dirty laundry, I left the pajamas, which were
only a handed-down pair of his discards. There wasn't much else to pack. I
closed the suitcase, picked it up with the typewriter and started to walk
away. I could see two faces peering after me from behind the drapes. But I
quickly forgot that, walked up Longwood, across 21st and up old Westview
hill. I didn't feel much different than I had always felt. I was neither
elated nor dejected; it all seemed to be just a continuation. I was going to
take the "W" streetcar, get a transfer, and go somewhere downtown.
I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50
a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady -- a middle-aged
blond -- a week's rent. The toilet and tub were down the hall but there was
a wash basin to piss in.
My first night there I discovered a bar downstairs just to the right of
the entrance. I liked that. All I had to do was climb the stairway and I was
home. The bar was full of little dark men but they didn't bother me. I'd
heard all the stories about Filipinos -- that they liked white girls,
blonds in particular, that they carried stilettoes, that since they were all
the same size, seven of them would chip in and buy one expensive suit, with
all the accessories, and they would take turns wearing the suit one night a
week. George Raft had said somewhere that Filipinos set the style trends.
They stood on street corners and swung golden chains around and around, thin
golden chains, seven or eight inches long, each man's chain-length
indicating the length of his penis.
The bartender was Filipino.
"You're new, hub?" he asked.
"I live upstairs. I'm a student."
"No credit."
I put some coins down.
"Give me an Eastside."
He came back with the bottle.
"Where can a fellow get a girl?" I asked. He picked up some of the
coins.
"I don't know anything," he said and walked to the register.
That first night I closed the bar. Nobody bothered me. A few blond
women left with the Filipinos. The men were quiet drinkers. They sat in
little groups with their heads close together, talking, now and then
laughing in a very quiet manner. I liked them. When the bar closed and I got
up to leave the bartender said, "Thank you." That was never done in American
bars, not to me anyhow. I liked my new situation. All I needed was money.
I decided to keep going to college. It would give me some place to be
during the daytime. My friend Becker had dropped out. There wasn't anybody
that I much cared for there except maybe the instructor in Anthropology, a
known Communist. He didn't teach much Anthropology. He was a large man,
casual and likeable.
"Now the way you fry a porterhouse steak," he told the class,
"you get the pan red hot, you drink a shot of whiskey and then you pour
a thin layer of salt in the pan. You drop the steak in and sear it but not
for too long. Then you flip it, sear the other side, drink another shot of
whiskey, take the steak out and eat it immediately."
Once when I was stretched out on the campus lawn he had come walking by
and had stopped and stretched out beside me.
"Chinaski, you don't believe all that Nazi hokum you're spreading
around, do you?"
"I'm not saying. Do you believe your crap?"
"Of course I do."
"Good luck."
"Chinaski, you're nothing but a wienerschnitzel."
He got up, brushed off the grass and leaves and walked away . . .
I had been at the Temple Street place only for a couple of days when
Jimmy Hatcher found me. He knocked on the door one night and I opened it and
there he was with two other guys, fellow aircraft workers, one called
Delmore, the other, Fastshoes.
"How come he's called 'Fastshoes'?"
"You ever lend him money, you'll know."
"Come on in . . . How in Christ's name did you find me?"
"Your folks had you traced by a private dick."
"Damn, they know how to take the boy out of a man's life."
"Maybe they're worried?"
"If they're worried all they have to do is send money."
"They claim you'll drink it up."
"Then let them worry . . ."
The three of them came in and sat around on the bed and the floor. They
had a fifth of whiskey and some paper cups. Jimmy poured all around.
"Nice place you've got. here."
"It's great. I can see the City Hall every time I stick my head out the
window."
Fastshoes pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. He was sitting on the
rug. He looked up at me.
"You gamble?"
"Every day. You got a marked deck?"
"Hey, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Don't curse me or I'll hang your wig on my mantlepiece."
"Honest, man, these cards are straight!"
"All I play is poker and 21. What's the limit?"
"Two bucks."
"We'll split for the deal."
I got the deal and called for draw poker, regular. I didn't like wild
cards, too much luck was needed that way. Two bits for the kitty. As I
dealt, Jimmy poured another round.
"How are you making it. Hank?"
"I'm writing term papers for the other people."
"Brilliant."
"Yeah .. ."
"Hey, you guys," said Jimmy, "I told you this guy was a genius."
"Yeah," said Delmore. He was to my right. He opened.
"Two bits," he said. We followed him in.
"Three cards," said Delmore.
"One," said Jimmy.
"Three," said Fastshoes.
"I'll stand," I said.
"Two bits," said Delmore.
We all stayed in and then I said, "I'll see your two bits and raise you
I nodded.
"You are thirty minutes late."
"Yes."
"Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?"
"No."
"Why not, pray tell?"
"Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding
was mine it would be my funeral." I was always quick with the mouth. I would
never learn.
"My dear sir," said Mr. Hamilton, "we have been listening to Gilbert
and Sullivan in order to learn proper enunciation. Please stand up."
I stood up.
"Now, please sing, Stick close to your desks and never go to sea and
you'll always be the ruler of the Queens Navy."
I stood there.
"Well, go ahead, please!"
I went through it and sat down.
"Mr. Chinaski, I could barely hear you. Couldn't you sing with just a
bit more verve?"
