Yet I also knew with another part of me, that if I ever let go and dropped into the flow of those shiny new bicycles, I was done, finished, that I’d never be able to make it. So I just lay back and let the wheels and the spokes and the colors soothe me.
A man with a hangover should never lay flat on his back looking up at the roof of a warehouse. The wooden girders finally get to you; and the skylights—you can see the chicken wire in the glass skylights—that wire somehow reminds a man of jail. Then there’s the heaviness of the eyes, the longing for just one drink, and then the sound of people moving about, you hear them, you know your hour is up, somehow you have to get on your feet and walk around and fill and pack orders …
She was the manager’s secretary. Her name was Carmen—but despite the Spanish name she was a blonde and she wore tight knitted dresses, high spiked heels, nylons, garter belt, her mouth was thick with lipstick, but, oh, she could shimmy, she could shake, she wobbled while bringing the orders up to the desk, she wobbled back to the office, all the boys watching every move, every twitch of her buttocks; wobbling, wiggling, wagging. I am not a lady’s man. I never have been. To be a lady’s man you have to make with the sweet talk. I’ve never been good at sweet talk. But, finally, with Carmen pressing me, I led her into one of the boxcars we were unloading at the rear of the warehouse and I took her standing up in the back of one of those boxcars. It was good, it was warm; I thought of blue sky and wide clean beaches, yet it was sad—there was definitely a lack of human feeling that I couldn’t understand or deal with. I had that knit dress up around her hips and I stood there pumping it to her, finally pressing my mouth to her heavy mouth thick with scarlet lipstick and I came between two unopened cartons with the air full of cinders and with her back pressed against the filthy splintering boxcar wall in the merciful dark.
—FACTOTUM
Spring Swan
swans die in the Spring too
and there it floated
dead on a Sunday
sideways
circling in current
and I walked to the rotunda
and overhead
gods in chariots
dogs, women
circled,
and death
ran down my throat
like a mouse,
and I heard the people coming
with their picnic bags
and laughter,
and I felt guilty
for the swan
as if death
were a thing of shame
and like a fool
I walked away
and left them
my beautiful swan.
A Day
Brock, the foreman, was always digging his fingers into his ass, using his left hand. He had a great case of hemorrhoids.
Tom noticed this throughout the working day.
Brock had been on his ass for months. Those round and lifeless eyes always appeared to be watching Tom. And then Tom would note the left hand, reaching around and digging.
And Brock was on his ass all right.
Tom did his work as well as the others. Maybe he didn’t show quite the enthusiasm of some but he got the job done.
Yet Brock was always after him, making comments, making useless suggestions.
Brock was related to the owner of the shop and a place had been made for him: foreman.
That day, Tom finished packing the light fixture into the oblong 8-foot carton and flung it onto the pile at the back of his work table. He turned to get another fixture from the assembly line.
Brock was standing in front of him.
“I wanna talk to you, Tom …”
Brock was tall and thin. His body bent forward from the middle. The head was always hanging down, it hung from his long thin neck. The mouth was always open. His nose was more than prominent with extremely large nostrils. The feet were large, and awkward. Brock’s pants hung loose on his skinny frame.
“Tom, you’re not doing your job.”
“I’m keeping up with production. What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think you’re using enough packing. You’ve got to use more of the shredding. We’ve had some breakage problems and we’re trying to correct that.”
“Why don’t you have each worker initial his carton, then if there’s breakage, you can trace it.”
“I’ll do the thinking here, Tom, that’s my job.”
“Sure.”
“Come on, I want you to come over here and watch Roosevelt pack.”
They walked over to Roosevelt’s table.
Roosevelt was a 13-year man.
They watched Roosevelt pack the shredded paper around the light fixture.
“You see what he’s doing?” Brock asked.
“Well, yes …”
“What I mean is, look what he’s doing with the shredded paper.”
“Yeah, he’s putting it in there.”
“Yes, of course … but you see how he’s picking up that shredded paper … he lifts it and drops it … it’s like playing a piano.”
“That isn’t really protecting the fixture …”
“Yes, it is. He’s fluffing it, don’t you see?”
Tom quietly inhaled, exhaled, “All right, Brock, I’ll fluff it …”
“Do that …”
Brock reached his left hand around and dug in. “By the way, you’re one fixture behind assembly now …”
“Sure I am. You’ve been talking to me.”
“Doesn’t matter, you’ll have to catch up.”
Brock gave it another dig, then walked away.
Roosevelt was laughing quietly. “Fluff it, motherfucker!”
Tom laughed. “How much shit does a man have to take just to stay alive?”
“Plenty,” came the answer, “and more …”
Tom went back to his table and caught up with assembly. And while Brock was looking, he “fluffed” it. And Brock always seemed to be looking.
Finally, it was lunchtime, 30 minutes. But for many of the workers lunchtime didn’t mean eating, it meant going down to the Villa and loading up on beer and ale, can after can, bulwarking themselves against the afternoon shift.
