The top of my head began to ache. I reached up and felt where I had been blackjacked in a Philadelphia bar 30 years before. Some scar tissue remained. Now the scar tissue, baked by the sun, was swollen. It stood up like a small horn. I broke a piece off and threw it in the road.
I walked another hour, then decided to turn back. It meant having to walk all the way back yet I felt it was the thing to do. I took my shirt off and draped it over my head. I stopped once or twice and screamed, “LYDIA!” There was no reply.
Some time later I got back to the gate. All I had to do was walk around it but there was something in the way. It stood in front of the gate, about 15 feet from me. It was a small doe, a fawn, a something.
I moved slowly toward it. It didn’t budge. Was it going to let me by? It didn’t seem to fear me. I guessed it sensed my confusion, my cowardice. I approached closer and closer. It wouldn’t get out of the way. It had large beautiful brown eyes, more beautiful than the eyes of any woman I had ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I was within three feet of it, ready to back off, when it bolted. It ran off the road and into the woods. It was in excellent shape; it could really run.
As I walked further along the road I heard the sound of running water. I needed water. You couldn’t live very long without water. I left the road and moved toward the sound of rushing water. There was a little hill covered with grass and as I topped the hill there it was: water spilling out of several cement pipes in the face of a dam and into some kind of reservoir. I sat down at the edge of the reservoir and took off my shoes and stockings, pulled up my pants, and stuck my legs into the water. Then I poured water over my head. Then I drank—but not too much or too fast—just like I’d seen it done in the movies.
After recovering a bit I noticed a pier that went out over the reservoir. I walked out on the pier and came to a large metal box bolted to the side of the pier. It was locked with a padlock. There was probably a telephone in there! I could phone for help!
I went and found a large rock and started smashing it against the lock. It wouldn’t give. What the hell would Jack London do? What would Hemingway do? Jean Genet?
I kept smashing the rock against the lock. Sometimes I missed and my hand hit the lock or the metal box itself. Skin ripped, blood flowed. I gathered myself and gave the lock one final blow. It opened. I took it off and opened the metal box. There was no telephone. There were a series of switches and some heavy cables. I reached in, touched a wire, and got a terrible shock. Then I pulled a switch. I heard the roar of water. Out of three or four of the holes in the concrete face of the dam shot giant white jets of water. I pulled another switch. Three or four other holes opened up, releasing tons of water. I pulled a third switch and the whole dam let loose. I stood and watched the water pouring forth. Maybe I could start a flood and cowboys would come on horses or in rugged little pickup trucks to rescue me. I could see the headline:
HENRY CHINASKI, MINOR POET, FLOODS UTAH COUNTRYSIDE IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS SOFT LOS ANGELES ASS.
I decided against it. I threw all the switches back to normal, closed the metal box, and hung the broken lock back on it.
I left the reservoir, found another road up the way, and began following it. This road seemed more used than the other. I walked along. I had never been so tired. I could hardly see. Suddenly there was a little girl about five years old walking toward me. She wore a little blue dress and white shoes. She looked frightened when she saw me. I tried to look pleasant and friendly as I edged toward her.
“Little girl, don’t go away. I won’t hurt you. I’M LOST! Where are your parents? Little girl, take me to your parents!”
The little girl pointed. I saw a trailer and a car parked up ahead. “HEY, I’m LOST!” I shouted. “CHRIST, AM I GLAD TO SEE YOU.”
Lydia stepped around the side of the trailer. Her hair was done up in red curlers. “Come on, city boy,” she said. “Follow me home.”
“I’m so glad to see you, baby, kiss me!”
“No. Follow me.”
Lydia took off running about 20 feet in front of me. It was hard keeping up.
“I asked those people if they had seen a city boy around,” she called back over her shoulder. “They said, No.”
“Lydia, I love you!”
“Come on! You’re slow!”
“Wait, Lydia, wait!”
She vaulted over a barbed wire fence. I couldn’t make it. I got tangled in the wire. I couldn’t move. I was like a trapped cow. “LYDIA!”
She came back with her red curlers and started helping me get loose from the barbs. “I tracked you. I found your red notebook. You got lost deliberately because you were pissed.”
“No, I got lost out of ignorance and fear. I am not a complete person—I’m a stunted city person. I am more or less a failed drizzling shit with absolutely nothing to offer.”
“Christ,” she said, “don’t you think I know that?”
She freed me from the last barb. I lurched after her. I was back with Lydia again.
