An old thin Mexican man stood up and began walking toward the doctor.
"Martinez? Martinez, old boy, how are you?"
"Sick, doctor . . . I think I die . . ."
"Well, now . . . Step in here . . ."
Martinez was in there a long time. I picked up a discarded newspaper
and tried to read it. But we were all thinking about Martinez. If Martinez
ever got out of there, someone would be next.
Then Martinez screamed. "AHHHHH! AHHHHH! STOP! STOP! AHHHH! MERCY! GOD!
PLEASE, STOP!"
"Now, now, that doesn't hurt . . ." said the doctor. Martinez screamed
again. A nurse ran into the examination room. There was silence. All we
could see was the black shadow of the half-open doorway. Then an orderly ran
into the examination room. Martinez made a gurgling sound. He was taken out
of there on a rolling stretcher. The nurse and the orderly pushed him down
the hall and through some swinging doors. Martinez was under a sheet but he
wasn't dead because the sheet wasn't pulled over his face.
The doctor stayed in the examination room for another ten minutes. Then
he came out with the clipboard.
"Jefferson Williams?" he asked. There was no answer.
"Is Jefferson Williams here?"
There was no response.
"Mary Blackthorne?"
There was no answer.
"Harry Lewis?"
"Yes, doctor?"
"Step forward, please . . ."
It was very slow. The doctor saw five more patients. Then he left the
examination room, stopped at the desk, lit a cigarette and talked to the
nurse for fifteen minutes. He looked like a very intelligent man. He had a
twitch on the right side of his face, which kept jumping, and he had red
hair with streaks of grey. He wore glasses and kept taking them off and
putting them back on. Another nurse came in and gave him a cup of coffee. He
took a sip, then holding the coffee in one hand he pushed the swinging doors
open with the other and was gone.
The office nurse came out from behind the desk with our long white
cards and she called our names. As we answered, she handed each of us our
card back. "This ward is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow if you
wish. Your appointment time is stamped on your card."
I looked down at my card. It was stamped 8:30 a.m.
30
I got lucky the next day. They called my name. It was a different
doctor. I stripped down. He turned a hot white light on me and looked me
over. I was sitting on the edge of the examination table.
"Hmmm, hmmmm," he said, "uh huh . . ."
I sat there.
"How long have you had this?"
"A couple of years. It keeps getting worse and worse."
"Ah hah."
He kept looking.
"Now, you just stretch out there on your stomach. I'll be right back."
Some moments passed and suddenly there were many people in the room.
They were all doctors. At least they looked and talked like doctors. Where
had they come from? I had thought there were hardly any doctors at L.A.
County General Hospital.
"Acne vulgaris. The worst case I've seen in all my years of practice!"
"Fantastic!"
"Incredible!"
"Look at the face!"
"The neck!"
"I just finished examining a young girl with acne vulgaris. Her back
was covered. She cried. She told me, 'How will I ever get a man? My back
will be scarred forever. I want to kill myself!' And now look at this
fellow! If she could see him, she'd know that she really had nothing to
complain about!"
You dumb fuck, I thought, don't you realize that I can hear
what you're saying? How did a man get to be a doctor? Did they take
anybody?
"Is he asleep?"
"Why?"
"He seems very calm."
"No, I don't think he's asleep. Are you asleep, my boy?"
"Yes."
They kept moving the hot white light about on various parts of
my body.
"Turn over."
I turned over.
"Look, there's a lesion inside of his mouth!"
"Well, how will we treat it?"
"The electric needle, I think . . .
"Yes, of course, the electric needle."
"Yes, the needle."
It was decided.
31
The next day I sat in the hall in my green tin chair, waiting to be
called. Across from me sat a man who had something wrong with his nose. It
was very red and very raw and very fat and long and it was growing upon
itself. You could see where section had grown upon section. Something had
irritated the man's nose and it had just started growing. I looked at the
nose and then tried not to look. I didn't want the man to see me looking, I
knew how he felt. But the man seemed very comfortable. He was fat and sat
there almost asleep.
They called him first: "Mr. Sleeth?"
He moved forward a bit in his chair.
"Sleeth? Richard Sleeth?"
"Uh? Yes, I'm here . . ."
He stood up and moved toward the doctor.
"How are you today, Mr. Sleeth?"
"Fine . . . I'm all right . . ."
He followed the doctor into the examination room.
I got my call an hour later. I followed the doctor through some
swinging doors and into another room. It was larger than the examination
room. I was told to disrobe and to sit on a table. The doctor looked at me.
"You really have a case there, haven't you?"
"Yeah."
He poked at a boil on my back.
"That hurt?"
"Yeah."
"Well," he said, "we're going to try to get some drainage."
I heard him turn on the machinery. It made a whirring sound. I could
smell oil getting hot.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He pushed the electric needle into my back. I was being drilled. The
pain was immense. It filled the room. I felt the blood run down my back.
Then he pulled the needle out.
"Now we're going to get another one," said the doctor. He jammed the
needle into me. Then he pulled it out and jammed it into a third boil. Two
other men had walked in and were standing there watching. They were probably
doctors. The needle went into me again.
"I never saw anybody go under the needle like that," said one of the
men.
"He gives no sign at all," said the other man.
"Why don't you guys go out and pinch some nurse's ass?" I asked them.
"Look, son, you can't talk to us like that!"
The needle dug into me. I didn't answer.
"The boy is evidently very bitter . . ."
"Yes, of course, that's it."
The men walked out.
"Those are fine professional men," said my doctor. "It's not good of
you to abuse them."
"Just go ahead and drill," I told him.
He did. The needle got very hot but he went on and on. He drilled my
entire back, then he got my chest. Then I stretched out and he drilled my
neck and my face.
A nurse came in and she got her instructions. "Now, Miss Ackerman, I
want these . . . pustules . . . thoroughly drained. And when you get to the
blood, keep squeezing. I want thorough drainage."
"Yes, Dr. Grundy."
"And afterwards, the ultra-violet ray machine. Two minutes on each side
to begin with . . ."
"Yes, Dr. Grundy."
I followed Miss Ackerman into another room. She told me to lay down on
the table. She got a tissue and started on the first boil.
"Does this hurt?"
"It's all right."
"You poor boy . . ."
"Don't worry. I'm just sorry you have to do this."
"You poor boy . . ."
Miss Ackerman was the first person to give me any sympathy. It felt
strange. She was a chubby little nurse in her early thirties.
"Are you going to school?" she asked.
"No, they had to take me out."
Miss Ackerman kept squeezing as she talked.
"What do you do all day?"
"I just stay in bed."
"That's awful."
"No, it's nice. I like it."
"Does this hurt?"
"Go ahead. It's all right."
"What's so nice about laying in bed all day?"
"I don't have to see anybody."
"You like that?"
"Oh, yes."
"What do you do all day?"
"Some of the day I listen to the radio."
"What do you listen to?"
"Music. And people talking."
"Do you think of girls?"
"Sure. But that's out."
"You don't want to think that way."
"I make charts of airplanes going overhead. They come over at the same
time each day. I have them timed. Say that I know that one of them is going
to pass over at 11:15 a.m. Around 11:10, I start listening for the sound of
the motor. I try to hear the first sound. Sometimes I imagine I hear it and
sometimes I'm not sure and then I begin to hear it, 'way off, for sure. And
the sound gets stronger. Then at 11:15 a.m. it passes overhead and the sound
is as loud as it's going to get."
"You do that every day?"
"Not when I'm here."
"Turn over," said Miss Ackerman.
I did. Then in the ward next to us a man started screaming. We were
next to the disturbed ward. He was really loud.
"What are they doing to him?" I asked Miss Ackerman.
"He's in the shower."
"And it makes him scream like that?"
"Yes."
"I'm worse off than he is."
"No, you're not."
I liked Miss Ackerman. I sneaked a look at her. Her face was round, she
wasn't very pretty but she wore her nurse's cap in a perky manner and she
had large dark brown eyes. It was the eyes. As she balled up some tissue to
throw into the dispenser I watched her walk. Well, she was no Miss Gredis,
and I had seen many other women with better figures, but there was something
warm about her. She wasn't constantly thinking about being a woman.
"As soon as I finish your face," she said, "I will put you under the
ultra-violet ray machine. Your next appointment will be the day after
tomorrow at 8:30 a.m."
We didn't talk any more after that.
Then she was finished. I put on goggles and Miss Ackerman turned on the
ultra-violet ray machine.
There was a ticking sound. It was peaceful. It might have been the
automatic timer, or the metal reflector on the lamp heating up. It was
comforting and relaxing, but when I began to think about it, I decided that
everything that they were doing for me was useless. I figured that at best
the needle would leave scars on me for the remainder of my life. That was
bad enough but it wasn't what I really minded. What I minded was that they
didn't know how to deal with me. I sensed this in their discussions and in
their manner. They were hesitant, uneasy, yet also somehow disinterested and
bored. Finally it didn't matter what they did. They just had to do something
-- anything -- because to do nothing would be unprofessional.
They experimented on the poor and if that worked they used the
treatment on the rich. And if it didn't work, there would still be more poor
left over to experiment upon.
The machine signaled its warning that two minutes were up. Miss
Ackerman came in, told me to turn over, re-set the machine, then left. She
was the kindest person I had met in eight years.
32
The drilling and squeezing continued for weeks but there was little
result. When one boil vanished another would appear. I often stood in front
of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get. I would look at
my face in disbelief, then turn to examine all the boils on my back. I was
horrified. No wonder people stared, no wonder they said unkind things. It
was not simply a case of teen-age acne. These were inflamed, relentless,
large, swollen boils filled with pus. I felt singled out, as if I had
been selected to be this way. My parents never spoke to me about my
condition. They were still on relief. My mother left each morning to look
for work and my. father drove off as if he were working. On Saturdays people
on relief got free foodstuffs from the markets, mostly canned goods, almost
always cans of hash for some reason. We ate a great deal of hash. And
bologna sandwiches. And potatoes. My mother learned to make potato pancakes.