Some of the fellows popped uppers. Others popped downers. Many popped both uppers and downers, washing them down with the beer and the ale.
Outside the plant, in the parking lot, there were more people sitting inside old cars, each with a different party going. The Mexicans were in some and the blacks were in others, and sometimes, unlike in the jails, they were mixed. There weren’t many whites, just a few silent ones from the south. But Tom liked the whole gang of them.
The only problem in the place was Brock.
That lunchtime Tom was in his own car drinking with Ramon.
Ramon opened his hand and showed Tom a large yellow pill. It looked like a jaw-breaker.
“Hey, dude, try this. You won’t worry about shit. 4 or 5 hours go like 5 minutes. And you’ll be STRONG, nothing will tire you …”
“Thanks, Ramon, but I’m too fucked-up now.”
“But this is to un-fuck you, don’t you get it?”
Tom didn’t answer.
“O.K.,” said Ramon, “I’ve had mine but I’ll take yours too!”
He popped the pill into his mouth, raised the can of beer and took a hit. Tom watched that enormous pill, he could see it going down Ramon’s throat, then it was gone.
Ramon slowly turned to Tom, then grinned, “Look, the damn thing hasn’t even hit my belly yet and already I feel better!”
Tom laughed.
Ramon took another hit of beer, then lit a cigarette. For a man supposedly feeling very good he looked very serious.
“No, I’m not a man … I’m not a man at all … Hey, last night I tried to fuck my wife … She’s gained 40 pounds this year … I had to get drunk first … I banged and banged, man, and nothing … Worst of all, I was sorry for her … I told her it was the job. And it was the job and it wasn’t. She got
up and turned on the tv …”
Ramon went on: “Man, everything’s changed. It seems like no more than a year or two ago, with me and my woman, everything was interesting and funny for us … We laughed like hell at everything … Now, all that’s stopped … It’s gone away somewhere, I don’t know where …”
“I know what you mean, Ramon …”
Ramon jolted straight upright as if given a message:
“Shit, man, we’ve got to punch in!”
“Let’s go!”
Tom was coming back from the assembly line with a fixture and Brock was waiting there. Brock said, “All right, put it down. Follow me.”
They walked out to assembly.
And there was Ramon in his little brown apron, with his fleck of mustache.
“You stand to his left now,” said Brock.
Brock raised his hand and the machinery began. It moved the 8-foot fixtures toward them at a steady but predictable pace.
Ramon had this huge roll of paper in front of him, a seemingly endless spool of heavy brown paper. The first light fixture off the assembly line arrived. He ripped away a sheet of paper, spread it on the table, then placed the light fixture on it. He flicked the paper together lengthwise, holding it with a small piece of Scotch tape. Then he folded the left end into a triangle, then the right end, and then the fixture moved toward Tom.
Tom sheared off a length of gummed tape and ran it carefully along the top of the fixture, where the paper was to be sealed. Then with shorter lengths he tightly secured the left end, and then the right. Then he lifted the heavy fixture, turned, walked across an aisle and placed it upright in a wall rack where it awaited one of the packers. Then he went back to the table where another fixture was moving toward him.
It was the worst job in the plant and everybody knew it.
“You’ll work with Ramon now, Tom …”
Brock left. There was no need to watch him: if Tom didn’t perform his function properly, the whole assembly line stopped.
Nobody ever lasted long as second man to Ramon.
“I knew you’d need that yellow,” Ramon said with a grin.
The fixtures moved relentlessly at them. Tom tore lengths of tape from the machine in front of him. It was a glistening, thick, wetted tape. He forced himself into the quick rhythm of the work but in order to keep up with Ramon, a certain caution was sacrificed: the razor-sharp edge of the tape occasionally cut long deep slices into his hands. The cuts were nearly invisible and seldom bled but looking at his fingers and palms he could see the bright red lines in the skin. There was never a pause. The fixtures seemed to move faster and faster and get heavier and heavier.
“Fuck,” said Tom, “I ought to quit. Wouldn’t a park bench beat this shit?”
“Sure,” said Ramon, “sure, anything beats this shit …”
Ramon was working with a tight crazy grin, denying the impossibility of it all. And then, the machinery stopped, as it did every now and then.
What a gift from the gods that was!
Something had jammed, something had overheated. Without those machinery breakdowns, most of the workers could not have endured. Within those 2 or 3 minute breaks they pulled their senses and their souls back together. Almost.
The mechanics scrambled wildly looking for the cause of the breakdown.
Tom looked over at the Mexican girls on the assembly line. To him, they were all very beautiful. They gave away their time, their lives to dull and routine labor, but they kept something back, some little thing. Many of them wore small ribbons in their hair: blue, yellow, green, red … And they made private jokes and laughed continually. They showed immense courage. Their eyes knew something.
But the mechanics were good, very good, and the machinery was starting. The lighting fixtures were moving at Tom and Ramon again. They all were working for the Sunray Company again.
And after a while, Tom got so tired that it went beyond tiredness, it was like being drunk, it was like being crazy, it was like being drunk and crazy.
