Ham on Rye: A Novel

by Charles Bukowski

  Dogface was twice my size. It was so wearisome being in the world. Every time you looked around there was some guy ready to take you on without even inhaling. I looked at Dogface. “Hi, buddy!”

  “Buddy, my ass,” he said. “Just get your next drink down.”

  Harry poured them all around. He skipped Gobbles in the highchair, though, which I appreciated. All right, we raised them, we all got that round down. Then Lana dropped out.

  “Somebody’s got to clean up this mess and get Harry ready for work in the morning,” she said.

  The next round was poured. Just as it was the door banged open and a large good-looking kid of around 22 came running into the room. “Shit, Harry,” he said, “hide me! I just held up a fucking gas station!”

  “My car’s in the garage,” Harry said. “Get down on the floor in the back seat and stay there!”

  We drank up. The next round was poured. A new bottle appeared. The eighteen dollars was still in the center of the table. We were still all hanging in there except Lana. It was going to take plenty of whiskey to do us in.

  “Hey,” I asked Harry, “aren’t we going to run out of drinks?”

  “Show him, Lana…”

  Lana pulled open some upper cupboard doors. I could see bottles and bottles of whiskey lined up, all the same brand. It looked like the loot from a truck hijack and it probably was. And these were the gang members: Harry, Lana, Stinky, Marshbird, Ellis, Dogface and The Ripper, maybe Becker, and most likely the young guy now on the floor in the back seat of Harry’s car. I felt honored to be drinking with such an active part of the population of Los Angeles. Becker not only knew how to write, Becker knew his people. I would dedicate my first novel to Robert Becker. And it would be a better novel than Of Time and the River.

  Harry kept pouring the rounds and we kept drinking them down. The kitchen was blue with cigarette smoke.

  Marshbird dropped out first. He had a very large nose, he just shook his head, no more, no more, and all you could see was this long nose waving “no” in the blue smoke.

  Ellis was the next to drop out. He had a lot of hair on his chest but evidently not much on his balls.

  Dogface was next. He just jumped up and ran to the crapper and puked. Listening to him Harry got the same idea and leaped up and puked in the sink.

  That left me, Becker, Stinky and The Ripper.

  Becker quit next. He just folded his arms on the table, put his head down in his arms and that was it.

  “The night’s so young,” I said. “I usually drink until the sun comes up.”

  “Yeah,” said The Ripper, “you shit in a basket too!”

  “Yeah, and it’s shaped like your head.”

  The Ripper stood up. “You son-of-a-bitch, I’ll bust your ass!”

  He swung at me from across the table, missed and knocked over the bottle. Lana got a rag and mopped it up. Harry opened a bottle.

  “Sit down, Rip, or you forfeit your bet,” Harry said.

  Harry poured a new round. We drank them down.

  The Ripper stood up, walked to the rear door, opened it and looked out into the night.

  “Hey, Rip, what the hell you doing?” Stinky asked.

  “I’m checking to see if there’s a full moon.”

  “Well, is there?”

  There was no answer. We heard him fall through the door, down the steps and into the bushes. We left him there.

  That left me and Stinky.

  “I’ve never seen anybody take Stinky yet,” said Harry.

  Lana had just put Gobbles to bed. She walked back into the kitchen. “Jesus, there are dead bodies all over the place.”

  “Pour ’em, Harry,” I said.

  Harry filled Stinky’s glass, then mine. I knew there was no way I could get that drink down. I did the only thing I could do. I pretended it was easy. I grabbed the shot glass and belted it down. Stinky just stared at me. “I’ll be right back. I gotta go to the crapper.”

  We sat and waited.

  “Stinky’s a nice guy,” I said. “You shouldn’t call him Stinky. How’d he get that name?”

  “I dunno,” said Harry, “somebody just laid it on him.”

  “That guy in the back of your car. He ever going to come out?”

  “Not till morning.”