I stood up again. I sucked in a giant sea of air and let go. "IF YA
WANNA BE DA RULLER OF DEY QUEEN'S NABY STICK CLOSE TA YUR DESKS AN NEVA GO
TA SEA!"
I had gotten it backwards.
"Mr. Chinaski," said Mr. Hamilton, "please sit down."
I sat down. It was Baldy's fault.
Everybody had gym period at the same time. Baldy's locker was about
four or five down from mine in the same row. I went to my locker early.
Baldy and I had a similar problem. We hated wool pants because the wool
itched our legs but our parents just loved for us to wear wool. I had solved
the problem, for Baldy and myself, by letting him in on a secret. All you
had to do was to wear your pajamas underneath the wool pants.
I opened my locker and undressed. I got my pants and pajamas off and
then I took the pajamas and hid them on top of the locker. I got into my gym
suit. The other guys were starting to walk in.
Baldy and I had some great pajama stories but Baldy's was the best. He
had been out with his girlfriend one night, they had gone to some dance. In
between dances his girlfriend had said, "What's that?"
"What's what?"
"There's something sticking out of your pant cuff."
"What?"
"My goodness! You're wearing your pajamas underneath your
pants!"
"Oh? Oh, that . . . I must have forgotten . . ."
"I'm leaving right now!"
She never dated him again.
All the guys were changing into their gym clothes. Then Baldy walked in
and opened his locker.
"How ya doing, pal?" I asked him.
"Oh, hello. Hank . . ."
"I've got a 7 a.m. English class. It really starts the day outright.
Only they ought to call it Music Appreciation /."
"Oh yeah. Hamilton. I've heard of him. Hee hee hee . . ."
I walked over to him.
Baldy had unbuckled his pants. I reached over and yanked his pants
down. Underneath were green striped pajamas. He tried to yank his pants back
up but I was too strong for him.
"HEY, FELLOWS, LOOK! JESUS CHRIST, HERE'S A GUY WHO WEARS HIS PAJAMAS
TO SCHOOL!"
Baldy was struggling. His face was florid. A couple of guys walked over
and looked. Then I did the worst. I yanked his pajamas down.
"AND LOOK HERE! THE POOR FUCKER IS NOT ONLY BALD BUT HE DOESN'T HARDLY
HAVE A COCK! WHAT IS THIS POOR EUCKER GOING TO DO WHEN HE CONFRONTS A
WOMAN?"
Some big guy standing nearby said, "Chinaski, you're really a piece of
shit!"
"Yeah," said a couple of other guys. "Yeah . . . yeah . . ." I heard
other voices.
Baldy pulled his pants up. He was actually crying. He looked at the
guys. "Well, Chinaski wears pajamas too! He was the guy who started
me doing it! Look in his locker, just look in his locker!"
Baldy ran down to my locker and ripped the door open. He pulled all my
clothing out. The pajamas weren't in there.
"He's hidden them! He's hidden them somewhere!"
I left my clothes on the floor and walked out on the field for roll
call. I stood in the second row. I did a couple of deep knee bends. I
noticed another big guy behind me. I'd heard his name around, Sholom
Stodolsky.
"Chinaski," he said, "you're a piece of shit."
"Don't mess with me, man, I've got an edgy nature."
"Well, I'm messing with you."
"Don't push me too far, fat boy."
"You know the place between the Biology Building and the tennis
courts?"
"I've seen it."
"I'll meet you there after gym."
"O.K.," I said.
I didn't show up. After gym I cut the rest of my classes and took the
streetcars down to Pershing Square. I sat on a bench and waited for some
action. It seemed a long time coming. Finally a Religionist and an Atheist
got into it. They weren't much good. I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn't
have much to argue about. I left the park and walked down to 7th and
Broadway. That was the center of town. There didn't seem to be much doing
there, just people waiting for the signals to change so they could cross the
street. Then I noticed my legs were starting to itch. I had left my pajamas
on top of the locker. What a fucking lousy day it had been from beginning to
end. I hopped a "W" streetcar and sat in the back as it rolled along
carrying me back toward home.
I only met one student at City College that I liked, Robert Becker. He
wanted to be a writer. "I'm going to learn everything there is to learn
about writing. It will be like taking a car apart and putting it back
together again."
"Sounds like work," I said.
"I'm going to do it."
Becker was an inch or so shorter than I was but he was stocky, he was
powerfully built, with big shoulders and arms.
"I had a childhood disease," he told me. "I had to lay in bed one time
for a year squeezing two tennis balls, one in each hand. Just from doing
that, I got to be like this."
He had a job as a messenger boy at night and was putting himself
through college.
"How'd you get your job?"
"I knew a guy who knew a guy."
"I'll bet I can kick your ass."
"Maybe, maybe not. I'm only interested in writing."
We were sitting in an alcove overlooking the lawn. Two guys were
staring at me.
Then one of them spoke. "Hey," he asked me, "do you mind if I ask you
something?"
"Go ahead."
"Well, you used to be a sissy in grammar school, I remember you. And
now you're a tough guy. What happened?"
"I don't know."
"Are you a cynic?"
"Probably."
"Are you happy being a cynic?"
"Yes."
"Then you're not a cynic because cynics aren't happy!"
The two guys did a little vaudeville handshake act and ran off,
laughing.
"They made you look bad," said Becker.
"No, they were trying too hard."
