Run With the Hunted (20 page)

“You just leave me a lousy $3 each day. What am I supposed to do with a lousy $3?”

“At least, get some toilet paper. Every time I want to wipe my ass I look around and there's just a cardboard roll hanging there.”

“Hey, a woman has
her
problems too! HOW DO YOU THINK I LIVE? Every day, you go out into the
world
, you get to go out and see the world! I've got to sit around
here!
You don't know what that's like day after day!”

“Yeah, well, there's that …”

Helena took a hit of her gin.

“You know I love you, Tommy, and when you're unhappy, it hurts me, it hurts my heart, it does.”

“All right, Helena, let's sit down here and calm down.”

Tom walked to the breakfastnook table and had a seat. Helena brought her pint and sat across from him. She looked at him.

“Jesus, what happened to your hands?”

“New job. I've got to figure a way to protect my hands … Adhesive tape, rubber gloves … something …”

He had finished his beer can. “Listen, Helena, got any more of that gin around?”

“Yeah, I think so …”

He watched as she went to the cupboard, reached high, and got a bottle down. She came back with the pint, sat down again. Tom unpeeled the bottle.

“How many of these have you got around?”

“A few …”

“Good. How do you drink this? Straight?”

“You can …”

Tom took a good hit. Then he looked down at his hands, opening and closing them, watching the red wounds open and shut. They were fascinating.

He took the bottle, poured a little gin into one of his palms, then rubbed it around on his hands.

“Wow! This shit burns!”

Helena took another hit at her bottle. “Tom, why don't you get another job?”

“Another job? Where? There's a hundred guys want
mine
…”

Then Rob and Bob ran in. They skidded to a stop at the breakfast-nook table.

“Hey,” said Bob, “when we gonna
eat?
”

Tom looked at Helena.

“I think I've got some weenies,” she said.

“Weenies again?” asked Rob. “
Weenies?
I
hate weenies!
”

Tom looked at his son. “Hey, fellow, go easy …”

“Well,” said Bob, “how about a fucking drink then?”

“You little bastard!” Helena yelled.

She reached out, open-handed, and slapped Bob hard on the ear.

“Don't hit the kids, Helena,” said Tom, “I got too much of that myself when I was a kid.”

“Don't tell me how to handle my kids!”

“They're mine too …”

Bob was standing there. His ear was very red.

“So, you want a fucking drink, eh?” Tom asked him.

Bob didn't answer.

“Come here,” said Tom.

Bob walked over near his father. Tom handed him the bottle.

“Go on, drink it. Drink your fucking drink.”

“Tom, what are you
doing?
” Helena asked.

“Go on … drink it,” said Tom.

Bob lifted the pint, took a gulp. Then he handed the bottle back, stood there. Suddenly he looked pale, even the red ear began to pale. He coughed. “This stuffs AWFUL! It's like drinking
perfume!
Why do you
drink
it?”

“Because we're stupid. You've got stupid parents. Now, go to the bedroom and take your brother with you …”

“Can we watch the tv in there?” asked Rob.

“All right, but get going …”

They filed out.

“Don't you go making
drunks
out of my kids!” Helena said.

“I just hope they have better luck in life than we've had.”

Helena took a hit from her bottle. That finished it off.

She got up, took the burnt pot from the stove and slammed it into the sink.

“I don't
need
all that god damned noise!” Tom said.

Helena appeared to be crying. “Tom, what are we going to
do?
”

She turned the hot water into the pot.

“Do?” asked Tom. “About what?”

“About the way we have to
live!
”

“There's not a hell of a lot we
can
do.”

Helena scraped out the burnt food and poured some soap into the pot, then reached into the cupboard and got another pint of gin. She came around, sat down across from Tom, and peeled the bottle. “Got to let the pot soak a while … I'll get the weenies on soon …”

Tom drank from his bottle, sat it down.

“Baby, you're just an old sot, an old sot-pot …”

The tears were still there. “Oh yeah, well,
who
do you think
made
me this way? ONE GUESS!”

“That's easy,” answered Tom, “two people: you and me.”

Helena took her first drink from the new bottle. With that, at once, the tears vanished. She gave a little smile. “Hey, I've got an idea! I can get a job as a waitress or something … You can rest up awhile, you know … What do you think?”

Tom put his hand across the table, put it on one of Helena's.

“You're a good girl, but let's leave it like it is.”

Then the tears were coming back again. Helena was good with the tears, especially when she was drinking gin. “Tommy, do you still love me?”

“Sure, baby, at your best you're wonderful.”

“I love you too, Tom, you know that …”

“Sure, baby, here's to it!”

Tom lifted his bottle. Helena lifted hers.

They clicked their pints of gin in mid-air, then each drank to the other.

In the bedroom, Rob and Bob had the radio on, they had it on
loud
. There was a laugh-track on and the people on the laugh-track were laughing and laughing and laughing

and laughing.

—
S
EPTUAGENARIAN
S
TEW

 

 

Miami was as far as I could go without leaving the country. I took Henry Miller with me and tried to read him all the way across. He was good when he was good, and vice versa. I had a pint. Then I had another pint, and another. The trip took four days and five nights. Outside of a leg-and-thigh rubbing episode with a young brunette girl whose parents would no longer support her in college, nothing much happened. She got off in the middle of the night in a particularly barren and cold part of the country, and vanished. I had always had insomnia and the only time I could really sleep on a bus was when I was totally drunk. I didn't dare try that. When we arrived I hadn't slept or shit for five days and I could barely walk. It was early evening. It felt good to be in the streets again.

