Ham On Rye

by Charles Bukowski

  Meanwhile, the boils got worse. I kept getting onto streetcar #7 and going to L. A. County General Hospital and I began to fall in love with Miss Ackerman, my nurse of the squeezings. She would never know how each stab of pain caused courage to well up in me. Despite the horror of the blood and the pus, she was always humane and kind. My love-feeling for her wasn't sexual. I just wished that she would enfold me in her starched whiteness and that together we could vanish forever from the world. But she never did that. She was too practical. She would only remind me of my next appointment.

  33

  The ultra-violet ray machine clicked off. I had been treated on both sides. I took off the goggles and began to dress. Miss Ackerman walked in.

  "Not yet," she said, "keep your clothes off."

  What is she going to do to me, I thought?

  "Sit up on the edge of the table."

  I sat there and she began rubbing salve over my face. It was a thick buttery substance.

  "The doctors have decided on a new approach. We're going to bandage your face to effect drainage."

  "Miss Ackerman, what ever happened to that man with the big nose? The nose that kept growing?"

  "Mr. Sleeth?"

  "The man with the big nose."

  "That was Mr. Sleeth."

  "I don't see him anymore. Did he get cured?"

  "He's dead."

  "You mean he died from that big nose?"

  "Suicide." Miss Ackerman continued to apply the salve. Then I heard a man scream from the next ward, "Joe, where are you? Joe, you said you'd come back! Joe, where are you?"

  The voice was loud and so sad, so agonized.

  "He's done that every afternoon this week," said Miss Ackerman, "and Joe's not going to come get him."

  "Can't they help him?"

  "I don't know. They all quiet down, finally. Now take your finger and hold this pad while I bandage you. There. Yes. That's it. Now let go. Fine."

  "Joe! Joe, you said you'd come back! Where are you, Joe?"

  "Now, hold your finger on this pad. There. Hold it there. I'm going to wrap you up good! There. Now I'll secure the dressings."

  Then she was finished.

  "O.K., put on your clothes. See you the day after tomorrow. Goodbye, Henry."

  "Goodbye, Miss Ackerman."

  I got dressed, left the room and walked down the hall. There was a mirror on a cigarette machine in the lobby. I looked into the mirror. It was great. My whole head was bandaged. I was all white. Nothing could be seen but my eyes, my mouth and my ears, and some tufts of hair sticking up at the top of my head. I was hidden. It was wonderful. I stood and lit a cigarette and glanced about the lobby. Some in-patients were sitting about reading magazines and newspapers. I felt very exceptional and a bit evil, Nobody had any idea of what had happened to me. Car crash. A fight to the death. A murder. Fire. Nobody knew.

  I walked out of the lobby and out of the building and I stood on the sidewalk. I could still hear him. "Joe! Joe! Where are you,Joe!"

  Joe wasn't coming. It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

  On the streetcar ride back I sat in the back smoking cigarettes out of my bandaged head. People stared but I didn't care. There was more fear than horror in their eyes now. I hoped I could stay this way forever.

  I rode to the end of the line and got off. The afternoon was going into evening and I stood on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Westview Avenue watching the people. Those few who had jobs were coming home from work. My father would soon be driving home from his fake job. I didn't have a job, I didn't go to school. I didn't do anything. I was bandaged, I was standing on the corner smoking a cigarette. I was a tough man, I was a dangerous man. I knew things. Sleeth had suicided. I wasn't going to suicide. I'd rather kill some of them. I'd take four or five of them with me. I'd show them what it meant to play around with me.

  A woman walked down the street toward me. She had fine legs. First I stared right into her eyes and then I looked down at her legs, and as she passed I watched her ass, I drank her ass in. I memorized her ass and the seams of her silk stockings. I never could have done that without my bandages.

  34

  The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed with the notebook and the pen. I made some drawings. I drew women in high-heeled shoes with their legs crossed and their skirts pulled back.

  Then I began writing. It was about a German aviator in World War 1. Baron Von Himmlen. He flew a red Fokker. And he was not popular with his fellow fliers. He didn't talk to them. He drank alone and he flew alone. He didn't bother with women, although they all loved him. He was above that. He was too busy. He was busy shooting Allied planes out of the sky. Already he had shot down 110 and the war wasn't over. His red Fokker, which he referred to as the "October Bird of Death," was known everywhere. Even the enemy ground troops knew him as he often flew low over them, taking their gunfire and laughing, dropping bottles of champagne to them suspended from little parachutes. Baron Von Himmlen was never attacked by less than five Allied planes at a time. He was an ugly man with scars on his face, but he was beautiful if you looked long enough - it was in the eyes, his style, his courage, his fierce aloneness.

