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Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER
I was five years old the first time I got drunk. It was on a hot day,
and my father was plowing in the field. I was sent from the house,
half a mile away, to carry to him a pail of beer. "And be sure you don't
spill it," was the parting injunction.
It was, as I remember it, a lard pail, very wide across the top, and
without a cover. As I toddled along, the beer slopped over the rim upon
my legs. And as I toddled, I pondered. Beer was a very precious thing.
Come to think of it, it must be wonderfully good. Else why was I never
permitted to drink of it in the house? Other things kept from me by the
grown-ups I had found good. Then this, too, was good. Trust the
grown-ups. They knew. And, anyway, the pail was too full. I was
slopping it against my legs and spilling it on the ground. Why waste it?
And no one would know whether I had drunk or spilled it.
I was so small that, in order to negotiate the pail, I sat down and
gathered it into my lap. First I sipped the foam. I was disappointed.
The preciousness evaded me. Evidently it did not reside in the foam.
Besides, the taste was not good. Then I remembered seeing the grown-ups
blow the foam away before they drank. I buried my face in the foam and
lapped the solid liquid beneath. It wasn't good at all. But still I
drank. The grown-ups knew what they were about. Considering my
diminutiveness, the size of the pail in my lap, and my drinking out of it
my breath held and my face buried to the ears in foam, it was rather
difficult to estimate how much I drank. Also, I was gulping it down like
medicine, in nauseous haste to get the ordeal over.
I shuddered when I started on, and decided that the good taste would come
afterward. I tried several times more in the course of that long
half-mile. Then, astounded by the quantity of beer that was lacking, and
remembering having seen stale beer made to foam afresh, I took a stick
and stirred what was left till it foamed to the brim.
And my father never noticed. He emptied the pail with the wide thirst of
the sweating plowman, returned it to me, and started up the plow. I
endeavoured to walk beside the horses. I remember tottering and falling
against their heels in front of the shining plow, and that my father
hauled back on the lines so violently that the horses nearly sat down on
me. He told me afterward that it was by only a matter of inches that I
escaped disembowelling. Vaguely, too, I remember, my father carried me
in his arms to the trees on the edge of the field, while all the world
reeled and swung about me, and I was aware of deadly nausea mingled with
an appalling conviction of sin.
I slept the afternoon away under the trees, and when my father roused me
at sundown it was a very sick little boy that got up and dragged wearily
homeward. I was exhausted, oppressed by the weight of my limbs, and in
my stomach was a harp-like vibrating that extended to my throat and
brain. My condition was like that of one who had gone through a battle
with poison. In truth, I had been poisoned.
In the weeks and months that followed I had no more interest in beer than
in the kitchen stove after it had burned me. The grown-ups were right.
Beer was not for children. The grown-ups didn't mind it; but neither did
they mind taking pills and castor oil. As for me, I could manage to get
along quite well without beer. Yes, and to the day of my death I could
have managed to get along quite well without it. But circumstance
decreed otherwise. At every turn in the world in which I lived, John
Barleycorn beckoned. There was no escaping him. All paths led to him.
And it took twenty years of contact, of exchanging greetings and passing
on with my tongue in my cheek, to develop in me a sneaking liking for the
rascal: the progenitor and ever-present goad of my miseries.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
Posted by:
Mr Misery
()
Date: December 17, 2010 10:53PM
Harry and I were living in a cotton-domestic lean-to at the base of a mountain. It was very cramped quarters, with barely enough room for us and the stove—wretched quarters, indeed, for every now and then, between eight in the morning and eight in the evening, the thermometer would make an excursion of fifty degrees...
At last, when we were flat broke and still had struck nothing, we saw that we must find some other way of earning a living.
I secured a place in a nearby quartz mill to screen sand with a long-handled shovel.
I hate a long-handled shovel. I never could learn to swing it properly.
As often as any other way the sand didn’t reach the screen at all, but went over my head and down my back, inside of my clothes.
It was the most detestable work I have ever engaged in, but it paid ten dollars a week and board — and the board was worthwhile, because it consisted not only of bacon, beans, coffee, bread and molasses, but we had stewed dried apples every day in the week just the same as if it were Sunday.
But this palatial life, this gross and luxurious life, had to come to an end, and there were two sufficient reasons for it.