—WOMEN
the night I was going to die
the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets
and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through the
mattress
and just before it hit the floor I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
then made it back to the bed
and again my soul dropped down through the mattress
and I leaped up
just before it hit the floor
I walked around and I turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and down it dropped again and
I was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7-year-old daughter
and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead
otherwise it wouldn’t have
mattered
but all that night
nobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn’t phone
all I could hear were the crickets and it was
hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed
inside at last and
I slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone rings
the phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.
Two mornings later, at 4 AM, somebody beat on the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s a redheaded floozie.”
I let Tammie in. She sat down and I opened a couple of beers.
“I’ve got bad breath, I have these two bad teeth. You can’t kiss me.”
“All right.”
We talked. Well, I listened. Tammie was on speed. I listened and looked at her long red hair and when she was preoccupied I looked and looked at that body. It was bursting out of her clothing, begging to get out. She talked on and on. I didn’t touch her.
At 6 AM Tammie gave me her address and phone number.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
It was a bright red Camaro, completely wrecked. The front was smashed in, one side was ripped open and the windows were gone. Inside were rags and shirts and Kleenex boxes and newspapers and milk cartons and Coke bottles and wire and rope and paper napkins and magazines and paper cups and shoes and bent colored drinking straws. This mass of stuff was piled above seat level and covered the seats. Only the driver’s area
had a little clear space.
Tammie stuck her head out the window and we kissed.
Then she tore away from the curb and by the time she reached the corner she was doing 45. She did hit the brakes and the Camaro bobbed up and down, up and down. I walked back inside.
I went to bed and thought about her hair. I’d never known a real redhead. It was fire.
Like lightning from heaven, I through.
Somehow her face didn’t seem to be as hard anymore....
Tammie came by that night. She appeared to be high on uppers.
“I want some champagne,” she said.
“All right,” I said.
I handed her a twenty.
“Be right back,” she said, walking out the door.
Then the phone rang. It was Lydia. “I just wondered how you were doing....”
“Things are all right.”
“Not here. I’m pregnant.”
“What?”
“And I don’t know who the father is.”
“Oh?”
“You know Dutch, the guy who hangs around the bar where I’m working now?”
“Yes, old Baldy.”
“Well, he’s really a nice guy. He’s in love with me. He brings me flowers and candy. He wants to marry me. He’s been real nice. And one night I went home with him. We did it.”
“All right.”
“Then there’s Barney, he’s married but I like him. Of all the guys in the bar he’s the only one who never tried to put the make on me. It fascinated me. Well, you know, I’m trying to sell my house. So he came over one afternoon. He just came by. He said he wanted to look the house over for a friend of his. I let him in. Well, he came at just the right time. The kids were in school so I let him go ahead.... Then one night this stranger came into the bar late. He asked me to go home with him. I told him no. Then he said he just wanted to sit in my car with me, talk to me. I said all right. We sat in the car and talked. Then we shared a joint. Then he kissed me. That kiss did it. If he hadn’t kissed me I wouldn’t have done it. Now I’m pregnant and I don’t know who. I’ll have to wait and see who the child looks like.”
“All right, Lydia, lots of luck.”
“Thanks.”
I hung up. A minute passed and then the phone rang again. It was Lydia. “Oh,” she said, “I wondered how you were doing?”
“About the same, horses and booze.”
“Then everything’s all right with you?”
“Not quite.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I sent this woman out for champagne....”
“Woman?”
“Well, girl, really …”
“A girl?”
“I sent her out with $20 for champagne and she hasn’t come back. I think I’ve been taken.”
“Chinaski, I don’t want to hear about your women. Do you understand that?”
“All right.”
Lydia hung up. There was a knock on the door. It was Tammie. She’d come back with the champagne and the change.
It was noon the next day when the phone rang. It was Lydia again.
“Well, did she come back with the champagne?”
“Who?”
“Your whore.”
“Yes, she came back....”
“Then what happened?”
“We drank the champagne. It was good stuff.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well, you know, shit …”
I heard a long insane wail like a wolverine shot in the arctic snow and left to bleed and the alone....
She hung up.
I slept most of the afternoon and that night I drove out to the harness races.
I lost $32, got into the Volks and drove back. I parked, walked up on the porch and put the key into the door. All the lights were on. I looked around. Drawers were ripped out and overturned on the floor, the bed covers were on the floor. All my books were missing from the bookcase, including the books I had written, 20 or so. And my typewriter was gone and my toaster was gone and my radio was gone and my paintings were gone.
Lydia, I thought.
All she’d left me was my t.v. because she knew I never looked at it.
I walked outside and there was Lydia’s car, but she wasn’t in it. “Lydia,” I said. “Hey, baby!”
