“He’s got it! He’s a homo-kike-nigger bastard! This time, he TALKS!”
Lincoln handed the bottle to Andrew who immediately drank from it.
Lincoln picked up the cane:
“Now! Cocksucker! WHERE’S THE 5 GRAND?”
There wasn’t any answer from the man on the bed. Lincoln inverted the cane, that is, he took the straight end in his hand, then took the curved end and came down upon Ramon’s cock and balls.
There was very little sound from the man except for a continual series of moans.
Ramon’s sexual organs were almost completely erased.
Lincoln took off for a moment for a good drain of wine and then took the cane and began beating everywhere — upon Ramon’s face, belly, hands, nose, head, everywhere, no longer asking the question about the 5 grand. Ramon’s mouth was open and the pouring of the blood from a broken nose and other parts of the face flowed into his mouth. He swallowed it down and drowned in his own blood. Then he was very still and the thrashing of the cane had very little effect.
“You’ve killed him,” said Andrew from his chair, watching, “and he was going to get me into the movies.”
“I didn’t kill him,” said Lincoln, “you killed him! I sat there and watched you beat him to death with his own cane. The cane that made him famous in his movies!”
“What the fuck,” said Andrew, “you’re really talking like a wino-nut now. The main thing is to get out of here. We’ll settle the rest later. This guy’s dead! Let’s move!”
“First,” said Lincoln, “I’ve read crime mags on this sort of stuff. First we throw them off. We dip our fingers into his blood and write various things on the walls, all that.”
“What?”
“O.K. Like: ‘FUCK PIGS! DEATH TO PIGS!’ Then, write some name above the headboard, a man’s name — say like ‘Louie.’ O.K.?”
“O.K.”
They dipped their fingers into his blood and wrote their little slogans. Then went outside.
The ’56 Plymouth started. They rolled south with Ramon’s 23 dollars plus his stolen wine. At Sunset and Western they saw two young mini’s standing near the corner hitchhiking. They pulled up. There was some clever rejoinder, then the two girls got in. The car had a radio. That’s about all it did have. They turned it on. There were bottles of expensive French wine rolling all around the car.
“Hey,” said one of the girls, “I think these guys are a couple of swingers!”
“Hey,” said Lincoln, “let’s drive down to the beach and lay on the sand and drink this wine and watch the sun come up!”
“O.K.,” said the other girl.
Andrew managed to uncork one, it was tough — he had to use his pocket knife, thin blade — they’d left Ramon and Ramon’s nice corkscrew behind — and the pocketknife didn’t quite work like a corkscrew — everytime you drank a bit of wine you had to drink a bit of cork.
Up front, Lincoln was having a bit of a time, but having to drive, he was mainly mentally conning his. In the back seat, Andrew had already run his hand up her legs, then he slid away part of the panty, it was hard work, and he had gotten his finger into there. Suddenly she withdrew, shoved him off, and said, “I think we should get to know each other better first.”
“Sure,” said Andrew, “We’ve got 20 or 30 minutes before we hit the sand and get busy. My name,” said Andrew, “is Harold Anderson.”
“My name is Claire Edwards.”
They embraced again.
The Great Lover was dead. But there would be others. Also plenty of un-great. Mostly those. It was the way things worked. Or didn’t work.
________________
This story is fiction, and any events or near-similar events in actual life which did transpire have not prejudiced the author toward any figures involved or uninvolved; in other words, the mind, the imagination, the creative facilities have been allowed to run freely, and that means invention, of which said is drawn and caused by living one year short of half a century with the human race… and is not narrowed down to any specific case, cases, newspaper stories, and was not written to harm, infer or do injustice to any of my fellow creatures involved in circumstances similar to the story to follow.
