Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [108]
It took two to play the boxing game and I wasn’t going to play with the pervert who owned the place. Then I saw a little Mexican boy, eight or nine years old. He came walking down the aisle. A nice-looking, intelligent Mexican boy.
“Hey, kid?”
“Yes, Mister?”
“Wanna play this boxing game with me?”
“Free?”
“Sure. I’m paying. Pick your fighter.”
He circled around, peering through the glass. He looked very serious. Then he said, “O.K., I’ll take the guy in the red trunks. He looks best.”
“All right.”
The kid got on his side of the game and stared through the glass. He looked at his fighter, then he looked up at me.
“Mister, don’t you know that there’s a war on?”
“Yes.”
We stood there.
“You gotta put the coin in,” said the kid.
“What are you doing in this place?” I asked him. “How come you’re not in school?”
“It’s Sunday.”
I put the dime in. The kid started squeezing his triggers and I started squeezing mine. The kid had made a bad choice. The left arm of his fighter was broken and only reached up halfway. It could never hit the button on my fighter’s chin. All the kid had was a right hand. I decided to take my time. My guy had blue trunks. I moved him in and out, making sudden flurries. The Mexican kid was great, he kept trying. He gave up on the left arm and just squeezed the trigger for the right arm. I rushed blue trunks in for the kill, squeezing both triggers. The kid kept pumping the right arm of red trunks. Suddenly blue trunks dropped. He went down hard, making a clanking sound.
“I got ya, Mister,” said the kid.
“You won,” I said.
The kid was excited. He kept looking at blue trunks flat on his ass.
“You wanna fight again, Mister?”
I paused, I don’t know why.
“You out of money, Mister?”
“Oh, no.”
“O.K., then, we’ll fight.”
I put in another dime and blue trunks sprang to his feet. The kid started squeezing his one trigger and the right arm of red trunks pumped and pumped. I let blue trunks stand back for a while and contemplate. Then I nodded at the kid. I moved blue trunks in, both arms flailing. I felt I had to win. It seemed very important. I didn’t know why it was important and I kept thinking, why do I think this is so important?
And another part of me answered, just because it is.
Then blue trunks dropped again, hard, making the same iron clanking sound. I looked at him laying on his back down there on his little green velvet mat.
Then I turned around and walked out.
About the Author
CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).
During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence