“Good luck, Marine!” he hollered.
Becker walked out. I paused inside the door and looked back at the barkeep.
“World War I, eh?”
“Yeh, yeh …” he said happily.
I caught up with Becker. We half-ran to the bus depot together. Servicemen in uniform were already beginning to arrive. The whole place had an air of excitement. A sailor ran past.
“I’M GOING TO KILL ME A JAP!” he screamed.
Becker stood in the ticket line. One of the servicemen had his girlfriend with him. The girl was talking, crying, holding on to him, kissing him. Poor Becker only had me. I stood to one side, waiting. It was a long wait. The same sailor who had screamed earlier came up to me. “Hey, fellow, aren’t you going to help us? What’re you standing there for? Why don’t you go down and sign up?”
There was whiskey on his breath. He had freckles and a very large nose.
“You’re going to miss your bus,” I told him.
He went off toward the bus departure point.
“Fuck the god-damned fucking Japs!” he said.
Becker finally had his ticket. I walked him to his bus. He stood in another line.
“Any advice?” he asked.
“No.”
The line was filing slowly into the bus. The girl was weeping and talking rapidly and quietly to her soldier.
Becker was at the door. I punched him on the shoulder. “You’re the best I’ve known.”
“Thanks, Hank …”
“Goodbye …”
—HAM ON RYE
The Loser
and the next I remembered I’m on a table,
everybody’s gone: the head of bravery
under light, scowling, flailing me down …
and then some toad stood there, smoking a cigar:
“Kid you’re no fighter,” he told me,
and I got up and knocked him over a chair;
it was like a scene in a movie, and
he stayed there on his big rump and said
over and over: “Jesus, Jesus, whatsamatta wit
you?” and I got up and dressed,
the tape still on my hands, and when I got home
I tore the tape off my hands and
wrote my first poem,
and I’ve been fighting
ever since.
The Life of a Bum
Harry awakened in his bed, hungover. Badly hungover.
“Shit,” he said lightly.
There was a small sink in the room.
Harry got up, relieved himself in the sink, washed it away with the spigot, then he stuck his head under there and drank some water. Then he splashed water on his face and dried off with a portion of the undershirt he was wearing.
The year was 1943.
Harry picked some clothing up off the floor and slowly began to dress. The shades were down and it was dark except where the sunlight slipped in through the torn shades. There were two windows. A class place.
He walked down the hall to the bathroom, locked the door and sat down. It was amazing that he could still excrete. He hadn’t eaten for days.
Christ, he thought, people have intestines, mouths, lungs, ears, bellybuttons, sexual parts, and … hair, pores, tongues, sometimes teeth, and all the other parts … fingernails, eyelashes, toes, knees, stomachs …
There was something so weary about all that. Why didn’t anybody complain?
Harry finished with the rough roominghouse toilet paper. You can bet the landladies wiped themselves with something better. All those religious landladies with their long-dead husbands.
He pulled up his pants, flushed, walked out of there, down the roominghouse stairway and into the street.
It was 11 a.m. He walked south. The hangover was brutal but he didn’t mind. It told him he had been somewhere else, someplace good. As he walked along he found half a cigarette in his shirt pocket. He stopped, looked at the crushed and blackened end, found a match, then tried to light up. The flame didn’t catch. He kept trying. After the fourth match, which burned his fingers, he was able to get a puff. He gagged, then coughed. He felt his stomach quiver.
A car came driving by swiftly. It was filled with four young men.
“HEY, YOU OLD FART! DIE!” one of them screamed at Harry.
The others laughed. Then they were gone.
Harry’s cigarette was still lit. He took another drag. A curl of blue smoke rose. He liked that curl of blue smoke.
He walked along in the warm sun thinking, I am walking and I am smoking a cigarette.