  I wrote pages and pages about the Baron's dog fights, how he would knock down three or four planes, fly back, almost nothing left of his red Fokker. He'd bounce down, leap out of the plane while it was still rolling and head for the bar where he'd grab a bottle and sit at a table alone, pouring shots and slamming them down. Nobody drank like the Baron. The others just stood at the bar and watched him. One time one of the other fliers said, "What is it, Himmlen? You think you're too good for us?" It was Willie Schmidt, the biggest, strongest guy in the outfit. The Baron downed his drink, set down his glass, stood up and slowly started walking toward Willie who was standing at the bar. The other fliers backed off.

  "Jesus, what are you going to do?" asked Willie as the Baron advanced.

  The Baron kept moving slowly toward Willie, not answering.

  "Jesus, Baron, I was just kidding! Mother's honor! Listen to me, Baron… Baron… the enemy is elsewhere! Baron!"

  The Baron let go with his right. You couldn't see it. It smashed into Willie's face propelling him over the top of the bar, flipping him over completely! He crashed into the bar mirror like a cannonball and the bottles tumbled down. The Baron pulled a cigar out and lit it, then walked back to his table, sat down and poured another drink. They didn't bother the Baron after that. Behind the bar they picked Willie up. His face was a mass of blood.

  The Baron shot plane after plane out of the sky. Nobody seemed to understand him and nobody knew how he had become so skillful with the red Fokker and in his other strange ways. Like fighting. Or the graceful way he walked. He went on and on. His luck was sometimes bad. One day flying back after downing three Allied planes, limping in low over enemy lines, he was hit by shrapnel. It blew off his right hand at the wrist. He managed to bring the red Fokker in. From that time on he flew with an iron hand in place of his original right hand. It didn't affect his flying. And the fellows at the bar were more careful than ever when they talked to him.

  Many more things happened to the Baron after that. Twice he crashed in no-man's-land and each time he crawled back to his squadron, half-dead, through barbed wire and flares and enemy fire. Many times he was given up for dead by his comrades. Once he was gone for eight days and the other flyers were sitting in the bar, talking about what an exceptional man he had been. When they looked up, there was the Baron standing in the doorway, eight- day beard, uniform torn and muddy, eyes red and bleary, iron hand glinting in the bar light. He stood there and he said, "There better be some god-damned whiskey in this place or I'm tearing it apart!"

  The Baron went on doing magic things. Half the notebook was filled with Baron Von Himmlen. It made me feel good to write abou
t the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't makebelieve or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living your life without a man like him around.

  35

  The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up with something. The boils drained. They didn't vanish but they flattened a bit. Yet some new ones would appear and rise up again. They drilled me and wrapped me again.

  My sessions with the drill were endless. Thirty-two, thirty-six, thirtyeight times. There was no fear of the drill anymore. There never had been. Only an anger. But the anger was gone. There wasn't even resignation on my part, only disgust, a disgust that this had happened to me, and a disgust with the doctors who couldn't do anything about it. They were helpless and I was helpless, the only difference being that I was the victim. They could go home to their lives and forget while I was stuck with the same face.

  But there were changes in my life. My father found a job. He passed an examination at the L.A. County Museum and got a job as a guard. My father was good at exams. He loved math and history. He passed the exam and finally had a place to go each morning. There had been three vacancies for guards and he had gotten one of them.

  L.A. County General Hospital somehow found out and Miss Ackerman told me one day, "Henry, this is your last treatment. I'm going to miss you."

  "Aw come on," I said, "stop your kidding. You're going to miss me like I'm going to miss that electric needle!"

  But she was very strange that day. Those big eyes were watery. I heard her blow her nose.

  I heard one of the nurses ask her, "Why, Janice, what's wrong with you?"

  "Nothing. I'm all right."

  Poor Miss Ackerman. I was 15 years old and in love with her and I was covered with boils and there was nothing that either of us could do.

  "All right," she said, "this is going to be your last ultra-violet ray treatment. Lay on your stomach."

  "I know your first name now," I told her. "Janice. That's a pretty name. It's just like you."

  "Oh, shut up," she said.

  I saw her once again when the first buzzer sounded. I turned over, Janice re-set the machine and left the room. I never saw her again.

  My father didn't believe in doctors who were not free. "They make you piss in a tube, take your money, and drive home to their wives in Beverly Hills," he said.

  But once he did send me to one. To a doctor with bad breath and a head as round as a basketball, only with two little eyes where a basketball had none. I didn't like my father and the doctor wasn't any better. He said, no fried foods, and to drink carrot juice. That was it.

  I would re-enter high school the next term, said my father.

  "I'm busting my ass to keep people from stealing. Some nigger broke the glass on a case and stole some rare coins yesterday. I caught the bastard. We rolled down the stairway together. I held him until the others came. I risk my life every day. Why should you sit around on your ass, moping? I want you to be an engineer. How the hell you gonna be an engineer when I find notebooks full of women with their skirts pulled up to their ass? Is that all you can draw? Why don't you draw flowers or mountains or the ocean? You're going back to school!"

  I drank carrot juice and waited to re-enroll. I had only missed one term. The boils weren't cured but they weren't as bad as they had been.

