else
and I was young and mean and
lean
and I would never be that way
again
as it rushed toward
us.
scene from 1940:
“I knew you were a bad-ass,” he said.
“you sat in the back of Art class and
you never said anything.
then I saw you in that brutal fight
with the guy with the dirty yellow
hair.
I like guys like you, you’re rare, you’re
raw, you make your own rules!”
“get your fucking face out of mine!”
I told him.
“you see?” he said. “you see?”
he disgusted me.
I turned and walked off.
he had outwitted me:
praise was the only thing I couldn’t
handle.
my big moment
I was a packer in a factory east of
Alameda street
and I was living with a bad-assed
woman.
she fucked everybody and anybody
even me.
and I didn’t have the sense to
leave.
anyhow, I worked all day and we
drank all night
and when I arrived every morning
at Sunbeam Lighting Co.
I always growled the
same thing:
“don’t anybody fuck with me
I’m not in the mood for it.”
this one morning
sitting on the floor in the shop
there was a large triangle of steel
with a little hand grip on top of it.
I didn’t know what it was.
I’d never seen anything like it before.
it didn’t matter.
all the killers and bullies and
musclemen were trying to lift it.
it wouldn’t move.
“hey, Hank, baby!” a worker hollered,
“try it!”
“all right,” I said.
I came around my bench, walked up
to the steel triangle, stuck my hand into the
grip and yanked. nothing. it must have
weighed at least 300 pounds.
I walked back to my bench.
“whatsa matter, Hank baby?”
“been beatin’ your meat, Hank baby?”
“ah shit,” I said, “for CHRIST’S SAKE!”
I walked back around my bench and swooped
down on the
object, grabbed it, lifted it a good foot,
put it down and went back to my bench
and continued packing a light fixture into a
box.
“jesus! did you see that, man?”
“I saw it! he did it!”
“let me lift that son of a bitch!”
he couldn’t do it. they all came and
tried again. the heavy steel object wouldn’t
move.
they went back to their various jobs.
at about noon a truck came in
with a crane in the back. the
crane reached down, grabbed the steel triangle
and lifted it, with much grinding, into
the truck.
for about a week after that the
blacks and Mexicans who had
never spoken to me
tried to make friends.
I was looked upon with much new
respect.
then not long after that
everybody seemed to forget
and
I began to get verbally
sliced again
challenged again
mocked again
it was the same old
bullshit.
they knew what I knew:
that I’d never be able to do anything
like that again.
daylight saving time
I came in and all the timecards were pulled so I had to go to Spindle in personnel and he said, what happened, Chinaski? and I said, hell, all the timecards are pulled, I couldn’t punch in, and he said, you’re an hour late, and I said, hell, I have 6 p.m. right here on my watch, and he said, it’s Daylight Saving Time today, and I said, oh, and he said, how come you didn’t know it was Daylight Saving? and I said, well, I don’t have a TV and I don’t read the newspapers and I only listen to symphony music on the radio, and Spindle turned to the others in the office and he said, look here, Chinaski says he doesn’t have a TV and he doesn’t read newspapers and he only listens to symphony music on the radio, should I really believe that? and somebody said, o, yes, you better believe it, that cat’s crazy, that cat’s crazy as they come, and Spindle got out my timecard and handed it to me and said, all right, punch in, you’ll be docked for the missing time, and I took my card out to the clock and hit it and then I walked to the work area, all the workers snickering at me and making sly remarks, and I handed my card to supervisor Wilkins in row 88 and I sat down and went to work.
the railroad yard
the feelings I get
driving past the railroad yard
(never on purpose but on my way to somewhere)
are the feelings other men have for other things.
I see the tracks and all the boxcars
the tank cars the flat cars
all of them motionless and so many of them
perfectly lined up and not an engine anywhere
(where are all the engines?).
I drive past looking sideways at it all
a wide, still railroad yard
not a human in sight
then I am past the yard
and it wasn’t just the romance of it all
that gives me what I get
but something back there nameless
always making me feel better
as some men feel better looking at the open sea
or the mountains or at wild animals
or at a woman
I like those things too
especially the wild animals and the woman
but when I see those lovely old boxcars
with their faded painted lettering
and those flat cars and those fat round tankers
all lined up and waiting
I get quiet inside
I get what other men get from other things
I just feel better and it’s good to feel better
whenever you can
not needing a reason.
horseshit
the horse stood in the yard and
the women went out to see the horse
and one of the women got on the horse and
rode around and almost had her head knocked off by a
tree limb and
I stood in the kitchen
measuring sunlight and wall slant and
what was willing to be measured
and one of the women was big and white and fat and
aching to be fucked
but it would take a month of talking and a year’s worth of
money and I didn’t have either
so I put it aside
and soon they all came back inside
and the big fat white one who was aching
sat there talking about the horse
and one of the others leaned toward me and said,
“she iss not available, dear!”
iss not, iss not. hell,
I knew that.
the light shined in and we sat there talking about
horses and waiting for her availability
and then the big fat aching one got up and walked out
and I followed and watched her mount her safe
mare
switch it—thapp!—
and my little switch went
thapp!
thapp!
and I walked back inside.
it looked like
snow, damn, it looked like snow, so early,
only some of the ladies wanted it
and the others didn’t want it. you know the ladies.
I went over and threw a couple of logs in the fire
and the whole thing flupped up red and
warm and we all felt
better, ready and not ready. it was Santa Fe in
October and all the poor had left town except
me.
man’s best friend
I told the guy—he was watering his lawn—
you ever squirt my dog
again and you’ll have to deal with me.
he just kept on watering, looking straight ahead,
and he said, I ain’t worried, you punks talk about
doing it but you never do it.
he was an old white-haired guy, kind of dumb. I could
feel the dullness radiating off him.