Harry walked until he got to the park across from the library. He kept dragging on the cigarette. Then he felt the heat from the butt and reluctantly tossed it away. He entered the park and walked until he found a place between a statue and some brush. The statue was of Beethoven. And Beethoven was walking, head bowed, hands clasped behind him, obviously thinking of something.
Harry got down and stretched out on the grass. The mowed grass itched quite a bit. It was pointed, sharp, but it had a good clean smell. The smell of peace.
Tiny insects began to swarm about his face, making irregular circles, crossing each other’s paths but never colliding.
They were only specks but the specks were searching for something.
Harry looked up through the specks at the sky. The sky was blue, and tall as hell. Harry kept looking up at the sky, trying to get something straight. But Harry got nothing. No feeling of eternity. Or God. Not even the Devil. But you had to find God first in order to find the Devil. They came in that order.
Harry didn’t like heavy thoughts. Heavy thoughts could lead to heavy errors.
He thought a little bit about suicide then … in an easy way. Like most men would think about buying a new pair of shoes. The main problem with suicide was the thought that it might lead to something worse. What he really needed was an ice cold bottle of beer, the label soaked just so, and with those chilled beads so beautiful on the surface of the glass.
Harry began to doze … to be awakened by the sound of voices. The voices of very young school girls. They were giggling, laughing.
“Ooooh, look!”
“He’s asleep!”
“Should we wake him up?”
Harry squinted in the sun, peeking at them through nearly-closed eyes. He wasn’t sure how many there were but he saw their colorful dresses: yellow and red and blue and green.
“Look! He’s beautiful!”
They giggled, laughed, ran off.
Harry closed his eyes again.
What had that been about?
Nothing so refreshingly delightful had ever happened to him before. They had called him “beautiful.” Such kindness!
But they wouldn’t be back.
He got up and walked to the edge of the park. There was the avenue. He found a park bench and sat down. There was another bum on the next bench. He was much older than Harry. The bum had a heavy, dark, grim feel about him which reminded Harry of his father.
No, thought Harry, I’m being unkind.
The bum glanced toward Harry. The bum had tiny blank eyes.
Harry gave him a slight smile. The bum turned away.
Then some noise came from the avenue. Engines. It was an army convoy. A long line of trucks filled with soldiers. The soldiers brimmed over, they were packed in, they hung out over the sides of the trucks. The world was at war.
The convoy moved slowly. The soldiers saw Harry sitting on the park bench. Then it began. It was an admixture of hissing, booing and cursing. They were screaming at him.
“HEY, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”
“SLACKER!”
As each truck in the convoy passed, the next truck picked it up:
“GET YOUR ASS OFF THAT BENCH!”
“COWARD!”
“FUCKING FAGGOT!”
“YELLOW BELLY!”
It was a very long and a very slow convoy.
“COME ON AND JOIN US!”
“WE’LL TEACH YOU HOW T
O FIGHT, FREAK!”
The faces were white and brown and black, flowers of hatred.
Then the old bum rose up from his park bench and screamed at the convoy:
“I’LL GET HIM FOR YOU FELLOWS! I FOUGHT IN WORLD WAR I!”
Those in the passing trucks laughed and waved their arms:
“YOU GET HIM, POPS!”
“MAKE HIM SEE THE LIGHT!”
Then the convoy was gone.
They had thrown things at Harry: empty beer cans, soft drink cans, oranges, a banana.
Harry got up, picked up the banana, sat back down, peeled it and ate it. It was wonderful. Then he found an orange, peeled it and chewed and gulped the pulp and the juice. He found another orange and ate that. Then he found a cigarette lighter someone had thrown or dropped. He flicked it. It worked.
He walked down to the bum sitting on the bench, holding the lighter out.
“Hey, buddy, got a smoke?”
The bum’s little eyes fastened upon Harry. They had a flat quality as if the pupils had been removed. The bum’s lower lip quivered.
“You like Hitler, don’t ya?” he said very quietly.
“Look, buddy,” Harry said, “why don’t you and I take off together? Maybe we can score for a drink?”