  "You know what carrot juice costs me? I have to work the first hour every day just for your god-damned carrot juice!"

  I discovered the La Cienega Public Library. I got a library card. The library was near the old church down on West Adams. It was a very small library and there was just one librarian in it. She was class. About 38 but with pure white hair pulled tightly into a bun behind her neck. Her nose was sharp and she had deep green eyes behind rimless glasses. I felt that she knew everything.

  I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book. Surely, out of all those books, there was one.

  Each day I walked down to the library at Adams and La Brea and there was my librarian, stern and infallible and silent. I kept pulling the books off the shelves. The first real book I found was by a fellow named Upton Sinclair. His sentences were simple and he spoke with anger. He wrote with anger. He wrote about the hog pens of Chicago. He came right out and said things plainly. Then I found another author. His name was Sinclair Lewis. And the book was called Main Street. He peeled back the layers of hypocrisy that covered people. Only he seemed to lack passion. I went back for more. I read each book in a single evening. I was walking around one day sneaking glances at my librarian when I came upon a book with the title Bow Down To Wood and Stone. Now, that was good, because that was what we were all doing. At last, some fire.' I opened the book. It was by Josephine Lawrence. A woman. That was all right. Anybody could find knowledge. I opened the pages. But they were like many of the other books: milky, obscure, tiresome. I replaced the book. And while my hand was there I reached for a book nearby. It was by another Lawrence. I opened the book at random and began reading. It was about a man at a piano. How false it seemed at first. But I kept reading. The man at the piano was troubled. His mind was saying things. Dark and curious things. The lines on the page were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More like Joe, where is anything? This Lawrence of the tight and bloody line. I had never been told about him. Why the secret? Why wasn't he advertised?

  I read a book a day. I read all the D. H. Lawrence in the library. My librarian began to look at me strangely as I checked out the books.

  "How are you today?" she would ask. That always sounded so good. I felt as if I had already gone to bed with her. I read all the books by D. H. And they led to others. To H.D., the poetess. And Huxley, the youngest of the Huxleys, Lawrence's friend. It all came rushing at me. One book led to the next. DOS Passes came along. Not too good, really, but good enough. His trilogy, about the U.S.A., took longer than a day to read. Dreiser didn't work for me. Sherwood Anderson did. And then along came Hemingway. What a thrill! He knew how to lay down a line. It was a joy. Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.

  But back at home…

  "LIGHTS OUT!" my father would scream. I was reading the Russians now, reading Turgenev and Gorky. My father's rule was that all lights were to be out by 8 p.m. He wanted to sleep so that he could be fresh and effective on the job the next day. His conversation at home was always about "the job." He talked to my mother about his "job" from the moment he entered the door in the evenings until they slept. He was determined to rise in the ranks.

  "All right, that's enough of those god-damned books! Lights out!"' To me, these men who had come into my life from nowhere were my only chance. They were the only voices that spoke to me.

  "All right," I would say.

  Then I took the reading lamp, crawled under the blanket, pulled the pillow under there, and read each new book, propping it against the pillow, under the quilt. It got very hot, the lamp got hot, and I had trouble breathing. I would lift the quilt for air.

  "What's that? Do I see a light? Henry, are your lights out?"

  I would quickly lower the quilt again and wait until I heard my father snoring.

  Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.

  I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It was magic.
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br />   And my father had found a job, and that was magic for him…

  36

  Back at Chelsey High it was the same. One group of seniors had graduated but they were replaced by another group of seniors with sports cars and expensive clothes. I was never confronted by them. They left me alone, they ignored me. They were busy with the girls. They never spoke to the poor guys in or out of class.

  About a week into my second semester I talked to my father over dinner.

  "Look," I said, "it's hard at school. You're giving me 50 cents a week allowance. Can't you make it a dollar?"

  "A dollar?"

  "Yes."

  He put a forkful of sliced pickled beets into his mouth and chewed. Then he looked at me from under his curled-up eyebrows,

  "If I gave you a dollar a week that would mean 52 dollars a year, that would mean I would have to work over a week on my job just so you could have an allowance."

  I didn't answer. But I thought, my god, if you think like that, item by item, then you can't buy anything: bread, watermelon, newspapers, flour, milk or shaving cream. I didn't say any more because when you hate, you don't beg…

  Those rich guys like to dart their cars in and out, swiftly, sliding up, burning rubber, their cars glistening in the sunlight as the girls gathered around. Classes were a joke, they were all going somewhere to college, classes were just a routine laugh, they got good grades, you seldom saw them with books, you just saw them burning more rubber, gunning from the curb with their cars full of squealing and laughing girls. I watched them with my 50 cents in my pocket. I didn't even know how to drive a car.

  Meanwhile the poor and the lost and the idiots continued to flock around me. I had a place I liked to eat under the football grandstand. I had my brown bag lunch with my two bologna sandwiches. They came around, "Hey, Hank, can I eat with you?"