“Now you keep quiet,” she said, “let me do the talking.”
We went in. She got some salami, eggs, bread, bacon, beer, hot mustard, pickles, two fifths of good whiskey, some Alka Seltzer and some mix. Cigarettes and cigars.
“Charge it to Willie Hansen,” she told the clerk.
We walked outside with the stuff and she called a cab from the box at the corner. The cab showed and we climbed in back.
“Who’s Willie Hansen?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said.
Up at my place she helped me put the perishables in the refrigerator. Then she sat down on the couch and crossed those good legs and sat there kicking and twisting an ankle, looking down at her shoe, that spiked and beautiful shoe. I peeled the top off a fifth and stood there mixing two strong drinks. I was king again.
That night in bed I stopped in the middle of it and looked down at her.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“What the hell difference does it make?”
I laughed and went on ahead.
The rent ran out and I put everything, which wasn’t much, into my paper suitcase, and 30 minutes later we walked back around a wholesale fur shop, down a broken walk, and there was an old two story house.
Pepper (that was her name, she finally gave me her name) rang the bell and told me—
“You stand back, just let him see me, and when the buzzer sounds I’ll push the door open and you follow me in.”
Willie Hansen always peeked down the stairway to the halfway point where he had a mirror that showed him who was at the door and then he made up his mind whether to be home or not.
He decided to be home. The buzzer rang and I followed Pepper on in, leaving my suitcase at the bottom of the steps.
“Baby!” he met her at the top of the steps, “so good to see you!”
He was pretty old and only had one arm. He put the arm around her and kissed her.
Then he saw me.
“Who’s this guy?”
“O, Willie, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is The Kid.”
“Hi!” I said.
He didn’t answer me.
“The Kid? He don’t look like a kid.”
“Kid Lanny, he used to fight under the name Kid Lanny.”
“Kid Lancelot,” I said.
We went on up into the kitchen and Willie took out a bottle and poured some drinks. We sat at the table.
“How do you like the curtains?” he asked me. “The girls made these curtains for me. The girls have a lot of talent.”
“I like the curtains,” I told him.
“My arm’s getting stiff, I can hardly move my fingers, I think I’m going to die, the doctors can’t figure what’s wrong. The girls think I’m kidding, the girls laugh at me.”
“I believe you,” I told him.
We had a couple of more drinks.
“I like you,” said Willie, “you look like you been around, you look like you’ve got class. Most people don’t have class. You’ve got class.”
“I don’t know anything about class,” I said, “but I’ve been around.”
We had some more drinks and went into the front room. Willie put on a sailing cap and sat down at an organ and he began playing the organ with his one arm. It was a very loud organ.
There were quarters and dimes and halves and nickles and pennies all over the floor. I didn’t ask questions. We sat there drinking and listening to the organ. I applauded lightly when he finished.
“All the girls were up here the other night,” he told me, “and then somebody hollered, RAID! and you should have seen them running, some of them naked and some of them in panties and bras, they all ran out and hid in the garage. It was funny as hell! I sat up here and they came drifting back one by one from the garage. It was sure funny!”
“Who was the one who hollered RAID?” I asked.
“I was,” he said.
Then he walked into his bedroom and took off his clothes and got into his bed. Pepper walked in and kissed him and talked to him as I walked around picking the coins up off the floor.
When she came out she motioned to the bottom of the stairway. I went down for the suitcase and brought it up.
7.
Everytime he put on that sailor’s cap, that captain’s cap, in the morning we knew we were going out on the yacht. He’d stand in front of the mirror adjusting it for proper angle and one of the girls would come running in to tell us:
“We’re going out on the yacht—Willie’s putting on his cap!”
Like the first time. He came out with the cap on and we followed him down to the garage, not a word spoken.
He had an old car, so old it had a rumble seat.
The two or three girls got in front with Willie, sitting on laps, however they made it, they made it, and Pepper and I got in the rumble seat, and she said—“He only goes out when he doesn’t have a hangover, and when he’s not drinking. The bastard doesn’t want anybody else to drink either, so watch it!”
“Hell, I need a drink.”
“We all need a drink,” she said. She took a pint from her purse and unscrewed the cap. She handed the bottle to me.
“Now wait until he checks us in the rearview mirror. Then the minute his eyes go back on the road take a slug.”
I tried it. It worked. Then it was Pepper’s turn. By the time we reached San Pedro the bottle was empty. Pepper took out some gum and I lit a cigar and we climbed out.
It was a fine looking yacht. It had two engines and Willie stood there showing me how to start the auxiliary motor in case anything went wrong. I stood there not listening, nodding. Some kind of crap about pulling a rope in order to start the thing.
