Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [67]
I changed into my working clothes, went out, and with my father watching me from beneath his dark and evil eyebrows, I opened the garage doors and carefully pulled the mower out backwards, the mower blades not turning then, but waiting.
42
“You ought to try to be like Abe Mortenson,” said my mother, “he gets straight A’s. Why can’t you ever get any A’s?”
“Henry is dead on his ass,” said my father. “Sometimes I can’t believe he’s my son.”
“Don’t you want to be happy, Henry?” asked my mother. “You never smile. Smile and be happy.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” said my father. “Be a man!”
“Smile, Henry!”
“What’s going to become of you? How the hell you going to make it? You don’t have any get up and go!”
“Why don’t you go see Abe? Talk to him, learn to be like him,” said my mother…
I knocked on the door of the Mortensons’ apartment. The door opened. It was Abe’s mother.
“You can’t see Abe. He’s busy studying.”
“I know, Mrs. Mortenson. I just want to see him a minute.”
“All right. His room is right down there.”
I walked on down. He had his own desk. He was sitting with a book open on top of two other books. I knew the book by the color of the cover: Civics. Civics, for Christ sake, on a Sunday.
Abe looked up and saw me. He spit on his hands and then turned back to the book. “Hi,” he said, looking down at the page.
“I bet you’ve read that same page ten times over, sucker.”
“I’ve got to memorize everything.”
“It’s just crap.”
“I’ve got to pass my tests.”
“You ever thought of fucking a girl?”
“What?” he spit on his hands.
“You ever looked up a girl’s dress and wanted to see more? Ever thought about her snatch?”
“That’s not important.”
“It’s important to her.”
“I’ve got to study.”
“We’re having a pick-up game of baseball. Some of the guys from school.”
“On Sunday?”
“What’s wrong with Sunday? People do a lot of things on Sunday.”
“But baseball?”
“The pros play on Sunday.”
“But they get paid.”
“Are you getting paid for reading that same page over and over? Come on, get some air in your lungs, it might clear your head.”
“All right. But just for a little while.”
He got up and I followed him up the hall and into the front room. We walked toward the door.
“Abe, where are you going?”
“I’ll just be gone a little while.”
“All right. But hurry back. You’ve got to study.”
“I know…”
“All right, Henry, you make sure he gets back.”
“I’ll take care of him, Mrs. Mortenson.”
There was Baldy and Jimmy Hatcher and some other guys from school and a few guys from the neighborhood. We only had seven guys on each side which left a couple of defensive holes, but I liked that. I played center field. I had gotten good, I was catching up. I covered most of the outfield. I was fast. I liked to play in close to grab the short ones. But what I liked best was running back to grab those high hard ones hit over my head. That’s what Jigger Statz did with the Los Angeles Angels. He only hit about .280 but the hits he took away from the other team made him as valuable as a .500 hitter.
Every Sunday a dozen or more girls from the neighborhood would come and watch us. I ignored them. They really screamed when something exciting happened. We played hardball and we each had our own glove, even Mortenson. He had the best one. It had hardly been used.
I trotted out to center and the game began. We had Abe at second base. I slammed my fist into my mitt and hollered in at Mortenson, “Hey, Abe, you ever jacked-off into a raw egg? You don’t have to die to go to heaven!”
I heard the girls laughing.
The first guy struck out. He wasn’t much. I struck out a lot too but I was the hardest hitter of them all. I could really put the wood to it: out of the lot and into the street. I always crouched low over the plate. I looked like a wound-up spring standing there.
Each moment of the game was exciting to me. All the games I had missed mowing that lawn, all those early school days of being chosen next-to-last were over. I had blossomed. I had something and I knew I had it and it felt good.
“Hey, Abe!