  We sat and waited. “I think,” said Harry, “we better take a look.”

  We opened the bathroom door. Stinky didn’t appear to be in there. Then we saw him. He had fallen into the bathtub. His feet stuck up over the edge. His eyes were closed, he was down in there, and out. We walked back to the table. “The money’s yours,” said Harry.

  “How about letting me pay for some of those bottles of whiskey?”

  “Forget it.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I picked up the money and put it in my right front pocket. Then I looked at Stinky’s drink.

  “No use wasting this,” I said.

  “You mean you’re going to drink that?” asked Lana.

  “Why not? One for the road…”

  I gulped it down.

  “O.K., see you guys, it’s been great!”

  “Goodnight, Hank…”

  I walked out the back door, stepping over The Ripper’s body. I found a back alley and took a left. I walked along and I saw a green Chevy sedan. I staggered a bit as I approached it. I grabbed the rear door handle to steady myself. The god-damned door was unlocked and it swung open, knocking me sideways. I fell hard, skinning my left elbow on the pavement. There was a full moon. The whiskey had hit me all at once. I felt as if I couldn’t get up. I had to get up. I was supposed to be a tough guy. I rose, fell against the half-open door, grabbed at it, held it. Then I had the inside handle and was steadying myself. I got myself into the back seat and then I just sat there. I sat there for some time. Then I started to puke. It really came. It came and it came, it covered the rear floorboard. Then I sat for a while. Then I managed to get out of the car. I didn’t feel as dizzy. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the vomit off my pant legs and off of my shoes as best I could. I closed the car door and walked on down the alley. I had to find the “W” streetcar. I would find it.

  I did. I rode it in. I made it down Westview Street, walked down 21st Street, turned south down Longwood Avenue to 2122. I walked up the neighbor’s driveway, found the berry bush, crawled over it, through the open screen and into my bedroom. I undressed and went to bed. I must have consumed over a quart of whiskey. My father was still snoring, just as he had been when I had left, only at the moment it was louder and uglier. I slept anyhow.

  As usual I approached Mr. Hamilton’s English class thirty minutes late. It was 7:30 a.m. I stood outside the door and listened. They were at Gilbert and Sullivan again. And it was still all about going to the sea and the Queen’s Navy. Hamilton couldn’t get enough of that. In high school I’d had an English teacher and it had been Poe, Poe, Edgar Allan Poe.

  I opened the door. Hamilton went over and lifted the needle from the record. Then he announced to the class, “When Mr. Chinaski arrives we always know that it is 7:30 a.m. Mr. Chinaski is always on time. The only problem being that it is the wrong time.”

  He paused, glancing at the faces in his class. He was very, very dignified. Then he looked at me.

  “Mr. Chinaski, whether you arrive at 7:30 a.m. or whether you arrive at all will not matter. I am assigning you a ‘D’ for English I.”

  “A ‘D,’ Mr. Hamilton?” I asked, flashing my famous sneer. “Why not an ‘F’?”

  “Because ‘F,’ at times, equates with ‘Fuck.’ And I don’t think you’re worth a ‘Fuck.’”

  The class cheered and roared and stomped and stamped. I turned around, walked out, closed the door behind me. I walked down the hallway, still hearing them going at it in there.

  52

  The war was going very well in Europe, for Hitler. Most of the students weren’t very vocal on the matter. But the instructors were, they were al
most all left-wing and anti-German. There seemed to be no right-wing faction among the instructors except for Mr. Glasglow, in Economics, and he was very discreet about it.

