“I don’t know. Only one thing I’m sure of.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t like you. Is the rum ready?”
“You see?” said Baldy. “I told you he was mean!”
“We’ll see who is the meanest before the night is ended,” said Igor.
Igor poured the melted butter into the boiling rum, then shut off the flame and stirred. I didn’t like him but he certainly was different and I liked that. Then he found three drinking cups, large, blue, with Russian writing on them. He poured the buttered rum into the cups.
“O.K.,” he said, “drink up!”
“Shit, it’s about time,” I said and I let it slide down. It was a little too hot and it stank.
I watched Igor drink his. I saw his little pea eyes over the rim of his cup. He managed to get it down, driblets of golden buttered rum leaking out of the corners of his stupid mouth. He was looking at Baldy. Baldy was standing, staring down into his cup. I knew from the old days that Baldy just didn’t have a natural love of drinking.
Igor stared at Baldy. “Drink up!”
“Yes, Igor, yes…”
Baldy lifted the blue cup. He was having a difficult time. It was too hot for him and he didn’t like the taste. Half of it ran out of his mouth and over his chin and onto his shirt. His empty cup fell to the kitchen floor.
Igor squared himself in front of Baldy.
“You’re not a man!”
“I AM A MAN, IGOR! I AM A MAN!”
“YOU LIE!”
Igor backhanded him across the face and as Baldy’s head jumped to one side, he straightened him up with a slap to the other side of his face. Baldy stood at attention with his hands rigidly at his sides.
“I’m…a man…”
Igor continued to stand in front of him.
“I’ll make a man out of you!”
“O.K.,” I said to Igor, “leave him alone.”
Igor left the kitchen. I poured myself another rum. It was dreadful stuff but it was all there was.
Igor walked back in. He was holding a gun, a real one, an old six-shooter.
“We will now play Russian roulette,” he announced.
“Your mother’s ass,” I said.
“I’ll play, Igor,” said Baldy, “I’ll play! I’m a man!”
“All right,” said Igor, “there is one bullet in the gun. I will spin the chamber and hand the gun to you.”
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to Baldy. Baldy took it and pointed it at his head. “I’m a man…I’m a man…I’ll do it!”
He began crying again. “I’ll do it…I’m a man…”
Baldy let the muzzle of the gun slip away from his temple. He pointed it away from his skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
Igor took the gun, spun the chamber and handed it to me. I handed it back.
“You go first.”
Igor spun the chamber, held the gun up to the light and looked through the chamber. Then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
“Big deal,” I said. “You checked the chamber to see where the bullet was.”
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to me. “Your turn…”
I handed the gun back. “Stuff it,” I told him.
I walked over to pour myself another rum. As I did there was a shot. I looked down. Near my foot, in the kitchen floor, there was a bullet hole.
I turned around.
“You ever point that thing at me again and I’ll kill you, Igor.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He stood there smiling. He slowly began to raise the gun. I waited. Then he lowered the gun. That was about it for the night. We went out to the car and Igor drove us home. But we stopped first at Westlake Park and rented a boat and went out on the lake to finish off the rum. With the last drink, Igor loaded up the gun and shot holes in the bottom of the boat. We were forty yards from shore and had to swim in…
It was late when I got home. I crawled over the old berry bush and through the bedroom window. I undressed and went to bed while in the next room my father snored.
53
I was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by guessing at the answers. I never had to cram for exams. I could get my “C’s.” And as I was coming down the hill I ran into a giant spider web. I was always doing that. I stood there pulling the sticky web from myself and looking for the spider. Then I saw him: a big fat black son-of-a-bitch. I crushed him. I had learned to hate spiders. When I went to hell I would be eaten by a spider.
All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs, I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy. It was either unbearably hot for weeks on end, or it rained, and when it rained it rained for five or six days. The water came up over the lawns and poured into the houses. Who’d ever planned the drainage system had probably been well paid for his ignorance about such matters.
And my own affairs were as bad, as dismal, as the day I had been born. The only difference was that now I could drink now and then, though never often enough. Drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless. Everything else just kept picking and picking, hacking away. And nothing was interesting, nothing. The people were restrictive and careful, all alike. And I’ve got to live with these fuckers for the rest of my life, I thought. God, they all had assholes and sexual organs and their mouths and their armpits. They shit and they chattered and they were dull as horse dung. The girls looked good from a distance, the sun shining through their dresses, their hair. But get up close and listen to their minds running out of their mouths, you felt like digging in under a hill and hiding out with a tommy-gun. I would certainly never be able to be happy, to get married, I could never have children. Hell, I couldn’t even get a job as a dishwasher.
Maybe I’d be a bank robber. Some god-damned thing. Something with flare, fire. You only had one shot. Why be a window washer?
I lit a cigarette and walked further down the hill. Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?