I yanked the hose from his hand, turned him around and
sank a hard right to his gut.
he dropped like a stone and just lay on his
back on the lawn, holding his stomach and breathing
hard.
he looked pitiful.
I picked up the hose and watered him down good,
soaked his clothes, then gave him a good dose
in the face and walked off.
I went down to the store and got a fifth of scotch
and a six-pack.
when I came back he was gone.
I went up to my apartment and told Marie that I
had taken care of the matter with the guy who
squirted our dog.
she asked me, what did you do, kill him?
and I told her, no, I just explained things to him.
and she wanted to know, what did I mean, I
explained things to him?
and I told her, never mind, where are some clean
glasses?
and then the dog came walking in.
Koko.
you gotta know I liked him
plenty.
the sensitive, young poet
I never realized then what a good time I was
having
smoking cheap cigars,
in my shorts and undershirt.
proud of my barrel chest
and my biceps
and my youth, my legs,
“baby, look at my legs! ever seen legs like
that?”
prancing up and down in that hotel
room.
I was giving her a show and she just sat
there smoking
cigarettes.
she was nasty, a looker but a nasty
looker.
I knew that she would say something
vicious
but I would laugh at her.
she had seen me make a whole barfull
of men back down one
night.
each night was about the same, I’d put on
my show for her,
I’d tell her what a great brain I had.
“you’re so fucking smart, what’re you
doing living in a hole like this?”
“I’m just resting up, baby, I haven’t
made my move yet…”
“bullshit! you’re an asshole!”
“what?”
“you’re an asshole!”
“why, you wasted whore, I’ll rip you in half!”
then we’d go at it, swearing loudly, throwing
things, breaking things,
the phone ringing from the desk downstairs,
the other roomers banging on the walls
and me laughing, loving it,
picking up the phone, “all right, all right,
I’ll keep her quiet…”
putting the phone down, looking at
her, “all right, baby, come on over here!”
“go to hell! you’re disgusting!”
and I was, red-faced, cigarette
holes burnt in my undershirt,
4-day beard, yellow teeth, broken toenails,
grinning madly I’d move toward
her, glancing at the pull-down bed, I’d move
toward her saying, “hike your skirt up!
I want to see more leg!”
I was one bad dude.
she stayed 3 years then I moved on to the
next
one.
the first one never lived with another
man again.
I cured her of
that.
hunger
I have been hungry many times
but the particular time that I
think of now
was in New York City,
the night was beginning
and I was standing before the
plate glass window of a
restaurant.
and in that window
was a roasted pig,
eyeless,
with an apple in its mouth.
poor damned pig.
poor damned me.
beyond the pig
inside there
were people
sitting at tables
talking, eating, drinking.
I was not one of those people.
I felt a kinship with the pig.
we had been caught in the wrong
place
at the wrong
time.
I imagined myself in the window,
eyeless, roasted, the apple in my
mouth.
that would bring a crowd.
“hey, not much rump on him!”
“his arms are too thin!”
“I can see his ribs!”
I walked away from the window.
I walked to my room.
I still had a room.
as I walked to my room
I began to conjecture:
could I eat some paper?
some newspaper?
roaches?
maybe I could catch a rat?
a raw rat.
peel off the fur,
remove the intestines.
remove the eyes.
forego the head, the tail.
no, I’d die of
some horrible rat disease!
I walked along.
I was so hungry that everything
looked eatable:
people, fireplugs, asphalt,
wristwatches…
my belt, my shirt.
I entered the building and
walked up the stairway to my
room.
I sat in a chair.
I didn’t turn on the light.
I sat there and wondered if I
was crazy
because I wasn’t doing anything
to help myself.
the hunger stopped then
and I just sat there.
then I heard it:
two people in the next room,
copulating.
I could hear the bedsprings
and the moans.
I got up, walked out of the
room and back into the
street.
but I walked in a different
direction this time,
I walked away from the pig
in the window.
but I thought about the pig
and I decided that I’d die first
rather than eat that
pig.
it began to rain.
I looked up.
I opened my mouth and let in the rain
drops…soup from the sky…
“hey, look at that guy!”
I heard someone say.
stupid sons-of-bitches, I thought,
stupid sons-of-
bitches!
I closed my mouth and kept
walking.
the first one
after she died
I met her son in her room
/>
a very small room without sink or toilet
in a flophouse at Beverly and Vermont.
he was thinking what kind of boyfriend are you
to let her die in a place like this?
and I was thinking, what kind of a son are you?
he asked me, do you want any of her things?
no, I said.
well, he said, we’ll give them to Goodwill.
he left.
there was a large bloodstain on the bottom
sheet.
the owner of the hotel walked in. she said,
I’ll have to change that sheet before I can rent this
room to
somebody else.
o.k., I said.
I left.
I walked down to the florist
and ordered a heart-shaped arrangement, large,
for the funeral.
just say on the card, I told the lady,
from your lover. no name.
no name?
no name.
cash or credit card?
cash.
I paid and walked out on the
boulevard and
never looked
back.
the night I saw George Raft in Vegas
I bet on #6, I try red, I stare at the women’s legs and breasts,
I wonder what Chekov would do, and over in the corner three men with
blue plates sit eating the carnage of my youth, they have beards
and look very much like Russians and I pat an imaginary pistol
over
my left tit and try to smile like George Raft sizing up a French tart. I play
the field, I pull out dollars like turnips from the good earth, the lights
blaze and nobody says stop.
Hank, says my whore, for Christ’s sake you’re losing everything except me,
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Page 3