Ham On Rye

by Charles Bukowski

  As for me, it was the same - at school, and with Chuck, Gene and Eddie. Not only did the grownups get mean, the kids got mean, and even the animals got mean. It was like they took their cue from the people.

  One day I was standing around, waiting as usual, not friendly with the gang, no longer really wanting to be, when Gene rushed up to me, "Hey, Henry, come on!"

  "What is it?"

  "COME ON!"

  Gene started running and I ran after him. We ran down the driveway and into the Gibsons' backyard. The Gibsons had a large brick wall all around their backyard.

  "LOOK! HE'S GOT THE CAT CORNERED! HE'S GOING TO KILL IT!"

  There was a small white cat backed into a corner of the wall. It couldn't go up and it couldn't go in one direction or the other. Its back was arched and it was spitting, its claws ready. But it was very small and Chuck's bulldog, Barney, was growling and moving closer and closer. I got the feeling that the cat had been put there by the guys and then the bulldog had been brought in. I felt it strongly because of the way Chuck and Eddie and Gene were watching: they had a guilty look.

  "You guys did this," I said.

  "No," said Chuck, "it's the cat's fault. It came in here. Let it fight its way out."

  "I hate you bastards," I said.

  "Barney's going to kill that cat," said Gene.

  "Barney will rip it to pieces," said Eddie. "He's afraid of the claws but when he moves in it will be all over."

  Barney was a large brown bulldog with slobbering jaws. He was dumb and fat with senseless brown eyes. His growl was steady and he kept inching forward, the hairs standing up on his neck and along his back. I felt like kicking him in his stupid ass but I figured he would rip my leg off. He was entirely intent upon the kill. The white cat wasn't even fully grown. It hissed and waited, pressed against the wall, a beautiful creature, so clean.

  The dog moved slowly forward. Why did the guys need this? This wasn't a matter of courage, it was just dirty play. Where were the grownups? Where were the authorities? They were always around accusing me. Now where were they?

  I thought of rushing in, grabbing the cat and running, but I didn't have the nerve. I was afraid that the bulldog would attack me. The knowledge that I didn't have the courage to do what was necessary made me feel terrible. I began to feel physically sick. I was weak. I didn't want it to happen yet I couldn't think of any way to stop it.

  "Chuck," I said, "let the cat go, please. Call your dog off."

  Chuck didn't answer. He just kept watching. Then he said, "Barney, go get him! Get that cat!"

  Barney moved forward and suddenly the cat leaped. It was a furious blur of white and hissing, claws and teeth. Barney backed off and the cat retreated to the wall again.

  "Go get him, Barney," Chuck said again.

  "God damn you, shut up!" I told him.

  "Don't talk to me that way," Chuck said. Barney began to move in again.

  "You guys set this up," I said.

  I heard a slight sound behind us and looked around. I saw old Mr. Gibson watching from behind his bedroom window. He wanted the cat to get killed too, just like the guys. Why?

  Old Mr. Gibson was our mailman with the false teeth. He had a wife who stayed in the house all the time. She only came out to empty the garbage. Mrs. Gibson always wore a net over her hair and she was always dressed in a nightgown, bathrobe and slippers. Then as I watched, Mrs. Gibson, dressed as always came and stood next to her husband, waiting for the kill. Old Mr. Gibson was one of the few men in the neighborhood with a job but he still needed to see the cat killed. Gibson was just like Chuck, Eddie and Gene.

  There were too many of them.

  The bulldog moved closer. I couldn't watch the kill. I felt a great shame at leaving the cat like that. There was always the chance that the cat might try to escape, but I knew that they would prevent it. That cat wasn't only facing the bulldog, it was facing Humanity.

  I turned and walked away, out of the yard, up the driveway and to the sidewalk. I walked along the sidewalk toward where I lived and there in the front yard of his home, my father stood waiting.

  "Where have you been?" he asked. I didn't answer.

  "Get inside," he said, "and stop looking so unhappy or I'll give you something that will really make you unhappy!"

  21

  Then I started attending Mt. Justin Jr. High. About half the guys from Delsey Grammar School went there, the biggest and toughest half. Another gang of giants came from other schools. Our 7th grade class was bigger than the 9th grade class. When we lined up for gym it was funny, most of us were bigger than the gym teachers. We would stand there for roll call, slouched, our guts hanging out, heads down, shoulders slumped.

  "Jesus Christ," said Wagner, the gym teacher, "pull your shoulders back, stand straight!"

  Nobody would change position. We were the way we were, and we didn't want to be anything else. We all came from Depression families and most of us were ill-fed, yet we had grown up to be huge and strong. Most of us, I think, got little love from our families, and we didn't ask for love or kindness from anybody. We were a joke but people were careful not to laugh in front of us. It was as if we had grown up too soon and we were bored with being children. We had no respect for our elders. We were like tigers with the mange. One of the Jewish fellows, Sam Feidman, had a black beard and had to shave every morning. By noon his chin was almost black. And he had a mass of black hair all over his chest and he smelled terrible under the arms. Another guy looked like Jack Dempsey. Another guy, Peter Mangalore, had a cock 10 inches long, soft. And when we got in the shower, I found out I had the biggest balls of anybody.