I walked up and down the street and then I saw her feet, both of them, sticking out from behind a small tree up against an apartment house wall. I walked up to the tree and said, “Look, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
Lydia just stood there. She had two shopping bags full of my books and a portfolio of my paintings.
“Look, I’ve got to have my books and paintings back. They belong to me.”
Lydia came out from behind the tree—screaming. She took the paintings out and started tearing them. She threw the pieces in the air and when they fell to the ground she stomped on them. She was wearing her cowgirl boots.
Then she took my books out of the shopping bags and started throwing them around, out into the street, out on the lawn, everywhere.
“Here are your paintings! Here are your books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”
Then Lydia ran down to my court with a book in her hand, my latest, The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski. She screamed, “So you want your books back? So you want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”
She started smashing the glass panes in my front door. She took The Selected Works of Henry Chinaski and smashed pane after pane, screaming, “You want your books back? Here are your goddamned books! AND DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!”
I stood there as she screamed and broke glass.
Where are the police? I thought. Where?
Then Lydia ran down the court walk, took a quick left at the trash bin and ran down the driveway of the apartment house next door. Behind a small bush was my typewriter, my radio and my toaster.
Lydia picked up the typewriter and ran out into the center of the street with it. It was a heavy old-fashioned standard machine. Lydia lifted the typer high over her head with both hands and smashed it in the street. The platen and several other parts flew off. She picked the typer up again, raised it over her head and screamed, “DON’T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN!” and smashed it into the street again.
Then Lydia jumped into her car and drove off.
Fifteen seconds later the police cruiser drove up.
“It’s an orange Volks. It’s called the Thing, looks like a tank. I don’t remember the license number, but the letters are HZY, like HAZY, got it?”
“Address?”
I gave them her address....
Sure enough, they brought her back. I heard her in the back seat, wailing, as they drove up.
“STAND BACK!” said one cop as he jumped out. He followed me up to my place. He walked inside and stepped on some broken glass. For some reason he shone his flashlight on the ceiling and the ceiling mouldings.
“You want to press charges?” the cop asked me.
“No. She has children. I don’t want her to lose her kids. Her ex-husband is trying to get them from her. But please tell her that people aren’t supposed to go around doing this sort of thing.”
“O.K.,” he said, “now sign this.”
He wrote it down in hand in a little notebook with lined paper. It said that I, Henry Chinaski, would not press charges against one Lydia Vance.
I signed it and he left.
I locked what was left of the door and went to bed and tried to sleep.
In an hour or so the phone rang. It was Lydia. She was back home.
“YOU-SON-OF-A-BITCH, YOU EVER TELL ME ABOUT YOUR WOMEN AGAIN AND I’LL DO THE SAME THING ALL OVER AGAIN!”
She hung up.
Two nights later I went over to Tammie’s place on Rustic Court. I knocked. The lights weren’t on. It seemed empty. I looked in her mailbox. There were letter
s in there. I wrote a note, “Tammie, I have been trying to phone you. I came over and you weren’t in. Are you all right? Phone me.... Hank.”
I drove over at 11 AM the next morning. Her car wasn’t out front. My note was still stuck in the door. I rang anyhow. The letters were still in the mailbox. I left a note in the mailbox: “Tammie, where the hell are you? Contact me.... Hank.”
I drove all over the neighborhood looking for that smashed red Camaro.
I returned that night. It was raining. My notes were wet. There was more mail in the box. I left her a book of my poems, inscribed. Then I went back to my Volks. I had a Maltese cross hanging from my rearview mirror. I cut the cross down, took it back to her place and tied it around her doorknob.
I didn’t know where any of her friends lived, where her mother lived, where her lovers lived.
I went back to my court and wrote some love poems.
—WOMEN
like a flower in the rain
I cut the middle fingernail of the middle
finger
right hand
real short
and I began rubbing along her cunt
as she sat upright in bed
spreading lotion over her arms
face
and breasts
after bathing.
then she lit a cigarette:
“don’t let this put you off,”
and smoked and continued to rub the
lotion on.
I continued to rub the cunt.
“you want an apple?” I asked.
“sure,” she said, “you got one?”
but I got to her—
she began to twist
then she rolled on her side,
she was getting wet and open
like a flower in the rain.
then she rolled on her stomach
and her most beautiful ass
looked up at me
and I reached under and got the
cunt again.
she reached around and got my
cock, she rolled and twisted,
I mounted
my face falling into the mass
of red hair that overflowed
from her head
and my fattened cock entered
Run With the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader Page 31