The Big Hunger

by John Fante

  Crane had done plenty of killing on his own. It took him exactly two seconds to size up the situation. Then he sprang into action. With a spark-throwing burp gun in one hand and a gold-plated Hoppy six-shooter in the other, he jumped off the porch and saluted his neighbor.

  “Who you after, Johnny?”

  The greeting irritated Stribling, thumping him back to the sordid reality of a Southern California backyard, across which stretched pieces of the Crane laundry—panties, shorts and shirts.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Want me to play with you?”

  Stribling looked him over with lynx eyes. “You wanna be the Law?”

  “Nah. I’m Billy the Kid.”

  “No, you ain’t. You gotta be the Law.”

  “And get killed? No chance.”

  “Then we got no game.”

  John Stribling swaggered toward the back gate, his artillery clattering

  “Wait, Johnny. I’ll play.”

  The outlaw swung around, his cruel lips smiling. “I just knocked over the bank at San Juan. Killed three men. Shot up the place real good. Big posse out to get me. That’s you. Count to a hundred, then come and get me.

  “Okay.”

  Dan Crane couldn’t count to a hundred. After nineteen he just mumbled stuff, but he knew about how long it took to get to a hundred. The sheer stupidity of the Law ground out his joy in the game. The Law was no good. The Law was old people, like his mother and father and his teacher, telling him what to do, what to eat, when to eat it. The Law put you to bed, made you get up. The Law washed your face, poked a washcloth into your ears, sent you to school and to church. The Law offended him, gave him a bellyache, insulted him. And in the end, the Law even destroyed the outlaw. With a heavy heart he stood there, wanting no part in the victory his role represented.

  Then he set out to find the enemy. He knew where Stribling would be holed up, for they had played the game a hundred times. Down the alley five houses, among the big leaves of the Becker fig tree, John Stribling would be hidden. He had only to go around and enter the yard from the street, tiptoe down the Becker driveway, and Stribling would be a setup for his burp gun. But Crane was in the grip of tragedy, and the old instinct for pursuit wasn’t there. On sullen feet he trudged down the alley, no stealth in his tread, his heart almost welcoming the outlaw’s bullet.

  “Ckh! ckh!” came the deadly fire from the fig tree.

  Crane staggered, feeling the hot cutting pain of the bullet under his heart. The burp gun dropped from his fingers as he careened drunkenly and fell. With a howl of triumph Stribling leaped from the tree and rushed over. Crane was badly hurt. The bullet had burst through his back, and plenty of blood was spurting from the wound. Feebly, he groped for his six-gun. With a grin of evil pleasure Stribling waited until Crane’s hand touched the gun. Then he let him have it with the rubber knife, leaping on the broken body and jabbing away. There was a quiver as life drained from Crane’s battered form: then he lay quite still. He was dead. The game was over. It was time to start all over again.

  Crane died twice more that morning. As Hopalong Cassidy, his heart was cut out and thrown to the Arizona buzzards. As the Lone Ranger, his demise was even more horrible. Stribling lashed him to a tree and shot off both ears; and when he still refused to divulge the hiding place of the gold shipment, the outlaw sliced off his nose with the rubber knife. Crane collapsed in a pool of his own blood, moaning pitifully, but carrying his secret into eternity.

  The killings might have gone on all morning if they hadn’t found the ginger-ale bottles There were ten empties in a gunny sack, tossed among the alley’s high weeds, and they were as good as gold, worth five cents apiece. The boys loaded the booty into a wagon and hauled it to the Safeway. When they emerged, each with a quarter, they were rich men, lavishly spending their money on bubble gum and candy bars down at the drugstore.

  It was an intimate, secret orgy. Hidden on the roof of the Crane garage, they lay on their bellies and ate in silent hoggishness. The hot noon sun melted the chocolate so that they scraped it off the wrappers with their teeth and licked it from their fingers. Then they rolled on their backs and popped the warm delicious bubble gum into their jaws, chewing slowly, their eyes closed to the sun, reveling in the sweet juices trickling down their throats.

  “Danny!”

  It was his mother, calling him from the back porch.

  “Whaddya’ want?”

