only the bell was humming instead of ringing,
and then a golden light appeared in the corner of the room
up near the ceding
and through the sound and light
shone the face of a woman, worn but beautiful,
and she looked down at me
and then a man’s face appeared by hers,
the light became stronger and the man said:
we, the artists, are proud of you!
then the woman said: the poor boy is frightened,
and I was, and then it went away.
I got up, dressed, and went to the bar
wondering who the artists were and why they should be
proud of me. there were some live ones in the bar
and I got some free drinks, set my pants on fire with the
ashes from my corncob pipe, broke a glass deliberately,
was not rousted, met a man who claimed he was William
Saroyan, and we drank until a woman came in and
pulled him out by the ear and I thought, no, that can’t be
William, and another guy came in and said: man, you talk
tough, well, listen, I just got out for assault and
battery, so don’t mess with me! we went outside the
bar, he was a good boy, he knew how to duke, and it went
along fairly even, then they stopped it and we went
back in and drank another couple of hours. I walked
back up to my place, put on Beethoven’s 5th and
when they beat on the walls I beat
back.
I keep thinking of myself young, then, the way I was,
and I can hardly believe it but I don’t mind it.
I hope the artists are still proud of me
but they never came back
again.
the war came running in and next I knew
I was in New Orleans
walking into a bar drunk
after falling down in the mud on a rainy night.
I saw one man stab another and I walked over and
put a nickel in the juke box.
it was a beginning. San
Francisco and New Orleans were two of my
favorite towns.
2
lay down
lay down and wait like
an animal
The Blackbirds Are Rough Today
lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the comer.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail—
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is
nowhere—
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school—
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.
we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.
don’t be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.
flophouse
you haven’t lived
until you’ve been in a
flophouse
with nothing but one
light bulb
and 56 men
squeezed together
on cots
with everybody
snoring
at once
and some of those
snores
so
deep and
gross and
unbelievable—
dark
snotty
gross
subhuman
wheezings
from hell
itself.
your mind
almost breaks
under those
death-like
sounds
and the
intermingling
odors:
hard
unwashed socks
pissed and
shitted
underwear
and over it all
slowly circulating
air
much like that
emanating from
uncovered
garbage
cans.
and those
bodies
in the dark
fat and
thin
and
bent
some
legless
armless
some
mindless
and worst of
all:
the total
absence of
hope
it shrouds
them
covers them
totally.
it’s not
bearable.
you get
up
go out
walk the
streets
up and
down
sidewalks
past buildings
around the
corner
and back
up
the same
street
those men
were all
children
once
what has happened
to
them?
and what has
happened
to
me?
it’s dark
and cold
out
here.
I arrived in New Orleans in the rain at 5 o’clock in the morning. I sat around in the bus station for a while but the people depressed me so I took my suitcase and went out in the rain and began walking. I didn’t know where the roominghouses were, where the poor section was.
I had a cardboard suitcase that was falling apart. It had once been black but the black coating had peeled off and yellow cardboard was exposed. I had tried to solve that by putting black shoepolish over the exposed cardboard. As I walked along in the rain the shoepolish on the suitcase ran and unwittingly I rubbed black streaks on both legs of my pants as I switched the suitcase from hand to hand.
Well, it was a new town. Maybe I’d get lucky.
The rain stopped and the sun came out. I was in the black district. I walked along slowly.
“Hey, poor white trash!”
I put my suitcase down. A high yellow was sitting on the porch steps swinging her legs. She did look good.
“Hello, poor white trash!”
I didn�
�t say anything. I just stood there looking at her.
“How’d you like a piece of ass, poor white trash?”
She laughed at me. She had her legs crossed high and she kicked her feet; she had nice legs, high heels, and she kicked her legs and laughed. I picked up my suitcase and began to approach her up the walk. As I did I noticed a side curtain on a window to my left move just a bit. I saw a black man’s face. He looked like Jersey Joe Wolcott. I backed down the pathway to the sidewalk. Her laughter followed me down the street.
I was in a room on the second floor across from a bar. The bar was called The Gangplank Cafe. From my room I could see through the open bar doors and into the bar. There were some rough faces in that bar, some interesting faces. I stayed in my room at night and drank wine and looked at the faces in the bar while my money ran out. In the daytime I took long slow walks. I sat for hours staring at pigeons. I only ate one meal a day so my money would last longer. I found a dirty cafe with a dirty proprietor, but you got a big breakfast—hotcakes, grits, sausage—for very little.
I went out on the street, as usual, one day and strolled along. I felt happy and relaxed. The sun was just right. Mellow. There was peace in the air. As I approached the center of the block there was a man standing outside the doorway of a shop. I walked past.
“Hey, BUDDY!”
I stopped and turned.
“You want a job?”
