to only flicker and flame
at the poor cracker-barrel jibes
of their conceited, pampered correct comedians.
Known, at last, for a moment,
as they will be known
and as you will be known
by an all-gray man on an all-gray horse
who sits and fondles a sword
longer than the night
longer than the mountain’s aching backbone
longer than all the cries
that have a-bombed up out of throats
and exploded in a newer, less-planned
land.
We smoke and the clouds do not notice us.
A cat walks by and shakes Shakespeare off of his back.
Tallow, tallow, candle like wax: our spines
are limp and our consciousness burns
guilelessly away
the remaining wick life has
doled out to us.
An old man asked me for a cigarette
and told me his troubles
and this
is what he said:
that Age was a crime
and that Pity picked up the marbles
and that Hatred picked up the
cash.
He might have been your father
or mine.
He might have been a sex-fiend
or a saint.
But whatever he was,
he was condemned
and we stood in the sun and
smoked
and looked around
in our leisure
to see who was next in
line.
nirvana
not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to
somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.
he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arrived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.
the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher,
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.
the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.
he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.
the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.
then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.
the young man
thought, I’ll just sit
here, I’ll just stay
here.
but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.
he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.
the young man
looked straight
forward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.
they had not
noticed
the
magic.
the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do—
just listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.
After arriving in Philadelphia I found a roominghouse and paid a week’s rent in advance. The nearest bar was fifty years old. You could smell the odor of urine, shit and vomit of a half century as it came up through the floor into the bar from the restrooms below.
It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Two men were fighting in the center of the bar.
The guy to the right of me said his name was Danny. To the left, he said his name was Jim.
Danny had a cigarette in his mouth, end glowing. An empty beerbottle looped through the air. It missed his cigarette and nose, fractionally. He didn’t move or look around, tapped the ashes of his cigarette into a tray. “That was pretty close, you son of a bitch! Come that close again, you got a fight on your hands!”
Every seat was taken. There were women in there, a few housewives, fat and a bit stupid, and two or three ladies who had fallen on hard times. As I sat there one girl got up and left with a man. She was back in five minutes.
“Helen! Helen! How do you do it?”
She laughed.
Another jumped up to try her. “That must be good. I gotta have some!”
They left together. Helen was back in five minutes.
“She must have a suction pump for a pussy!”
“I gotta try me some of that,” said an old guy down at the end of the bar. “I haven’t had a hard-on since Teddy Roosevelt took his last hill.”
It took Helen ten minutes with that one.
“I want a sandwich,” said a fat guy. “Who’s gonna run me an errand for a sandwich?”
I told him I would. “Roast beef on a bun, everything on.”
He gave me some money. “Keep the change.”
I walked down to the sandwich place. An old geezer with a big belly walked up. “Roast beef on a bun to go, everything on. And a bottle of beer while I’m waiting.”
I drank the beer, took the sandwich back to the fat guy in the bar, and found another seat. A shot of whiskey appeared. I drank it down. Another appeared. I drank it down. The juke box played.
A young fellow of about twenty-four came down from the end of the bar. “I need the venetian blinds cleaned,” he said to me.
“You sure do.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing. Drink. Both.”
“How about the blinds?”
“Five bucks.”
“You’re hired.”
They called him Billy-Boy. Billy-Boy had married the owner of the bar. She was forty-five.
He brought me two buckets, some suds, rags and sponges. I took the blinds down, removed the slats, and began.
“Drinks are free,” said Tommy the night bartender, “as long as you’re working.”
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
It was slow work; the dust had caked, turned into embedded grime. I cut my hands several times on the edges of the metal slats. The soapy water burned.
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
I finished one set of blinds and hung them up. The patrons of the bar turned to look at my work.
“Beautiful!”
“It sure helps the place.”
“They’ll probably raise the price of drinks.”
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy,” I said.
I took down a
nother set of blinds, pulled out the slats. I beat Jim at the pinball machine for a quarter, then emptied the buckets in the crapper and got fresh water.
The second set went slower. My hands collected more cuts. I doubt that those blinds had been cleaned in ten years. I won another quarter at the pinball then Billy-Boy hollered at me to go back to work.
Helen walked by on her way to the women’s crapper.