  “Lunch is ready.”

  Crane moaned. The very thought of lunch turned the bubble gum to gall. He spat it out in disgust.

  They climbed down from the garage, dropping to the fence and then to the lawn. Stribling went next door. Crane turned on the hose and let the water trickle across his mouth, wiping himself dry with a sleeve. He looked at the kitchen door and thought a moment. It was probably cream of tomato soup, a sandwich and a glass of milk. There was no way out, except plain revolt. He was in an ugly mood, a heaviness at his stomach. With a hard face he walked into the kitchen.

  Tomato soup it was, and milk, and a sandwich.

  Nick was just finishing. He downed his glass of milk and pushed back his chair.

  “That was real good, Mother. Thanks.”

  “Twerp,” Dan sneered.

  “Who you calling a twerp?”

  “You, bub. Do something.”

  Mrs. Crane broke it up. “Sit down, Danny. Eat your lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “But you didn’t have any breakfast.”

  “I’m still not hungry.”

  “Don’t you feel well, Danny?”

  “Never felt better in my life.”

  Anger made her voice sharp. “Dan Crane, I won’t have you defying me. Go to your room.”

  Crane swaggered upstairs to his room and threw himself on the bed. He stared at the ceiling and dreamed of owning a burro, just a friendly little jackass, so that he could pull out of L.A. and go up around Sacramento, his grandpa’s country, where the hills were full of gold, where a man could strike it rich and shed his family. He smiled as he pictured himself a rich man, tossing nuggets to his weeping mother, who was sorry she had mistreated him in the old days.

  At three o’clock, he heard the gurgling voice of Victoria through the wall, and he knew his sister had wakened from her afternoon nap. He pictured Vicky in her crib, pink and bright-eyed, singing to herself, and the fatal urge to see her overcame him.

  She lay among dolls and teddy bears, her feet in the air, as she crooned to her toes.

  Dan stood over her in mute adoration, enchanted by her sleepy eyes, her sweet red lips. As always, her beauty melted his killer instinct, and he babbled to her. “Pretty girl, pretty, pretty, pretty.”

  Her pink fingers explored his eyes and ears, and he sucked quick kisses when they touched his lips. Her small nails probed his nostrils. She seemed to wait until he was completely spellbound. Then she let him have it again. The nails dug. There was a fierce pain. He saw it on his fingers and down the front of his T-shirt—not the blood of Hopalong Cassidy, not the blood of the Lone Ranger—but the rich, red, priceless blood of Daniel Crane.

  “Mother, help! Oh Mother!”

  She found him in the bathroom, reeling with fear, holding a towel tinged with scarlet against his face. Two ice cubes wrapped in a washcloth quickly stopped the bleeding, and Mrs. Crane forgave everything and told him to go out into the world again. He did not protest when she suggested changing his clothes. Then he stood before her, in clean clothes, subdued and rather sad. Suddenly his arms went around her, and his wild kiss left her blinking in wonder, for Crane was a hard man who opposed mother-kissing.

  He left her standing there bewildered, and sauntered down the stairs. The smell of liver and bacon and baked beans was coming from the kitchen. The madness of hunger seized him, and he hurried into the kitchen. The liver and bacon sang in the frying pan, and the beans sizzled in a brown pot in the oven. But everything was too hot to handle. He opened the refrigerator, too
k out a half-pound block of yellow cheese and an apple and stuffed them under an armpit. He raised a bottle of milk to his lips and drank most of the quart without a pause. Then he closed the ice-box door and walked outside.

  Dinner was ready an hour later, but Dan Crane could eat none of it. A leaden cheddar satiation crushed his stomach, and when Mr. Crane served up the liver and bacon, the baked beans, and salad of lettuce and cucumbers, Dan stared helplessly at his plate, while he listened to his brother saying, “Gee, Mother, I love liver and bacon, and the beans are wonderful.”

  “What’s the matter, Danny?” Mr. Crane said.

  “Not hungry, Dad.”

  “But you haven’t even tried the liver and bacon,” Nick said with bright impatience.

  Dan lowered his chin and scowled.

