Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [104]
The others came running up. “I think he’s hurt,” I said. “Come on, somebody help me get him off the field.”
Stapen got him on one side and I got Kong on the other and we walked him to the sideline. Near the sideline I pretended to stumble and ground my left shoe into his ankle.
“Oh,” said Kong, “please leave me alone…”
“I’m just helpin’ ya, buddy.”
When we got him to the sideline we dropped him. Kong sat and rubbed the blood from his mouth. Then he reached down and felt his ankle. It was skinned and would soon begin to swell. I bent over him. “Hey, Kong, let’s finish the game. We’re behind 42-7 and need a chance to catch up.”
“Naw, I gotta make my next class.”
“I didn’t know they taught dog-catching here.”
“It’s English Lit I.”
“That figures. Well, look, I’ll help you over to the gym and I’ll put you under a hot shower, what you say?”
“No, you stay away from me.”
Kong got up. He was pretty busted. The great shoulders sagged, there was dirt and blood on his face. He limped a few steps. “Hey, Quinn,” he said to one of his buddies, “gimme a hand…”
Quinn took one of Kong’s arms and they walked slowly across the field toward the gym.
“Hey, Kong!” I yelled, “I hope you make your class! Tell Bill Saroyan I said ‘hello’!”
The other fellows were standing around, including Baldy and Ballard who had come down from the stands. Here I had done my best ever god-damned act and not a pretty girl around for miles.
“Anybody got a smoke?” I asked.
“I got some Chesterfields,” Baldy said.
“You still smoking pussy cigarettes?” I asked.
“I’ll take one,” said Joe Stapen.
“All right,” I said, “since that’s all there is.”
We stood around, smoking.
“We still have enough guys around to play a game,” somebody said.
“Fuck it,” I said. “I hate sports.”
“Well,” said Stapen, “you sure took care of Kong.”
“Yeah,” said Baldy, “I watched the whole thing. There’s only one thing that confuses me.”
“What’s that?” asked Stapen.
“I wonder which guy is the sadist?”
“Well,” I said, “I gotta go. There’s a Cagney movie showing tonight and I’m taking my cunt.”
I began to walk across the field.
“You mean you’re taking your right hand to the movie?” one of the guys yelled after me.
“Both hands,” I said over my shoulder.
I walked off the field, down past the Chemistry Building and then out on the front lawn. There they were, boys and girls with their books, sitting on benches, under the trees, or on the lawn. Green books, blue books, brown books. They were talking to each other, smiling, laughing at times. I cut over to the side of the campus where the “V” car line ended. I boarded the “V,” got my transfer, went to the back of the car, took the last seat in back, as always, and waited.
58
I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn’t like what I saw down there. Those men and women had no special daring or brilliance. They wanted what everybody else wanted. There were also some obvious mental cases down there who were allowed to walk the streets undisturbed. I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. I knew that I wasn’t entirely sane. I still knew, as I had as a child, that there was something strange about myself. I felt as if I were destined to be a murderer, a bank robber, a saint, a rapist, a monk, a hermit. I needed an isolated place to hide. Skid row was disgusting. The life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death. There seemed to be no possible alternative. Education