  It was intellectually popular and proper to be for going to war with Germany, to stop the spread of fascism. As for me, I had no desire to go to war to protect the life I had or what future I might have. I had no Freedom. I had nothing. With Hitler around, maybe I’d even get a piece of ass now and then and more than a dollar a week allowance. As far as I could rationalize, I had nothing to protect. Also, having been born in Germany, there was a natural loyalty and I didn’t like to see the whole German nation, the people, depicted everywhere as monsters and idiots. In the movie theatres they speeded up the newsreels to make Hitler and Mussolini look like frenetic madmen. Also, with all the instructors being anti-German I found it personally impossible to simply agree with them. Out of sheer alienation and a natural contrariness I decided to align myself against their point of view. I had never read Mein Kampf and had no desire to do so. Hitler was just another dictator to me, only instead of lecturing me at the dinner table he’d probably blow my brains out or my balls off if I went to war to stop him.

  Sometimes as the instructors talked on and on about the evils of nazism (we were told always to spell “nazi” with a small “n” even at the beginning of a sentence) and fascism I would leap to my feet and make something up:

  “The survival of the human race depends upon selective accountability!”

  Which meant, watch out who you go to bed with, but only I knew that. It really pissed everybody off.

  I don’t know where I got my stuff:

  “One of the failures of Democracy is that the common vote guarantees a common leader who then leads us to a common apathetic predictability!”

  I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given me any trouble. All my troubles had come from white gentiles. Thus, I wasn’t a nazi by temperament or choice; the teachers more or less forced it on me by being so much alike and thinking so much alike and with their anti-German prejudice. I had also read somewhere that if a man didn’t truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job, which gave me a considerable advantage over the teachers.

  “Breed a plow horse to a race horse and you get an offspring that is neither swift nor strong. A new Master Race will evolve from purposeful breeding!”

  “There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor’s Cause becomes history’s Noble Cause. It’s not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it’s a matter of who has the best generals and the better army!”

  I loved it. I could make up anything I liked.

  Of course, I was talking myself further and further away from any chance with the girls. But I had never been that close anyhow. I figured because of my wild speeches I was alone on campus but it wasn’t so. Some others had been listening. One day, walking to my Current Affairs class, I heard somebody walking up behind me. I never liked anybody walking behind me, not close. So I turned as I walked. It was the student body president, Boyd Taylor. He was very popular with the students, the only man in the history of the college to have been elected president twice.

  “Hey, Chinaski, I want to talk to you.”

  I’d never cared too much for Boyd, he was the typical good looking American youth with a guaranteed future, always properly dressed, casual, smooth, every hair of his black mustache trimmed. What his appeal was to the student body, I had no idea. He walked along beside me.

  “Don’t you think it looks bad for you, Boyd, to be seen walking with me?”

  “I’ll worry about that.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “Chinaski, this is just between you and me, got it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Listen, I don’t believe in what guys like you stand for or what you’re trying to do.”

  “So?”

  “But I want you to know that if you win here and in Europe I’m willing to join your side.”

  I could only look at him and laugh.

  He stood there as I walked on. Never trust a man with a perfectly-trimmed mustache…

  Other people had been listening as well. Coming out of Current Affairs I ran into Baldy standing there with a guy five feet tall and three feet wide. The guy’s head was sunk down into his shoulders, he had a very round head, small ears, cropped hair, pea eyes, tiny wet round mouth.

  A nut, I thought, a killer.

  “HEY, HANK!” Baldy hollered.

  I walked over. “I thought we were finished, LaCrosse.”

  “Oh no! There are great things still to do!”

  Shit! Baldy was one too!

  Why did the Master Race movement draw nothing but mental and physical cripples?

  “I want you to meet Igor Stirnov.”

  I reached out and we shook hands. He squeezed mine with all his strength. It really hurt.

  “Let go,” I said, “or I’ll bust your fucking missing neck!”

  Igor let go. “I don’t trust men with limp handshakes. Why do you have a limp handshake?”

  “I’m weak today. They burned my toast for breakfast and at lunch I spilled my chocolate milk.”

  Igor turned to Baldy. “What’s with this guy?”

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s got his own ways.”

  Igor looked at me again.

  “My grandfather was a White Russian. During the Revolution the Reds killed him. I must get even with those bastards!”

  “I see.”