"Are you a cynic?"
"I'm unhappy. If I was a cynic it would probably make me feel
better."
We hopped down from the alcove. Classes were over. Becker
wanted to put his books in his locker. We walked there and he
dumped them in. He handed me five or six sheets of paper.
"Here read this. It's a short story."
We walked down to my locker. I opened it and handed him a
paper bag.
"Take a hit..."
It was a bottle of port. Becker took a hit, then I took one.
"You always keep one of these in your locker?" he asked.
"I try to."
"Listen, tonight's my night off. Why don't you come meet some
of my friends?"
"People don't do me much good."
"These are different people."
"Yeah? Where at? Your place?"
"No. Here, I'll write down the address . . ." He began writing
on a piece of paper.
"Listen, Becker, what do these people do?"
"Drink," said Becker. I put the slip into my pocket . . .
That night after dinner I read Becker's short story. It was good and I
was jealous. It was about riding his bike at night and then delivering a
telegram to a beautiful woman. The writing was objective and clear, there
was a gentle decency about it. Becker claimed Thomas Wolfe as an influence
but he didn't wail and ham it up like Wolfe did. The emotion was there but
it wasn't spelled out in neon. Becker could write, he could write better
than I could.
My parents had gotten me a typewriter and I had tried some short
stories but they had come out very bitter and ragged. Not that that was so
bad but the stories seemed to beg, they didn't have their own vitality. My
stories were darker than Becker's, stranger, but they didn't work. Well, one
or two of them had worked -- for me -- but it was more or less as if they
had fallen into place instead of being guided there. Becker was clearly
better. Maybe I'd try painting,
I waited until my parents were asleep. My father always snored loudly.
When I heard him I opened the bedroom screen and slid out over the berry
bush. That put me into the neighbor's driveway and I walked slowly in the
dark. Then I walked up Longwood to 21st Street, took a right, then went up
the hill along Westview to where the "W" car ended its route. I dropped my
token in and walked to the rear of the car, sat down and lit a cigarette. If
Becker's friends were anywhere as good as Becker's short story it was going
to be one hell of a night.
Becker was already there by the time I found the Beacon Street address.
His friends were in the breakfast nook. I was introduced. There was Harry,
there was Lana, there was Gobbles, there was Stinky, there was Marshbird,
there was Ellis, there was Dogface and finally there was The Ripper. They
all sat around a large breakfast table. Harry had a legitimate job
somewhere, he and Becker were the only ones employed. Lana was Harry's wife,
Gobbles their baby was sitting in a highchair. Lana was the only woman
there. When we were introduced she had looked right at me and smiled. They
were all young, thin, and puffed at rolled cigarettes.
"Becker told us about you," said Harry. "He says you're a writer."
"I've got a typewriter."
"You gonna write about us?" asked Stinky.
"I'd rather drink."
"Fine. We're going to have a drinking contest. Got any money?" Stinky
asked.
"Two dollars . . ."
"O.K., the ante is two dollars. Everybody up!" Harry said. That made
eighteen dollars. The money looked good laying there. A bottle appeared and
then shot glasses.
"Becker told us you think you're a tough guy. Are you a tough guy?"
"Yeah."
"Well, we're gonna see . . ."
The kitchen light was very bright. It was straight whiskey. A dark
yellow whiskey. Harry poured the drinks. Such beauty. My mouth, my throat,
couldn't wait. The radio was on. Oh,Johnny, oh Johnny, how you can
love! somebody sang.
"Down the hatch!" said Harry.
There was no way I could lose. I could drink for days. I had never had
enough to drink.
Gobbles had a tiny shot glass of his own. As we raised ours and drank
them, he raised his and drank. Everybody thought it was funny. I didn't
think it was so funny for a baby to drink but I didn't say anything. Harry
poured another round.
"You read my short story, Hank?" Becker asked.
"Yeah."
"How'd you like it?"
"It was good. You're ready now. All you need is some luck."
"Down the hatch!" said Harry.
The second round was no problem, we all got it down, including Lana.
Harry looked at me. "You like to duke it, Hank?"
"No."
"Well, in case you do, we got Dogface here."
Dogface was twice my size. It was so wearisome being in the world.
Every time you looked around there was some guy ready to take you on without
even inhaling. I looked at Dogface.
"Hi, buddy!"
"Buddy, my ass," he said. "Just get your next drink down."
Harry poured them all around. He skipped Gobbles in the highchair,
though, which I appreciated. All right, we raised them, we all got that
round down. Then Lana dropped out.
"Somebody's got to clean up this mess and get Harry ready for work in
the morning," she said.
The next round was poured. Just as it was the door banged open and a
large good-looking kid of around 22 came running into the room. "Shit,
Harry" he said, "hide me! I just held up a fucking gas station!"
"My car's in the garage," Harry said. "Get down on the floor in the
back seat and stay there!"
We drank up. The next round was poured. A new bottle appeared. The
eighteen dollars was still in the center of the table. We were still all
hanging in there except Lana. It was going to take plenty of whiskey to do
us in.
"Hey," I asked Harry, "aren't we going to run out of drinks?"
"Show him, Lana , , ."