“Helen, I’ll give you five bucks when I’m finished. Will that cover?”
“Sure, but you won’t be able to get it up after all that work.”
“I’ll get it up.”
“I’ll be here at closing. If you can still stand up, then you can have it for nothing!”
“I’ll be standing tall, baby.”
Helen walked back to the crapper.
“Shot of whiskey, Tommy.”
“Hey, take it easy,” said Billy-Boy, “or you’ll never finish that job tonight.”
“Billy, if I don’t finish you keep your five.”
“It’s a deal. All you people hear that?”
“We heard you, Billy, you cheap ass.”
“One for the road, Tommy.”
Tommy gave me the whiskey. I drank it and went to work. I drove myself on. After a number of whiskeys I had the three sets of blinds up and shining.
“All right, Billy, pay up.”
“You’re not finished.”
“What?”
“There’s three more windows in the back room.”
“The back room?”
“The back room. The party room.”
Billy-Boy showed me the back room. There were three more windows, three more sets of blinds.
“I’ll settle for two-fifty, Billy.”
“No, you got to do them all or no pay.”
I got my buckets, dumped the water, put in clean water, soap, then took down a set of blinds. I pulled the slats out, put them on a table and stared at them.
Jim stopped on his way to the crapper. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t go another slat.”
When Jim came out of the crapper he went to the bar and brought back his beer. He began cleaning the blinds.
“Jim, forget it.”
I went to the bar, got another whiskey. When I got back one of the girls was taking down a set of blinds. “Be careful, don’t cut yourself,” I told her.
A few minutes later there were four or five people back there talking and laughing, even Helen. They were all working on the blinds. Soon nearly everybody in the bar was back there. I worked in two more whiskeys. Finally the blinds were finished and hanging. It hadn’t taken very long. They sparkled. Billy-Boy came in:
“I don’t have to pay you.”
“The job’s finished.”
“But you didn’t finish it.”
“Don’t be a cheap shit, Billy,” somebody said.
Billy-Boy dug out the $5 and I took it. We moved to the bar. “A drink for everybody!” I laid the $5 down. “And one for me too.”
Tommy went around pouring drinks.
I drank my drink and Tommy picked up the $5.
“You owe the bar $3.15.”
“Put it on the tab.”
“O.K., what’s your last name?”
“Chinaski.”
“You heard the one about the Polack who went to the outhouse?”
“Yes.”
Drinks came my way until closing time. After the last one I looked around. Helen had slipped out. Helen had lied.
Just like a bitch, I thought, afraid of the long hard ride …
I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me. I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.
When I arrived in St. Louis it was still very cold, about to snow, and I found a room in a nice clean place, a room on the second floor, in the back. It was early evening and I was having one of my depressive fits so I went to bed early and somehow managed to sleep.
When I awakened in the morning it was very cold. I was shivering uncontrollably. I got up and found that one of the windows was open. I closed the window and went back to bed. I began to feel nauseated. I managed to sleep another hour, then awakened. I got up, dressed, barely made it to the hall bathroom and vomited. I undressed and got back into bed. Soon there was a knock on the door. I didn’t answer. The knocking continued. “Yes?” I asked.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Can we come in?”
“Come in.”
There were two girls. One was a bit on the fat side but scrubbed, shining, in a flowery pink dress. She had a kind face. The other wore a wide tight belt that accentuated her very good figure. Her hair was long, dark, and she had a cute nose; she wore high heels, had perfect legs, and wore a white low cut blouse. Her eyes were dark brown, very dark, and they kept looking at me, amused, very amused. “I’m Gertrude,” she said, “and this is Hilda.”
Hilda managed to blush as Gertrude moved across the room toward that dark hair. She walked off down the hall, leaving the door ajar.
I took the salt and pepper, seasoned the broth, broke the crackers into it, and spooned it into my illness.
