Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski [92]
“O.K.,” he said, “drink up!”
“Shit, it’s about time,” I said and I let it slide down. It was a little too hot and it stank.
I watched Igor drink his. I saw his little pea eyes over the rim of his cup. He managed to get it down, driblets of golden buttered rum leaking out of the corners of his stupid mouth. He was looking at Baldy. Baldy was standing, staring down into his cup. I knew from the old days that Baldy just didn’t have a natural love of drinking.
Igor stared at Baldy. “Drink up!”
“Yes, Igor, yes…”
Baldy lifted the blue cup. He was having a difficult time. It was too hot for him and he didn’t like the taste. Half of it ran out of his mouth and over his chin and onto his shirt. His empty cup fell to the kitchen floor.
Igor squared himself in front of Baldy.
“You’re not a man!”
“I AM A MAN, IGOR! I AM A MAN!”
“YOU LIE!”
Igor backhanded him across the face and as Baldy’s head jumped to one side, he straightened him up with a slap to the other side of his face. Baldy stood at attention with his hands rigidly at his sides.
“I’m…a man…”
Igor continued to stand in front of him.
“I’ll make a man out of you!”
“O.K.,” I said to Igor, “leave him alone.”
Igor left the kitchen. I poured myself another rum. It was dreadful stuff but it was all there was.
Igor walked back in. He was holding a gun, a real one, an old six-shooter.
“We will now play Russian roulette,” he announced.
“Your mother’s ass,” I said.
“I’ll play, Igor,” said Baldy, “I’ll play! I’m a man!”
“All right,” said Igor, “there is one bullet in the gun. I will spin the chamber and hand the gun to you.”
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to Baldy. Baldy took it and pointed it at his head. “I’m a man…I’m a man…I’ll do it!”
He began crying again. “I’ll do it…I’m a man…”
Baldy let the muzzle of the gun slip away from his temple. He pointed it away from his skull and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
Igor took the gun, spun the chamber and handed it to me. I handed it back.
“You go first.”
Igor spun the chamber, held the gun up to the light and looked through the chamber. Then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There was a click.
“Big deal,” I said. “You checked the chamber to see where the bullet was.”
Igor spun the chamber and handed the gun to me. “Your turn…”
I handed the gun back. “Stuff it,” I told him.
I walked over to pour myself another rum. As I did there was a shot. I looked down. Near my foot, in the kitchen floor, there was a bullet hole.
I turned around.
“You ever point that thing at me again and I’ll kill you, Igor.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He stood there smiling. He slowly began to raise the gun. I waited. Then he lowered the gun. That was about it for the night. We went out to the car and Igor drove us home. But we stopped first at Westlake Park and rented a boat and went out on the lake to finish off the rum. With the last drink, Igor loaded up the gun and shot holes in the bottom of the boat. We were forty yards from shore and had to swim in…
It was late when I got home. I crawled over the old berry bush and through the bedroom window. I undressed and went to bed while in the next room my father snored.
53
I was coming home from classes down Westview hill. I never had any books to carry. I passed my exams by listening to the class lectures and by guessing at the answers. I never had to cram for exams. I could get my “C’s.” And as I was coming down the hill I ran into a giant spider web. I was always doing that. I stood there pulling the sticky web from myself and looking for the spider. Then I saw him: a big fat black son-of-a-bitch. I crushed him. I had learned to hate spiders. When I went to hell I would be eaten by a spider.
All my life, in that neighborhood, I had been walking into spider webs, I had been attacked by blackbirds, I had lived with my father. Everything was eternally