What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (4 page)
Read What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Online
Authors: Charles Bukowski
I told the guyâhe was watering his lawnâ
you ever squirt my dog
again and you'll have to deal with me.
he just kept on watering, looking straight ahead,
and he said, I ain't worried, you punks talk about
doing it but you never do it.
he was an old white-haired guy, kind of dumb. I could
feel the dullness radiating off him.
I yanked the hose from his hand, turned him around and
sank a hard right to his gut.
he dropped like a stone and just lay on his
back on the lawn, holding his stomach and breathing
hard.
he looked pitiful.
I picked up the hose and watered him down good,
soaked his clothes, then gave him a good dose
in the face and walked off.
I went down to the store and got a fifth of scotch
and a six-pack.
when I came back he was gone.
I went up to my apartment and told Marie that I
had taken care of the matter with the guy who
squirted our dog.
she asked me, what did you do, kill him?
and I told her, no, I just explained things to him.
and she wanted to know, what did I mean, I
explained things to him?
and I told her, never mind, where are some clean
glasses?
and then the dog came walking in.
Koko.
you gotta know I liked him
plenty.
I never realized then what a good time I was
having
smoking cheap cigars,
in my shorts and undershirt.
proud of my barrel chest
and my biceps
and my youth, my legs,
“baby, look at my legs! ever seen legs like
that?”
prancing up and down in that hotel
room.
I was giving her a show and she just sat
there smoking
cigarettes.
she was nasty, a looker but a nasty
looker.
I knew that she would say something
vicious
but I would laugh at her.
she had seen me make a whole barfull
of men back down one
night.
each night was about the same, I'd put on
my show for her,
I'd tell her what a great brain I had.
“you're so fucking smart, what're you
doing living in a hole like this?”
“I'm just resting up, baby, I haven't
made my move yet⦔
“bullshit! you're an asshole!”
“what?”
“you're an asshole!”
“why, you wasted whore, I'll rip you in half!”
then we'd go at it, swearing loudly, throwing
things, breaking things,
the phone ringing from the desk downstairs,
the other roomers banging on the walls
and me laughing, loving it,
picking up the phone, “all right, all right,
I'll keep her quiet⦔
putting the phone down, looking at
her, “all right, baby, come on over here!”
“go to hell! you're disgusting!”
and I was, red-faced, cigarette
holes burnt in my undershirt,
4-day beard, yellow teeth, broken toenails,
grinning madly I'd move toward
her, glancing at the pull-down bed, I'd move
toward her saying, “hike your skirt up!
I want to see more leg!”
I was one bad dude.
she stayed 3 years then I moved on to the
next
one.
the first one never lived with another
man again.
I cured her of
that.
I have been hungry many times
but the particular time that I
think of now
was in New York City,
the night was beginning
and I was standing before the
plate glass window of a
restaurant.
and in that window
was a roasted pig,
eyeless,
with an apple in its mouth.
poor damned pig.
poor damned me.
beyond the pig
inside there
were people
sitting at tables
talking, eating, drinking.
I was not one of those people.
I felt a kinship with the pig.
we had been caught in the wrong
place
at the wrong
time.
I imagined myself in the window,
eyeless, roasted, the apple in my
mouth.
that would bring a crowd.
“hey, not much rump on him!”
“his arms are too thin!”
“I can see his ribs!”
I walked away from the window.
I walked to my room.
I still had a room.
as I walked to my room
I began to conjecture:
could I eat some paper?
some newspaper?
roaches?
maybe I could catch a rat?
a raw rat.
peel off the fur,
remove the intestines.
remove the eyes.
forego the head, the tail.
no, I'd die of
some horrible rat disease!
I walked along.
I was so hungry that everything
looked eatable:
people, fireplugs, asphalt,
wristwatchesâ¦
my belt, my shirt.
I entered the building and
walked up the stairway to my
room.
I sat in a chair.
I didn't turn on the light.
I sat there and wondered if I
was crazy
because I wasn't doing anything
to help myself.
the hunger stopped then
and I just sat there.
then I heard it:
two people in the next room,
copulating.
I could hear the bedsprings
and the moans.
I got up, walked out of the
room and back into the
street.
but I walked in a different
direction this time,
I walked away from the pig
in the window.
but I thought about the pig
and I decided that I'd die first
rather than eat that
pig.
it began to rain.
I looked up.
I opened my mouth and let in the rain
dropsâ¦soup from the skyâ¦
“hey, look at that guy!”
I heard someone say.
stupid sons-of-bitches, I thought,
stupid sons-of-
bitches!