Lana pulled open some upper cupboard doors. I could see bottles and
bottles of whiskey lined up, all the same brand. It looked like the loot
from a truck hi jack and it probably was. And these were the gang members:
Harry, Lana, Stinky, Marshbird, Ellis, Dogface and The Ripper, maybe Becker,
and most likely the young guy now on the floor in the back seat of Harry's
car. I felt honored to be drinking with such an active part of the
population of Los Angeles. Becker not only knew how to write, Becker knew
his people. I would dedicate my first novel to Robert Becker. And it would
be a better novel than Of Time and the River.
Harry kept pouring the rounds and we kept drinking them down. The
kitchen was blue with cigarette smoke.
Marshbird dropped out first. He had a very large nose, he just shook
his head, no more, no more, and all you could see was this long nose waving
"no" in the blue smoke.
Ellis was the next to drop out. He had a lot of hair on his chest but
evidently not much on his balls.
Dogface was next. He just jumped up and ran to the crapper and puked.
Listening to him Harry got the same idea and leaped up and puked in the
sink.
That left me, Becker, Stinky and The Ripper. Becker quit next. He just
folded his arms on the table, put his head down in his arms and that was it.
"The night's so young," I said. "I usually drink until the sun comes
up."
"Yeah," said The Ripper, "you shit in a basket too!"
"Yeah, and it's shaped like your head."
The Ripper stood up. "You son-of-a-bitch, I'll bust your ass!"
He swung at me from across the table, missed and knocked over the
bottle. Lana got a rag and mopped it up. Harry opened a bottle.
"Sit down, Rip, or you forfeit your bet," Harry said. Harry poured a
new round. We drank them down. The Ripper stood up, walked to the rear door,
opened it and looked out into the night.
"Hey, Rip, what the hell you doing?" Stinky asked.
"I'm checking to see if there's a full moon."
"Well, is there?"
There was no answer. We heard him fall through the door, down the steps
and into the bushes. We left him there. That left me and Stinky.
"I've never seen anybody take Stinky yet," said Harry. Lana had just
put Gobbles to bed. She walked back into the kitchen. "Jesus, there are dead
bodies all over the place."
"Pour 'em, Harry," I said.
Harry filled Stinky's glass, then mine. I knew there was no way I could
get that drink down. I did the only thing I could do. I pretended it was
easy. I grabbed the shot glass and belted it down. Stinky just stared at me.
"I'll be right back. I gotta go to the crapper."
We sat and waited.
"Stinky's a nice guy," I said. "You shouldn't call him Stinky. How'd he
get that name?"
"I dunno," said Harry, "somebody just laid it on him."
"That guy in the back of your car. He ever going to come out?"
"Not till morning."
We sat and waited. "I think," said Harry, "we better take a look."
We opened the bathroom door. Stinky didn't appear to be in there. Then
we saw him. He had fallen into the bathtub. His feet stuck up over the edge.
His eyes were closed, he was down in there, and out. We walked back to the
table. "The money's yours," said Harry.
"How about letting me pay for some of those bottles of whiskey?"
"Forget it."
"You mean it?"
"Yes, of course."
I picked up the money and put it in my right front pocket. Then I
looked at Stinky's drink.
"No use wasting this," I said.
"You mean you're going to drink that?" asked Lana.
"Why not? One for the road . . ."
I gulped it down.
"O.K., see you guys, it's been great!"
"Goodnight, Hank . . ."
I walked out the back door, stepping over The Ripper's body. I found a
back alley and took a left. I walked along and I saw a green Chevy sedan. I
staggered a bit as I approached it. I grabbed the rear door handle to steady
myself. The god-damned door was unlocked and it swung open, knocking me
sideways. I fell hard, skinning my left elbow on the pavement. There was a
full moon. The whiskey had hit me all at once. I felt as if I couldn't get
up. I had to get up. I was supposed to be a tough guy. I rose, fell against
the half-open door, grabbed at it, held it. Then I had the inside handle and
was steadying myself. I got myself into the back seat and then I just sat
there. I sat there for some time. Then I started to puke. It really came. It
came and it came, it covered the rear floorboard. Then I sat for a while.
Then I managed to get out of the car. I didn't feel as dizzy. I took out my
handkerchief and wiped the vomit off my pant legs and off of my shoes as
best I could. I closed the car door and walked on down the alley. I had to
find the "W" streetcar. I would find it.
I did. I rode it in. I made it down Westview Street, walked down 21st
Street, turned south down Longwood Avenue to 2122. I walked up the
neighbor's driveway, found the berry bush, crawled over it, through the open
screen and into my bedroom. I undressed and went to bed. I must have
consumed over a quart of whiskey. My father was still snoring, just as he
had been when I had left, only at the moment it was louder and uglier. I
slept anyhow.
As usual I approached Mr. Hamilton's English class thirty minutes late.
It was 7:30 a.m. I stood outside the door and listened. They were at Gilbert
and Sullivan again. And it was still all about going to the sea and the
Queen's Navy. Hamilton couldn't get enough of that. In high school I'd had
an English teacher and it had been Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan Poe.
I opened the door. Hamilton went over and lifted the needle from the
record. Then he announced to the class, "When Mr. Chinaski arrives we always
know that it is 7:30 a.m. Mr. Chinaski is always on time. The only
problem being that it is the wrong time."
He paused, glancing at the faces in his class. He was very, very
dignified. Then he looked at me.
"Mr. Chinaski, whether you arrive at 7:30 a.m. or whether you arrive at
all will not matter. I am assigning you a 'D' for English 1. "
"A 'D,' Mr. Hamilton?" I asked, flashing my famous sneer.