A DRINKING PARTNER
I met Jeff at an auto parts warehouse on Flower street or maybe it was Figueroa street, I always get the two mixed. Anyhow, I was the receiving clerk and Jeff was more or less the flunky. He’d unload used parts, sweep the floors, hang paper in the crappers and so forth. I’d had flunky jobs like that all over the country, so I never looked down on them. I was coming off a bad run with a woman who had almost finished me. I wasn’t in the mood for any more women for a while and as a substitute I played the horses, jacked-off and drank. Frankly, I was always happier doing that, and each time I got into that I thought, no more women, ever, god damn it all. Of course, another always came long — they hunted you down, no matter how indifferent you were. I guess it was when you got real indifferent they put it to you, to bring you down. Women could do that; no matter how strong a man was, women could do that. But, anyhow, I was in this calm free state when I met Jeff — womanless — and there was nothing homosexual in it. Just two guys who lived on their luck, traveled about, had been burned by the ladies. I remember one time sitting in The Green Light, 1 had a beer to myself, I was at a table reading the race results and that gang was talking about something when I heard somebody say, “… and, yeah, Bukowski was burned good by little Flo. Didn’t she burn ya good, Bukowski?”
I looked up. People laughed. I didn’t smile. I just raised my beer, “Yeah,” I said, had a drink, sat it down.
When I looked up again a young black girl had brought her beer over. “Look, man,” she said, “look man …”
“Hello,” I said.
“Look, man, don’t let this little Flo bring you down, don’t let her shoot you down, man. You can make it.”
“I know I can make it. I don’t intend to toss it in.”
“Good. You just looked sad, that’s all. You just looked so sad.”
“Of course, I am. She got into me, inside. But it will wear away. Beer?”
“Yeah. But on me.”
We made it that night at my place but that was my farewell to women — for maybe around 14 or 18 months. If you don’t hunt it you can get these rest periods.
So I drank every night after work, alone, up at my place and I had enough left for a day at the track on Saturday, and life was simple and without too much pain. Maybe without too much reason, but getting away from pain was reasonable enough. I knew Jeff right off. Although he was younger than I, I recognized a younger model of myself.
“You got a hell of a hangover for yourself there, kid,” I said to him one morning.
“There’s no other way,” he said, “a man has to forget.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said, “a hangover is better than a madhouse.”
That night we hit a nearby bar after work. He was like me, he didn’t worry about food, a man never thought about food. For it all, we were two of the strongest men in the plant but we never examined it. Food was simply boring. I was plenty bored with bars at that time — all those lonely male idiots hoping some woman would walk in and carry them off to wonderland. The two most sickening crowds are the racetrack crowd and the bar crowd, and I mean mostly the male of the species. The losers who kept losing and couldn’t make a stand and gather themselves. And there I was, right in the center of them. Jeff made it easier for me. By that, I mean, the thing was newer to him and he pepped it up, almost made it realistic, as if we were doing something meaningful instead of throwing our poor salaries away on drink and gambling and cheap rooms, and losing jobs and finding jobs and getting burned by women, and always in hell, and ignoring it. All of it.
“I want you to meet my buddy Gramercy Edwards,” he said.
“Gramercy Edwards?”
“Yeah, Gram’s been in more than he’s been out.”
“Stir?”
&
nbsp; “Stir and madhouse.”
“Sounds great. Tell him to come down.”
“I gotta get the desk phone. If he’s not too drunk, he’ll make it. ..”
Gramercy Edwards came in about an hour later. By then, I was feeling more able to handle things, and that was good, for here came Gramercy walking through the door — a victim of reform schools and prisons. His eyes seemed to keep rolling back into the inside of his head as if he were trying to look into his brain to see what had gone wrong. He was dressed in rags and a large wine bottle was jammed into the ripped pocket of his pants. He stank, and a rolled cigarette dangled. Jeff introduced us. Gram pulled his wine bottle out of his pocket and offered me a drink. I took it. We stayed in there drinking until closing time.
Then we walked down the street to Gramercy’s hotel. In those days, before industry moved into that area, there were old houses that rented out rooms to the poor, and in one of these houses the landlady had a bulldog that she let out each night to guard her precious property. He was one mean son of a bitch; he had frightened me many a drunken night until I learned which side of the street was his and which side was mine. I got the side he didn’t want.
“All right,” said Jeff, “we’re going to get that son of a bitch tonight. Now, Gram, it’s up to me to catch him. Now if I catch him, it’s up to you to cut him.”