As Tom slapped a piece of tape on a light fixture he screamed out, “SUNRAY!”
It could have been his tone or the timing. Anyhow, everybody started laughing, the Mexican girls, the packers, the mechanics, even the old man who went about oiling and checking the machinery, they all laughed, it was crazy.
Brock walked out.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
He got silence.
The fixtures came and went and the workers remained.
Then, somehow, like awakening from a nightmare, the day was over. They walked to the card racks, pulled their cards and then waited in line before the time clock to check out.
Tom hit the clock, racked his card, made it to his car. It started and he pulled out into the street, thinking, I hope nobody gets in my way, I think I’m too weak to put my foot down on the brake.
Tom drove back with the gas gauge sliding into the red. He was too tired to stop and pump gas.
He managed to park, got to his door, opened it and walked in.
The first thing he saw was Helena, his wife. She was in a loose dirty housegown, she was sprawled on the couch, her head on a pillow. Her mouth was open, she was snoring. She had a rather round mouth and her snoring was a mixture of spitting and gulping, as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to spit out her life or swallow it.
She was an unhappy woman. She felt that her life was unfulfilled.
A pint of gin was on the coffee table. It was ¾’s empty.
Tom’s two sons, Rob and Bob, age 5 and 7, were bouncing a tennis ball against the wall. It was the south wall, the one without any furniture. The wall had once been white but now was pocked and dirty from the endless banging of tennis balls.
The boys paid no attention to their father. They had stopped banging the ball against the wall. Now they were arguing.
“I STRUCK YOU OUT!”
“NO, IT’S BALL FOUR!”
“STRIKE THREE!”
“BALL FOUR!”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Tom asked, “can I ask you fellows something?”
They stopped and stared, almost affronted.
“Yeah,” Bob said finally. He was the 7-year-old.
“How can you guys play baseball, bouncing a ball against a wall?”
They looked at Tom, then ignored him.
“STRIKE THREE!”
“NO, BALL FOUR!”
Tom walked into the kitchen. There was a white pot on the stove. Dark smoke was rising from it. Tom looked under the lid. The bottom was blackened, with burnt potatoes, carrots, chunks of meat. Tom slid the pot over and shut the flame off.
Then he went to the refrigerator. There was a can of beer in there. He took it out, pulled the tab and had a gulp.
The sound of the tennis ball against the wall began again.
Then there was another sound: Helena. She had bumped against something. Then she was there, standing in the kitchen. In her right hand she held the pint of gin.
“I guess you’re mad, huh?”
“I just wish you’d feed the kids …”
“You just leave me a lousy $3 each day. What am I supposed to do with a lousy $3?”
“At least, get some toilet paper. Every time I want to wipe my ass I look around and there’s just a cardboard roll hanging there.”
“Hey, a woman has her problems too! HOW DO YOU THINK I LIVE? Every day, you go out into the world, you get to go out and see the world! I’ve got to sit around here! You don’t know what that’s like day after day!”
“Yeah, well, there’s that …”
Helena took a hit of her gin.
“You know I love you, Tommy, and when you’re unhappy, it hurts me, it hurts my heart, it does.”
“All right, Helena, let’s sit down here and calm down.”
Tom walked to the breakfastnook table and had a seat. Helena brought her pint and sat across from him. She looked at him.
“Jesus, what happened to your hands?”
He had finished his beer can. “Listen, Helena, got any more of that gin around?”
“Yeah, I think so …”
He watched as she went to the cupboard, reached high, and got a bottle down. She came back with the pint, sat down again. Tom unpeeled the bottle.
“How many of these have you got around?”
“A few …”
“Good. How do you drink this? Straight?”
“You can …”
Tom took a good hit. Then he looked down at his hands, opening and closing them, watching the red wounds open and shut. They were fascinating.
He took the bottle, poured a little gin into one of his palms, then rubbed it around on his hands.
“Wow! This shit burns!”
Helena took another hit at her bottle. “Tom, why don’t you get another job?”
“Another job? Where? There’s a hundred guys want mine …”
Then Rob and Bob ran in. They skidded to a stop at the breakfast-nook table.
“Hey,” said Bob, “when we gonna eat?”
Tom looked at Helena.
“I think I’ve got some weenies,” she said.
“Weenies again?” asked Rob. “Weenies? I hate weenies!”
Tom looked at his son. “Hey, fellow, go easy …”
“Well,” said Bob, “how about a fucking drink then?”
“You little bastard!” Helena yelled.
She reached out, open-handed, and slapped Bob hard on the ear.
“Don’t hit the kids, Helena,” said Tom, “I got too much of that myself when I was a kid.”
“Don’t tell me how to handle my kids!”
“They’re mine too …”
Bob was standing there. His ear was very red.
“So, you want a fucking drink, eh?” Tom asked him.
Bob didn’t answer.
“Come here,” said Tom.
Bob walked over near his father. Tom handed him the bottle.
“Go on, drink it. Drink your fucking drink.”
“Tom, what are you doing?” Helena asked.
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 13