Charles Bukowski - Short Stories Collection Part 35

"you'll make a good rabbi some day but you should understand all this."

the kid is studying to be a rabbi.

"I don't understand it," he said.

"I need a drink," I said. "if John Thomas were here he'd murder them all. but I ain't John Thomas."

I was just about to leave, the woman just kept on ramming the white pickup truck to pieces, I was just about to leave when an old man in a floppy brown overcoat and gla.s.ses, a real old guy, he was older than I, and that's old, he came out and confronted the kid in the white t-s.h.i.+rt. confronted? that's the right word ain't it?

anyhow, as they say, the old guy with gla.s.ses and floppy brown overcoat runs out with this big can of green paint, it must have been at least a gallon or 5 gallons, I don't know what it means, I have completely lost the plot or the meaning, if there ever was any in the first place, and the old man throws the paint on the insane kid in the white t-s.h.i.+rt circling around on DeLongpre ave. in the chickens.h.i.+t Hollywood moonlight, and most of it misses him and some of it gets him, mostly where his heart used to be, a smash of green along the white, and it happens fast, like things happen fast, almost quicker than eye or the pulse can add up, and that's why you get such diverent accounts of any action, riot or fist fight or anything, the eye and the soul can't keep up with the frustrating animal ACTION, but I saw the old man go down, fall, I think the first was a push, but I know that the second wasn't. the woman in the car stopped ramming and honking and just sat there screaming, screaming, one total pitch of scream that meant the same thing as her leaning on the honker, she was dead and finished forever in a *69 car and she couldn't fathom it, she was hooked and broken, thrown away, and some small touch inside of her still realized this - n.o.body ever finally loses their soul - they only p.i.s.s away 99/100ths of it.

white t-s.h.i.+rt landed goon on the old man on the second shot. broke his gla.s.ses. let him flopping and floundering in his own brown overcoat. the old man got up and the kid gave him another shot, knocked him down, hit him against as he got halfa.s.s up, the kid in the white t was having a good time of it.

the young poet said to me, "JESUS! LOOK WHAT HE'S DOING TO THE OLD MAN!"

"humm, very interesting," I said, whis.h.i.+ng I had a drink or a smoke at least.

I walked off back toward my place. then I saw the squad car and moved a bit faster. the kid followed me in.

"why don't we go back out there and tell them what happened?"

"because nothing happened except that everybody has been driven insane and stupid by life. in this society there are only two things that count: don't be caught without money and don't get caught high on any kind of high."

"but he shouldn't have done that to the old man."

"that's what old men are for."

"but what about justice?"

"but that is justice: the young whipping the old, the living whipping the dead. don't you see?"

"but you say these things and you're old."

"I know, let's step inside."

I brought out some more beer and we sat there. through the walls you could hear the radio of the stupid squad car. 2 twentytwo years old kids with guns and clubs were going to be the immediate decision-makers upon 2,000 years of idiotic, h.o.m.os.e.xual, s.a.d.i.s.tic Christianity.

no wonder they felt good in their smooth and well-fed stretched black, most policemen being lower-middle cla.s.s servants given a steak in the frying pan and a wife with halfway decent a.s.s and legs, and a little quiet home in s.h.i.+tland - they'd kill you to prove Los Angeles was right, we're taking you in, sir, so sorry, sir, but we've got to do this, sir.

2,000 years of Christianity and what do you end up with? squad-car radios trying to hold rotting s.h.i.+t together, and what else? tons of wars, little air raids, muggers in streets, knifings, so many insane that you just forget it, you just let them run the streets in policeman's uniforms or out of them.

so we went inside and the kid kept saying, "hey, let's go out there and tell the police what happened."

"no, kid, please. if you are drunk you are guilty no matter what happens."

"but they are right outside, let's go to tell them."

"there's nothing to tell."

the kid looked at me as if I were some kind of chickens.h.i.+t coward. I was. the longest he had ever been in jail was 7 hours under some kind of east L.A. campus protestation.

"kid, I think that the night is over."

I threw him a blanket for the couch and he went to sleep. I took 2 quarts of beer, opened both, set them on the headboard of my rented bed, took a big swallow, stretched out, waited on my death as c.u.mmings must have done, Jeffers, the garbage man, the newspaper boy, the touta I finished off the beers.

the kid woke up about 9:30 a.m. I can't understand early risers. Micheline was another early riser. running around ringing doorbells, waking everybody up. they were nervous, trying to push down walls. I always figured a man was a d.a.m.n fool if he got up before noon. Norse had the best idea - sit around in silk robe and pajamas and let the world go its way.