“You catch him,” said Gramercy, “I’ve got the steel. Just had it sharpened.”
We walked along. Soon there was this growling sound and the bulldog was bounding toward us. He was good at nipping at the calves. He was one hell of a watchdog. He came bounding out with much aplomb. Jeff waited until the bulldog was almost upon us, then he turned sideways and leaped over the top of the bulldog. The bulldog skidded, turned back quickly and Jeff grabbed him as he passed underneath his leap. He locked his arms under the bulldog’s front legs and then stood up. The bulldog kicked and snapped helplessly, his belly exposed.
“Hehehehe,” went Gramercy, “hehehehe!”
And he poked his knife in and sliced a rectangle. Then he divided it into 4 parts.
“Jesus,” said Jeff.
Blood was everywhere. Jeff dropped the bulldog. The bulldog didn’t move. We walked on.
“Hehehehehe,” went Gramercy, “that son of a bitch won’t ever bother anybody again.”
“You guys make me sick,” I said. I walked up to my room thinking about that poor bulldog. I remained angry at Jeff for 2 or 3 days, then forgot it.. .
I never saw Gramercy again but I kept getting drunk with Jeff. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do.
Each morning, down at work, we would be sick … it was our private joke. Each night we would get drunk again. What is a poor man to do? The girls don’t search out the common laborers; the girls search out the doctors, the scientists, the lawyers, the businessmen, so forth. We get the girls when they are through with the girls, and they are no longer girls — we get the used, the deformed, the diseased, the mad. After a while, instead of taking seconds and thirds and fourths, you give it up. Or you try to give it up. Drinking helps. And Jeff liked the bars so I went with him. Jeff’s trouble was that when he got drunk he liked to fight. Luckily, he didn’t fight me. He was very good at it, he was a good duker, and he was strong, perhaps the strongest man I had ever seen. He wasn’t a bully, but after drinking a while he’d just seem to go crazy. I saw him put down 3 guys in a fight one night. He looked at them stretched in the alley there, put his hands in his pockets, then looked at me:
“Well, let’s go get another drink.”
He never bragged on it.
Of course, Saturday nights were best. We had Sunday off to get over the hangover. Most of the time we just got another one but at least on a Sunday morning you didn’t have to be in an auto parts warehouse working for slave wages on a job you would either finally quit or be fired from.
This Saturday night we were sitting in the Green Light and we finally got hungry. We walked up to the Chinaman’s, which was a rather clean class place. We walked up the stairway to the second floor and took a table in the back. Jeff was drunk and knocked over a tablelamp. It broke with a great crash. Everybody looked. The Chinese waiter at another table gave us a particularly distasteful look.
“Take it easy,” said Jeff, “put it on the bill. I’ll pay for it.”
A pregnant woman was staring at Jeff. She seemed quite unhappy with what he had done. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t see it as all that bad. The waiter wouldn’t serve us, or he was keeping us waiting and this pregnant woman kept staring. It was as if Jeff had committed the most heinous of crimes.
“Whatsa matta, baby? Ya need a little love? I can go in the back door for you. Ya lonely, honey?”
“I’m gonna call my husband. He’s downstairs in the men’s room. I’m gonna call him, I’m gonna get him. He’ll show you something!”
“What’s he got?” asked Jeff, “A stamp collection? Or butterflies under glass?”
“I’m gonna get him! Now!” she said.
“Lady,” I said, “please don’t do it. You need your husband. Please don’t do it, lady.”
“I’m gonna do it,” she said, “I’m gonna do it!”
She got up and ran toward the stairway. Jeff ran after her, caught her, spun her and said, “Here, I’ll send you on your way!”
Then he hit her on the chin and she went bouncing and rolling down the stairway. It sickened me. It was as bad as the night of the dog.
“God o mighty, Jeff! You’ve knocked a pregnant woman down the stairway! That’s chickenshit and stupid! You might have killed 2 people. You get so vicious man, what are you trying to prove?”
“Shut up,” said Jeff, “or you’ll get it too!”