Each Saturday when my parents went for their free food they didn't go to the
nearest market because they were afraid some of the neighbors might see them
and then know that they were on the dole. So they walked two miles down
Washington Boulevard, to a store a couple of blocks past Crenshaw. It was a
long walk. They walked the two miles back, sweating, carrying their shopping
bags full of canned hash and potatoes and bologna and carrots. My father
didn't drive because he wanted to save gas. He needed the gas to drive to
and from his invisible job. The other fathers weren't like that. They just
sat quietly on their front porches or played horseshoes in the vacant lot.
The doctor gave me a white substance to apply to my face. It hardened
and caked on the boils, giving me a plaster-like look. The substance didn't
seem to help. I was home alone one afternoon, applying this substance to my
face and body. I was standing in my shorts trying to reach the infected
areas of my back with my hand when I heard voices. It was Baldy and his
friend Jimmy Hatcher. Jimmy Hatcher was a good looking fellow and he was a
wise-ass.
"Henry!" I heard Baldy calling. I heard him talking to Jimmy, Then he
walked up on the porch and beat on the door. "Hey, Hank, it's Baldy! Open
up!"
You damn fool, I thought, don't you understand that I don't want to see
anybody?
"Hank! Hank! It's Baldy and Jim!"
He beat on the front door.
I heard him talking to Jim. "Listen, I saw him! I saw him walking
around in there!"
"He doesn't answer."
"We better go in. He might be in trouble."
You fool, I thought, I befriended you. I befriended you when nobody
else could stand you. Now, look at this!
I couldn't believe it. I ran into the hall and hid in a closet, leaving
the door slightly open. I was sure they wouldn't come into the house. But
they did. I had left the back door open. I heard them walking around in the
house.
"He's got to be here," said Baldy. "I saw something moving in here..."
Jesus Christ, I thought, can't I move around in here? I live in this
house.
I was crouched in the dark closet. I knew I couldn't let them find me
in there.
I swung the closet door open and leaped out. I saw them both standing
in the front room. I ran in there.
"GET OUT OF HERE, YOU SONS-OF-BITCHES!"
They looked at me.
"GET OUT OF HERE! YOU'VE GOT NO RIGHT TO BE IN HERE! GET OUT OF HERE
BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
They started running toward the back porch.
"GO ON! GO ON, OR I'LL KILL YOU!"
I heard them run up the driveway and out onto the sidewalk. I didn't
want to watch them. I went into my bedroom and stretched out on the bed. Why
did they want to see me? What could they do? There was nothing to be done.
There was nothing to talk about.
A couple of days later my mother didn't leave to go job hunting, and it
wasn't my day to go to the L.A. County General Hospital. So we were in the
house together. I didn't like it. I liked the place to myself. I heard her
moving about the house and I stayed in my bedroom. The boils were worse than
ever. I checked my airplane chart. The 1:20 p.m. flight was due. I began
listening. He was late. It was 1:20 and he was still approaching. As he
passed over I timed him as being three minutes late. Then I heard the
doorbell ring. I heard my mother open the door.
"Emily, how are you?"
"Hello, Katy, how are you?"
It was my grandmother, now very old. I heard them talking but I
couldn't make out what they were saying. I was thankful for that. They
talked for five or ten minutes and then I heard them walking down the hall
to my bedroom.
"I will bury all of you," I heard my grandmother say. "Where is the
boy?"
The door opened and my grandmother and mother stood there.
"Hello, Henry," my grandmother said.
"Your grandmother is here to help you," my mother said. My grandmother
had a large purse. She set it down on the dresser and pulled a huge silver
crucifix out of it.
"Your grandmother is here to help you, Henry . . ."
Grandmother had more warts on her than ever before and she was fatter.
She looked invincible, she looked as if she would never die. She had gotten
so old that it was almost senseless for her to die.
"Henry," said my mother, "turn over on your stomach."
I turned over and my grandmother leaned over me. From the corner of my
eye I saw her dangling the huge crucifix over me. I had decided against
religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of
people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the
more foolish.
But it was my grandmother and my mother. I decided to let them have
their way. The crucifix swung back and forth above my back, over my boils,
over me.
"God," prayed my grandmother, "purge the devil from this poor boy's
body! Just look at all those sores! They make me sick, God! Look at
them! It's the devil, God, dwelling in this boy's body. Purge the devil from
his body, Lord!"
"Purge the devil from his body, Lord!" said my mother. What I need is a
good doctor, I thought. What is wrong with these women? Why don't they leave
me alone?
"God," said my grandmother, "why do you allow the devil to dwell inside
this body's body? Don't you see how the devil is enjoying this? Look at
these sores, 0 Lord, I am about to vomit just looking at them! They are red
and big and full!"
"Purge the devil from my boy's body!" screamed my mother.
"May God save us from this evil!" screamed my grandmother. She took the
crucifix and poked it into the center of my back, dug it in. The blood
spurted out, I could feel it, at first warm, then suddenly cold. I turned
over and sat up in the bed.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"I am making a hole for the devil to be pushed out by God!" said my
grandmother.
"All right," I said, "I want you both to get out of here, and fast! Do
you understand me?"
"He is still possessed!" said my grandmother.
"GET THE FUCKING HELL OUT OF HERE!" I screamed.
They left, shocked and disappointed, closing the door behind them.
I went into the bathroom, wadded up some toilet paper and tried to stop
the bleeding. I pulled the toilet paper away and looked at it. It was
soaked. I got a new batch of toilet paper and held it to my back awhile.
Then I got the iodine. I made passes at my back, trying to reach the wound
with the iodine. It was difficult. I finally gave up. Who ever heard of an
infected back, anyhow? You either lived or died. The back was something the
assholes had never figured out how to amputate.
I walked back into the bedroom and got into bed and pulled the covers
to my throat. I looked up at the ceiling as I talked to myself.
All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this
fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not
there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils.
I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will
come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face.
And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to
doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much sol am
asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test!
I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I
slept.
I never slept on my back. But when I awakened I was on my back and it
surprised me. My legs were bent at the knees in front of me, making a
mountain-like effect with the blankets. And as I looked at the blanket-
mountain before me I saw two eyes staring at me. Only the eyes were dark,
black, blank . . . looking at me from underneath a hood, a black hood with a
sharp tall peak, like a ku-klux-klansman. They kept staring at me, dark
blank eyes, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was truly
terrified. I thought, it's God but God isn't supposed to look like that.
I couldn't stare it down. I couldn't move. It just stayed there looking
at me over the mound of my knees and the blanket. I wanted to get away. I
wanted it to leave. It was powerful and black and threatening.
It seemed to remain there for hours, just staring at me. Then it was
gone . . . I stayed in bed thinking about it.
I couldn't believe that it had been God. Dressed like that. That would
be a cheap trick. It had been an illusion, of course.
I thought about it for ten or fifteen minutes, then I got up and went
to get the little brown box my grandmother had given me many years ago.
Inside of it were tiny rolls of paper with quotations from the Bible. Each
tiny roll was held in a cubicle of its own. One was supposed to ask a
question and the little roll of paper one pulled out was supposed to answer
that question. I had tried it before and found it useless. Now I tried it
again. I asked the brown box, "What did that mean? What did those eyes
mean?"
I pulled out a paper and unrolled it. It was a tiny stiff white piece
of paper. I unrolled and read it. GOD HAS FORSAKEN YOU.
I rolled the paper up and stuck it back into its cubicle in the brown
box. I didn't believe it. I went back to bed and thought about it. It was
too simple, too direct. I didn't believe it. I considered masturbating to
bring me back to reality. I still didn't believe it. I got back up and
started unrolling all the little papers inside the brown box. I was looking
for the one that said, GOD HAS FORSAKEN YOU. I unrolled them all. None of
them said that. I read them all and none of them said that. I rolled them up
and put them carefully back into their cubicles in the little brown box.
Meanwhile, the boils got worse. I kept getting onto streetcar #7 and
going to L. A. County General Hospital and I began to fall in love with Miss
Ackerman, my nurse of the squeezings. She would never know how each stab of
pain caused courage to well up in me. Despite the horror of the blood and
the pus, she was always humane and kind. My love-feeling for her wasn't
sexual. I just wished that she would enfold me in her starched whiteness and
that together we could vanish forever from the world. But she never did
that. She was too practical. She would only remind me of my next
appointment.
33
The ultra-violet ray machine clicked off. I had been treated on both
sides. I took off the goggles and began to dress. Miss Ackerman walked in.
"Not yet," she said, "keep your clothes off."
What is she going to do to me, I thought?
"Sit up on the edge of the table."
I sat there and she began rubbing salve over my face. It was a thick
buttery substance.
"The doctors have decided on a new approach. We're going to bandage
your face to effect drainage."
"Miss Ackerman, what ever happened to that man with the big nose? The
nose that kept growing?"
"Mr. Sleeth?"
"The man with the big nose."
"That was Mr. Sleeth."
"I don't see him anymore. Did he get cured?"
"He's dead."
"You mean he died from that big nose?"
"Suicide." Miss Ackerman continued to apply the salve. Then I heard a
man scream from the next ward, "Joe, where are you? Joe, you said you'd
come back! Joe, where are you?"
The voice was loud and so sad, so agonized.
"He's done that every afternoon this week," said Miss Ackerman, "and
Joe's not going to come get him."
"Can't they help him?"
"I don't know. They all quiet down, finally. Now take your finger and
hold this pad while I bandage you. There. Yes. That's it. Now let go. Fine."
"Joe! Joe, you said you'd come back! Where are you, Joe?"
"Now, hold your finger on this pad. There. Hold it there. I'm going to
wrap you up good! There. Now I'll secure the dressings."
Then she was finished.
"O.K., put on your clothes. See you the day after tomorrow. Goodbye,
Henry."
"Goodbye, Miss Ackerman."
I got dressed, left the room and walked down the hall. There was a
mirror on a cigarette machine in the lobby. I looked into the mirror. It was
great. My whole head was bandaged. I was all white. Nothing could be seen
but my eyes, my mouth and my ears, and some tufts of hair sticking up at the
top of my head. I was hidden. It was wonderful. I stood and lit a
cigarette and glanced about the lobby. Some in-patients were sitting about
reading magazines and newspapers. I felt very exceptional and a bit evil,
Nobody had any idea of what had happened to me. Car crash. A fight to the
death. A murder. Fire. Nobody knew.
I walked out of the lobby and out of the building and I stood on the
sidewalk. I could still hear him. "Joe! Joe! Where are you,Joe!"