On my side, I could not endure the heavy labor; and on the Company’s side, they did not feel justified in paying me to shovel sand down my back; so I was discharged just at the moment that I was going to resign.
January 23rd: Rainy, stormy. Beans and dishwater for breakfast. . . dishwater and beans for dinner, and both articles warmed over for supper.
January 24th: Rained all day—meals as before.
January 25th: Same as above.
January 26th: Rain, beans & dishwater.
January 27th: Same old diet—same old weather.
What to do next? It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had no shortage of friends; and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian stock and its national distinction, I found that I could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with...).
They call me Mr. Misery
(Age 17)
At last, when we were flat broke and still had struck nothing, we saw that we must find some other way of earning a living.
I secured a place in a nearby quartz mill to screen sand with a long-handled shovel.
I hate a long-handled shovel. I never could learn to swing it properly.
As often as any other way the sand didn’t reach the screen at all, but went over my head and down my back, inside of my clothes.
It was the most detestable work I have ever engaged in, but it paid ten dollars a week and board — and the board was worthwhile, because it consisted not only of bacon, beans, coffee, bread and molasses, but we had stewed dried apples every day in the week just the same as if it were Sunday.
But this palatial life, this gross and luxurious life, had to come to an end, and there were two sufficient reasons for it.
On my side, I could not endure the heavy labor; and on the Company’s side, they did not feel justified in paying me to shovel sand down my back; so I was discharged just at the moment that I was going to resign.
January 23rd: Rainy, stormy. Beans and dishwater for breakfast. . . dishwater and beans for dinner, and both articles warmed over for supper.
January 24th: Rained all day—meals as before.
January 25th: Same as above.
January 26th: Rain, beans & dishwater.
January 27th: Same old diet—same old weather.
What to do next? It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had no shortage of friends; and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine Virginian stock and its national distinction, I found that I could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down with...).
They call me Mr. Misery
(Age 17)
Re: A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
Posted by:
Harry Tuttle
()
Date: December 18, 2010 06:12AM
p-p-p-p-p...p-p-plagiarism!?
What is the meaning of this?... my world has been flipped upside down....
I have a lot of soul searching to do...
Signatures are for fags
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2010 06:17AM by Harry Tuttle.
What is the meaning of this?... my world has been flipped upside down....
I have a lot of soul searching to do...
Signatures are for fags
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/2010 06:17AM by Harry Tuttle.
Posted by:
chuckhoffmann
()
Date: December 18, 2010 06:38AM
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2014 03:50AM by chuckhoffmann.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2014 03:50AM by chuckhoffmann.
Re: A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
Posted by:
Mr Misery
()
Date: December 18, 2010 01:47PM
THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER
I was five years old the first time I got drunk. It was on a hot day,
and my father was plowing in the field. I was sent from the house,
half a mile away, to carry to him a pail of beer. "And be sure you don't
spill it," was the parting injunction.
It was, as I remember it, a lard pail, very wide across the top, and
without a cover. As I toddled along, the beer slopped over the rim upon
my legs. And as I toddled, I pondered. Beer was a very precious thing.
Come to think of it, it must be wonderfully good. Else why was I never
permitted to drink of it in the house? Other things kept from me by the
grown-ups I had found good. Then this, too, was good. Trust the
grown-ups. They knew. And, anyway, the pail was too full. I was
slopping it against my legs and spilling it on the ground. Why waste it?
And no one would know whether I had drunk or spilled it.
I was so small that, in order to negotiate the pail, I sat down and
gathered it into my lap. First I sipped the foam. I was disappointed.
The preciousness evaded me. Evidently it did not reside in the foam.
Besides, the taste was not good. Then I remembered seeing the grown-ups
blow the foam away before they drank. I buried my face in the foam and
lapped the solid liquid beneath. It wasn't good at all. But still I
drank. The grown-ups knew what they were about. Considering my
diminutiveness, the size of the pail in my lap, and my drinking out of it
my breath held and my face buried to the ears in foam, it was rather
difficult to estimate how much I drank. Also, I was gulping it down like
medicine, in nauseous haste to get the ordeal over.
I shuddered when I started on, and decided that the good taste would come
afterward. I tried several times more in the course of that long
half-mile. Then, astounded by the quantity of beer that was lacking, and
remembering having seen stale beer made to foam afresh, I took a stick
and stirred what was left till it foamed to the brim.
