Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [72]
“Sit down, baby. Have a beer.”
Clare sat down. I was very surprised when she did that.
“You go to Chelsey, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah. Jim and I are buddies.”
“You’re Hank.”
“Yes.”
“He’s told me about you.”
I handed Clare a can of beer. My hand shook. “Here, have a drink, baby.”
She opened the beer and took a sip.
I looked at Clare, lifted my beer and had a hit. She was plenty of woman, a Mae West type, wore the same kind of tight-fitting gown—big hips, big legs. And breasts. Startling breasts.
Clare crossed her wondrous legs, a bit of skirt falling back. Her legs were full and golden and the stockings fit like skin.
“I’ve met your mother,” she said.
I drained my can of beer and put it down by my feet. I opened a new one, took a sip, then looked at her, not knowing whether to took at her breasts or at her legs or into her tired face.
“I’m sorry that I got your son drunk. But I’ve got to tell you something.”
She turned her head, lighting a cigarette as she did so, then faced me again.
“Yes?”
“Clare, I love you.”
She didn’t laugh. She just gave me a little smile, the corners of her mouth turning up a little.
“Poor boy. You’re nothing but a little chicken just out of the egg.”
It was true but it angered me. Maybe because it was true. The dream and the beer wanted it to be something else. I took another drink and looked at her and said, “Cut the shit. Lift your skirt. Show me some leg. Show me some flank.”
“You’re just a boy.”
Then I said it. I don’t know where the words came from, but I said it, “I could tear you in half, baby, if you gave me the chance.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Let’s see.”
Then she did it. Just like that. She uncrossed her legs and pulled her skirt back.
She didn’t have on panties.
I saw her huge white upper flanks, rivers of flesh. There was a large protruding wart on the inside of her left thigh. And there was a jungle of tangled hair between her legs, but it was not bright yellow like the hair on her head, it was brown and shot with grey, old like some sick bush dying, lifeless and sad.
I stood up.
“I’ve got to go, Mrs. Hatcher.”
“Christ, I thought you wanted to party!”
“Not with your son in the other room, Mrs. Hatcher.”
“Don’t worry about him, Hank. He’s passed out.”
“No, Mrs. Hatcher, I’ve really got to go.”
“All right, get out of here you god-damned little piss-ant!”
I closed the door behind me and walked down the hall of the apartment building and out into the street.
To think, somebody had suicided for that.
The night suddenly looked good. I walked along toward my parents’ house.
44
I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn’t particularly want money. I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother’s Day…was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.
My father had a master plan. He told me, “My son, each man during his lifetime should buy a house. Finally he dies and leaves that house to his son. Then his son gets his own house and dies, leaves both houses to his son. That’s two houses. That son gets his own house, that’s three houses…”
The family structure. Victory over adversity through the family. He believed in it. Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what was needed.
I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. He was a stranger. My mother was non-existent. I was cursed. Looking