I saw another one of those big black spiders. He was about face-high, in his web, right in my path. I took my cigarette and placed it against him. The tremendous web shook and leaped as he jumped, the branches of the bush trembled. He leaped out of the web and fell to the sidewalk. Cowardly killers, the whole bunch of them. I crushed him with my shoe. A worthwhile day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature—now we would all be eaten up by the bugs and the flies.
I walked further down the hill, I was near the bottom when a large bush began to shake. The King Spider was after me. I strode forward to meet it.
My mother leaped out from behind the bush. “Henry, Henry, don’t go home, don’t go home, your father will kill you!”
“How’s he going to do that? I can whip his ass.”
“No, he’s furious, Henry! Don’t go home, he’ll kill you! I’ve been waiting here for hours!”
My mother’s eyes were wide with fear and quite beautiful, large and brown.
“What’s he doing home this early?”
“He had a headache, he got the afternoon off!”
“I thought you were working, that you’d found a new job?”
She’d gotten a job as a housekeeper.
“He came and got me! He’s furious! He’ll kill you!”
“Don’t worry, Mom, if he messes with me I’ll kick his god-damned ass, I promise you.”
“Henry, be found your short stories and be read them!”
“I never asked him to read them.”
“He found them in a drawer! He read them, be read all of them!”
I had written ten or twelve short stories. Give a man a typewriter and he becomes a writer. I had hidden the stories un
der the paper lining of my shorts-and-stockings drawer.
“Well,” I said, “the old man poked around and he got his fingers burned.”
“He said that he was going to kill you! He said that no son of his could write stories like that and live under the same roof with him!”
I took her by the arm. “Let’s go home, Mom, and see what he does…”
“Henry, he’s thrown all your clothes out on the front lawn, all your dirty laundry, your typewriter, your suitcase and your stories!”
“My stories?”
“Yes, those too…”
“I’ll kill him!”
I pulled away from her and walked across 21st Street and toward Longwood Avenue. She went after me.
“Henry, Henry, don’t go in there.”
The poor woman was yanking at the back of my shirt.
“Henry, listen, get yourself a room somewhere! Henry, I have ten dollars! Take this ten dollars and get yourself a room somewhere!”
I turned. She was holding out the ten.
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ll just go.”
“Henry, take the money! Do it for me! Do it for your mother!”
“Well, all right…”
I took the ten, put it in my pocket.
“Thanks, that’s a lot of money.”
“It’s all right, Henry. I love you, Henry, but you must go.”
She ran ahead of me as I walked toward the house. Then I saw it: everything was strewn across the lawn, all my dirty and clean clothes, the suitcase flung there open, socks, shirts, pajamas, an old robe, everything flung everywhere, on the lawn and into the street. And I saw my manuscripts being blown in the wind, they were in the gutter, everywhere.
My mother ran up the driveway to the house and I screamed after her so he could hear me, “TELL HIM TO COME OUT HERE AND I’LL KNOCK HIS GOD-DAMNED HEAD OFF!”
I went after my manuscripts first. That was the lowest of the blows, doing that to me. They were the one thing he had no right to touch. As I picked up each page from the gutter, from the lawn and from the street, I began to feel better. I found every page I could, placed them in the suitcase under the weight of a shoe, then rescued the typewriter. It had broken out of its case but it looked all right. I looked at my rags scattered about. I left the dirty laundry, I left the pajamas, which were only a handed-down pair of his discards. There wasn’t much else to pack. I closed the suitcase, picked it up with the typewriter and started to walk away. I could see two faces peering after me from behind the drapes. But I quickly forgot that, walked up Longwood, across 21st and up old Westview hill. I didn’t feel much different than I had always felt. I was neither elated nor dejected; it all seemed to be just a continuation. I was going to take the “W” streetcar, get a transfer, and go somewhere downtown.
54
I found a room on Temple Street in the Filipino district. It was $3.50 a week, upstairs on the second floor. I paid the landlady—a middle-aged blond—a week’s rent. The toilet and tub were down the hall but there was a wash basin to piss in.
My first night there I discovered a bar downstairs just to the right of the entrance. I liked that. All I had to do was climb the stairway and I was home. The bar was full of little dark men but they didn’t bother me. I’d heard all the stories about Filipinos—that they liked white girls, blonds in particular, that they carried stilettoes, that since they were all the same size, seven of them would chip in and buy one expensive suit, with all the accessories, and they would take turns wearing the suit one night a week. George Raft had said somewhere that Filipinos set the style trends. They stood on street corners and swung golden chains around and around, thin golden chains, seven or eight inches long, each man’s chain-length indicating the length of his penis.
The bartender was Filipino.
“You’re new, huh?” he asked.
“I live upstairs. I’m a student.”
“No credit.”
I put some coins down.
“Give me an Eastside.”
He came back with the bottle.
