Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [2]
“Henry,” he said, “you and I, we know each other. Come into the house.”
He held out his hand. As I got closer I could smell the stink of his breath. It was very strong but he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen and I wasn’t afraid.
I went into his house with him. He led me to a chair.
“Sit down, please. I’m very happy to see you.”
He went into another room. Then he came out with a little tin box.
“It’s for you. Open it.”
I had trouble with the lid, I couldn’t open the box.
“Here,” he said, “let me have it.”
He loosened the lid and handed the tin box back to me. I lifted the lid and here was this cross, a German cross with a ribbon.
“Oh no,” I said, “you keep it.”
“It’s yours,” he said, “it’s just a gummy badge.”
“Thank you.”
“You better go now. They will be worried.”
“All right. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Henry. No, wait…”
I stopped. He reached into a small front pocket of his pants with a couple of fingers, and tugged at a long gold chain with his other hand. Then he handed me his gold pocket watch, with the chain.
“Thank you, Grandfather…”
They were waiting outside and I got into the Model-T and we drove off. They all talked about many things as we drove along. They were always talking, and they talked all the way back to my grandmother’s house. They spoke of many things but never, once, of my grandfather.
2
I remember the Model-T. Sitting high, the running boards seemed friendly, and on cold days, in the mornings, and often at other times, my father had to fit the hand-crank into the front of the engine and crank it many times in order to start the car.
“A man can get a broken arm doing this. It kicks back like a horse.”
We went for Sunday rides in the Model-T when grandmother didn’t visit. My parents liked the orange groves, miles and miles of orange trees always either in blossom or full of oranges. My parents had a picnic basket and a metal chest. In the metal chest were frozen cans of fruit on dry ice, and in the picnic basket were weenie and liverwurst and salami sandwiches, potato chips, bananas and soda-pop. The soda-pop was shifted continually back and forth between the metal box and the picnic basket. It froze quickly, and then had to be thawed.
My father smoked Camel cigarettes and he knew many tricks and games which he showed us with the packages of Camel cigarettes. How many pyramids were there? Count them. We would count them and then he would show us more of them.
There were also tricks about the humps on the camels and about the written words on the package. Camel cigarettes were magic cigarettes.
There was a particular Sunday I can recall. The picnic basket was empty. Yet we still drove along through the orange groves, further and further away from where we lived.
“Daddy,” my mother asked, “aren’t we going to run out of gas?”
“No, there’s plenty of god-damned gas.”
“Where are we going?”
“I’m going to get me some god-damned oranges!”
My mother sat very still as we drove along. My father pulled up alongside the road, parked near a wire fence and we sat there, listening. Then my father kicked the door open and got out.
“Bring the basket.”
We all climbed through the strands of the fence.
“Follow me,” said my father.
Then we were between two rows of orange trees, shaded from the sun by the branches and the leaves. My father stopped and reaching up began yanking oranges from the lower branches of the nearest tree. He seemed angry, yanking the oranges from the tree, and the branches seemed angry, leaping up and down. He threw the oranges into the picnic basket which my mother held. Sometimes he missed and I chased the oranges and put them into the basket. My father went from tree to tree, yanking at the lower branches, throwing the oranges into the picnic basket.
“Daddy, we have enough,” said my mother.
“Like hell.”
He kept yanking.
Then a man stepped forward, a very tall man. He held a shotgun.
“All right, buddy, what do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m picking oranges. There are plenty of oranges.