"Why not an 'F'?"
"Because 'F,' at times, equates with 'Fuck.' And I don't think you're
worth a 'Fuck."'
The class cheered and roared and stomped and stamped. I turned around,
walked out, closed the door behind me. I walked down the hallway, still
hearing them going at it in there.
The war was going very well in Europe, for Hitler. Most of the students
weren't very vocal on the matter. But the instructors were, they were almost
all left-wing and anti-German. There seemed to be no right-wing faction
among the instructors except for Mr. Glasgow, in Economics, and he was very
discreet about it.
It was intellectually popular and proper to be for going to war with
Germany, to stop the spread of fascism. As for me, I had no desire to go to
war to protect the life I had or what future I might have. I had no Freedom.
I had nothing. With Hitler around, maybe I'd even get a piece of ass now and
then and more than a dollar a week allowance. As far as I could rationalize,
I had nothing to protect. Also, having been born in Germany, there was a
natural loyalty and I didn't like to see the whole German nation, the
people, depicted everywhere as monsters and idiots. In the movie theatres
they speeded up the newsreels to make Hitler and Mussolini look like
frenetic madmen. Also, with all the instructors being anti-German I found it
personally impossible to simply agree with them. Out of sheer alienation and
a natural contrariness I decided to align myself against their point of
view. I had never read Mein Kampf and had no desire to do so. Hitler
was just another dictator to me, only instead of lecturing me at the dinner
table he'd probably blow my brains out or my balls off if I went to war to
stop him.
Sometimes as the instructors talked on and on about the evils of nazism
(we were told always to spell "nazi" with a small "n" even at the beginning
of a sentence) and fascism I would leap to my feet and make something up:
"The survival of the human race depends upon selective accountability!"
Which meant, watch out who you go to bed with, but only I knew that. It
really pissed everybody off. I don't know where I got my stuff:
"One of the failures of Democracy is that the common vote guarantees a
common leader who then leads us to a common apathetic predictability!"
I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given
me any trouble. All my troubles had come from white gentiles. Thus, I wasn't
a nazi by temperament or choice; the teachers more or less forced it on me
by being so much alike and thinking so much alike and with their anti-German
prejudice. I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or
understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job,
which gave me a considerable advantage over the teachers.
"Breed a plow horse to a race horse and you get an offspring that is
neither swift nor strong. A new Master Race will evolve from purposeful
breeding!"
"There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is
to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both
sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a
matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best
generals and the better army!"
I loved it. I could make up anything I liked. Of course, I was talking
myself further and further away from any chance with the girls. But I had
never been that close anyhow. I figured because of my wild speeches I was
alone on campus but it wasn't so. Some others had been listening. One day,
walking to my Current Affairs class, I heard somebody walking up behind me.
I never liked anybody walking behind me, not close. So I turned as I walked.
It was the student body president, Boyd Taylor. He was very popular with the
students, the only man in the history of the college to have been elected
president twice.
"Hey, Chinaski, I want to talk to you."
I'd never cared too much for Boyd, he was the typical good- looking
American youth with a guaranteed future, always properly dressed, casual,
smooth, every hair of his black mustache trimmed. What his appeal was to the
student body, I had no idea. He walked along beside me.
"Don't you think it looks bad for you, Boyd, to be seen walking with
me?"
"I'll worry about that."
"All right. What is it?"
"Chinaski, this is just between you and me, got it?"
"Sure."
"Listen, I don't believe in what guys like you stand for or what you're
trying to do."
"So?"
"But I want you to know that if you win here and in Europe I'm willing
to join your side."
I could only look at him and laugh.
He stood there as I walked on. Never trust a man with a perfectly-
trimmed mustache . . .
Other people had been listening as well. Coming out of Current Affairs
I ran into Baldy standing there with a guy five feet tall and three feet
wide. The guy's head was sunk down into his shoulders, he had a very round
head, small ears, cropped hair, pea eyes, tiny wet round mouth. A nut, I
thought, a killer.
"HEY, HANK!" Baldy hollered.
I walked over. "I thought we were finished, LaCrosse."
"Oh no! There are great things still to do!"
Shit! Baldy was one too!
Why did the Master Race movement draw nothing but mental and physical
cripples?
"I want you to meet Igor Stirnov."
I reached out and we shook hands. He squeezed mine with all his
strength. It really hurt.
"Let go," I said, "or I'll bust your fucking missing neck!"
Igor let go. "I don't trust men with limp handshakes. Why do you have a
limp handshake?"
"I'm weak today. They burned my toast for breakfast and at lunch I
spilled my chocolate milk."
Igor turned to Baldy. "What's with this guy?"
"Don't worry about him. He's got his own ways."
Igor looked at me again.
"My grandfather was a White Russian. During the Revolution the Reds
killed him. I must get even with those bastards!"
"I see."
Then another student came walking toward us. "Hey, Fenster!" Baldy
hollered.
Fenster walked up. We shook hands. I gave him a limp one. I didn't like
to shake hands. Fenster's first name was Bob. There was to be a meeting at a
house in Glendale, the Americans for America Party. Fenster was the campus
representative. He walked off. Baldy leaned over and whispered into my ear,
"They're Nazis!"