I let the kid out the door and off he went into the world. the green paint was dry on the street. Maeterlinck's bluebird was dead. Hirschman sat in a dark room with a b.l.o.o.d.y right nostril.

and I had written another FOREWORD to another book of somebody's poetry. how many more?

"hey, Bukowski, I've got this book of poems here. I thought you might read the poems and say something."

"say something? but I don't like poetry, man."

"that's all right. just say something."

the kid was gone. I had to take a s.h.i.+t. the toilet was clogged; the landlord gone for 3 days. I took the s.h.i.+t and put it in a brown paper bag. then I went outside and walked with the paperbag like a man going to work with his lunch. then when I got to the vacant lot I threw the bag. three forewords. 3 bags of s.h.i.+t. n.o.body would ever understand how Bukowski suffered.

I walked back toward my place, dreaming of supine women and everlasting fame. the former would be nicer. and I was running out of brown bags. I mean, paper bags. 10 a.m. there was the mailman. a letter from Beiles in Greece. he said it was raining there too.

fine, then, and inside I was alone again, and the madness of the night was the madness of the day. I arranged myself upon the bed, supine, staring upward and listened to the c.o.c.ksucking rain.

Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip I WALKED AROUND outside and thought about it. It was the longest one I ever got. Usually they only said, "Sorry, this did not quite make the grade" or "Sorry, this did't quite work in." Or more often, the regular printed rejection form.

But this was the longest, the longest ever. It was from my story "My Adventures in Half a Hundred Rooming Houses." I walked under a lamppost, took the little slip out of my pocket and reread it - Dear Mr. Bukowski: Again, this is a conglomeration of extremely good stuff and other stuff so full of idolized prost.i.tutes, morning-after vomiting scenes, misanthropy, praise for suicide etc. that it is not quite for a magazine of any circulation at all. This is, however, pretty much a saga of a certain type of person and in it I think you've done an honest job. Possibly we will print you sometime, but I don't know exactly when. That depends on you.

Sincerely yours, Whit Burnett Oh, I knew the signature: the long "h" that twisted into the end of the "W," and the beginning of the "B" which dropped halfway down the page.

I put the slip back in my pocket and walked on down the street. I felt pretty good.

Here I had only been writing two years. Two short years. It took Hemingway ten years. And Sherwood Anderson, he was forty before he was published.

I guess I would have to give up drinking and women of ill-fame, though. Whiskey was hard to get anyhow and wine was ruining my stomach. Millie though - Millie, that would be harder, much harder.

aBut Millie, Millie, we must remember art. Dostoievsky, Gorki, for Russia, and now America wants an Eastern-European. America is tired of Browns and smiths. The Browns and the Smiths are good writers but there are too many of them and they all write alike. America wants the fuzzy blackness, impractical meditations and repressed desires of an Eastern-European.

Millie, Millie, your figure is just right: it all pours down tight to the hips and loving you is as easy as putting on a pair of gloves in zero weather. Your room is always warm and cheerful and you have record alb.u.ms and cheese sandwiches that I like. And Millie, your cat, remember? Remember when he was a kitten? I tried to teach him to shake hands and to roll over, and you said a cat wasn't a dog and it couldn't be done, Well, I did it, didn't I, Millie? The cat's big now and he's been a mother and had kittens. We've been friends a long time. But it's going to have to go now, Millie: cats and figures and Tschaikowsky's 6th Symphony. America needs an Eastern-Europeana.

I found I was in front of my rooming house by then and I started to go in. Then I saw a light on in my window. I looked in: Carson and s.h.i.+pkey were at the table with somebody I didn't know. They were playing cards and in the center sat a huge jug of wine. Carson and s.h.i.+pkey were painters who couldn't make up their minds whether to paint like Salvador Dali or Rockwell Kent, and they worked at the s.h.i.+pyards while trying to decide.

Then I saw a man sitting very quietly on the edge of my bed. He had a mustache and a goatee and looked familiar. I seemed to remember his face. I had seen it in a book, a newspaper, a movie, maybe. I wondered. Then I remembered.

When I remembered, I didn't know whether to go in or not. After all, what did one say? How did one act? With a man like that it was hard. You had to be careful not to say the wrong words, you had to be careful about everything.