Joe wasn't coming. It didn't pay to trust another human being.
Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.
On the streetcar ride back I sat in the back smoking cigarettes out of
my bandaged head. People stared but I didn't care. There was more fear than
horror in their eyes now. I hoped I could stay this way forever.
I rode to the end of the line and got off. The afternoon was going into
evening and I stood on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Westview
Avenue watching the people. Those few who had jobs were coming home from
work. My father would soon be driving home from his fake job. I didn't have
a job, I didn't go to school. I didn't do anything. I was bandaged, I was
standing on the corner smoking a cigarette. I was a tough man, I was a
dangerous man. I knew things. Sleeth had suicided. I wasn't going to
suicide. I'd rather kill some of them. I'd take four or five of them with
me. I'd show them what it meant to play around with me.
A woman walked down the street toward me. She had fine legs. First I
stared right into her eyes and then I looked down at her
legs, and as she passed I watched her ass, I drank her ass in. I
memorized her ass and the seams of her silk stockings. I never could have
done that without my bandages.
34
The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I
found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It
was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed with the notebook and the pen. I
made some drawings. I drew women in high-heeled shoes with their legs
crossed and their skirts pulled back.
Then I began writing. It was about a German aviator in World War 1.
Baron Von Himmlen. He flew a red Fokker. And he was not popular with his
fellow fliers. He didn't talk to them. He drank alone and he flew alone. He
didn't bother with women, although they all loved him. He was above that. He
was too busy. He was busy shooting Allied planes out of the sky. Already he
had shot down 110 and the war wasn't over. His red Fokker, which he referred
to as the "October Bird of Death," was known everywhere. Even the enemy
ground troops knew him as he often flew low over them, taking their gunfire
and laughing, dropping bottles of champagne to them suspended from little
parachutes. Baron Von Himmlen was never attacked by less than five Allied
planes at a time. He was an ugly man with scars on his face, but he was
beautiful if you looked long enough -- it was in the eyes, his style, his
courage, his fierce aloneness.
I wrote pages and pages about the Baron's dog fights, how he would
knock down three or four planes, fly back, almost nothing left of his red
Fokker. He'd bounce down, leap out of the plane while it was still rolling
and head for the bar where he'd grab a bottle and sit at a table alone,
pouring shots and slamming them down. Nobody drank like the Baron. The
others just stood at the bar and watched him. One time one of the other
fliers said, "What is it, Himmlen? You think you're too good for us?" It was
Willie Schmidt, the biggest, strongest guy in the outfit. The Baron downed
his drink, set down his glass, stood up and slowly started walking toward
Willie who was standing at the bar. The other fliers backed off.
"Jesus, what are you going to do?" asked Willie as the Baron
advanced.
The Baron kept moving slowly toward Willie, not answering.
"Jesus, Baron, I was just kidding! Mother's honor! Listen to me,
Baron . . . Baron . . . the enemy is elsewhere! Baron!"
The Baron let go with his right. You couldn't see it. It smashed into
Willie's face propelling him over the top of the bar, flipping him over
completely! He crashed into the bar mirror like a cannonball and the bottles
tumbled down. The Baron pulled a cigar out and lit it, then walked back to
his table, sat down and poured another drink. They didn't bother the Baron
after that. Behind the bar they picked Willie up. His face was a mass of
blood.
The Baron shot plane after plane out of the sky. Nobody seemed to
understand him and nobody knew how he had become so skillful with the red
Fokker and in his other strange ways. Like fighting. Or the graceful way he
walked. He went on and on. His luck was sometimes bad. One day flying back
after downing three Allied planes, limping in low over enemy lines, he was
hit by shrapnel. It blew off his right hand at the wrist. He managed to
bring the red Fokker in. From that time on he flew with an iron
hand in place of his original right hand. It didn't affect his flying.
And the fellows at the bar were more careful than ever when they talked to
him.
Many more things happened to the Baron after that. Twice he crashed in
no-man's-land and each time he crawled back to his squadron, half-dead,
through barbed wire and flares and enemy fire. Many times he was given up
for dead by his comrades. Once he was gone for eight days and the other
flyers were sitting in the bar, talking about what an exceptional man he had
been. When they looked up, there was the Baron standing in the doorway,
eight- day beard, uniform torn and muddy, eyes red and bleary, iron hand
glinting in the bar light. He stood there and he said, "There
better be some god-damned whiskey in this place or I'm tearing it
apart!"
The Baron went on doing magic things. Half the notebook was filled with
Baron Von Himmlen. It made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man
needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up
somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-
believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living
your life without a man like him around.
35
The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up
with something. The boils drained. They didn't vanish but they flattened a
bit. Yet some new ones would appear and rise up again. They drilled me and
wrapped me again.
My sessions with the drill were endless. Thirty-two, thirty-six, thirty-
eight times. There was no fear of the drill anymore. There never had been.
Only an anger. But the anger was gone. There wasn't even resignation on my
part, only disgust, a disgust that this had happened to me, and a disgust
with the doctors who couldn't do anything about it. They were helpless and I
was helpless, the only difference being that I was the victim. They could go
home to their lives and forget while I was stuck with the same face.
But there were changes in my life. My father found a job. He passed an
examination at the L.A. County Museum and got a job as a guard. My father
was good at exams. He loved math and history. He passed the exam and finally
had a place to go each morning. There had been three vacancies for guards
and he had gotten one of them.
L.A. County General Hospital somehow found out and Miss Ackerman told
me one day, "Henry, this is your last treatment. I'm going to miss you."
"Aw come on," I said, "stop your kidding. You're going to miss me like
I'm going to miss that electric needle!"
But she was very strange that day. Those big eyes were watery. I heard
her blow her nose.
I heard one of the nurses ask her, "Why, Janice, what's wrong
with you?"
"Nothing. I'm all right."
Poor Miss Ackerman. I was 15 years old and in love with her
and I was covered with boils and there was nothing that either of
us could do.
"All right," she said, "this is going to be your last ultra-violet ray
treatment. Lay on your stomach."
"I know your first name now," I told her. "Janice. That's a
pretty name. It's just like you."
"Oh, shut up," she said.
I saw her once again when the first buzzer sounded. I turned over,
Janice re-set the machine and left the room. I never saw her again.
My father didn't believe in doctors who were not free. "They make you
piss in a tube, take your money, and drive home to their wives in Beverly
Hills," he said.
But once he did send me to one. To a doctor with bad breath and a head
as round as a basketball, only with two little eyes where a basketball had
none. I didn't like my father and the doctor wasn't any better. He said, no
fried foods, and to drink carrot juice. That
was it.
I would re-enter high school the next term, said my father.
"I'm busting my ass to keep people from stealing. Some nigger broke the
glass on a case and stole some rare coins yesterday. I caught the bastard.
We rolled down the stairway together. I held him until the others came. I
risk my life every day. Why should you sit around on your ass, moping? I
want you to be an engineer. How the hell you gonna be an engineer when I
find notebooks full of women with their skirts pulled up to their ass? Is
that all you can draw? Why don't you draw flowers or mountains or the
ocean? You're going back to school!"
I drank carrot juice and waited to re-enroll. I had only missed one
term. The boils weren't cured but they weren't as bad as they had been.
"You know what carrot juice costs me? I have to work the first hour
every day just for your god-damned carrot juice!"
I discovered the La Cienega Public Library. I got a library card. The
library was near the old church down on West Adams. It was a very small
library and there was just one librarian in it. She was class. About 38 but
with pure white hair pulled tightly into a bun behind her neck. Her nose was
sharp and she had deep green eyes behind rimless glasses. I felt that she
knew everything.
I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the
shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There
were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say
something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you
already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book.
Surely, out of all those books, there was one.
Each day I walked down to the library at Adams and La Brea and
there was my librarian, stern and infallible and silent. I kept pulling the
books off the shelves. The first real book I found was by a fellow named
Upton Sinclair. His sentences were simple and he spoke with anger. He wrote
with anger. He wrote about the hog pens of Chicago. He came right out and
said things plainly. Then I found another author. His name was Sinclair
Lewis. And the book was called Main Street. He peeled back the layers
of hypocrisy that covered people. Only he seemed to lack passion. I went
back for more. I read each book in a single evening. I was walking around
one day sneaking glances at my librarian when I came upon a book with the
title Bow Down To Wood and Stone. Now, that was good, because that
was what we were all doing. At last, some fire.' I opened the book.
It was by Josephine Lawrence. A woman. That was all right. Anybody could
find knowledge. I opened the pages. But they were like many of the other
books: milky, obscure, tiresome. I replaced the book. And while my hand was
there I reached for a book nearby. It was by another Lawrence. I opened the
book at random and began reading. It was about a man at a piano. How false
it seemed at first. But I kept reading. The man at the piano was troubled.
His mind was saying things. Dark and curious things. The lines on the page
were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More
like Joe, where is anything? This Lawrence of the tight and bloody
line. I had never been told about him. Why the secret? Why wasn't he
advertised?
I read a book a day. I read all the D. H. Lawrence in the library. My
librarian began to look at me strangely as I checked out the books.
"How are you today?" she would ask. That always sounded so good. I felt
as if I had already gone to bed with her. I read all the books by D.
H. And they led to others. To H.D., the poetess. And Huxley, the youngest of
the Huxleys, Lawrence's friend. It all came rushing at me. One book led to
the next. DOS Passes came along. Not too good, really, but good enough. His
trilogy, about the U.S.A., took longer than a day to read. Dreiser didn't
work for me. Sherwood Anderson did. And then along came Hemingway. What a
thrill! He knew how to lay down a line. It was a joy. Words weren't dull,
words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let
yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter
what happened to you.
But back at home . . .
"LIGHTS OUT!" my father would scream. I was reading the Russians now,
reading Turgenev and Gorky. My father's rule was that all lights were to be
out by 8 p.m. He wanted to sleep so that he could be fresh and effective on
the job the next day. His conversation at home was always about "the job."
He talked to my mother about his "job" from the moment he entered the door
in the evenings until they slept. He was determined to rise in the ranks.
"All right, that's enough of those god-damned books! Lights out!"'
To me, these men who had come into my life from nowhere were my only
chance. They were the only voices that spoke to me.
"All right," I would say.