Igor had a car and a gallon of rum. We met in front of Baldy's house,
Igor passed the bottle. Good stuff, it really burned the membranes of the
throat, Igor drove his car like a tank, right through stop signals. People
blew their horns and slammed on their brakes and he waved a fake black
pistol at them.
"Hey, Igor," said Baldy, "show Hank your pistol."
Igor was driving. Baldy and I were in the back. Igor passed me his
pistol. I looked at it.
"It's great!" Baldy said. "He carved it out of wood and stained it with
black shoe polish. Looks real, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," I said. "He's even drilled a hole in the barrel."
I handed the gun back to Igor. "Very nice," I said. He handed back the
jug of rum. I took a hit and handed the bottle to Baldy. He looked at me and
said, "Heil Hitler!"
We were the last to arrive. It was a large handsome house. We were met
at the door by a fat smiling boy who looked like he had spent a lifetime
eating chestnuts by the fire. His parents didn't seem to be about. His name
was Larry Kearny. We followed him through the big house and down a long dark
stairway. All I could see was Kearny's shoulders and head. He was certainly
a well-fed fellow and looked to be far saner than Baldy, Igor or myself.
Maybe there would be something to learn here.
Then we were in the cellar. We found some chairs. Fenster nodded to us.
There were seven others there whom I didn't know. There was a desk on a
raised platform. Larry walked up and stood behind the desk. Behind him on
the wall was a large American flag. Larry stood very straight. "We will now
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America!"
My god, I thought, I am in the wrong place! We stood and took the
pledge, but I stopped after "I pledge allegiance . . ." I didn't say to
what.
We sat down. Larry started talking from behind the desk. He explained
that since this was the first meeting, he would preside. After two or three
meetings, after we got to know one another, a president could be elected if
we wished. But meanwhile . . .
"We face here, in America, two threats to our liberty. We face the
communist scourge .and the black takeover. Most often they work hand in
hand. We true Americans will gather here in an attempt to counter this
scourge, this menace. It has gotten so that no decent white girl can walk
the streets anymore without being accosted by a black male!"
Igor leaped up. "We'll kill them!"
"The communists want to divide the wealth for which we have worked so
long, which our fathers labored for, and their fathers before them
worked for. The communists want to give our money to every black man, homo,
bum, murderer and child molester who walks our streets!"
"We'll kill them!"
"They must be stopped."
"We'll arm!"
"Yes, we'll arm! And we'll meet here and formulate a master plan to
save America!"
The fellows cheered. Two or three of them yelled, "Heil Hitler!" Then
the get-to-know-each-other time arrived.
Larry passed out cold beers and we stood around in little groups
talking, not much being said, except we reached a general agreement that we
needed target practice so that we would be expert with our guns when the
time came.
When we got back to Igor's house his parents didn't seem to be about,
either, Igor got out a frying pan, put in four cubes of butter, and began to
melt them. He took the rum, put it in a large pot and warmed it up.
"This is what men drink," he said. Then he looked at Baldy.
"Are you a man, Baldy?"
Baldy was already drunk. He stood very straight, hands down at his
sides. "YES, I'M A MAN!" He started to weep. The tears came rolling down.
"I'M A MAN!" He stood very straight and yelled, "HEIL HITLER!" the tears
rolling. Igor looked at me. "Are you a man?"
"I don't know. Is that rum ready?"
"I'm not sure I trust you. I'm not so sure that you are one of us. Are
you a counter-spy? Are you an enemy agent?"
"No."
"Are you one of us?"
"I don't know. Only one thing I'm sure of."
"What's that?"
"I don't like you. Is the rum ready?"
"You see?" said Baldy. "I told you he was mean!"
"We'll see who is the meanest before the night is ended," said Igor.
Igor poured the melted butter into the boiling rum, then shut off the
flame and stirred. I didn't like him but he certainly was different and I
liked that. Then he found three drinking cups, large, blue, with Russian
writing on them. He poured the buttered rum into the cups.
"O.K.,"he said, "drink up!"
"Shit, it's about time," I said and I let it slide down. It was a
little too hot and it stank.
I watched Igor drink his. I saw his little pea eyes over the rim of his
cup. He managed to get it down, driblets of golden buttered rum leaking out
of the corners of his stupid mouth. He was looking at Baldy. Baldy was
standing, staring down into his cup. I knew from the old days that Baldy
just didn't have a natural love of drinking.
Igor stared at Baldy. "Drink up!"
"Yes, Igor, yes . . ."
Baldy lifted the blue cup. He was having a difficult time. It was too
hot for him and he didn't like the taste. Half of it ran out of his mouth
and over his chin and onto his shirt. His empty cup fell to the kitchen
floor.
Igor squared himself in front of Baldy.
"You're not a man!"
"I AM A MAN, IGOR! I AM A MAN!"
"YOU LIE!"
Igor backhanded him across the face and as Baldy's head jumped to one
side, he straightened him up with a slap to the other side of his face.
Baldy stood at attention with his hands rigidly at his sides.
"I'm . . . a man . . ,"
Igor continued to stand in front of him.
"I'll make a man out of you!"
"O.K.," I said to Igor, "leave him alone."
Igor left the kitchen. I poured myself another rum. It was dreadful
stuff but it was all there was.
Igor walked back in. He was holding a gun, a real one, an old six-
shooter.
"We will now play Russian roulette," he announced.
