Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [14]
“You better get out of here,” I told him. “My father will be coming home soon.”
“Is that right?” he asked.
I stood up. “What are you doing here?”
“I hear you guys from Delsey Grammar think you’re tough.”
“We win all the inter-school games.”
“That’s because you cheat. We don’t like cheaters at Marmount.”
He had on an old blue shirt, half unbuttoned in front. He had a leather thong on his left wrist.
“You think you’re tough?” he asked me.
“No.”
“What do you have in your garage? I think I’ll take something from your garage.”
“Stay out of there.”
The garage doors were open and he walked past me. There wasn’t much in there. He found an old deflated beach ball and picked it up.
“I think I’ll take this.”
“Put it down.”
“Down your throat!” he said and then he threw it at my head. I ducked. He came out of the garage toward me. I backed up.
He followed me into the yard. “Cheaters never prosper!” he said. He swung at me. I ducked. I could feel the wind from his swing. I closed my eyes, rushed him and started punching. I was hitting something, sometimes. I could feel myself getting hit but it didn’t hurt. Mostly I was scared. There was nothing to do but to keep punching. Then I heard a voice: “Stop it!” It was Lila Jane. She was in my backyard. We both stopped fighting. She took an old tin can and threw it. It hit the boy from Marmount in the middle of the forehead and bounced off. He stood there a moment and then ran off, crying and howling. He ran out the rear gate and down the alley and was gone. A little tin can. I was surprised, a big guy like him crying like that. At Delsey we had a code. We never made a sound. Even the sissies took their beatings silently. Those guys from Marmount weren’t much.
“You didn’t have to help me,” I told Lila Jane.
“He was hitting you!”
“He wasn’t hurting me.”
Lila Jane ran off through the yard, out the rear gate, then into her yard and into her house.
Lila Jane still likes me, I thought.
11
During the second and third grades I still didn’t get a chance to play baseball but I knew that somehow I was developing into a player. If I ever got a bat in my hands again I knew I would hit it over the school building. One day I was standing around and a teacher came up to me.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“This is Physical Education. You should be participating. Are you disabled?”
“What?”
“Is there anything wrong with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come with me.”
He walked me over to a group. They were playing kickball. Kickball was like baseball except they used a soccer ball. The pitcher rolled it to the plate and you kicked it. If it went on a fly and was caught you were out. If it rolled on through the infield or you kicked it high between the fielders you took as many bases as you could.
“What’s your name?” the teacher asked me.
“Henry.”
He walked up to the group. “Now,” he said, “Henry is going to play shortstop.”
They were from my grade. They all knew me. Shortstop was the toughest position. I went out there. I knew they were going to gang up on me. The pitcher rolled the ball real slow and the first guy kicked it right at me. It came hard, chest high, but it was no problem. The ball was big and I stuck out my hands and caught it. I threw the ball to the pitcher. The next guy did the same thing. It came a little higher this time. And a little faster. No problem. Then Stanley Greenberg walked up to the plate. That was it. I was out of luck. The pitcher rolled the ball and Stanley kicked it. It came at me like a cannonball, head high. I wanted to duck but didn’t. The ball smashed into my hands and I held it. I took the ball and rolled it to the pitcher’s mound. Three outs. I trotted to the sideline. As I did, some guy passed me and said, “Chinaski, the great shitstop!”
It was the boy with the vaseline in his hair and the long black nostril hairs. I spun around. “Hey!” I said. He stopped.