  " Hey! Look at that guy's balls, will ya? "

  "Holy shit! Not much cock but look at those balls! "

  "Holy shit!"

  I don't know what it was about us but we had something, and we felt it. You could see it in the way we walked and talked. We didn't talk much, we just inferred, and that's what got everybody mad, the way we took things for granted.

  The 7th grade team would play touch football after school against the 8th and 9th graders. It was no match. We beat them easy, we knocked them down, we did it with style, almost without effort. In touch football most teams passed on every play, but our team worked in lots of runs. Then we could set up the blocking and our guys would go for the other guys and knock them down. It was just an excuse to be violent, we didn't give a damn about the runner. The other side was always glad when we called a pass play.

  The girls stayed after school and watched us. Some of them were already going out with high school guys, they didn't want to mess with jr. high school punks, but they stayed to watch the 7th graders. We were known. The girls stayed after class and watched us and marveled. I wasn't on the team but I stood on the sidelines and sneaked smokes, feeling like a coach or something. We're all going to get fucked, we thought, watching the girls. But most of us only masturbated.

  Masturbation. I remember how I learned about it. One morning Eddie scratched on my bedroom window.

  "What is it?" I asked Eddie.

  He held up a test tube and it had something white in the bottom of it.

  "What's that?"

  "Come," said Eddie, "it's my come."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah, all you do is spit on your hand and begin rubbing your cock, it feels good and pretty soon this white juice shoots out of the end of your cock. That stuff is called 'come."'

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  Eddie walked off with his test tube. I thought about it awhile and then I decided to try it. My cock got hard and it felt real good, it felt better and better, and I kept going and it felt like nothing I had ever felt before. Then juice spurted out of the head of my cock. After that I did it every now and then. It got better if you imagined you were doing it with a girl while you whacked-off.

  One day I was standing on the sidelines watching our team kick the shit out of some other team. I was sneaking a smoke and watching. There was a girl on
either side of me. As our guys broke out of a huddle I saw the gym coach, Curly Wagner, walking toward me. I ditched the smoke and clapped my hands.

  "Let's dump 'em on their butts, gang!"

  Wagner walked up to me. He just stood there staring at me. I had developed an evil look on my face.

  "I'm going to get all you guys!" Wagner said. "Especially you!"

  I turned my head and glanced at him, casually, then turned my head away. Wagner stood there looking at me. Then he walked off.

  I felt good about that. I liked being picked out as one of the bad guys. I liked to feel bad. Anybody could be a good guy, that didn't take guts. Dillinger had guts. Ma Barker was a great woman teaching those guys how to operate a submachine gun. I didn't want to be like my father. He only pretended to be bad. When you're bad you didn't pretend, it was just there. I liked being bad. Trying to be good made me sick.

  The girl next to me said, "You don't have to take that from Wagner. Are you afraid of him?"

  I turned and looked at her. I stared at her a long time, motionless.

  "What's wrong with you?" she asked.

  I looked away from her, spit on the ground, and walked off. I slowly walked the length of the field, exited through the rear gate and began walking home.

  Wagner always wore a grey sweatshirt and grey sweatpants. He had a little pot belly. Something was continually bothering him. His only advantage was his age. He would try to bluff us but that was working less and less. There was always somebody pushing me who had no right to push. Wagner and my father. My father and Wagner. What did they want? Why was I in their way?

  22

  One day, just like in grammar school, like with David, a boy attached himself to me. He was small and thin and had almost no hair on top of his head. The guys called him Baldy. His real name was Eli LaCrosse. I liked his real name, but I didn't like him. He just glued himself to me. He was so pitiful that I couldn't tell him to get lost. He was like a mongrel dog, starved and kicked. Yet it didn't make me feel good going around with him. But since I knew that mongrel dog feeling, I let him hang around. He used a cuss word in almost every sentence, at least one cuss word, but it was all fake, he wasn't tough, he was scared. I wasn't scared but I was confused so maybe we were a good pair.

  I walked him back to his place after school every day. He was living with his mother, his father and his grandfather. They had a little house across from a small park. I liked the area, it had great shade trees, and since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light.

  During our walks home Baldy had told me about his father. He had been a doctor, a successful surgeon, but he had lost his license because he was a drunk. One day I met Baldy's father. He was sitting in a chair under a tree, just sitting there.

  "Dad," he said, "this is Henry."

  "Hello, Henry."

  It reminded me of when I had seen my grandfather for the first time, standing on the steps of his house. Only Baldy's father had black hair and a black beard, but his eyes were the same - brilliant and glowing, so strange. And here was Baldy, the son, and he didn't glow at all.

  "Come on," Baldy said, "follow me."

  We went down into a cellar, under the house. It was dark and damp and we stood awhile until our eyes grew used to the gloom. Then I could see a number of barrels.

  "These barrels are full of different kinds of wine," Baldy said.

  "Each barrel has a spigot. Want to try some?"

  "No."

  "Go ahead, just try a god-damned sip."

  "What for?"

  "You think you're a god-damned man or what?"