I walked back to where he stood. Over his shoulder I could see a large dark room. There was a long table with men and women standing on both sides of it. They had hammers with which they pounded objects in front of them. In the gloom the objects appeared to be clams. They smelled like clams. I turned and continued walking down the street.
I remembered how my father used to come home each night and talk about his job to my mother. The job talk began when he entered the door, continued over the dinner table, and ended in the bedroom where my father would scream “Lights Out!” at 8 p.m., so he could get his rest and his full strength for the job the next day. There was no other subject except the job.
Down by the corner I was stopped by another man.
“Listen, my friend …” he began.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Listen, I’m a veteran of World War I. I put my life on the line for this country but nobody will hire me, nobody will give me a job. They don’t appreciate what I did. I’m hungry, give me some help …”
“I’m not working.”
“You’re not working?”
“That’s right.”
I walked away. I crossed the street to the other side.
“You’re lying!” he screamed. “You’re working. You’ve got a job!”
A few days later I was looking for one.
He was a man behind the desk with a hearing aid and the wire ran down along the side of his face and into his shirt where he hid the battery. The office was dark and comfortable. He was dressed in a worn brown suit with a wrinkled white shirt and a necktie frayed at the edges. His name was Heathercliff.
I had seen the ad in the local paper and the place was near my room.
NEED AMBITIOUS YOUNG MAN
WITH AN EYE TO THE FUTURE.
EXPER. NOT NECESSARY.
BEGIN IN DELIVERY ROOM AND WORK UP.
I waited outside with five or six young men, all of them trying to look ambitious. We had filled out our employment applications and now we waited. I was the last to be called.
“Mr. Chinaski, what made you leave the railroad yards?”
“Well, I don’t see any future in the railroads.”
“They have good unions, medical care, retirement.”
“At my age, retirement might almost be considered superfluous.”
“Why did you come to New Orleans?”
“I had too many friends in Los Angeles, friends I felt were hindering my career. I wanted to go where I could concentrate unmolested.”
“How do we know that you’ll remain with us any length of time?”
“I might not.”
“Why?”
“Your ad stated that there was a future for an ambitious man. If there isn’t any future here then I must leave.”
“Why haven’t you shaved your face? Did you lose a bet?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“No; I bet my landlord that I could land a job in one day even with this beard.”
“All right, we’ll let you know.”
“I don’t have a phone.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Chinaski.”
I left and went back to my room. I went down the dirty hall and took a hot bath. Then I put my clothes back on and went out and got a bottle of wine. I came back to the room and sat by the window drinking and watching the people in the bar, watching the people walk by. I drank slowly and began to think again of getting a gun and doing it quickly—without all the thought and talk. A matter of guts. I wondered about my guts. I finished the bottle and went to bed and slept. About 4 p.m. I was awakened by a knock on the door. It was a Western Union boy. I opened the telegram:
MR. H. CHINASKI. REPORT TO WORK 8 AM TOMORROW. R.M. HEATHERCLIFF CO.
It was a magazine publishers distributing house and we stood at the packing table checking the orders to see that the quantities coincided with the invoices. Then we signed the invoice and either packed the order for out of town shipment or set the magazines aside for local truck delivery. The work was easy and dull but the clerks were in a constant state of turmoil. They were worried about their jobs. There was a mixture of young men and women and there didn’t seem to be a foreman. After several hours an argument began between two of the women. It was something about the magazines. We were packing comic books and something had gone wrong across the table. The two women became violent as the argument went on.
“Look,” I said, “these books aren’t worth reading let alone arguing about.”
“All right,” one of the women said, “we know you think you’re too good for this job.”
“Too good?”
“Yes, your attitude. You think we didn’t notice it?”
That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.
I worked there three or four days, then on Friday we were paid right up to the hour. We were given yellow envelopes with green bills and the exact change. Real money, no checks.
Toward quitting time the truck driver came back a little early. He sat on a pile of magazines and smoked a cigarette.
“Yeah, Harry,” he said to one of the clerks, “I got a raise today. I got a two dollar raise.”
At quitting time I stopped for a bottle of wine, went up to my room, had a drink then went downstairs and phoned my company. The phone rang a long time. Finally Mr. Heathercliff answered. He was still there.
“Mr. Heathercliff?”
“Yes?”
“This is Chinaski.”
“Yes, Mr. Chinaski?”
“I want a two dollar raise.”
“What?”
“That’s right. The truck driver got a raise.”
“But he’s been with us two years.”
“I need a raise.”
“We’re giving you seventeen dollars a week now and you’re asking for nineteen?”
“That’s right. Do I get it or not?”
“We just can’t do it.”
“Then I quit.” I hung up.
—FACTOTUM
young in New Orleans
starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for
hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, maybe it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and
always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my dark small room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.
women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.
that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.
there was something about
that city, though:
it didn’t let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.
sitting up in my bed
the lights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.
being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way:
undisturbed.
New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.
no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no
anything.
me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.
consummation of grief
I even hear the mountains