After losing several typewriters to pawnbrokers I simply gave up the idea of owning one. I printed out my stories by hand and sent them out that way. I hand-printed them with a pen. I got to be a very fast hand-printer. It got so that I could hand-print faster than I could write. I wrote three or four short stories a week. I kept things in the mail. I imagined the editors of The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s saying: “Hey, here’s another one of those things by that nut …”
One night I took Gertrude to a bar. We sat at a table to one side and drank beer. It was snowing outside. I felt a little better than usual. We drank and talked. An hour or so passed. I began gazing into Gertrude’s eyes and she looked right back. “A good man, nowadays, is hard to find!” said the juke box. Gertrude moved her body to the music, moved her head to the music, and looked into my eyes.
“You have a very strange face,” she said. “You’re not really ugly.”
“Number four shipping clerk, working his way up.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Love is for real people.”
“You sound real.”
“I dislike real people.”
“You dislike them?”
“I hate them.”
We drank some more, not saying much. It continued to snow. Gertrude turned her head and stared into the crowd of people. Then she looked at me.
“Isn’t he handsome?”
“Who?”
“That soldier over there. He’s sitting alone. He sits so straight. And he’s got all his medals on.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“But it’s not late.”
“You can stay.”
“No, I want to go with you.”
“I don’t care what you do.”
“Is it the soldier? Are you mad because of the soldier?”
my bed. “We heard you in the bathroom. Are you sick?”
“Yes. But it’s nothing serious, I’m sure. An open window.”
“Mrs. Downing, the landlady, is making you some soup.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“It’ll do you good.”
Gertrude moved nearer my bed. Hilda remained where she was, pink and scrubbed and blushing. Gertrude pivoted back and forth on her very high heels. “Are you new in town?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not in the army?”
“No.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing.”
“No work?”
“No work.”
“Yes,” said Gertrude to Hilda, “look at his hands. He has the most beautiful hands. You can see that he has never worked.”
The landlady, Mrs. Downing, knocked. She was large and pleasant. I imag
ined that her husband was dead and that she was religious. She carried a large bowl of beef broth, holding it high in the air. I could see the steam rising. I took the bowl. We exchanged pleasantries. Yes, her husband was dead. She was very religious. There were crackers, plus salt and pepper.
“Thank you.”
Mrs. Downing looked at both of the girls. “We’ll all be going now. We hope you get well soon. And I hope the girls haven’t bothered you too much?”
“Oh no!” I grinned into the broth. She liked that.
“Come on, girls.”
Mrs. Downing left the door open. Hilda managed one last blush, gave me the tiniest smile, then left. Gertrude remained. She watched me spoon the broth in. “Is it good?”
“I want to thank all you people. All this … is very unusual.”
“I’m going.” She turned and walked very slowly toward the door. Her buttocks moved under her tight black skirt; her legs were golden. At the doorway she stopped and turned, rested her dark eyes on me once again, held me. I was transfixed, glowing. The moment she felt my response she tossed her head and laughed. She had a lovely neck, and all
“Oh, shit!”
“It was the soldier!”
“I’m going.”
I stood up at the table, left a tip and walked toward the door. I heard Gertrude behind me. I walked down the street in the snow. Soon she was walking at my side.
“You didn’t even get a taxi. These high heels in the snow!”
I didn’t answer. We walked the four or five blocks to the rooming-house. I went up the steps with her beside me. Then I walked down to my room, opened the door, closed it, got out of my clothes and went to bed. I heard her throw something against the wall of her room.
Rows and rows of silent bicycles. Bins filled with bicycle parts. Rows and rows of bicycles hanging from the ceiling: green bikes, red bikes, yellow bikes, purple bikes, blue bikes, girls’ bikes, boys’ bikes, all hanging up there; the glistening spokes, the wheels, the rubber tires, the paint, the leather seats, taillights, headlights, handbrakes; hundreds of bicycles, row after row.
We got an hour for lunch. I’d eat quickly, having been up most of the night and early morning, I’d be tired, aching all over, and I found this secluded spot under the bicycles. I’d crawl down there, under three deep tiers of bicycles immaculately arranged. I’d lay there on my back, and suspended over me, precisely lined up, hung rows of gleaming silver spokes, wheel rims, black rubber tires, shiny new paint, everything in perfect order. It was grand, correct, orderly—500 or 600 bicycles stretching out over me, covering me, all in place. Somehow it was meaningful. I’d look up at them and know I had forty-five minutes of rest under the bicycle tree.
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 12