Ham on Rye: A Novel

by Charles Bukowski

  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 a while 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!”

  I felt a little sorry for Stanhope but it was either him or me. Stanhope stood behind his desk and screamed, “All textbooks must be closed or I will flunk the entire class!”

  Then Lilly Fischman stood up. She pulled her skirt up and yanked at one of her silk stockings. She adjusted the garter, we saw white flesh. Then she pulled at and adjusted the other stocking. Such a sight we had never seen, nor had Stanhope ever seen anything like it. Lilly sat down and we all finished the exam with our textbooks open. Stanhope sat behind his desk, utterly defeated.

  Another guy we jerked around was Pop Farnsworth. It began the first day in Machine Shop. He said, “Here we learn by doing. We will begin right now. You will each take an engine apart and put it back together, until it is in working order, during the semester. There are charts on the wall and I will answer your questions. You will also be shown movies about how an engine works. But right now please begin to dismantle your engines. The tools are on your workshelf.”

  “Hey, Pop, how about the movies first?” some guy asked.

  “I said, ‘Begin your project!’”

  I don’t know where they got all those engines. They were greasy and black and rusted. They looked really dismal.

  “Fuck,” said some guy, “this one is a hunk of clogged shit.”

  We stood over our engines. Most of the guys reached for monkey wrenches. Red Kirkpatrick took a screwdriver and scraped it slowly along the top of his engine carefully creating a black ribbon of grease two feet long.

  “Come on, Pop, how about a movie? We just got out of gym, our asses are dragging! Wagner had us doing the hop, skip and jump like a bunch of frogs!”

  “Begin your assignment as requested!”

  We started in. It was senseless. It was worse than Music Appreciation. Some clanking of tools could be heard and some heavy breathing.

  “FUCK!” hollered Harry Henderson, “I’VE JUST SKINNED MY WHOLE GOD-DAMNED KNUCKLE! THIS IS NOTHING BUT FUCKING WHITE SLAVERY!”

  He wrapped a handkerchief tenderly around his right hand and watched the blood soak through. “Shit,” he said.

  The rest of us kept trying. “I’d rather stick my head up an elephant’s cunt,” said Red Kirkpatrick.

  Jack Dempsey threw his wrench to the floor. “I quit,” he said, “do anything you want to me, I quit. Kill me. Cut my balls off. I quit.”

  He walked over and leaned against a wall. He folded his arms and looked down at his shoes.

  The situation seemed truly terrible. There weren’t any girls. When you looked out the back door of the shop you could see the open schoolyard, all that sunlight and empty space out there where there was nothing to do. And here we were bent over stupid engines that weren’t even attached to cars, they were useless. Just stupid steel. It was dumb and it was hard. We needed mercy. Our lives were dumb enough. Something had to save us. We’d heard Pop was a soft touch but it didn’t seem true. He was a giant son-of-a-bitch with a beer gut, dressed in his greasy outfit, and with hair hanging down in his eyes and grease on his chin.

  Arnie Whitechapel threw down his wrench and walked up to Mr. Farnsworth. Arnie had a big grin on his face. “Hey, Pop, what the fuck?”

  “Get back to your engine, Whitechapel!”

  “Ah, come on, Pop, what the shit!”

  Arnie was a couple of years older than the rest of us. He had spent a few years in some boys’ correctional school. But even though he was older than we were, he was smaller. He had very black hair slicked back with vaseline. He would stand in front of the mirror in the men’s crapper squeezing his pimples. He talked dirty to the girls and carried Sheik rubbers in his pockets.

  “I got a good one for you, Pop!”

  “Yeah? Get back to your engine, Whitechapel.”

  “It’s a good one, Pop.”

  We stood there and watched as Arnie began to tell Pop a dirty joke. Their heads were close together. Then the joke was over. Pop began laughing. That big body was doubled over, he was holding his gut. “Holy shit! Oh my god, holy shit!” he laughed. Then he stopped. “O.K., Arnie, back to your machine!”

  “No, wait, Pop, I got another one!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, listen…”

  We all left our machines and walked over. We circled them, listening as Arnie told the next joke. When it was over Pop doubled up. “Holy shit, oh lord, holy shit!”

  “Then there’s another one, Pop. This guy is driving his car in the desert. He notices this guy jumping along the road. He’s naked and his hands and feet are tied with rope. The guy stops his car and asks the guy, ‘Hey, buddy, what’s the matter?’ And the guy tells him, ‘Well, I was driving along and I saw this bastard hitch-hiking so I stopped and the son-of-a-bitch pulls a gun on me, takes my clothes away and then ties me up. Then the dirty son-of-a-bitch reams me in the ass!’ ‘Oh yeah?’ says the guy getting out of his car. ‘Yeah, that’s what that dirty son-of-a-bitch did!’ says the man. ‘Well,’ says the guy unzipping his fly, ‘I guess this just isn’t your lucky day!’”

  Pop began laughing, he doubled over. “Oh, no! Oh, NO! OH…HOLY…SHIT, CHRIST…HOLY SHIT…!”

  He finally stopped.

  “God damn,” he said quietly, “oh my lord…”

  “How about a movie, Pop?”

  “Oh well, all right.”

  Somebody closed the back door and Pop pulled out a dirty white screen. He started the projector. It was a lousy movie but it beat working on those engines. The gas was ignited by the spark plugs and the explosion hit the cylinder head and the head was thrust down and that turned the crankshaft and the valves opened and closed and the cylinder heads kept going up and down and the crankshaft turned some more. Not very interesting, but it was cool in there and you could lean back in your chair and think about what you wanted to think about. You didn’t have to bust your knuckles on dumb steel.

  We never did get those engines taken apart let alone put back together again and I don’t know how many times we saw that same movie. Whitechapel’s jokes kept coming and we all laughed our heads of
f even though most of the jokes were pretty terrible, except to Pop Farnsworth who kept doubling over and laughing, “Holy shit! Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!”

  He was an O.K. guy. We all liked him.

  24

  Our English teacher, Miss Gredis, was the absolute best. She was a blonde with a long sharp nose. Her nose wasn’t much good but you didn’t notice it when you looked at the rest of her. She wore tight dresses and low v-necks, black high-heeled shoes and silk stockings. She was snake-like with long beautiful legs. She only sat behind her desk when she took roll call. She kept one desk vacant at the front of the room and after roll call she would come down and sit on that desk top, facing us. Miss Gredis sat perched there with her legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. Never had we seen such ankles, such legs, such thighs. Well, there was Lilly Fischman, but Lilly was a girl-woman while Miss Gredis was in full bloom. And we got to gaze upon her for a full hour each day. There wasn’t a boy in that class who wasn’t sad when the bell rang ending the English period. We’d talk about her.

  “Do you think she wants to be fucked?”

  “No, I think she’s just teasing us. She knows she’s driving us crazy, that’s all she needs, that’s all she wants.”

  “I know where she lives. I’m going over there some night.”

  “You wouldn’t have the balls!”

  “Yeah? Yeah? I’ll fuck the shit out of her! She’s asking for it!”

  “A guy I know in the 8th grade said he went over there one night.”

  “Yeah? What happened?”

  “She came to the door in a nightgown, her tits were practically hanging out. The guy said he had forgotten the next day’s homework and wondered what it was. She asked him in.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. Nothing happened. She made him some tea, told him about the homework and he left.”