Then I took the reading lamp, crawled under the blanket, pulled the
pillow under there, and read each new book, propping it against the pillow,
under the quilt. It got very hot, the lamp got hot, and I had trouble
breathing. I would lift the quilt for air.
"What's that? Do I see a light? Henry, are your lights out?"
I would quickly lower the quilt again and wait until I heard my
father snoring.
Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a
truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the
same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the
overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It
was magic.
And my father had found a job, and that was magic for him . . .
36
Back at Chelsey High it was the same. One group of seniors had
graduated but they were replaced by another group of seniors with sports
cars and expensive clothes. I was never confronted by them. They left me
alone, they ignored me. They were busy with the girls. They never spoke to
the poor guys in or out of class.
About a week into my second semester I talked to my father over dinner.
"Look," I said, "it's hard at school. You're giving me 50 cents a week
allowance. Can't you make it a dollar?"
"A dollar?"
"Yes."
He put a forkful of sliced pickled beets into his mouth and chewed.
Then he looked at me from under his curled-up eyebrows,
"If I gave you a dollar a week that would mean 52 dollars a year, that
would mean I would have to work over a week on my job just so you
could have an allowance."
I didn't answer. But I thought, my god, if you think like that, item by
item, then you can't buy anything: bread, watermelon, newspapers, flour,
milk or shaving cream. I didn't say any more because when you hate, you
don't beg . . .
Those rich guys like to dart their cars in and out, swiftly, sliding
up, burning rubber, their cars glistening in the sunlight as the girls
gathered around. Classes were a joke, they were all going somewhere to
college, classes were just a routine laugh, they got good grades, you seldom
saw them with books, you just saw them burning more rubber, gunning from the
curb with their cars full of squealing and laughing girls. I watched them
with my 50 cents in my pocket. I didn't even know how to drive a car.
Meanwhile the poor and the lost and the idiots continued to flock
around me. I had a place I liked to eat under the football grandstand. I had
my brown bag lunch with my two bologna sandwiches. They came around, "Hey,
Hank, can I eat with you?"
"Get the fuck out of here! I'm not going to tell you twice!"
Enough of this kind had attached themselves to me already. I didn't
much care for any of them: Baldy, Jimmy Hatcher, and a thin gangling Jewish
kid, Abe Mortenson. Mortenson was a straight-A student but one of the
biggest idiots in school. He had something radically wrong with him. Saliva
kept forming in his mouth but instead of spitting on the ground to get rid
of it he spit into his hands. I don't know why he did it and I didn't ask. I
didn't like to ask. I just watched him and I was disgusted. I went home with
him once and I found out how he got straight A's. His mother made him stick
his nose into a book right away and she made him keep it there. She made him
read all of his school books over and over, page after page. "He must pass
his exams," she told me. It never occurred to her that maybe the hooks were
wrong. Or that maybe it didn't matter. I didn't ask her.
It was like grammar school all over again. Gathered around me were the
weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers
instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their
company through life. That didn't bother me so much as the fact that I
seemed irresistible to these dull idiot fellows. I was like a turd that drew
flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted
to live alone, I felt best being alone, cleaner, yet I was not clever enough
to rid myself of them. Maybe they were my masters: fathers in another
form. In any event, it was hard to have them hanging around while I was
eating my bologna sandwiches.
37
But there were some good moments. My sometime friend from the
neighborhood, Gene, who was a year older than I, had a buddy, Harry Gibson,
who had had one professional fight (he'd lost). I was over at Gene's one
afternoon smoking cigarettes with him when Harry Gibson showed up with two
pairs of boxing gloves. Gene and I were smoking with his two older brothers,
Larry and Dan.
Harry Gibson was cocky. "Anybody want to try me?" he asked. Nobody said
anything. Gene's oldest brother, Larry, was about 22. He was the biggest,
but he was kind of timid and subnormal. He had a huge head, he was
short and stocky, really well-built, but everything frightened him. So we
all looked at Dan who was the next oldest, since Larry said, "No, no I don't
want to fight." Dan was a musical genius, he had almost won a scholarship
but not quite. Anyhow, since Larry had passed up Harry's challenge, Dan put
the gloves on with Harry Gibson.
Harry Gibson was a son-of-a-bitch on shining wheels. Even the sun
glinted off his gloves in a certain way. He moved with precision, aplomb and
grace. He pranced and danced around Dan. Dan held up his gloves and waited.
Gibson's first punch streaked in. It cracked like a rifle shot. There were
some chickens in a pen in the yard and two of them jumped into the air at
the sound. Dan spilled backwards. He was stretched out on the grass, both of
his arms spread out like some cheap Christ.
Larry looked at him and said, "I'm going into the house." He walked
quickly to the screen door, opened it and was gone.
We walked over to Dan. Gibson stood over him with a little grin on his
face. Gene bent down, lifted Dan's head up a bit. "Dan? You all right?"
Dan shook his head and slowly sat up.
"Jesus Christ, the guy's carrying a lethal weapon. Get these
gloves off me!"
Gene unlaced one glove and I got the other. Dan stood up and walked
toward the back door like an old man. "I'm gonna lay down . . ." He went
inside.
Harry Gibson picked up the gloves and looked at Gene. "How about it,
Gene?"
Gene spit in the grass. "What the hell you trying to do, knock off the
whole family?"
"I know you're the best fighter, Gene, but I'll go easy on you anyhow."
Gene nodded and I laced on his gloves for him. I was a good glove man.
They squared off. Gibson circled around Gene, getting ready. He circled
to the right, then he circled to the left. He bobbed and he weaved. Then he
stepped in, gave Gene a hard left jab. It landed right between Gene's eyes.
Gene backpedaled and Gibson followed. When he got Gene up against the
chicken pen he steadied him with a soft left to the forehead and then
cracked a hard right to Gene's left temple. Gene slid along the chicken wire
until he hit the fence, .then he slid along the fence, covering up. He
wasn't attempting to fight back. Dan came out of the house with a piece of
ice wrapped in a rag. He sat on the porch steps and held the rag to his
forehead. Gene retreated along the fence. Harry got him in the corner
between the fence and the garage. He looped a left to Gene's gut and when
Gene bent over he straightened him with a right uppercut. I didn't like it.
Gibson wasn't going easy on Gene like he'd promised. I got excited.
"Hit that fucker back, Gene! He's yellow! Hit him!"
Gibson lowered his gloves, looked at me and walked over.
"What did you say, punk?"
"I was rooting my man on," I said. Dan was over getting the gloves off
Gene.
"Did I hear something about being 'yellow'?"
"You said you were going to go easy on him. You didn't. You're hitting
him with every shot you've got."
"You callin' me a liar?"
"I'm saying you don't keep your word."
"Come on over and put the gloves on this punk!"
Gene and Dan came over and began putting the gloves on me.
"Take it easy on this guy, Hank," Gene said. "Remember he's all tired
out from fighting us."
Gene and I had fought barefisted one memorable day from 9 a.m. to 6
p.m. Gene had done pretty good. I had small hands and if you have small
hands you've cither got to be able to hit hard as hell or else be some kind
of a boxer. I was only a little of each. The next day my entire upper body
was purple with bruises and I had two fat lips and a couple of loose front
teeth. Now I had to fight the guy who had just whipped the guy who had
whipped me.
Gibson circled to the left, then the right, then he moved in on me. I
didn't see the left jab at all. I don't know where it caught me hut I went
down from the left jab. It hadn't hurt but I was down. I got up. If the left
could do that what would the right do? I had to figure something out.
Harry Gibson began to circle to the left, my left. Instead of circling
to my right like he expected, I circled to my left. He looked surprised and
as we came together I looped a wild left which caught him high and hard on
the head. It felt great. If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.
Then we were facing each other and he came straight at me. Gibson got
me with the jab hut as it hit me I ducked my head down and to one side as
quickly as I could. His right swung around over the top, missing. I moved
into him and clinched, giving him a rabbit punch. We broke and I felt like a
pro.
"You can take him, Hank!" yelled Gene.
"Go get him, Hank!" yelled Dan.
I rushed Gibson and tried a right lead. I missed and his left cross
flashed on my jaw. I saw green and yellow and red lights, then he dug a
right to my belly. It felt like it went through to my backbone. I grabbed
him and clinched. But I wasn't frightened, for a change, and that felt good.
"I'll kill you, you fucker!" I told him.
Then it was just head-to-head, no more boxing. His punches came fast
and hard. He was more accurate, had more power, yet I was landing some hard
shots too and it made me feel good. The more he hit me the less I felt it. I
had my gut sucked in, I liked the action. Then Gene and Dan were between us.
They pulled us apart.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Don't stop this thing! I can take his ass!"
"Cut the shit, Hank," said Gene. "Look at yourself."
I looked down. The front of my shirt was dark with blood and there were
splotches of pus. The punches had broken open three or four boils. That
hadn't happened in my fight with Gene.
"That's nothing," I said. "That's just bad luck. He hasn't hurt me.
Give me a chance and I'll cut him down."
"No, Hank, you'll get an infection or something," said Gene.
"All right, shit," I said, "cut the gloves off me!"
Gene unlaced me. When he got the gloves off I noticed that my hands
were trembling, and also my arms to a lesser extent. I put my hands in my
pockets. Dan took Harry's gloves off. Harry looked at me. "You're pretty
good, kid."
"Thanks. Well, I'll see you guys . . ."
I walked off. As I walked away I took my hands out of my pockets. Then
up the-driveway, just at the sidewalk, I stopped, pulled out a cigarette and
stuck it into my mouth. When I tried to strike a match my hands were
trembling so much I couldn't do it. I gave them a wave, a real nonchalant
wave, and walked away.
Back at the house I looked at myself in the mirror. Pretty damn good. I
was coming along.
I took off my shirt and threw it under the bed. I'd have to find a way
to clean the blood off. I didn't have many shirts and they'd notice a
missing one right away. But for me, it had finally been a successful day,
and I hadn't had too many of those.
38
Abe Mortenson was had enough to be around but he was just a fool. You
can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive
anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel had. Jimmy Hatcher had
straight black hair, fair skin, he wasn't as big as I was but he kept his
shoulders back, dressed better than most of us, and he had a way of getting
along with anybody he felt like getting along with. His mother was a bar
maid and his father had committed suicide. Jimmy had a nice smile, perfect
teeth, and the girls liked him even though he didn't have the money the rich
guys had. I would always see him talking to some girl. I don't know what he
said to them. I didn't know what any of the guys said to any of them. The
girls were impossibly out of reach for me and so I pretended that they
didn't exist.