  “I’m so worried about that boy,” Mrs. Crane said. “He has simply stopped eating altogether.”

  Mr. Crane studied Dan’s frowning face. “He’ll eat. He just isn’t hungry. That right, Danny?”

  Dan Crane stared across the table at his father, and waves of love and tenderness flowed from his eyes. The frown gave way to a softness around his lips, and two tears spilled on his empty plate.

  “Oh, Dad,” he sobbed. “You’re the only one in the world who understands me.”

  “I try,” Mr. Crane said, smiling at him. “I do the best I can. Leave the table, if you want.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Dan pushed his chair and moved toward the front door. From the dining room came his mother’s voice, full of concern. “Talk to the boy I’m so worried. He hasn’t eaten for days.”

  Sitting on the porch steps, his chin in his hands, Crane waited for his father. He thought of a better life for himself, away from all this, the life of a tramp, him and his father riding boxcars, hitchhiking rides on the highways, living like free men, traveling the whole earth together, pals to the end.

  Mr. Crane opened the front door and sat down beside his son. A big geyser of self-pity was rising in Dan’s throat, pushing upward, finally bringing tears. He sobbed quietly. Mr. Crane put his arm around the boy’s shoulder.

  “Tell me, Dan. What’s wrong?”

  Dan couldn’t think of anything, so he kept on crying, until an idea came forth. “I’m lonesome, Dad. Nobody likes me. That’s why I don’t eat, Dad. Because I’m lonesome all the time.”

  It took Mr. Crane five minutes to knock down this excuse and convince Dan that he was not lonesome, that, in fact, he had many friends, and that he was truly loved by his own family.

  He pulled out a handkerchief and stroked away Dan’s tears. Dan watched the wrinkles in his father’s forehead, the concern in his eyes. He was doing a lot better than he’d ever dreamed he could, and he decided to go all the way with it.

  “I miss school, too, Dad,” he lied. “I want to get back so I can learn to read and write.”

  “That’s fine, kid. And you will, but don’t rush it. You’ve got plenty of time”

  Dan’s arms went around his father’s neck. “Gee, Dad. You’re great. No foolin’.”

  Mr. Crane dug a half dollar from his pocket. “Go to the drugstore and get yourself a chocolate malted, Danny boy. Good for you. Full of protein.”

  As in a dream, Dan Crane walked to the drugstore. He climbed up on the stool at the fountain, the fifty-cent piece in his fist. He almost ordered a chocolate malted, too, but happily his eyes fell on a luscious picture on the mirror behind the counter, a triumph of ice cream, crushed nuts, maraschino cherries, sliced bananas, whipped cream and colored syrups.

  “Banana split,” he ordered.

  At midnight, a frantic hunger got hold of Dan Crane, a hunger for simple things like bread and meat and beans. Lying in his bed, while across the room his brother Nick snorted softly, he felt the vast emptiness of his stomach.

  Quietly, he slipped out of bed and tiptoed into the hall and down the stairs. Like a naked ghost, he drifted into the kitchen. His practiced hand made no sound as the refrigerator door opened. He looked over the lighted interior. The baked beans were in one bowl, the liver and bacon in another. Dan hugged them to his chest, enduring without a murmur the shock of their coldness against his skin.

  A minute later he was in bed again, the food before him as he lay on his stomach, the covers over his head. It was very cold food, but that was as it should be, for he was Dan Crane of the Northwest Mounted, living in an igloo in the Far North, and he was eating bear meat, and Nick’s snores were the howls of wolves outside the igloo. Crane of the Mounties ate two pieces of cold liver and three fistfuls of iced beans before sleep laid him low. He barely got the food out of bed and behind the radiator; indeed, his hand went limp and he had no strength to pull it back under the covers before a great wave of sleep carried him away.

  It was morning when he awakened, and there it was again, her voice, coming up the staircase:

  “Up, Danny boy. Breakfast!”

  Jeepers, what a dame. Dan Crane moaned. He wouldn’t eat. He never wanted to eat again.