ROOMS FOR RENT. I walked up and rang the doorbell. At such times one always places the old suitcase out of the view of the person who will open the door.

“I'm looking for a room. How much is it?”

“$6.50 a week.”

“May I look at it?”

“Surely.”

I walked in and followed her up the stairway. She was about forty-five but her behind swayed nicely. I have followed so many women up stairways like that, always thinking, if only some nice lady like this one would offer to take care of me and feed me warm tasty food and lay out clean stockings and shorts for me to wear, I would accept.

She opened the door and I looked in.

“All right,” I said, “it looks all right.”

“Are you employed?”

“Self-employed.”

“May I ask what you do?”

“I'm a writer.”

“Oh, have you written books?”

“Oh, I'm hardly ready for a novel. I just do articles, bits for magazines. Not very good really but I'm developing.”

“All right. I'll give you your key and make out a receipt.”

I followed her down the stairway. The ass didn't sway as nicely going down the stairway as going up. I looked at the back of her neck and imagined kissing her behind the ears.

“I'm Mrs. Adams,” she said. “Your name?”

“Henry Chinaski.”

As she made out the receipt, I heard sounds like the sawing of wood coming from behind the door to our left—only the rasps were punctuated with gasps for breath. Each breath seemed to be the last yet each breath finally led painfully to another.

“My husband is ill,” said Mrs. Adams and as she handed me the receipt and my key, she smiled. Her eyes were a lovely hazel color and sparkled. I turned and walked back up the stairs.

When I got into my room I remembered I had left my suitcase downstairs. I went down to fetch it. As I walked past Mrs. Adams' door the gasping sounds were much louder. I took my suitcase upstairs, threw it on the bed, then walked downstairs again and out into the night. I found a main boulevard a little to the north, walked into a grocery store and bought a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I had a pocket knife and would be able to spread the peanut butter on the bread and have something to eat.

When I got back to the roominghouse I stood in the hall and listened to Mr. Adams, and I thought, that's Death. Then I went up to my room and opened the jar of peanut butter and while listening to the death sounds from below I dug my fingers in. I ate it right off my fingers. It was great. Then I opened the bread. It was green and moldy and had a sharp sour smell. How could they sell bread like that? What kind of a place was Florida? I threw the bread on the floor, got undressed, turned out the light, pulled up the covers and lay there in the dark, listening.

I found a job through the newspaper. I was hired by a clothing store but it wasn't in Miami it was in Miami Beach, and I had to take my hangover across the water each morning. The bus ran along a very narrow strip of cement that stood up out of the water with no guard-rail, no nothing; that's all there was to it. The bus driver leaned back and we roared along over this narrow cement strip surrounded by water and all the people in the bus, the twenty-five or forty or fifty-two people trusted him, but I never did. Sometimes it was a new driver, and I thought, how do they select these sons of bitches? There's deep water on both sides of us and with one error of judgment he'll kill us all. It was ridiculous. Suppose he had an argument with his wife that morning? Or cancer? Or visions of God? Bad teeth? Anything. He could do it. Dump us all. I knew that if I was driving that
I
would consider the possibility or desirability of drowning everybody. And sometimes, after just such considerations, possibility turns into reality. For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter. The old story of good and evil. But none of the bus drivers ever dumped us. They were thinking instead of car payments, baseball scores, haircuts, vacations, enemas, family visits. There wasn't a real man in the whole shitload. I always got to work sick but safe. Which demonstrates why Schumann was more relative than Shostakovich …

I was hired as what they called the extra ball-bearing. The extra ball-bearing is the man who is simply turned loose without specific duties. He is supposed to
know
what to do after consulting some deep well of ancient instinct. Instinctively one is supposed to know what will best keep things running smoothly, best maintain the company, the Mother, and meet all her little needs which are irrational, continual and petty.

A good extra ball-bearing man is faceless, sexless, sacrificial; he is always waiting at the door when the first man with the key arrives. Soon he is hosing off the sidewalk, and he greets each person by name as they arrive, always with a bright smile and in a reassuring manner. Obeisant. That makes everybody feel a little better before the bloody grind begins. He sees that toilet paper is plentiful, especially in the lathes' crapper. That wastebaskets never overflow. That no grime coats the windows. That small repairs are promptly made on desks and office chairs. That doors open easily. That clocks are set. That carpeting remains tacked down. That overfed powerful women do not have to carry small packages.

I wasn't very good. My idea was to wander about doing nothing, always avoiding the boss, and avoiding the stoolies who might report to the boss. I wasn't all that clever. It was more instinct than anything else. I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.

It was a completely self-sufficient, self-contained clothing store, factory and retail business combined. The showroom, the finished product and the salesmen were all downstairs, and the factory was up above. The factory was a maze of catwalks and runways that even the rats couldn't crawl, long narrow lofts with men and women sitting and working under thirty watt bulbs, squinting, treading pedals, threading needles, never looking up or speaking, bent and quiet, doing it.