But Hatcher was another matter. I knew he wasn't a fairy but he kept
hanging around.
"Listen, Jimmy, why do you follow me around? I don't like anything
about you."
"Ah, come on. Hank, we're friends."
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
He even got up once in English class and read an essay called
"The Value of Friendship," and while he was reading it he kept glancing
at me. It was a stupid essay, soft and standard, but the class applauded
when he finished, and I thought, well, that's what people think and what can
you do about it? I wrote a counter-essay called, "The Value of No Friendship
At All." The teacher didn't let me read it to the class. She gave me a "D."
Jimmy and Baldy and I walked home together from high school each day.
(Abe Mortenson lived in the other direction so that saved us from having to
walk with him.) One day we were walking along and Jimmy said, "Hey, let's go
to my girlfriend's house. I want you to meet her."
"Ah, balls, fuck that," I said.
"No, no," said Jimmy, "she's a nice girl. I want you to meet her. I've
finger-fucked her."
I'd seen his girl, Ann Weatherton, she was really beautiful, long brown
hair and large brown eyes, quiet, and with a good figure. I'd never spoken
to her but I knew she was Jimmy's girl. The rich guys had tried to hit on
her but she ignored them. She looked like she was first-rate.
"I've got the key to her house," said Jimmy. "We'll go there and wait
for her. She's got a late class."
"Sounds dull to me," I said.
"Ah, come on, Hank," said Baldy. "you're just going to go home and
whack-off anyhow."
"That's not always without its own merits," I said.
Jimmy opened the front door with his key and we walked in. A nice clean
little house. A small black and white bulldog ran up to Jimmy, wagging its
stub tail.
"This is Bones," said Jimmy. "Bones loves me. Watch this!"
Jimmy spit in the palm of his right hand and grabbed Bones' penis and
began rubbing it.
"Hey, what the fuck you doing?" asked Baldy.
"They keep Bones on a leash in the yard. He never gets any. He needs
release!" Jimmy worked away.
Bones' penis got disgustingly red, a thin, long string of dripping
inanity. Bones began making whimpering sounds. Jimmy looked up as he worked
away. "Hey, you wanna know what our song is? I mean, Ann's song and my song?
It's 'When the Deep Purple Falls Over Sleepy Garden Walls."'
Then Bones was making it. The sperm spurted out and on the carpet.
Jimmy stood up and with the sole of his shoe rubbed the come down into the
nap of the carpet.
"I'm gonna fuck Ann one of these days. It's getting close. She says she
loves me. And I love her too, I love her god-damned cunt."
"You prick," I told Jimmy, "you make me sick."
"I know you don't mean that, Hank," he said. Jimmy walked into the
kitchen. "She's got a nice family. She lives here with her father, mother
and brother. Her brother knows I am going to fuck her. He's right. But
there's nothing he can do about it because I can beat the shit out of him.
He's nothing. Hey, watch this!"
Jimmy opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a bottle of milk. At
our place we still had an icebox. The Weathertons were obviously a well-off
family. Jimmy pulled out his cock and then peeled the cardboard cap off the
bottle and put his cock in there.
"Just a little, you know. They'll never taste it but they'll be
drinking my piss . . ."
He pulled his cock out, capped the bottle, shook it, and then placed it
hack in the refrigerator.
"Now," he said, "here's some jello. They are going to eat jello for
dessert tonight. They are also going to eat . . ." He took the bowl of jello
out and held it and then we heard a key in the front door and the front door
opening. Jimmy quickly put the jello back into the refrigerator and closed
the door. Then Ann walked in. Into the kitchen.
"Ann," said Jimmy, "I want you to meet my good friends, Hank and
Baldy."
"Hi!"
"Hi!"
"Hi!"
"This one's Baldy. The other guy is Hank."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"I've seen you guys around campus."
"Oh yeah," I said, "we're around there. And we've seen you too."
"Yeah," said Baldy.
Jimmy looked at Ann. "You all right, baby?"
"Yes, Jimmy, I've been thinking about you."
She moved toward him and they embraced, then they were kissing. They
were standing right in front of us as they were kissing. Jimmy was facing
us. We could see his right eye. It winked.
"Well," I said, "we've got to get going."
"Yeah," said Baldy.
We walked out of the kitchen, through the front room and out of there.
We walked down the sidewalk toward Baldy's place.
"That guy's really got it made," said Baldy.
"Yeah," I said.
39
One Sunday Jimmy talked me into going to the beach with him. He wanted
to go swimming. I didn't want to he seen wearing swimming trunks because my
hack was covered with boils and scars. Outside of that, I had a good
body. But nobody would notice that. I had a good chest and great legs
but nobody would see that.
I here was nothing to do and I didn't have any money and the guys
didn't play in the streets on Sunday. I decided that the beach belonged to
everybody. I had a right, my scars and boils weren't against the law.
So we got on our bikes and started out. It was fifteen miles. That
didn't bother me. I had the legs.
I breezed with Jimmy all the way to Culver City. Then I gradually began
to pedal faster. Jimmy pumped, trying to keep up. I could see him getting
winded. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, held out the pack to him. "Want
one, Jim?"
"No . . . thanks . . ."
"This beats shooting birds with a beebee gun," I told him. "We ought to
do this more often!"
I began pumping harder. I still had plenty of reserve strength.
"This really gets it," I told him. "This beats whacking-off!"
"Hey, slow up a little!"
I looked back at him. "There's nothing like a good friend to go biking
with. Come on, friend!"
Then I gave it all I had and pulled away. The wind was blowing in my
face. It felt good.
"Hey, wait! WAIT, GOD DAMN IT!" yelled Jimmy. I started laughing and
really opened up. Soon Jim was half-a- block back, a block, two blocks.
Nobody knew how good I was, nobody knew what I could do. I was some kind of
miracle. The sun tossed yellow everywhere and I cut through-it, a crazy
knife on wheels. My father was a beggar in the streets of India but all the
women in the world loved me . . .
I was traveling at full speed as I reached the signal. I shot through
inside the row of waiting cars. Now even the cars were back there behind me.
But not for long. A guy and his girl in a green coupe pulled up and drove
alongside me.
"Hey, kid!"
"Yeah?" I looked at him. He was a big guy in his twenties with hairy
arms and a tattoo.
"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" he asked me. He was trying
to show off in front of his girl. She was a looker, her long blond hair
blowing in the wind.
"Up yours, buddy!" I told him.
"What?"
"I said, 'Up yours!"
I gave him the finger. He kept driving along beside me.
"You gonna take shit off that kid, Nick?" I heard his girl ask him.
He kept driving along beside me.
"Hey, kid," he said, "I didn't quite hear what you said. Would you mind
saying that again?"
"Yeah, say that again," said the looker, her long blond hair blowing in
the wind. That pissed me. She pissed me.
I looked at him. "All right, you want trouble? Park it. I'm
trouble."
He zoomed ahead of me about half a block, parked, and swung the door
open. As he got out I swung wide around him almost into the path of a Chevy
who gave me the horn. As I swung around into a side street I could hear the
big guy laughing.
After the guy was gone I wheeled back onto Washington Boulevard, went a
few blocks, got off the bike and waited for Jim on a bus stop bench. I could
see him coming along. When he pulled up I pretended that I was asleep.
"Come on, Hank! Don't give me that shit!"
"Oh, hello, Jim. You here?"
I tried to get Jim to pick a spot on the beach where there weren't too
many people. I felt normal standing there in my shirt but when I undressed I
was exposed. I hated the other bathers for their unmarred bodies. I hated
all the god-damned people who were sunbathing or in the water or eating or
sleeping or talking or throwing beachballs. I hated their behinds and their
faces and their elbows and their hair and their eyes and their bellybuttons
and their bathing suits.
I stretched out on the sand thinking, I should have punched that fat
son-of-a-bitch. What the hell did he know? Jim stretched out beside me.
"What the hell," he said, "let's go swimming."
"Not yet," I said.
The water was full of people. What was the fascination of the beach?
Why did people like the beach? Didn't they have anything better to do? What
chicken-brained fuckers they were.
"Just think," said Jim, "women go into the water and they piss in
there."
"Yeah, and you swallow it."
'
There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people.
Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a
cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Nobody would fuck with me. I
could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn't have to look
at anybody and they could just send in the wine. The trouble was, the black
robes were pure wool. They were worse than R.O.T.C. uniforms. I couldn't
wear them. I'd have to think of something else.
"Oh, oh," said Jim.
"What is it?"
"There are some girls down there looking at us."
"So what?"
"They're talking and laughing. They might come down here."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And if they start coming over I'll warn you. When I do, turn on
your back."
My chest had only a few boils and scars.
"Don't forget," said Jim, "when I warn you, turn over on your back."
"I heard you."
I had my head down in my arms. I knew that Jim was looking at the girls
and smiling. He had a way with them.
"Simple cunts," he said, "they're really stupid."
Why did I come here? I thought. Why is it always only a matter of
choosing between something bad and something worse?
"Oh, oh, Hank, here they come!"
I looked up. There were five of them. I rolled over on my back. They
walked up giggling and stood there. One of them said,
"Hey, these guys are cute!"
"You girls live around here?" Jim asked.
"Oh yeah," one of them said, "we nest with the seagulls!"
They giggled.
"Well," said Jim, "we're eagles. I'm not sure we'd know what to do with
five seagulls."
"How do birds do it anyhow?" one of them asked.
"Damned if I know," Jim said, "maybe we can find out."
"Why don't you guys come over to our blanket?" one of them asked.
"Sure," Jim said.
Three of the girls had spoken. The other two had just stood there
pulling their bathing suits down over what they didn't want seen.
"Count me out," I said.
"What's wrong with your friend?" asked one of the girls who had been
covering her ass. Jim said, "He's strange."
"What's wrong with him?" asked the last girl.
"He's just strange," said Jim.
He got up and walked off with the girls. I closed my eyes and listened
to the waves. Thousands of fish out there, eating each other. Endless mouths
and assholes swallowing and shifting. The whole earth was nothing but mouths
and assholes swallowing and shifting, and fucking.