“Where can a fellow get a girl?” I asked.
He picked up some of the coins.
“I don’t know anything,” he said and walked to the register.
That first night I closed the bar. Nobody bothered me. A few blond women left with the Filipinos. The men were quiet drinkers. They sat in little groups with their heads close together, talking, now and then laughing in a very quiet manner. I liked them. When the bar closed and I got up to leave the bartender said, “Thank you.” That was never done in American bars, not to me anyhow.
I liked my new situation. All I needed was money.
I decided to keep going to college. It would give me some place to be during the daytime. My friend Becker had dropped out. There wasn’t anybody that I much cared for there except maybe the instructor in Anthropology, a known Communist. He didn’t teach much Anthropology. He was a large man, casual and likeable.
“Now the way you fry a porterhouse steak,” he told the class, “you get the pan red hot, you drink a shot of whiskey and then you pour a thin layer of salt in the pan. You drop the steak in and sear it but not for too long. Then you flip it, sear the other side, drink another shot of whiskey, take the steak out and eat it immediately.”
Once when I was stretched out on the campus lawn he had come walking by and had stopped and stretched out beside me.
“Chinaski, you don’t believe all that Nazi hokum you’re spreading around, do you?”
“I’m not saying. Do you believe your crap?”
“Of course I do.”
“Good luck.”
“Chinaski, you’re nothing but a wienerschnitzel.”
He got up, brushed off the grass and leaves and walked away…
I had been at the Temple Street place only for a couple of days when Jimmy Hatcher found me. He knocked on the door one night and I opened it and there he was with two other guys, fellow aircraft workers, one called Delmore, the other, Fastshoes.
“How come he’s called ‘Fastshoes’?”
“You ever lend him money, you’ll know.”
“Come on in…How in Christ’s name did you find me?”
“Your folks had you traced by a private dick.”
“Damn, they know how to take the joy out of a man’s life.”
“Maybe they’re worried?”
“If they’re worried all they have to do is send money.”
“They claim you’ll drink it up.”
“Then let them worry…”
The three of them came in and sat around on the bed and the floor. They had a fifth of whiskey and some paper cups. Jimmy poured all around.
“Nice place you’ve got here.”
“It’s great. I can see the City Hall every time I stick my head out the window.”
Fastshoes pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. He was sitting on the rug. He looked up at me.
“You gamble?”
“Every day. You got a marked deck?”
“Hey, you son-of-a-bitch!”
“Don’t curse me or I’ll hang your wig on my mantlepiece.”
“Honest, man, these cards are straight!”
“All I play is poker and 21. What’s the limit?”
“Two bucks.”
“We’ll split for the deal.”
I got the deal and called for draw poker, regular. I didn’t like wild cards, too much luck was needed that way. Two bits for the kitty. As I dealt, Jimmy poured another round.
“How are you making it, Hank?”
“I’m writing term papers for the other people.”
“Brilliant.”
“Yeah…”
“Hey, you guys,” said Jimmy, “I told you this guy was a genius.”
“Yeah,” said Delmore. He was to my right. He opened.
“Two bits,” he said.
We followed him in.
“Three cards,” said Delmore.
“One,” said Jimmy.
/> “Three,” said Fastshoes.
“I’ll stand,” I said.
“Two bits,” said Delmore.
We all stayed in and then I said, “I’ll see your two bits and raise you two bucks.”
Delmore dropped out, Jimmy dropped out. Fastshoes looked at me. “What else do you see besides City Hall when you stick your head out the window?”
“Just play your hand. I’m not here to chat about gymnastics or the scenery.”
“All right,” he said, “I’m out.”
I scooped up the pot and gathered in their cards, leaving mine face down.
“What did ya have?” asked Fastshoes.
“Pay to see or weep forever,” I said sweeping my cards into the deck and mixing them together, shuffling them, feeling like Gable before he got weakened by God at the time of the San Francisco earthquake.
The deck changed hands but my luck held, most of the time. It had been payday at the aircraft plant. Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.
Somehow I felt that the night was to be mine. Delmore soon tapped out and left.
“Fellows,” I said, “I’ve got an idea. Cards are too slow. Let’s just match coins, ten bucks a toss, odd man wins.”
“O.K.,” said Jimmy.
“O.K.,” said Fastshoes.
The whiskey was gone. We were into a bottle of my cheap wine.
“All right,” I said, “flip the coins high! Catch them on your palms. And when I say ‘lift,’ we’ll check the result.”
We flipped them high. Caught them.
“Lift!” I said.
I was odd man. Shit. Twenty bucks, just like that.
I jammed the tens into my pocket.
“Flip!” I said. We did.
“Lift!” I said.
I won again.
“Flip!” I said.
“Lift!” I said.
Fastshoes won.
I got the next.
Then Jimmy won.
I got the next two.
Ham on Rye: A Novel Page 23