Jeff was insanely drunk, standing at the top of the stairway, weaving. Downstairs they gathered about the woman. She still seemed alive, no parts broken, but I didn’t know about the child. I hoped the child was o.k. Then the husband came out of the restroom and saw his wife. They explained to him what had happened then pointed to Jeff. Jeff turned and walked back toward the table. The husband rocketed up the steps. He was a big guy, as big as Jeff and as young. I wasn’t too happy with Jeff so I didn’t warn him. The husband leaped upon Jeff’s back, then got a stranglehold upon Jeff. Jeff choked and his whole head flushed scarlet but under it all he grinned, the grin came out. He loved fights. He got one hand on the guy’s head, then he reached back with the other hand and he had the guy’s body parallel to the floor. The husband still had a grip about Jeff’s neck as Jeff walked him to the top of the stairway, stood there, and then simply snapped the guy off his neck, lifted him in the air and threw him into space. When the lady’s husband stopped rolling he was very still. I began to think about getting out of there.
There were some Chinamen circling down there. Cooks, waiters, owners. They seemed to run about talking to each other. Then they started running up the stairway. I had a half pint in my coat and sat down at a table to watch the fun. Jeff met them at the top of the stairway and punched them back down. There were more and more of them. Where all those Chinamen came from, I don’t know. Just the force of them all moved Jeff back from the stairway and then he was stepping about in the center of the room knocking them down. I would have helped Jeff otherwise, but I kept thinking about that poor dog and that poor pregnant woman and I sat there drinking from the half pint and watching.
Finally a couple of them got Jeff from the back, another grabbed one arm, two others got the other arm, another had a leg, another had him about the neck. He was like a spider being brought down by an ant-swarm. Then he was down and they were trying to hold him down, hold him still. As I said, he was the strongest man I had ever seen. They held him down but they couldn’t hold him still. Every now and then a Chinaman would come flying off the pile as if he had been ejected by some invisible force. Then he would leap back on. Jeff simply would not give up. And although they had him there, there was nothing they could do with him. He kept struggling and t
he Chinamen seemed very confused and unhappy that he would not give up.
I had another drink, put the bottle in my coat, got up. I walked over there.
“If you’ll hold him still,” I said, “I’ll knock him out. He’ll kill me for it, but it’s the only way out.”
I got down in there and sat on his chest.
“Hold him still! Now hold his head still! I can’t hit him when he’s moving like that! Hold him still, god damn it! God damn it, there are a dozen of you! Can’t you even hold one man still? Hold him still, god damn it, hold him still!”
They couldn’t do it. Jeff kept rocking and rolling. His strength seemed endless. I gave up and sat down at the table again and had another drink. It must have gone on for another 5 minutes.
Then, suddenly, Jeff became very still. He stopped moving. The Chinamen held him and watched. I began to hear crying. Jeff was crying! The tears washed over his face. His whole face shone like a lake. Then he screamed out, very woefully — one word:
“MOTHER!”
It was then that I heard the sirens. I got up and walked past them and down the stairway. Half way down the stairway I met the police.
“He’s up there, officers! Hurry!”
I walked slowly out the front door. Then I passed an alley. When I got to the alley I cut in and began to run. I came to the other street and as I did I could hear the ambulances coming. I got to my room, pulled down all the shades and cut the light. I finished the bottle in bed.
Monday Jeff wasn’t at work. Tuesday Jeff wasn’t at work. Wednesday. Well, I never saw him again. I didn’t check out the jails.
Not much later I was fired for absenteeism and moved to the west side of town where I found a job as a stockboy for Sears- Roebuck. The Sears-Roebuck stockboys never had a hangover and were very tame, slightly built. Nothing seemed to disturb them. I ate lunch alone and said very little to the rest of them.
I don’t suppose Jeff was a very good human being. He made a lot of mistakes, brutal mistakes, but he had been interesting, interesting enough. I suppose he’s doing time now or somebody has killed him. I’ll never find another drinking partner like him. Everybody’s asleep and sane and proper. A real son of a bitch like him is needed now and then. But like they say in the song — Where has everybody gone?
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories Page 24