I rolled over and watched Jim with the five girls. He was standing up,
sticking his chest out and showing off his balls. He didn't have my barrel
chest and big legs. He was slim and neat, with that black hair and that
little nasty mouth with perfect teeth, and his little round ears and his
long neck. I didn't have a neck. Not much of one, anyway. My head seemed to
sit on my shoulders. But I was strong, and mean. Not good enough, the ladies
liked dandies. If it wasn't for the boils and scars, though. I'd be down
there now showing them a thing or two. I'd flash my balls for them, bringing
their dead air-headed minds to attention. Me, with my 50-cents-a-week life.
Then I saw the girls leap up and follow Jim into the water. I heard
them giggling and screaming like mindless . . . what? No, they were nice.
They weren't like grown-ups and parents. They laughed. Things were funny.
They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of
things. D, H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of
love most people used and were used up by. Old D, H. had known something.
His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one.
Better than G. B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom,
his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him
from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping
the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made
you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally
useless.
Jim was splashing water on the girls. He was the Water God and they
loved him. He was the possibility and the promise. He was great. He knew how
to do it. I had read many books but he had read a book that I had never
read. He was an artist with his little pair of bathing trunks and his balls
and his wicked little look and his round ears. He was the best. I couldn't
challenge him any more than I could have challenged that big son-of-a-bitch
in the green coupe with the looker whose hair flowed in the wind. They both
had got what they deserved. I was just a 50-cent turd floating around in the
green ocean of life.
I watched them come out of the water, glistening, smooth- skinned and
young, undefeated. I wanted them to want me. But never out of pity. Yet,
despite their smooth untouched bodies and minds they still were missing
something because they were as yet basically untested. When adversity
finally arrived in their lives it might come too late or too hard. I was
ready. Maybe.
I watched Jim toweling off, using one of their towels. As I watched,
somebody's child, a boy of about four came along, picked up a handful of
sand and threw it in my face. Then he just stood there, glowering, his sandy
stupid little mouth puckered in some kind of victory. He was a daring
darling little shit. I wiggled my finger for him to come closer, come, come.
He stood there.
"Little boy," I said, "come here. I have a bag of candy-covered shit
for you to eat."
The fucker looked, turned and ran off. He had a stupid ass. Two little
pear-shaped buttocks wobbling, almost disjointed. But, another enemy gone.
Then Jim, the lady killer, was back. He stood there over me. Glowering
also.
"They're gone," he said.
I looked down to where the five girls had been and sure enough they
were gone.
"Where did they go?" I asked.
"Who gives a fuck? I've got the phone numbers of the two best ones."
"Best ones for what?"
"For fucking, you jerk!"
I stood up.
"I think I'll deck you, jerk!"
His face looked good in the sea wind. I could already see him, knocked
down, squirming on the sand, kicking up his white- bottomed feet. Jim backed
off.
"Take it easy. Hank. Look, you can have their phone numbers!"
"Keep them. I don't have your god-damned dumb ears!"
"O.K., O.K., we're friends, remember?"
We walked up the beach to the strand where we had our bicycles locked
behind someone's beach house. And as we walked along we both knew whose day
it had been, and knocking somebody on their ass could not have changed that,
although it might have helped, but not enough. All the way home, on our
bikes, I didn't try to show him up as I had earlier. I needed something
more. Maybe I needed that blonde in the green coupe with her long hair
blowing in the wind.
40
R.O.T.C. (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was for the misfits. Like I
said, it was either that or gym. I would have taken gym but I didn't want
people to sec the boils on my back. There was something wrong with everybody
enrolled in R.O.T.C. It almost entirely consisted of guys who didn't like
sports or guys whose parents forced them to take R.O.T.C. because they
thought it was patriotic. The parents of rich kids tended to be more
patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under. The poor
parents were far less patriotic, and then often professed their patriotism
only because it was expected or because it was the way they had been raised.
Subconsciously they knew it wouldn't be any better or worse for them
if the Russians or the Germans or the Chinese or the Japanese ran the
country, especially if they had dark skin. Things might even improve.
Anyhow, since many of the parents of Chelsey High were rich, we had one of
the biggest R.O.T.C.'s in the city.
So we marched around in the sun and learned to dig latrines, cure snake-
bite, tend the wounded, tie tourniquets, bayonet the enemy; we learned about
hand grenades, infiltration, deployment of troops, maneuvers, retreats,
advances, mental and physical discipline; we got on the firing range, bang
bang, and we got our marksmen's medals. We had actual field maneuvers, we
went out into the woods and waged a mock war. We crawled on our bellies
toward each other with our rifles. We were very serious. Even I was serious.
There was something about it that got your blood going. It was stupid and we
all knew it was stupid, most of us, but something clicked in our brains and
we really wanted to get involved in it. We had an old retired Army man, Col.
Sussex. He was getting senile and drooled, little trickles of saliva running
out of the corners of his mouth and down, around and under his chin. He
never said anything. He just stood around in his uniform covered with medals
and drew his pay from the high school. During our mock maneuvers he carried
around a clipboard and kept score. He stood on a high hill and made marks on
the clipboard -- probably. But he never told us who won. Each side claimed
victory. It made for bad feelings.
Lt. Herman Beechcroft was best. His father owned a bakery and a hotel
catering service, whatever that was. Anyhow, he was best. He always gave the
same speech before a maneuver.
"Remember, you must hate the enemy! They want to rape your
mother and sisters! Do you want those monsters to rape your mother and
sisters?"
Lt. Beechcroft had almost no chin at all. His face dropped away
suddenly and where the jaw bone should have been there was only a little
button. We weren't sure if it was a deformity or not. But his eyes were
magnificent in their fury, large blue biaxing symbols of war and victory.
"Whitlinger! "
"Yes, sir!"
"Would you want those guys raping your mother?"
"My mother's dead, sir."
"Oh, sorry . . . Drake."
"Yes, sir!"
"Would you want those guys raping your mother?"
"No, sir."
"Good. Remember, this is war' We accept mercy but we do not give
mercy. You must hate the enemy. Kill him! A dead man can't defeat
you. Defeat is a disease! Victory writes history! NOW LET'S GO GET
THOSE COCKSUCKERS!"
We deployed our line, sent out the advance scouts and began crawling
through the brush. I could see Col. Sussex on his hill with his clipboard.
It was the Blues vs. the Greens. We each had a piece of colored rag tied
around our upper right arm. We were the Blues. Crawling through those bushes
was pure hell. It was hot. There were bugs, dust, rocks, thorns. I didn't
know where I was.
Our squad leader, Kozak, had vanished somewhere. There was no
communication. We were fucked. Our mothers were going to get raped. I kept
crawling forward, bruising and scratching myself, feeling lost and scared,
but really feeling more the fool. All this vacant land and empty sky, hills,
streams, acres and acres. Who owned it all? Probably the father of one of
the rich guys. We weren't going to capture anything. The whole place was on
loan to the high school. NO SMOKING. I crawled forward. We had no air cover,
no tanks, nothing. We were just a bunch of fairies out on a half-assed
maneuver without food, without women, without reason. I stood up, walked
over and sat down with my back against a tree, put my rifle down and waited.
Everybody was lost and it didn't matter. I pulled my arm band off and
waited for a Red Cross Ambulance or something. War was probably hell but the
in-between parts were boring.
Then the bushes cracked open and a guy leaped out and saw me. He had on
a Green arm band. A rapist. He pointed his rifle at me. I had no arm band
on, it was down in the grass. He wanted to take a prisoner. I knew him. He
was Harry Missions. His father owned a lumber company. I sat there against
the tree.
"Blue or Green?" he hollered at me.
"I'm Mata Hari."
"A spy! I take spies!"
"Come on, cut the shit, Harry. This is a game for children. Don't
bother me with your fetid melodrama."
The bushes cracked open again and there was Lt. Beechcroft. Missions
and Beechcroft faced each other.
"I hereby take you prisoner!" screamed Beechcroft at Missions.
"I hereby take you prisoner!" screamed Missions at Beechcroft. They
both were really nervous and angry, I could feel it. Beechcroft drew his
sabre. "Surrender or I'll run you through!"
Missions grabbed his gun by the barrel. "Come over here and I'll knock
your god-damned head off!"
Then the bushes cracked open everywhere. The screaming had attracted
both the Blues and the Greens. I sat against the tree while they mixed it
up. There was dust and scuffling and now and then the evil sound of rifle
stock against skull. "Oh, Jesus! Oh, my God!" Some bodies were down. Rifles
were lost. There were fist fights and headlocks. I saw two guys with Green
arm bands locked in a death-grip. Then Col. Sussex appeared. He blew
frantically on his whistle. Spit sprayed everywhere. Then he ran over with
his swagger stick and began beating the troops with it. He was good. It cut
like a whip and sliced like a razor.
"Oh shit! I QUIT!"
"No, stop! Jesus! Mercy!"
"Mother!"
The troops separated and stood looking at each other. Col. Sussex
picked up his clipboard. His uniform was unwrinkled. His medals were still
in place. His cap sat at the correct angle. He flipped his swagger stick,
caught it, and walked off. We followed.
We climbed into the old army trucks with their ripped canvas sides and
tops that had brought us. The engines started and we drove off. We faced
each other on the long wooden benches. We had come out, all the Blues in one
of the trucks, all the Greens in the other. Now we were mixed together,
sitting there, most of us looking down at our scuffed and dusty shoes, being
jiggled this way and that, to the left, to the right, up and down, as the
truck tires hit the ruts in the old roads. We were tired and we were
defeated and we were frustrated. The war was over.
41
R.O.T.C. kept me away from sports while the other guys practiced every
day. They made the school teams, won their letters and got the girls. My
days were spent mostly marching around in the sun. All you ever saw were the
backs of some guy's ears and his buttocks. I quickly became disenchanted
with military proceedings. The others shined their shoes brightly and seemed
to go through maneuvers with relish. I couldn't see any sense in it. They
were just getting shaped up in order to get their balls blown off later. On
the other hand, I couldn't see myself crouched down in a football helmet,
shoulder pads laced on, decked out in Blue and White, #69, trying to block
some mean son-of-a-bitch from across town, trying to move out some brute
with tacos on his breath so that the son of the district attorney could
slant off left tackle for six yards. The problem was you had to keep
choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they
sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age
of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes
driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst
way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them
most of themselves.
