Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [76]
46
Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears-Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of applications. There was nothing else to do. I didn’t want a job but I didn’t want to live with my parents either. Mears-Starbuck must have had thousands of applications on hand. I couldn’t believe they had chosen me. It was a department store with branches in many cities.
The next Monday, there I was walking to work with my lunch in a brown paper bag. The department store was only a few blocks away from my former high school.
I still didn’t understand why I had been selected. After filling out the application, the interview had lasted only a few minutes. I must have given all the right answers.
First paycheck I get, I thought, I’m going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.
As I walked along I didn’t feel so alone and I wasn’t. I noticed a starving mongrel dog following me. The poor creature was terribly thin; I could see his ribs poking through his skin. Most of his fur had fallen off. What remained clung in dry, twisted patches. The dog was beaten, cowed, deserted, frightened, a victim of Homo sapiens.
I stopped and knelt, put out my hand. He backed off.
“Come here, fellow, I’m your friend…Come on, come on…”
He came closer. He had such sad eyes.
“What have they done to you, boy?”
He came still closer, creeping along the sidewalk, trembling, wagging his tail quite rapidly. Then he leaped at me. He was large, what was left of him. His forelegs pushed me backwards and I was flat on the sidewalk and he was licking my face, mouth, ears, forehead, everywhere. I pushed him off, got up and wiped my face.
“Easy now! You need something to eat! FOOD!”
I reached into my bag and took out a sandwich. I unwrapped it and broke off a portion.
“Some for you and some for me, old boy!”
I put his part of the sandwich on the sidewalk. He came up, sniffed at it, then walked off, slinking, staring back at me over his shoulder as he walked down the street away from me.
“Hey, wait, buddy! That was peanut butter! Come here, have some bologna! Hey, boy, come here! Come back!”
The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk.
The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn’t look back. He accelerated down the street.
No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn’t getting proper nourishment.
I walked on toward the department store. It was the same street I had walked along to go to high school.
I arrived. I found the employees’ entrance, pushed the door open and walked in. I went from bright sunlight into semi-darkness. As my eyes adjusted I could make out a man standing several feet away in front of me. Half of his left ear had been sliced off at some point in the past. He was a tall, very thin man with needlepoint grey pupils centered in otherwise colorless eyes. A very tall thin man, yet right above his belt, sticking out over his belt—suddenly—was a sad and hideous and strange pot belly. All his fat had settled there while the remainder of him had wasted away.
“I’m Superintendent Ferris,” he said. “I presume that you’re Mr. Chinaski?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re five minutes late.”
“I was delayed by…Well, I stopped to try to feed a starving dog,” I grinned.
“That’s one of the lousiest excuses I’ve ever heard and I’ve been here thirty-five years. Couldn’t you come up with a better one than that?”
“I’m just starting, Mr. Ferris.”
“And you’re almost finished. Now,” he pointed, “the time-clock is over there and the card rack is over there. Find