I closed my mouth and kept
walking.
after she died
I met her son in her room
a very small room without sink or toilet
in a flophouse at Beverly and Vermont.
he was thinking what kind of boyfriend are you
to let her die in a place like this?
and I was thinking, what kind of a son are you?
he asked me, do you want any of her things?
no, I said.
well, he said, we'll give them to Goodwill.
he left.
there was a large bloodstain on the bottom
sheet.
the owner of the hotel walked in. she said,
I'll have to change that sheet before I can rent this
   room to
somebody else.
o.k., I said.
I left.
I walked down to the florist
and ordered a heart-shaped arrangement, large,
for the funeral.
just say on the card, I told the lady,
from your lover. no name.
no name?
no name.
cash or credit card?
cash.
I paid and walked out on the
boulevard and
never looked
back.
I bet on #6, I try red, I stare at the women's legs and breasts,
I wonder what Chekov would do, and over in the corner three men with
blue plates sit eating the carnage of my youth, they have beards
and look very much like Russians and I pat an imaginary pistol
   over
my left tit and try to smile like George Raft sizing up a French tart. I play
the field, I pull out dollars like turnips from the good earth, the lights
blaze and nobody says stop.
Â
Hank, says my whore, for Christ's sake you're losing everything except me,
and I say don't forget, baby, I'm a shipping clerk. what've I got to lose
but a ball of string?
Â
the gentlemen in the corner who look like Russians get up, knock
their plates and cups on the floor and wipe their mouths on the tablecloth.
some belch (and one farts). they laugh evilly and leave without anyone bothering them. a ribbed and moiled cat comes out of somewhere,
begins licking the plates on the floor and then jumps up on the
table and walks around like his feet are wet.
Â
I try black. the croupier's eyes dart like beetles. he makes futile
almost habitual movements to brush them away.
Â
I switch back to red. I look around for George Raft and spill my drink
against my chest. Hank, says my whore, let's get out of here! well, at least,
I say, I ought to get a blow-job out of this. you needn't get filthy, the whore
says. I say, baby, I was born filthy. I try #14.
Â
DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG.
Â
mirrors enclose us, I say to the croupier, ignoring the scenery of our despair.
Â
I slap away a filthy thing that runs across my mouth. the cat
leaps and snatches it up as it spins upon its back kicking its
thousand legs.
Â
then George Raft walks in. hello kid, he says, back again? I place
my last few coins on the chest of a dead elephant.
the lightning flares, they are stabbing grapefruit in the backroom, some-
body drops a glove and the place, the whole place, goes up in smoke.
Â
we walk back to the car and fall asleep.
all theories
like clichés
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird.
wish us
luck.
my first wife was from Texas and we came back
to L.A. to live
she came from oil money and I came from
someplace else.
our 2nd day in town
we drove down Vermont Avenue
to get her some art supplies
and as I was tooling my eleven-year-old
Plymouth south
a black man rolled past in a nine-year-old
green Dodge:
“hey, baby,” he hollered out the window,
“what's happening?”
“nothing much happenin',” I hollered
back, “I'm just trying to make
it!”
as we stopped for a signal at
Beverly Blvd.
a black man on the corner saw me
he was standing in a broad-brimmed
Stetson pulled down in front
and wearing white leather boots
and lots of gold:
“Hank, baby, where'd you find the
blonde gash?”
“she's my mark, man,” I replied,
“you know how it is.”
I put it into low and pulled
away.
“listen,” my first wife said
nasally,
“how come you know all these
black
guys?”
“it's easy, baby, I've worked with them
on all the gigs. like it's
natural.”
she didn't answer and when we got
to the art store
she was very upset
about the brushes
the quality of the paper
the paints weren't what she
wanted
and the total selection was
unsatisfactory.
she was very unhappy
about everything.
I stood there and watched her
beautiful ass and her very long
blonde hair
then I walked over to the picture frame
section
picked up an 8-and-one-half by
eleven
stared through the space of
it
and let her
work it
out.
I went for a walk on Hollywood Boulevard.
I looked down and there was a large white dog
walking beside me.
his pace was exactly the same as mine.
we stopped at traffic signals together.
we crossed the side streets together.
a woman smiled at us.
he must have walked 8 blocks with me.
then I went into a grocery store and
when I came out he was gone.
or she was gone.
the wonderful white dog
with a trace of yellow in its fur.
the large blue eyes were gone.
the grinning mouth was gone.
the lolling tongue was gone.
things are so easily lost.
things just can't be kept forever.
I got the blues.
I got the blues.
that dog loved and
trusted me and
I let it walk away.