He showed me how to pull anchor, unmoor from dock, but I was only thinking about another drink, and then we pulled out, and he stood there in the cabin with his captain’s cap on steering the thing, and all the girls got around him.
“O, Willie, let me steer!”
“Willie, let me steer!”
I didn’t want to steer. He named the boat after himself: THE WILLHAN. Terrible name. He should have called it THE FLOATING PUSSY.
I followed Pepper down to the cabin and we found more to drink, plenty to drink. We stayed down there drinking. I heard him cut the engine and he came down the steps.
“We’re going back in,” he said.
“What for?”
“Connie’s gone into one of her moods. I’m afraid she’ll jump overboard. She won’t speak to me. She just sits there staring. She can’t swim. I’m afraid she’ll jump over.”
(Connie was the one with the rag around her head.)
“Let her jump. I’ll go get her out. I’ll knock her out, I’ve still got my punch and then I’ll pull her in. Don’t worry about her.”
“No, we’re going in. Besides, you people have been drinking!”
He went upstairs. I poured some more drinks and lit a cigar.
8.
When we hit dock Willie came down and said he’d be right back. He wasn’t right back. He wasn’t right back. He wasn’t back for three days and three nights. He left all the girls there. He just drove off in his car.
“He’s mad,” said one of the girls.
“Yeah,” said another.
There was plenty of food and liquor there though, so we stayed and waited for Willie. There were four girls there including Pepper. It was cold down there no matter how much you drank, no matter how many blankets you got under. There was only one way to get warm. The girls made a joke of it—
“I’m NEXT!” one of them would holler.
“I think I’m out a come,” another would say.
“You think YOU’RE out a come,” I said, “how about ME?”
They laughed. Finally I just couldn’t make it anymore.
I found I had my green dice on me and we got down on the floor and started a crap game. Everybody was drunk and the girls had all the money, I didn’t have any money, but soon I had quite a
bit of money. They didn’t quite understand the game and I explained it to them as we went along and I changed the game as we went along to suit the circumstances.
That’s how Willie found us when he got back—shooting craps and drunk.
“I DON’T ALLOW GAMBLING ON THIS SHIP!” he screamed from the top of the steps.
Connie climbed up the steps, put her arms around him and stuck her long tongue into his mouth, then grabbed his parts. He came down the steps smiling, poured a drink, poured drinks for us all and we sat there talking and laughing, and he talked about an opera he was writing for the organ, The Emperor of San Francisco. I promised him I’d write the words to the music and that night we drove back into town everybody drinking and feeling good. That first trip was almost a carbon of every trip. One night he died and we were all out in the street again, the girls and myself. Some sister back east got every dime and I went to work in a dog biscuit factory.
9.
I’m living in someplace on Kingsley Street and working as a shipping clerk for a place that sold overhead light fixtures.
It was a fairly calm time. I drank a lot of beer each night, often forgetting to eat. I bought a typewriter, an old second-hand Underwood with keys that stuck. I hadn’t written anything for ten years. I got drunk on beer and began writing poetry. Pretty soon I had quite a backlog and didn’t know what to do with it. I put the whole works into one envelope and mailed it to some new magazine in a small town in Texas. I figured that nobody would take the stuff but at least somebody might get mad, so it wouldn’t be wasted entirely.
I got a letter back, I got two letters back, long letters. They said I was a genius, they said I was startling, they said I was God. I read the letters over and over and got drunk and wrote a long letter back. I sent more poems. I wrote poems and letters every night, I was full of bullshit.
The editoress, who was also a writer of sorts, began sending back photos of herself and she didn’t look bad, not bad at all. The letters began getting personal. She said nobody would marry her. Her assistant editor, a young male, said he would marry her for half her inheritance but she said she didn’t have any money, people only thought she had money. The assistant editor later did a stretch in a mental ward. “Nobody will marry me,” she kept writing, “your poems will be featured in our next edition, and all-Chinaski edition, and nobody will ever marry me, nobody, you see I have a deformity, it’s my neck, I was born this way. I’ll never be married.”
I was very drunk one night. “Forget it,” I wrote, “I will marry you. Forget about the neck. I am not so hot either. You with your neck and me with my lion-clawed face—I can see us walking down the street together!”
I mailed the thing and forgot all about it, drank another can of beer and went to sleep.
The return mail brought a letter: “Oh, I’m so happy! Everybody looks at me and they say, ‘Niki, what happened to you? You’re RADIANT, bursting!!! What is it?’ I won’t tell them! Oh, Henry, I’M SO HAPPY!”