The old bum’s eyes rolled in his head. For a moment all that Harry saw were the whites of his bloodshot eyes. The eyes then rolled back. The bum looked at him.
“Not with … you!”
“O.K.,” said Harry, “see you around …”
The old bum’s eyes rolled again and he said it once again, only louder:
“NOT WITH … YOU!”
Harry walked slowly out of the park and up the street toward his favorite bar. The bar was always there. Harry moored at the bar. It was his one haven. It was merciless and exact.
On the way Harry came to a vacant lot. A bunch of middle-aged men were playing softball. They were out of shape. Most had pot bellies, were small of stature, had large butts, almost like women. They were all 4-F or too old for the draft.
Harry stood and watched the game. There were many strikeouts, wild pitches, hit batters, errors, badly hit balls, but they kept playing. Almost as a ritual, a duty. And they were angry. The one thing they were good at was anger. The energy of their anger dominated.
Harry stood watching. Everything seemed a waste. Even the softball seemed sad, bouncing about uselessly.
“Hello, Harry, how come you’re not down at the bar?”
It was old thin McDuff, puffing his pipe. McDuff was around 62, he always looked straight forward, he never looked at you but he saw you anyhow from behind those rimless glasses. And he was always dressed in a black suit and blue necktie. He came into the bar each day about noon, had two beers, then left. And you couldn’t hate him and you couldn’t like him. He was like a calendar or a pen holder.
“I’m on my way,” Harry answered.
“I’ll walk with you,” said McDuff.
So Harry walked along with old thin McDuff and old thin McDuff puffed on his pipe. McDuff always kept that pipe lit. That was his thing. McDuff was his pipe. Why not?
They walked along, not talking. There was nothing to say. They stopped at traffic lights, McDuff puffing at his pipe.
McDuff had saved his money. He had never married. He lived in a two room apartment and didn’t do much. Well, he read the newspapers but not with much interest. He wasn’t religious. But it wasn’t out of non-conviction. It was simply because he hadn’t bothered to consider the aspect one way or the other. It was like not being a Republican because one didn’t know what a Republican was. McDuff was neither happy nor unhappy. Once in a while he became a bit of a fidget, something would appear to bother him and for a tiny moment terror would fill his eyes. Then it left quickly … like a fly that had landed … then zoomed away for more promising territory.
Then they were at the bar. They walked in.
The usual crowd.
McDuff and Harry found their stools.
“Two beers,” good old McDuff intoned to the barkeep.
“How ya doin’, Harry?” one of the bar patrons asked.
“Gropin’, shakin’, and shittin’,” Harry answered.
He felt bad for McDuff. Nobody had greeted him. McDuff was a blotter on a desk. He didn’t make an impression on them. They noticed Harry because he was a bum. He made them feel superior. They needed that. McDuff just made them feel bland and they were already bland.
Not much happened. Everybody sat over their drinks, nursing them. Few had the imagination to simply get piss-assed drunk.
A stale Saturday afternoon.
McDuff went for his second beer and was kind enough to buy another for Harry.
McDuff’s pipe was red hot from six hours of continuous firing.
He finished his second beer and walked out and then Harry sat there alone with the remainder of the crew.
It was a slow slow Saturday but Harry knew if he could hang in long enough he could make it. Saturday night was best, of course, for bumming drinks. But there was no place to go until then. Harry was ducking the landlady at the roominghouse. He paid by the week and he was nine days behind.
It got very deadly between drinks. The patrons, they just needed to sit and be somewhere. There was a general loneliness and a gentle fear and the need to be together and chat a bit, it eased them. All Harry needed was something to drink. Harry could drink forever and still need more, there wasn’t enough drink to satisfy him. But the others … they just sat, talking now and then about whatever they talked about.