  The First Time I Saw Paris

  I WAS COMING along the Avenue George V about eight of an evening, wading through a river of heat, coat over my shoulder, wondering how in the hell those Frenchmen did it, all day long neat as penguins in starched collars and neckties, and their women forever chic in bell-shaped dresses, some wearing furs even in the heat. But most of the chicks in furs were Americans, the mink stoles a badge of global identification, as positive as the Stars and Stripes, meaning we’re off to Maxim’s and then a strip joint, absolutely naked, Darling, and when we got back to the hotel Harry was like a boy again.

  Then on this corner leaning against the wall of the French Red Cross was this old woman, old as Paris, the oldest and lousiest and ugliest human being I ever saw in Paris in nine whole weeks, with skin like Notre Dame and stringy grey hair sweat-matted, it could have been a pigeon’s nest, and a cotton dress such as you find in deserted shacks down in East Texas, something they use to stop up a leak under the sink…and her ankles, ponderous as posts, swollen, fish-white, thrust into some shredded leather called shoes, and she was crying, her face in the crook of her elbow, sobbing—the river deep sobs of my son my son is dead, or my husband, they put him away forever and now I am alone—such a heart-twisting thing that I stopped and stared, and felt I should do something, do what? At least say something, are you hurt, do you need a doctor, do you want some money Madame?

  But I went along with the rest of them, everybody immune to the torment of another human being, and floating past in the heat of the evening, but when I got across the street I thought wait, you can’t do this, leave her like that, you have to go back and help her, but why should I? Nobody gives a damn, so why should I? Well, maybe someone will come along, and I waited, and the only thing that stopped to investigate was a little grey Scottie, and he was at the end of a chrome chain, and he went over and sniffed the fish-white ankles and got yanked back to respectability by his mistress.

  Then a gent came along lugging a coat over his shoulder like me, maybe he was a baker, or maybe a plasterer, the dust of his good day’s labor coating him gently, and he stopped and rubbed his chin and went on again, and looked once more over his shoulder and went away forever. Him and me, I said, him and me.

  My God, nobody gives a damn, what a civilization, Jacques Fath and their pastries and Judas do they rook you in those bistros with all the broads, what a country, no wonder they got beat. Not even two gendarmes who came and stood two feet from her and hooked their thumbs in their belts and stared at the sky and obviously said God we sure could use a little rain.

  I said well you dope, are you enjoying it or something, so why do you stand here watching, are you getting your jollies? So I turned and walked another block to my hotel, through a crowd of kids waiting for The Presley to come out, and I went inside and asked for my mail. No mail. All at once I almost burst into tears for my beautiful California, and I crossed to the bar which is so magnificent with twenty-foot walls of pan
eled mahogany simply wonderful, and I sat in a red chair and looked around for a kid I know from Fresno who comes rushing in there to grab a beer once in a while, but I didn’t see anybody except a Hindu princess, an Italian movie star, a countess who is really not a countess, four luscious whores proud of their profession, and horribly expensive, and the usual dapper Frenchmen in their dark suits and starched collars they wear like sweatshirts. I drank two highballs while chicks almost too exquisite for touching went floating into my eyes.

  And all at once there she was again, that old woman down on the corner—was it possible she was still there? It could not be possible, and what if it was, and it came over me again, this thing, this terrible twist of divine idiocy that goads me and louses me up, always wanting to know about people, can’t leave people alone.

  She was still there, I saw her from half a block away, she hadn’t moved in the heat of the evening, and it began to irritate me and I said it’s a racket, she’s a beggar you dope, people slip her coins in sympathy, how stupid can you get? But nobody slipped her anything except a slewing of the eyes, and when I reached the corner and she was across the street, her grief came over, hulking and crawling and crippled in the heat of the evening, and it hurt me without letting up, and I knew I had to help that woman or it would pound and pound in me, and maybe chip off another little piece of my own death upon the earth.

  I crossed the street and stood before her, and my masterful French took over, and I said is there something wrong Madame, can I help you, Señora, no Français, Ma’am, parla un poco Italiano, you need—I give, what’s wrong, old girl? And I touched the skin of old Notre Dame, my hand softly upon the gargoyle, and wondered suddenly frightfully could she be a saint, because it was possible because saints can be the strangest of people in the damndest of places.