I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I
was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They
seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was
lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away
from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more
work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn't let me.
So there I was, at Chelsey High, still in the R.O.T.C., still with my
boils. That always reminded me of how fucked up I was.
It was a grand day. One man from each squad who had won the Manual of
Arms competition within his squad stepped into a long line where the final
competition was to be held. Somehow I had won the competition in my squad. I
had no idea how. I was no hot shot.
It was Saturday. Many mothers and fathers were in the stands. Somebody
blew a bugle. A sword flashed. Commands rang out. Right shoulder arms! Left
shoulder arms! Rifles hit shoulders, rifle butts hit the ground, rifle
stocks slammed into shoulders again. Little girls sat in the stands in their
blue and green and yellow and orange and pink and white dresses. It was hot,
it was boring, it was insanity.
"Chinaski, you are competing for the honor of our squadron!"
"Yes, Corporal Monty."
All those little girls in the stands each waiting for her lover, for
her winner, for her corporate executive. It was sad. A flock of pigeons,
frightened by a piece of paper blown in the wind, flapped noisily away. I
yearned to be drunk on beer. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
As each man made an error he dropped out of line. Soon there were six,
then five, then three. I was still there. I had no desire to win. I knew
that I wouldn't win. I'd soon be out of it. I wanted to be out of there. I
was tired and bored. And covered with boils. I didn't give cream-shit for
what they were chasing. But I couldn't make an obvious error. Corporal Monty
would be hurt.
Then there were just two of us. Me and Andrew Post. Post was a darling.
His father was a great criminal lawyer. He was in the stands with his wife,
Andrew's mother. Post was sweating but determined. We both knew that he
would win. I could feel the energy and all the energy was his.
It's all right, I thought, he needs it, they need it. It's the way it
works. It's the way it's meant to work.
We went on and on, repeating various Manual of Arms maneuvers. From the
corner of my eye I saw the goal posts on the field and I thought, maybe if I
had tried harder I could have become a great football player.
"ORDER!" shouted the Commander and I ripped my bolt home. There had
been only one click. There had been no click to my left. Andrew Post had
frozen. A little moan rose from the grandstands.
"ARMS!" the Commander finished and I completed the maneuver. Post did
too but his bolt was open . . .
The actual ceremony for the winner came some days later. Luckily for me
there were other awards to be given. I stood and waited with the others as
Col. Sussex came down the line. My boils were worse than ever and as always
when I was wearing that itchy brown wool uniform the sun was up and hot and
making me conscious of every wool fiber in that son-of-a-bitching shirt. I
wasn't much of a soldier and everybody knew it. I had won on a fluke because
I hadn't cared enough to be nervous. I felt badly for Col. Sussex because I
knew what he was thinking and maybe he knew what I was thinking: that his
peculiar type of devotion and courage didn't seem exceptional to me.
Then he was standing right in front of me. I stood at attention but
managed to sneak a peek at him. He had his saliva in good order. Maybe when
he was pissed-off it dried up. In spite of the heat there was a good west
wind blowing. Col. Sussex pinned the medal on me. Then he reached out and
shook my hand.
"Congratulations," he said. Then he smiled at me. And moved on. Why the
old fuck. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all . . .
Walking home I had the medal in my pocket. Who was Col. Sussex? Just
some guy who had to shit like the rest of us. Everybody had to conform, find
a mold to fit into. Doctor, lawyer, soldier -- it didn't matter what it was.
Once in the mold you had to push forward. Sussex was as helpless as the next
man. Either you managed to do something or you starved in the streets.
I was alone, walking. On my side of the street just before reaching the
first boulevard on the long walk home there was a small neglected store. I
stopped and looked in the window. Various objects were on display with their
soiled price tags. I saw some candle holders. There was an electric toaster.
A table lamp. The glass of the window was dirty inside and out. Through the
rather dusty brown smear I saw two toy dogs grinning. A miniature piano.
These things were for sale. They didn't look very appealing. There weren't
any customers in the store and I couldn't see a clerk either. It was a place
I had passed many times before but had never stopped to examine.
I looked in and I liked it. There was nothing happening there. It was a
place to rest, to sleep. Everything in there was dead. I could see myself
happily employed as a clerk there so long as no customers entered the door.
I turned away from the window and walked along some more. Just before
reaching the boulevard I stepped into the street and saw an enormous storm
drain almost at my feet. It was like a great black mouth leading down to the
bowels of the earth. I reached into my pocket and took the medal and tossed
it toward the black opening. It went right in. It disappeared into the
darkness.
Then I stepped onto the sidewalk and walked back home. When I got there
my parents were busy with various cleaning chores. It was a Saturday. Now I
had to mow and clip the lawn, water it and the flowers.
I changed into my working clothes, went out, and with my father
watching me from beneath his dark and evil eyebrows, I opened the garage
doors and carefully pulled the mower out backwards, the mower blades not
turning then, but waiting.
42
"You ought to try to be like Abe Mortenson," said my mother, "he
gets straight A's. Why can't you ever get any A's?"
"Henry is dead on his ass," said my father. "Sometimes I can't
believe he's my son."
"Don't you want to be happy, Henry?" asked my mother. "You
never smile. Smile and be happy."
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," said my father. "Be a man!"
"Smile, Henry!"
"What's going to become of you? How the hell you going to
make it? You don't have any get up and go!"
"Why don't you go see Abe? Talk to him, learn to be like him,"
said my mother . . .
I knocked on the door of the Mortensons' apartment. The door opened. It
was Abe's mother.
"You can't see Abe. He's busy studying."
"I know, Mrs. Mortenson. I just want to see him a minute."
"All right. His room is right down there."
I walked on down. He had his own desk. He was sitting with a book open
on top of two other books. I knew the book by the color of the cover:
Civics. Civics, for Christ sake, on a Sunday.
Abe looked up and saw me. He spit on his hands and then turned back to
the book. "Hi," he said, looking down at the page.
"I bet you've read that same page ten times over, sucker."
"I've got to memorize everything."
"It's just crap."
"I've got to pass my tests."
"You ever thought of fucking a girl?"
"What?" he spit on his hands.
"You ever looked up a girl's dress and wanted to see more? Ever
thought about her snatch?"
"That's not important."
"It's important to her."
"I've got to study."
"We're having a pick-up game of baseball. Some of the guys
from school."
"On Sunday?"
"What's wrong with Sunday? People do a lot of things on
Sunday."
"But baseball?"
"The pros play on Sunday."
"But they get paid."
"Are you getting paid for reading that same page over and over?
Come on, get some air in your lungs, it might clear your head."
"All right. But just for a little while."
He got up and I followed him up the hall and into the front
room. We walked toward the door.
"Abe, where are you going?"
"I'll just be gone a little while."
"All right. But hurry back. You've got to study."
"I know . . ."
"All right, Henry, you make sure he gets back."
"I'll take care of him, Mrs. Mortenson."
There was Baldy and Jimmy Hatcher and some other guys from school and a
few guys from the neighborhood. We only had seven guys on each side which
left a couple of defensive holes, but I liked that. I played center field. I
had gotten good, I was catching up. I covered most of the outfield. I was
fast. I liked to play in close to grab the short ones. But what I liked best
was running back to grab those high hard ones hit over my head. That's what
Jigger Statz did with the Los Angeles Angels. He only hit about .280 but the
hits he took away from the other team made him as valuable as a .500 bitter.
Every Sunday a dozen or more girls from the neighborhood would come and
watch us. I ignored them. They really screamed when something exciting
happened. We played hardball and we each had our own glove, even Mortenson.
He had the best one. It had hardly been used.
I trotted out to center and the game began. We had Abe at second base.
I slammed my fist into my mitt and hollered in at Mortenson, "Hey, Abe, you
ever packed-off into a raw egg? You don't have to die to go to heaven!"
I heard the girls laughing.
The first guy struck out. He wasn't much. I struck out a lot too but I
was the hardest hitter of them all. I could really put the wood to it: out
of the lot and into the street. I always crouched low over the plate. I
looked like a wound-up spring standing there.
Each moment of the game was exciting to me. All the games I had missed
mowing that lawn, all those early school days of being chosen next-to-last
were over. I had blossomed. I had something and I knew I had it and it felt
good.
"Hey, Abe!" I yelled in. "With all that spit you don't need a raw egg!"
The next guy connected hard with one but it was high, very high and I
ran back to make an over-the-shoulder catch. I sprinted back, feeling great,
knowing that I would create the miracle once again.
Shit. The ball sailed into a tall tree at the back of the lot. Then I
saw the ball bouncing down through the branches. I stationed myself and
waited. No good, it was going left. I ran left. Then it bounced back to the
right. I ran right. It hit a branch, lingered there, then slithered through
some leaves and dropped into my glove. The girls screamed.
I fired the ball into our pitcher on one bounce then trotted back into
shallow center. The next guy struck out. Our pitcher, Harvey Nixon, had a
good fireball.
We changed sides and I was first up. I had never seen the guy on the
mound. He wasn't from Chelsey. I wondered where he was from. He was big all
over, big head, big mouth, big ears, big body. His hair fell down over his
eyes and he looked like a fool. His hair was brown and his eyes were green
and those green eyes stared at me through that hair as if he hated me. It
looked like his left arm was longer than his right. His left arm was his
pitching arm. I'd never faced a lefty, not in hardball. But they could all
be had. Turn them upside down and they were all alike.
"Kitten" Floss, they called him. Some kitten. 190 pounds.
"Come on, Butch, hit one out!" one of the girls pleaded. They called me
"Butch" because I played a good game and ignored them.
The Kitten looked at me from between his big ears. I spit on the plate,
dug in and waved my bat.
The Kitten nodded like he was getting a signal from the catcher. He was
just showboating. Then he looked around the infield. More showboating. It
was for the benefit of the girls. He couldn't keep his pecker-mind off of
snatch-thoughts.
He took his wind-up. I watched that ball in his left hand. My eyes
never left that ball. I had learned the secret. You concentrated on the ball
and followed it all the way in until it reached the plate and then you
murdered it with the wood.