"Your mother's ass," I said.
"I'll play, Igor," said Baldy, "I'll play! I'm a man!"
"All right," said Igor, "there is one bullet in the gun. I will spin
the chamber and hand the gun to you."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to Baldy. Baldy took it and
pointed it at his head. "I'm a man . . . I'm a man . . . I'll do it!"
He began crying again. "I'll do it . . . I'm a man . . ."
Baldy let the muzzle of the gun slip away from his temple. He pointed
it away from his skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
Igor took the gun, spun the chamber and handed it to me. I handed it
back.
"You go first."
Igor spun the chamber, held the gun up to the light and looked through
the chamber. Then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There
was a click.
"Big deal," I said. "You checked the chamber to see where the bullet
was."
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to me. "Your turn..."
I handed the gun back. "Stuff it," I told him. I walked over to pour
myself another rum. As I did there was a shot. I looked down. Near my foot,
in the kitchen floor, there was a bullet hole. I turned around.
"You ever point that thing at me again and I'll kill you, Igor."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He stood there smiling. He slowly began to raise the gun. I waited.
Then he lowered the gun. That was about it for the night. We went out to the
car and Igor drove us home. But we stopped first at Westlake Park and rented
a boat and went out on the lake to finish off the rum. With the last drink,
Igor loaded up the gun and shot holes in the bottom of the boat. We were
forty yards from shore and had to swim in . . .
It was late when I got home. I crawled over the old berry bush and
through the bedroom window. I undressed and went to bed while in the next
room my father snored.
I was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any
books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by
guessing at the answers. I never had to cram for exams. I could get my
"C's." And as I was coming down the hill I ran into a giant spider web. I
was always doing that. I stood there pulling the sticky web from myself and
looking for the spider. Then I saw him: a big fat black son-of-a-bitch. I
crushed him. I had learned to hate spiders. When I went to hell I would be
eaten by a spider.
All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs,
I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything
was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and
bitchy. It was either unbearably hot for weeks on end, or it rained, and
when it rained it rained for five or six days. The water came up over the
lawns and poured into the houses. Who'd ever planned the drainage system had
probably been well paid for his ignorance about such matters.
And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born.
The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never
often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever
stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking
away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and
careful, all alike. And I've got to live with these fuckers for the rest of
my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their
mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as
horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through
their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds
running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and
hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to
get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn't even get a job as
a dishwasher.
Maybe I'd be a bank robber. Some god-damned thing. Something with
flare, fire. You only had one shot. Why be a window washer?
I lit a cigarette and walked further down the hill. Was I the only
person who was distracted by this future without a chance?
I saw another one of those big black spiders. He was about face-high,
in his web, right in my path. I took my cigarette and placed it against him.
The tremendous web shook and leaped as he jumped, the branches of the bush
trembled. He leaped out of the web and fell to the sidewalk. Cowardly
killers, the whole bunch of .them. I crushed him with my shoe. A worthwhile
day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature -- now we
would all be eaten up by the bugs and the Hies.
I walked further down the hill, I was near the bottom when a large bush
began to shake. The King Spider was after me. I strode forward to meet it.
My mother leaped out from behind the bush. "Henry, Henry, don't
go home, don't go home, your father will kill you!"
"How's he going to do that? I can whip his ass."
"No, he's furious, Henry! Don't go home, he'll kill you! I've
been waiting here for hours!"
My mother's eyes were wide with fear and quite beautiful, large and
brown.
"What's he doing home this early?"
"He had a headache, he got the afternoon off!"
"I thought you were working, that you'd found a new job?"
She'd gotten a job as a housekeeper.
"He came and got me! He's furious.' He'll kill you."
"Don't worry, Mom, if he messes with me I'll kick his goddamned ass, I
promise you."
"Henry, he found your short stories and he read them!"
"I never asked him to read them."
"He found them in a drawer! He read them, he read all of them!"
I had written ten or twelve short stories. Give a man a typewriter
and he becomes a writer. I had hidden the stories under the paper lining of
my shorts-and-stockings drawer.
"Well," I said, "the old man poked around and he got his fingers
burned."
"He said that he was going to kill you! He said that no son of his
could write stories like that and live under the same roof with him!"
I took her by the arm. "Let's go home. Morn, and see what he does
..."
"Henry, he's thrown all your clothes out on the front lawn, all your
dirty laundry, your typewriter, your suitcase and your stories!"
"My stories?"
"Yes, those too . . ."
"I'll kill him!"
I pulled away from her and walked across 21st Street and toward
Longwood Avenue. She went after me.
"Henry, Henry, don't go in there."
The poor woman was yanking at the back of my shirt.
"Henry, listen, get yourself a room somewhere! Henry, I have ten
dollars! Take this ten dollars and get yourself a room somewhere!"
I turned. She was holding out the ten.
"Forget it," I said. "I'll just go."
"Henry, take the money! Do it for me! Do it for your mother!"
"Well, all right . . ."
I took the ten, put it in my pocket.
"Thanks, that's a lot of money."
"It's all right, Henry. I love you, Henry, but you must go."
She ran ahead of me as I walked toward the house. Then I saw it:
everything was strewn across the lawn, all my dirty and clean clothes, the
suitcase flung there open, socks, shirts, pajamas, an old robe, everything
flung everywhere, on the lawn and into the street. And I saw my manuscripts
being blown in the wind, they were in the gutter, everywhere.