  "I'm tough," I said.

  "Then take a fucking sample."

  Here was little Baldy, daring me. No problem. I walked up to a barrel, ducked my head down.

  "Turn the god-damned spigot! Open your god-damned mouth!"

  "Are there any spiders around here?"

  "Go on! Go on, god damn it!"

  I put my mouth under the spigot and opened it. A smelly liquid trickled out and into my mouth. I spit it out.

  "Don't be chicken! Swallow it, what the shit!"

  I opened the spigot and I opened my mouth. The smelly liquid entered and I swallowed it. I turned off the spigot and stood there. I thought I was going to puke.

  "Now, you drink some," I said to Baldy.

  "Sure," he said, "I ain't fucking afraid!"

  He got down under a barrel and took a good swallow. A little punk like that wasn't going to outdo me. I got under another barrel, opened it and took a swallow. I stood up. I was beginning to feel good.

  "Hey, Baldy," I said, "I like this stuff."

  "Well, shit, try some more."

  I tried some more. It was tasting better. I was feeling better.

  "This stuff belongs to your father, Baldy. I shouldn't drink it all."

  "He doesn't care. He's stopped drinking."

  Never had I felt so good. It was better than masturbating. I went from barrel to barrel. It was magic. Why hadn't someone told me? With this, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him.

  I stood up straight and looked at Baldy.

  "Where's your mother? I'm going to fuck your mother!"

  "I'll kill you, you bastard, you stay away from my mother!"

  "You know I can whip you, Baldy."

  "Yes."

  "All right, I'll leave your mother alone."

  "Let's go then, Henry."

  "One more drink…"

  I went to a barrel and took a long one. Then we went up the cellar stairway. When we were out, Baldy's father was still sitting in his chair.

  "You boys been in the wine cellar, eh?"

  "Yes," said Baldy.

  "Starting a little early, aren't you?"

  We didn't answer. We walked over to the boulevard and Baldy and I went into a store which sold chewing gum. We bought several packs of it and stuck it into our mouths. He was worried about his mother finding out. I wasn't worried about anything. We sat on a park bench and chewed the gum and I thought, well, now I have found something, I have found something that is going to help me, for a long long time to come. The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder. Maybe that stuff wasn't good for surgeons but anybody who wanted to be a surgeon, there was something wrong with them in the first place.

  23

  At Mt. Justin, biology class was neat. We had Mr. Stanhope for our teacher. He was an old guy about 55 and we pretty much dominated him. Lilly Fischman was in the class and she was really developed. Her breasts were enormous and she had a marvelous behind which she wiggled while walking in her high-heeled shoes. She was great, she talked to all the guys and rubbed up against them while she talked.

  Every day in biology class it was the same. We never learned any biology, Mr. Stanhope would talk for about ten minutes and then Lilly would say, "Oh, Mr. Stanhope, let's have a show!"

  "No!"

  "Oh, Mr. Stanhope!"

  She would walk up to his desk, bend over him sweetly and whisper something.

  "Oh, well, all right…" he'd say.

  And then Lilly would begin singing and wiggling. She always opened up with "The Lullaby of Broadway" and then she went into her other numbers. She was great, she was hot, she was burning up, and we were too. She was like a grown woman, putting it to Stanhope, putting it to us. It was wonderful. Old Stanhope would sit there blubbering and slobbering. We'd laugh at Stanhope and cheer Lilly on. It lasted until one day the principal, Mr. Lacefield, came running in.

  "What's going on here?"

  Stanhope just sat there unable to speak.

  "This class is dismissed!" Lacefield screamed.

  As we filed out, Lacefield said, "And you, Miss Fischman, will report to my office!"

  Of course, after that we never studied our homework, and that was all right until the day Mr. Stanhope gave us our first examination.

  "Shit," said Peter Mangalore out
loud, "what are we going to do?"

  Peter was the guy with the 10-incher, soft.

  "You'll never have to work for a living," said the guy who looked like Jack Dempsey. "This is our problem."

  "Maybe we ought to burn the school down," said Red Kirkpatrick.

  "Shit," said a guy from the back of the room, "every time I get an 'F' my father pulls out one of my fingernails."

  We all looked at our examination sheets. I thought about my father. Then I thought about Lilly Fischman. Lilly Fischman, I thought, you are a whore, an evil woman, wiggling your body in front of us and singing like that, you will send us all to hell. Stanhope was watching us.

  "Why isn't anybody writing? Why isn't anybody answering the questions? Does everybody have a pencil?"

  "Yeah, yeah, we all got pencils," one of the guys said. Lilly sat up in front, right by Mr. Stanhope's desk. We saw her open her biology textbook and look up the answer to the first question. That was it. We all opened up our textbooks. Stanhope just sat there and watched us. He didn't know what to do. He began to sputter. He sat there a good five minutes, then he jumped up. He ran back and forth up and down the center aisle of the room.

  "What are you people doing? Close those textbooks! Close those textbooks!"

  As he ran by, the students would close their books only to open them again when he had run past.

  Baldy was in the seat next to mine, laughing. "He's an asshole! Oh, what an old asshole!"