I watched the ball leave his fingers through a blaze of sun. It was a
murderous humming blur, but it could be had. It was below my knees and far
out of the strike zone. His catcher had to dive to get it.
"Ball one," mumbled the old neighborhood fart who umpired our games. He
was a night watchman in a department store and he liked to talk to the
girls. "I got two daughters at home just like you girls. Real cute. They
wear tight dresses too." He liked to crouch over the plate and show them his
big buttocks, that's all he had, that and one gold tooth.
The catcher threw the ball back to Kitten Floss.
"Hey, Pussy!" I yelled out to him.
"You talkin' to me?"
"I'm talking to you, short-arm. You gotta come closer than that or I'll
have to call a cab."
"The next one is all yours," he told me.
"Good," I said. I dug in.
He went through his routine again, nodding like he was getting a sign,
checking the infield. Those green eyes stared at me through that dirty brown
hair. I watched him wind-up. I saw the ball leave his fingers, a dark fleck
against the sky in the sun and then suddenly it was zooming toward my skull.
I dropped in my tracks, feeling it brush the hair of my head.
"Strike one," mumbled the old fart.
"What?" I yelled. The catcher was still holding the ball. He was as
surprised at the call as I was. I took the ball from him and showed it to
the umpire.
"What's this?" I asked him.
"It's a baseball."
"Fine. Remember what it looks like."
I took the ball and walked out to the mound. The green eyes didn't
flinch under the dirty hair. But the mouth opened up just a bit, like a frog
sucking air. I walked up to Kitten.
"I don't swing with my head. The next time you do that I am going to
jam this thing right up through your shorts and past where you forget to
wipe."
I handed him the ball and walked back to the plate. I dug in and waved
my bat.
"One and one," said the old fart.
Floss kicked dirt around on the mound. He stared off into left field.
There was nothing out there except a starving dog scratching his ear. Floss
looked in for a sign. He was thinking of the girls, trying to look good. The
old fart crouched low, spreading his dumb buttocks, also trying to look
good. I was probably one of the few with his mind on the business at hand.
The time came, Kitten Floss went into his wind-up. That left hand
windmill could panic you if you let it. You had to be patient and wait for
the ball. Finally they had to let it go. Then it was yours to destroy and
the harder they threw it in the harder you could hit it out of there.
I saw the ball leave his fingers as one of the girls screamed. Floss
hadn't lost his zip. The ball looked like a bee-bee, only it got larger and
it was headed right for my skull again. All I knew was that I was trying to
find the dirt as fast as I could. I got a mouthful.
"SEERIKE TWO!" I heard the old fart yell. He couldn't even pronounce
the word. Get a man who works for nothing and you get a man who just likes
to hang around.
I got up and brushed the dirt off. It was even down in my shorts. My
mother was going to ask me, "Henry, how did you ever get your shorts so
dirty? Now don't make that face. Smile, and be happy!"
I walked to the mound. I stood right there. Nobody said anything. I
just looked at Kitten. I had the bat in my hand. I took the bat by the end
and pressed it against his nose. He slapped it away. I turned and walked
back toward the plate. Halfway there I stopped. I turned and stared at him
again. Then I walked to the plate.
I dug in and waved my bat. This one was going to be mine. The Kitten
peered in for the non-existent sign. He looked a long time, then shook his
head, no. He kept staring through that dirty hair with those green eyes. I
waved my bat more powerfully.
"Hit it out, Butch!" screamed one of the girls.
"Batch! Batch! Batch!'" screamed another girl. Then the Kitten
turned his back on us and just stared out into center field.
"Time," I said and stepped out of the box. There was a very cute girl
in an orange dress. Her hair was blond and it hung straight down, like a
yellow waterfall, beautiful, and I caught her eye for a moment and she said,
"Butch, please do it."
"Shut up," I said and stepped back into the box. The pitch came. I saw
it all the way. It was my pitch. Unfortunately, I was looking for the
duster. I wanted the duster so I could go out to the mound and kill or be
killed. The ball sailed right over the center of the plate. By the time I
adjusted the best I could do was swing weakly over the top of it as it went
by. The bastard had suckered me all the way.
He got me on three straight strikes next time. I swear he must have
been at least 23 years old. Probably a semi-pro.
One of our guys finally did get a single off him.
But I was good in the field. I made some catches. I moved out there. I
knew that the more I saw of the Kitten's fireball the more I was apt to
solve it. He wasn't trying to knock out my brains anymore. He didn't have
to. He was just smoking them down the middle. I hoped it was only a matter
of time before I golfed one out of there.
But things got worse and worse. I didn't like it. The girls didn't
either. Not only was green eyes great on the mound, he was great at the
plate. The first two times up he hit a homer and a double. The third time up
he swung under a pitch and looped a high blooper between Abe at second base
and me in center field. I came charging in, the girls screaming, but Abe
kept looking up and back over his shoulder, his mouth drooping down, looking
up, looking like a fool really, that wet mouth open. I came charging in
screaming, "It's mine!" It was really his but somehow I couldn't bear to let
him make the catch. The guy was nothing but an idiot book- reader and I
didn't really like him so I came charging in very hard as the ball dropped.
We crashed into one another, the ball popped out of his glove and into the
air as he fell to the ground, and I caught the ball off his glove. I stood
there over him as he lay on the ground.
"Get up, you dumb bastard," I told him. Abe stayed on the ground. He
was crying. He was holding his left arm.
"I think my arm is broken," he said.
"Get up, chickenshit."
Abe finally got up and walked off the held, crying and holding his arm.
I looked around. "All right," I said, "let's play ball!"
But everybody was walking away, even the girls. The game was evidently
over. I hung around awhile and then I started walking home. ..
Just before dinner the phone rang. My mother answered it. Her voice
became very excited. She hung up and I heard her talking to my father.
Then she came into my bedroom.
"Please come to the front room," she said. I walked in and sat on the
couch. They each had a chair. It was always that way. Chairs meant you
belonged. The couch was for visitors.
"Mrs. Mortenson just phoned. They've taken x-rays. You broke her son's
arm."
"It was an accident," I said.
"She says she is going to sue us. She'll get a Jewish lawyer. They'll
take everything we have."
"We don't have very much."
My mother was one of those silent criers. As she cried the tears came
faster and faster. Her cheeks were starting to glisten in the evening
twilight.
She wiped her eyes. They were a dull light brown.
"Why did you break that boy's arm?"
"It was a pop-up. We both went for it."
"What is this 'pop-up'?"
"Whoever gets it, gets it."
"So you got the 'pop-up'?"
"Yes."
"But how can this 'pop-up' help us? The Jewish lawyer will still have
the broken arm on his side."
I got up and walked back to my bedroom to wait for dinner. My father
hadn't said anything. He was confused. He was worried about losing what
little he had but at the same time he was very proud of a son who could
break somebody's arm.
43
Jimmy Hatcher worked part time in a grocery store. While none of us
could get jobs he could always get one. He had his little movie star face
and his mother had a great body. With his face and her body he didn't have
trouble finding employment.
"Why don't you come up to the apartment after dinner tonight?" he asked
me one day.
"What for?"
"I steal all the beer I want. I take it out the back. We can drink the
beer."
"Where you got it?"
"In the refrigerator."
"Show me."
We were about a block away from his place. We walked over. In the
hallway Jimmy said, "Wait a minute, I've got to check the mail." He took out
his key and opened the lock box. It was empty. He locked it again.
"My key opens this woman's box. Watch."
Jimmy opened the box and pulled out a letter and opened it. He read the
letter to me. "Dear Betty: I know that this check is late and that you've
been waiting for it. I lost my job. I have found another one, but it put me
behind. Here's the check, finally. I hope that everything is all right with
you. Love, Don."
Jimmy took the check and looked at it. He tore it up and he tore the
letter up and he put the pieces in his coat pocket. Then he locked the
mailbox.
"Come on."
We went into his apartment and into the kitchen and he opened the
refrigerator. It was packed with cans of beer.
"Does your mother know?"
"Sure. She drinks it."
He closed the refrigerator.
"Jim, did your father really blow his brains out because of your
mother?"
"Yeah. He was on the telephone. He told her he had a gun. He said. If
you don't come back to me I'm going to kill myself. Will you come back to
me?' And my mother said, 'No.' There was a shot and that was that."
"What did your mother do?"
"She hung up."
"All right, I'll see you tonight."
I told my parents that I was going over to Jimmy's to do some homework
with him. My kind of homework, I thought to myself.
"Jimmy's a nice boy," my mother said. My father didn't say anything.
Jimmy got the beer out and we began. I really liked it. Jimmy's
mother worked at a bar until 2 a.m. We had the place to ourselves.
"Your mother really has a body, Jim. How come some women
have great bodies and most of the others look like they're deformed?
Why can't all women have great bodies?"
"God, I don't know. Maybe if women were all the same we'd
get bored with them."
"Drink some more. You drink too slow."
"O.K."
"Maybe after a few beers I'll beat the shit out of you."
"We're friends, Hank."
"I don't have any friends. Drink up!"
"All right. What's the hurry?"
"You've got to slam them down to get the effect."
We opened some more cans of beer.
"If I was a woman I'd go around with my skirt hiked up giving all the
men hard-ons," Jimmy said.
"You make me sick."
"My mother knew a guy who drank her piss."
"What?"
"Yeah. They'd drink all night and then he'd lay down in the bathtub and
she'd piss in his mouth. Then he'd give her twenty- five dollars."
"She told you that?"
"Since my father died she confides in me. It's like I've taken his
place."
"You mean . . . ?"
"Oh, no. She just confides."
"Like the guy in the tub?"
"Yeah, like him."
"Tell me some more stuff."
"No."
"Come on, drink up. Does anybody eat your mother's shit?"
"Don't talk that way."
I finished the can of beer in my hand and threw it across the room.
"I like this joint. I might move in here."
I walked to the refrigerator and brought back a new six-pack.
"I'm one tough son-of-a-bitch," I said. "You're lucky I let you hang
around me."
"We're friends, Hank."
I jammed a can of beer under his nose.
"Here, drink this!"
I went to the bathroom to piss. It was a very ladylike bathroom,
brightly colored towels, deep pink floormats. Even the toilet seat was pink.
She sat her big white ass on there and her name was Clare.