Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [45]
I must have had 5,000 demerits by graduation time but it didn’t seem to matter. They wanted to get rid of me. I was standing outside in the line that was filing into the auditorium one by one. We each had on our cheap little cap and gown that had been passed down again and again to the next graduating group. We could hear each person’s name as they walked across the stage. They were making one big god-damned deal out of graduating from jr. high. The band played our school song:
Oh, Mt. Justin, Oh, Mt. Justin
We will be true,
Our hearts are singing wildly
All our skies are blue…
We stood in line, each of us waiting to march across the stage. In the audience were our parents and friends.
“I’m about to puke,” said one of the guys.
“We only go from crap to more crap,” said another.
The girls seemed to be more serious about it. That’s why I didn’t really trust them. They seemed to be part of the wrong things. They and the school seemed to have the same song.
“This stuff brings me down,” said one of the guys. “I wish I had a smoke.”
“Here you are…”
Another of the guys handed him a cigarette. We passed it around between four or five of us. I took a hit and exhaled through my nostrils. Then I saw Curly Wagner walking in.
“Ditch it!” I said. “Here comes vomit-head!”
Wagner walked right up to me. He was dressed in his grey gym suit, including sweatshirt, just as he had been the first time I saw him and all the other times afterward. He stood in front of me.
“Listen,” he said, “you think you’re getting away from me because you’re getting out of here, but you’re not! I’m going to follow you the rest of your life. I’m going to follow you to the ends of the earth and I’m going to get you!”
I just glanced at him without comment and he walked off. Wagner’s little graduation speech only made me that much bigger with the guys. They thought I must have done some big god-damned thing to rile him. But it wasn’t true. Wagner was just simple-crazy.
We got nearer and nearer to the doorway of the auditorium. Not only could we hear each name being announced, and the applause, but we could see the audience.
Then it was my turn.
“Henry Chinaski,” the principal said over the microphone. And I walked forward. There was no applause. Then one kindly soul in the audience gave two or three claps.
There were rows of seats set up on the stage for the graduating class. We sat there and waited. The principal gave his speech about opportunity and success in America. Then it was all over. The band struck up the Mt. Justin school song. The students and their parents and friends rose and mingled together. I walked around, looking. My parents weren’t there. I made sure. I walked around and gave it a good look-see.
It was just as well. A tough guy didn’t need that. I took off my ancient cap and gown and handed it to the guy at the end of the aisle—the janitor. He folded the pieces up for the next time.
I walked outside. The first one out. But where could I go? I had eleven cents in my pocket. I walked back to where I lived.
29
That summer, July 1934, they gunned down John Dillinger outside the movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered him. More than a year earlier the banks had collapsed. Prohibition was repealed and my father drank Eastside beer again. But the worst thing was Dillinger getting it. A lot of people admired Dillinger and it made everybody feel terrible. Roosevelt was President. He gave Fireside Chats over the radio and everybody listened. He could really talk. And he began to enact programs to put people to work. But things were still very bad. And my boils got worse, they were unbelievably large.
That September I was scheduled to go to Woodhaven High but my father insisted I go to Chelsey High.
“Look,” I told him, “Chelsey is out of this district. It’s too far away.”
“You’ll do as I tell you. You’ll register at Chelsey High.”
I knew why he wanted