My mother ran up the driveway to the house and I screamed after her so
he could hear me, "TELL HIM TO COME OUT HERE AND I'LL KNOCK HIS GOD-DAMNED
HEAD OFF!"
I went after my manuscripts first. That was the lowest of the blows,
doing that to me. They were the one thing he had no right to touch. As I
picked up each page from the gutter, from the lawn and from the street, I
began to feel better. I found every page I could, placed them in the
suitcase under the weight of a shoe, then rescued the typewriter. It had
broken out of its case but it looked all right. I looked at my rags
scattered about. I left the dirty laundry, I left the pajamas, which were
only a handed-down pair of his discards. There wasn't much else to pack. I
closed the suitcase, picked it up with the typewriter and started to walk
away. I could see two faces peering after me from behind the drapes. But I
quickly forgot that, walked up Longwood, across 21st and up old Westview
hill. I didn't feel much different than I had always felt. I was neither
elated nor dejected; it all seemed to be just a continuation. I was going to
take the "W" streetcar, get a transfer, and go somewhere downtown.
I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50
a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady -- a middle-aged
blond -- a week's rent. The toilet and tub were down the hall but there was
a wash basin to piss in.
My first night there I discovered a bar downstairs just to the right of
the entrance. I liked that. All I had to do was climb the stairway and I was
home. The bar was full of little dark men but they didn't bother me. I'd
heard all the stories about Filipinos -- that they liked white girls,
blonds in particular, that they carried stilettoes, that since they were all
the same size, seven of them would chip in and buy one expensive suit, with
all the accessories, and they would take turns wearing the suit one night a
week. George Raft had said somewhere that Filipinos set the style trends.
They stood on street corners and swung golden chains around and around, thin
golden chains, seven or eight inches long, each man's chain-length
indicating the length of his penis.
The bartender was Filipino.
"You're new, hub?" he asked.
"I live upstairs. I'm a student."
"No credit."
I put some coins down.
"Give me an Eastside."
He came back with the bottle.
"Where can a fellow get a girl?" I asked. He picked up some of the
coins.
"I don't know anything," he said and walked to the register.
That first night I closed the bar. Nobody bothered me. A few blond
women left with the Filipinos. The men were quiet drinkers. They sat in
little groups with their heads close together, talking, now and then
laughing in a very quiet manner. I liked them. When the bar closed and I got
up to leave the bartender said, "Thank you." That was never done in American
bars, not to me anyhow. I liked my new situation. All I needed was money.
I decided to keep going to college. It would give me some place to be
during the daytime. My friend Becker had dropped out. There wasn't anybody
that I much cared for there except maybe the instructor in Anthropology, a
known Communist. He didn't teach much Anthropology. He was a large man,
casual and likeable.
"Now the way you fry a porterhouse steak," he told the class,
"you get the pan red hot, you drink a shot of whiskey and then you pour
a thin layer of salt in the pan. You drop the steak in and sear it but not
for too long. Then you flip it, sear the other side, drink another shot of
whiskey, take the steak out and eat it immediately."
Once when I was stretched out on the campus lawn he had come walking by
and had stopped and stretched out beside me.
"Chinaski, you don't believe all that Nazi hokum you're spreading
around, do you?"
"I'm not saying. Do you believe your crap?"
"Of course I do."
"Good luck."
"Chinaski, you're nothing but a wienerschnitzel."
He got up, brushed off the grass and leaves and walked away . . .
I had been at the Temple Street place only for a couple of days when
Jimmy Hatcher found me. He knocked on the door one night and I opened it and
there he was with two other guys, fellow aircraft workers, one called
Delmore, the other, Fastshoes.
"How come he's called 'Fastshoes'?"
"You ever lend him money, you'll know."
"Come on in . . . How in Christ's name did you find me?"
"Your folks had you traced by a private dick."
"Damn, they know how to take the boy out of a man's life."
"Maybe they're worried?"
"If they're worried all they have to do is send money."
"They claim you'll drink it up."
"Then let them worry . . ."
The three of them came in and sat around on the bed and the floor. They
had a fifth of whiskey and some paper cups. Jimmy poured all around.
"Nice place you've got. here."
"It's great. I can see the City Hall every time I stick my head out the
window."
Fastshoes pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. He was sitting on the
rug. He looked up at me.
"You gamble?"
"Every day. You got a marked deck?"
"Hey, you son-of-a-bitch!"
"Don't curse me or I'll hang your wig on my mantlepiece."
"Honest, man, these cards are straight!"
"All I play is poker and 21. What's the limit?"
"Two bucks."
"We'll split for the deal."
I got the deal and called for draw poker, regular. I didn't like wild
cards, too much luck was needed that way. Two bits for the kitty. As I
dealt, Jimmy poured another round.
"How are you making it. Hank?"
"I'm writing term papers for the other people."
"Brilliant."
"Yeah .. ."
"Hey, you guys," said Jimmy, "I told you this guy was a genius."
"Yeah," said Delmore. He was to my right. He opened.
"Two bits," he said. We followed him in.
"Three cards," said Delmore.
"One," said Jimmy.
"Three," said Fastshoes.
"I'll stand," I said.
"Two bits," said Delmore.
We all stayed in and then I said, "I'll see your two bits and raise you