She enclosed some photos, particularly ugly photos. I got scared. I went out and got a fifth of whiskey. I looked at the photos, I drank the whiskey. I got down on the rug:
“O Lord or Jesus what have I done? What have I done? Well, I’ll tell you what, Boys, I’m going to devote the rest of my life to making this poor woman happy! It will be hell but I am tough, and what’s a better way to go than making somebody else happy?”
I got up from the rug, not too sure about the last part….
A week later I was waiting in the bus station, I was drunk and waiting for the arrival of a bus from Texas.
They called the bus over the loudspeaker and I got ready to die. I watched them coming through the doorway trying to match them up with the photographs. And then I saw a young blonde, 23, good legs, live walk, and an innocent and rather snobbish face, pert I’d guess you’d call her, and the neck was not bad at all. I was 35 then.
I walked up to her.
“Are you Niki?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Chinaski. Let me have your suitcase.”
We walked out to the parking lot.
“I’ve been waiting for three hours, nervous, jumpy, going through hell waiting. All I could do was to have some drinks in the bar.”
She put her hand on the hood of the car.
“This engine’s still hot. You bastard you just got here!”
I laughed.
“You’re right.”
We got into the old car and made it on in. Soon we were married in Vegas, and it took what money I had for that and the bus fare back to Texas.
I got on the bus with her and I had thirty-five cents left in my pocket.
“I don’t know if Poppa’s gonna like what I did,” she said.
“O Jesus o God,” I prayed, “help me be strong, help me be brave!”
She necked and squirmed and twisted all the way to that small Texas town. We arrived at 2:30 a.m. and as we got off the bus I thought I heard the bus driver say—“Who’s that bum you got there with you, Niki?”
We stood in the street and I said, “What did that busdriver say? What’d he say to you?” I asked, rattling my thirty-five cents in my pocket.
“He didn’t say anything. Come on with me.”
She walked up the steps of a downtown building.
“Hey, where the hell you going?”
She put a key in the door and the door opened. I looked above the door and carved in the stone were the words: CITY HALL.
We went on in.
“I want to see if I received any mail.”
She went into her office and looked through a desk.
“Damn it, no mail!! I’ll bet that bitch stole my mail!”
“What bitch? What bitch, baby?”
“I have an enemy. Look, follow me.”
We went down the hall and she stopped in front of a doorway. She gave me a hairpin.
“Here, see if you can pick this lock.”
I stood there trying. I saw the headlines:
FAMED WRITER AND REFORMED PROSTITUTE FOUND BREAKING INTO MAYOR’S OFFICE!
I couldn’t pick the lock.
We walked on down to her place, leaped into bed and went at what we had been working toward on the bus.
I’d been there a couple of days when the doorbell rang about 9 a.m. one morning. We were in bed.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Go get the bell,” she said.
I climbed into some clothes and went to the door. A midget was standing there, and every once in a while he shook all over, he had some type of malady. He had on a little chauffeur’s cap.
“Mr. Chinaski?”
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Dyer asked me to show you the lands.”
“Wait a minute.”
I went back on in. “Baby, there’s a midget out there and he says a Mr. Dyer wants to show me the lands. He’s a midget and he shakes all over.
“Well, go with him. That’s my father.”
“Who, the midget?”
“No, Mr. Dyer.”
I put on my shoes and stockings and went out on the porch.
“O.k., buddy,” I said, “let’s go.”
We drove all over town and out of town.
“Mr. Dyer owns that,” the midget would point, and I’d look, “and Mr. Dyer owns that,” and I’d look.
I didn’t say anything.
“All those farms,” he said, “Mr. Dyer owns all those farms and he lets them work the land and they split it down the middle.”
The midget drove to a green forest. He pointed.
“See the lake?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s seven lakes in there full of fish. See the turkey walking around?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s wild turkey. Mr. Dyer rents all that out to a fish and game club which runs it. Of course, Mr. Dyer and any of his friends can go anytime they want. Do you fish or shoot?”
“I’ve done a lot of shooting in my time,” I
told him.
We drove on.
“Mr. Dyer went to school there.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yup, right in that brick building. Now he’s bought it and restored it as a kind of monument.”
“Amazing.”
We drove back in.
“Thanks,” I told him.
“Do you want me to come back tomorrow morning? There’s more to see.”
“No, thanks, it’s all right.”
I walked back in. I was king again…
And it’s good to end it right there instead of telling you how I lost it, although it’s something about a Turk who wore a purple stickpin in his tie and had fine manners and culture. I didn’t have a chance. But the Turk wore off too and the last I heard she was in Alaska married to an Eskimo. She sent me a picture of her baby, and she said she was still writing and truly happy. I told her, “Hang tight, baby, it’s a crazy world.”
And that, as they say, was that.
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967 (2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001).
South of No North Page 19