I decided to walk around the block once first. I read someplace that that helped when you were nervous. I heard s.h.i.+pkey swearing as I left and I heard somebody drop a gla.s.s. That wouldn't help me any.

I decided to make up my speech ahead of time. "Really, I'm not a very good speaker at all. I'm very withdrawn and tense. I save it all and put it in words on paper. I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way I've always been."

I thought that would do it and when I finished my block's walk I went right into my room.

I could see that Carson and s.h.i.+pkey were rather drunk, and I knew they wouldn't help me any. The little card player they had brought with them was also bad off, except he had all the money on his side of the table.

The man with the goatee got up off the bed. "How do you do, sir?" he asked.

"Fine, and you?" I shook hands with him. "I hope you haven't been waiting too long?" I said.

"Oh no."

"Really," I said, "I'm not a verv good speaker at all -"

"Except when he's drunk, then he yells his head off. Sometimes he goes to the square and lectures and if n.o.body listens to him he talks to the birds," said s.h.i.+pkey.

The man with the goatee grinned. He had a marvelous grin. Evidently a man of understanding.

The other two went on playing cards, but s.h.i.+pkey turned his chair around and watched us.

"I'm very withdrawn and tense," I continued, "and -"

"Past tense or circus tents?" yelled s.h.i.+pkey.

That was very bad, but the man with the goatee smiled again and I felt better.

"I save it all and put it in words on paper and -"

"Nine-tenths or pretense?" yelled s.h.i.+pkey.

"- and I'm sure you'll be disappointed in me, but it's the way I've always been."

"Listen, mister!" yelled s.h.i.+pkey wobbling back and forth in his chair. "Listen, you with the goatee!"

"Yes?"

"Listen, I'm six feet tall with wavy hair, a gla.s.s eye and a pair of red dice."

The man laughed.

"You don't believe me then? You don't believe I have a pair of red dice?"

s.h.i.+pkey, when intoxicated always wanted, for some reason, to make people believe he had a gla.s.s eye. He would point to one eye or the other and maintain it was a gla.s.s eye. He claimed the gla.s.s eye was made for him by his father, the greatest specialist in the world, who had, unfortunately, been killed by a tiger in China.

Suddenly Carson began yelling, "I saw you take that card! Where did you get it? Give it here, here! Marked, marked! I thought so! No wonder you've been winning! So! So!"

Carson rose up and grabbed the little card player by the tie and pulled up on it. Carson was blue in the face with anger and the little card player began to turn red as Carson pulled up on the tie.

"What's up, ha! Ha! What's up! What's going on?" yelled s.h.i.+pkey. "Lemme see, ha? Gimme tha dope!"

Carson was all blue and could hardly speak. He hissed the words out of his lips with a great effort and held up on the tie. The little card player began to flop his arms about like a great octopus brought to the surface.

"He crossed us!" hissed Carson. "Crossed us! Pulled one from under his sleeve, sure as the Lord! Crossed us, I tell you!"

s.h.i.+pkey walked behind the little card player and grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back and forth. Carson remained at the tie.

"Did vou cross us, huh? Did you! Speak! Speak!" yelled s.h.i.+pkey pulling at the hair.

The little card player didn't speak. He just flopped his arms and began to sweat.

"I'll take you someplace where we can get a beer and something to eat" I said to the man with the goatee.

"Come on! Talk! Give out! You can't cross us!"

"Oh, that won't be necessary," said the man with the goatee.

"Rat! Louse! Fish-faced pig!"

"I insist", I said.

"Rob a man with a gla.s.s eye, will you? I'll show you, fish-faced pig!"

"That's very kind of you, and I am a little hungry, thanks," said the man with the goatee.

"Speak! Speak, fish-faced pig! If you don't speak in two minutes, in just two minutes, I'll cut your heart out for a doork.n.o.b!"

"Let's leave right away," I said.

"All right," said the man with the goatee.

ALL the eating places were closed at that time of the night and it was a long ride into town. I couldn't take him back to my room, so I had to take a chance on Millie. She always had plenty of food. At any rate, she always had cheese.

I was right. She made us cheese sandwiches with coffee. The cat knew me and leaped into my lap.

I put the cat on the floor.

"Watch, Mr. Burnett," I said.

"Shake hands!" I said to the cat. "Shake hands!"

The cat just sat there.

"That's funny, it always used to do it," I said. "Shake hands!"

I remembered s.h.i.+pkey had told Mr. Burnett that I talked to birds.

"Come on now! Shake hands!"

I began to feel foolish.