  Then another student came walking toward us. “Hey, Fenster!” Baldy hollered.

  Fenster walked up. We shook hands. I gave him a limp one. I didn’t like to shake hands. Fenster’s first name was Bob. There was to be a meeting at a house in Glendale, the Americans for America Party. Fenster was the campus representative. He walked off. Baldy leaned over and whispered into my ear, “They’re Nazis!”

  Igor had a car and a gallon of rum. We met in front of Baldy’s house. Igor passed the bottle. Good stuff, it really burned the membranes of the throat. Igor drove his car like a tank, right through stop signals. People blew their horns and slammed on their brakes and he waved a fake black pistol at them.

  “Hey, Igor,” said Baldy, “show Hank your pistol.”

  Igor was driving. Baldy and I were in the back. Igor passed me his pistol. I looked at it.

  “It’s great!” Baldy said. “He carved it out of wood and stained it with black shoe polish. Looks real, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s even drilled a hole in the barrel.”

  I handed the gun back to Igor. “Very nice,” I said.

  He handed back the jug of rum. I took a hit and handed the bottle to Baldy. He looked at me and said, “Heil Hitler!”

  We were the last to arrive. It was a large handsome house. We were met at the door by a fat smiling boy who looked like he had spent a lifetime eating chestnuts by the fire. His parents didn’t seem to be about. His name was Larry Kearny. We followed him through the big house and down a long dark stairway. All I could see was Kearny’s shoulders and head. He was certainly a well-fed fellow and looked to be far saner than Baldy, Igor or myself. Maybe there would be something to learn here.

  Then we were in the cellar. We found some chairs. Fenster nodded to us. There were seven others there whom I didn’t know. There was a desk on a raised platform. Larry walked up and stood behind the desk. Behind him on the wall was a large American flag. Larry stood very straight. “We will now pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America!”

  My god, I thought, I am in the wrong place!

  We stood and took the pledge, but I stopped after “I pledge allegiance…” I didn’t say to what.

  We sat down. Larry started talking from behind the desk. He explained that since this was the first meeting, he would preside. After two or th
ree meetings, after we got to know one another, a president could be elected if we wished. But meanwhile…

  “We face here, in America, two threats to our liberty. We face the communist scourge and the black takeover. Most often they work hand in hand. We true Americans will gather here in an attempt to counter this scourge, this menace. It has gotten so that no decent white girl can walk the streets anymore without being accosted by a black male!”

  Igor leaped up. “We’ll kill them!”

  “The communists want to divide the wealth for which we have worked so long, which our fathers labored for, and their fathers before them worked for. The communists want to give our money to every black man, homo, bum, murderer and child molester who walks our streets!”

  “We’ll kill them!”

  “They must be stopped.”

  “We’ll arm!”

  “Yes, we’ll arm! And we’ll meet here and formulate a master plan to save America!”

  The fellows cheered. Two or three of them yelled, “Heil Hitler!” Then the get-to-know-each-other time arrived.

  Larry passed out cold beers and we stood around in little groups talking, not much being said, except we reached a general agreement that we needed target practice so that we would be expert with our guns when the time came.

  When we got back to Igor’s house his parents didn’t seem to be about, either. Igor got out a frying pan, put in four cubes of butter, and began to melt them. He took the rum, put it in a large pot and warmed it up.

  “This is what men drink,” he said. Then he looked at Baldy. “Are you a man, Baldy?”

  Baldy was already drunk. He stood very straight, hands down at his sides. “YES, I’M A MAN!” He started to weep. The tears came rolling down. “I’M A MAN!” He stood very straight and yelled, “HEIL HITLER!” the tears rolling.

  Igor looked at me. “Are you a man?”

  “I don’t know. Is that rum ready?”

  “I’m not sure I trust you. I’m not so sure that you are one of us. Are you a counter-spy? Are you an enemy agent?”

  “No.”

  “Are you one of us?”