Harry’s beer was getting flat. And the idea was not to finish it because then you had to buy another and he didn’t have the money. He had to wait and hope. As a professional bummer of drinks Harry knew the first rule: you never asked for one. His thirst was their joke and any demand by him subtracted from their joy of giving.
Harry let his eyes drift down the bar. There were four or five patrons in there. Not many and not much. One of the not much was Monk Hamilton. Monk’s biggest claim to immortality was that he ate six eggs for breakfast. Every day. He thought that gave him an edge. He wasn’t good at thinking. He was huge, almost as wide as he was tall, with pale steady unworried eyes, oaktree neck, big knotted hairy hands.
Monk was talking to the bartender. Harry watched a fly crawl into the beer-wet ashtray before him. The fly walked around in there between the butts, pushed against a sotted cigarette, then it made an angry buzz, rose straight up, then seemed to fly backwards, and to the left, and then was gone.
Monk was a window washer. His bland eyes saw Harry. His thick lips twisted into a superior grin. He picked up his bottle, walked down, took the stool next to Harry.
“Watcha doin’, Harry?”
“Waiting for it to rain.”
“How about a beer?”
“Waiting for it to rain beer, Monk. Thanks.”
Monk ordered two beers. They came along.
Harry liked to drink his right out of the bottle. Monk dumped some of his into a glass.
“Harry, you need a job?”
“Haven’t thought about it.”
“All ya gotta do is hold the ladder. We need a ladder man. It doesn’t pay as good as upstairs work but you get something. How about it?”
Monk was making a joke. Monk thought Harry was too screwed-up to know that.
“Give me some time to think about it, Monk.”
Monk looked down at the other patrons, let his superior grin loose again, winked at them, then looked back at Harry.
“Listen, all you gotta do is hold the ladder steady. I’ll be up there cleaning the windows. All you gotta do is hold the ladder steady. That’s not too hard, is it?”
“Not as hard as a lot of things, Monk.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on! Why don’t ya give it a try?”
“I can’t do it, Monk.”
They all felt good then. Harry was their boy. The
excellent fool.
Harry looked at all those bottles behind the bar. All those good times waiting, all that laughter, all that madness … scotch, whiskey, wine, gin, vodka and all the others. Yet those bottles stood there, unused. It was like a life waiting to be lived that nobody wanted.
“Listen,” said Monk, “I’m going to get a haircut.”
Harry felt Monk’s quiet thickness. Monk had won something somewhere. He fit, like a key in a lock that opened to somewhere.
“Why don’t you come with me while I get a haircut?”
Harry didn’t answer.
Monk leaned closer. “We’ll stop for a beer on the way and I’ll buy you one afterwards.”
“Let’s go …”
Harry emptied his bottle easily into his thirst, put the bottle down. He followed Monk out the door. They walked down the street together. Harry felt like a dog following his master. And Monk was calm, he was functioning, everything fit. It was his Saturday off and he was going to get a haircut.
They found a bar and stopped there. It was much nicer and cleaner than the one Harry usually bummed at. Monk ordered the beers.
How he sat there! A man’s man. And a comfortable one at that. He never thought about death, at least not his own.
As they sat side by side, Harry knew he had made a mistake: an 8 to 5 job would be less painful.
Monk had a mole on the right side of his face, a very relaxed mole, a non-self-conscious mole.
Harry watched Monk pick up his bottle and suck on it. It was only something Monk did, like scratching his nose. He wasn’t hungry for a drink. Monk just sat there with his bottle and it was paid for. And time was going by like shit down a river.
They finished their bottles and Monk said something to the bartender and the bartender answered something.
Then Harry followed Monk out the door. They were together and Monk was going to get a haircut.
They found the barbershop and entered. There were no other customers. The barber knew Monk. As Monk clambered into the chair they said something to each other. The barber spread the sheet and Monk’s head loomed out of there, mole steady on right cheek, and he said, “Short around the ears and not too much off the top.”
Harry, in agony for another drink, picked up a magazine, turned some pages and pretended to be interested.