Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [13]
Lila Jane was one of the pretty girls I’d seen at school. She was one of the nicest, and she was living right next door. One day when I was in the yard she came up to the fence and stood there looking at me.
“You don’t play with the other boys, do you?”
I looked at her. She had long red-brown hair and dark brown eyes.
“No,” I said, “no, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I see them enough at school.”
“I’m Lila Jane,” she said.
“I’m Henry.”
She kept looking at me and I sat there on the grass and looked at her. Then she said, “Do you want to see my panties?”
“Sure,” I said.
She lifted her dress. The panties were pink and clean. They looked good. She kept holding her dress up and then turned around so that I could see her behind. Her behind looked nice. Then she pulled her dress down. “Goodbye,” she said and walked off.
“Goodbye,” I said.
It happened each afternoon. “Do you want to see my panties?”
“Sure.”
The panties were nearly always a different color and each time they looked better.
One afternoon after Lila Jane showed me her panties I said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
“All right,” she said.
I met her in front and we walked down the street together. She was really pretty. We walked along without saying anything until we came to a vacant lot. The weeds were tall and green.
“Let’s go into the vacant lot,” I said.
“All right,” said Lila Jane.
We walked out into the tall weeds.
“Show me your panties again.”
She lifted her dress. Blue panties.
“Let’s stretch out here,” I said.
We got down in the weeds and I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her. Then I pulled up her dress and looked at her panties. I put my hand on her behind and kissed her again. I kept kissing her and grabbing at her behind. I did this for quite a long time. Then I said, “Let’s do it.” I wasn’t sure what there was to do but I felt there was more.
“No, I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Those men will see.”
“What men?”
“There!” she pointed.
I looked between the weeds. Maybe half a block away some men were working repairing the street.
“They can’t see us!”
“Yes, they can!”
I got up. “God damn it!” I said and I walked out of the lot and went back home.
I didn’t see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn’t matter. It was football season and I was—in my imagination—a great quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best running into grown men. I crushed them. It took five or six men to tackle me. Sometimes, like in baseball, I felt sorry for everybody and I allowed myself to be tackled after only gaining 8 or 10 yards. Then I usually got injured, badly, and they had to carry me off the field. My team would fall behind, say 40 to 17, and with 3 or 4 minutes left to play I’d return, angry that I had been injured. Every time I got the ball I ran all the way to a touchdown. How the crowd screamed! And on defense I made every tackle, intercepted every pass. I was everywhere. Chinaski, the Fury! With the gun ready to go off I took the kickoff deep in my own end zone. I ran forward, sideways, backwards. I broke tackle after tackle, I leaped over fallen tacklers. I wasn’t getting any blocking. My team was a bunch of sissies. Finally, with five men hanging on to me I refused to fall and dragged them over the goal line for the winning touchdown.
I looked up one afternoon as a big guy entered our yard through