And my father never noticed. He emptied the pail with the wide thirst of
the sweating plowman, returned it to me, and started up the plow. I
endeavoured to walk beside the horses. I remember tottering and falling
against their heels in front of the shining plow, and that my father
hauled back on the lines so violently that the horses nearly sat down on
me. He told me afterward that it was by only a matter of inches that I
escaped disembowelling. Vaguely, too, I remember, my father carried me
in his arms to the trees on the edge of the field, while all the world
reeled and swung about me, and I was aware of deadly nausea mingled with
an appalling conviction of sin.
I slept the afternoon away under the trees, and when my father roused me
at sundown it was a very sick little boy that got up and dragged wearily
homeward. I was exhausted, oppressed by the weight of my limbs, and in
my stomach was a harp-like vibrating that extended to my throat and
brain. My condition was like that of one who had gone through a battle
with poison. In truth, I had been poisoned.
In the weeks and months that followed I had no more interest in beer than
in the kitchen stove after it had burned me. The grown-ups were right.
Beer was not for children. The grown-ups didn't mind it; but neither did
they mind taking pills and castor oil. As for me, I could manage to get
along quite well without beer. Yes, and to the day of my death I could
have managed to get along quite well without it. But circumstance
decreed otherwise. At every turn in the world in which I lived, John
Barleycorn beckoned. There was no escaping him. All paths led to him.
And it took twenty years of contact, of exchanging greetings and passing
on with my tongue in my cheek, to develop in me a sneaking liking for the
rascal: the progenitor and ever-present goad of my miseries.
Re: A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
Posted by:
GHEYS
()
Date: December 18, 2010 06:18PM
You are a flamer
Re: A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
Posted by:
Mr Mystery
()
Date: January 29, 2011 11:19PM
My luck was down again and I was too nervous at this time from excessive wine-drinking;
wild-eyed, weak; too depressed to find my usual stop-gap, rest-up job as shipping clerk or
stock boy, so I went down to the meat packing plant and walked into the office.
Haven't I seen you before? The man asked.
No, I lied.
I'd been there 2 or 3 years before, gone through all the paper work, the medical and so
forth, and they had led me down steps, 4 floors down and it had gotten colder and colder
and the floors had been covered with a sheen of blood, green floors, green walls. I had been
explained my job – which was to push a button and then through this hole in the wall there
was a noise like the crushing of fullbacks or elephants falling in lay, and here it came –
something dead, a lot of it, bloody, and he showed me, you take it and throw it on the truck
and then push the button and another one comes along, then he walked away. When he did
I took off my smock, my tin hat, my boots (issued 3 sizes too small) and walked up the
stairway and out of there. Now I was back, struck down again.
You look a little old for the job.
I want to toughen up. I need hard work, good hard work, I lied.
Can you handle it?
I'm nothing but guts. I used to be in the ring. I've fought the best.
Oh, yes?
Yeah.
Umm, I can see by your face. You must have been in some fierce ones.
Never mind my face. I had fast hands. Still have. I had to take some dives, had to
make it look good.
I follow boxing. I don't recall your name.
I fought under another name, Kid Stardust.
Kid Stardust? I don't recall a Kid Stardust.
I fought in South America, Africa, Europe, the islands. I fought in the tank towns.
That's why there's all these gaps in my employment records – I don't like to put down boxer
because people think I am kidding or lying. I just leave the blanks and to hell with it.
All right, show up for med. at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. And we'll put you to work. You
say you want hard work?
Well, if you have something else …
No, not right now. You know, you look close to 50 years old. I wonder if I'm doing
the right thing? We don't like you people to waste our time.
I'm not people – I'm Kid Stardust.
o.k., kid, he laughed, we'll put you to WORK!
I didn't like the way he said it.
2 days later I walked through the passgate into the wooden shack where I showed an old
man my slip with my name on it: Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr., and he sent me on to the
loading dock – I was to see Thurman. I walked on over. There were a row of men sitting on
a wooden bench and they looked at me as if I were a homosexual or a basket case. I looked
at them with what I imagined to be easy disdain and drawled in my best back-alley fashion:
Where's Thurman? I'm supposed to see the guy.
Somebody pointed.
Thurman?
Yeah?
I'm workin' for ya.
Yeah?
Yeah.
He looked at me.
Where's yor boots?
Boots? Got none, I said.
He reached under the bench and handed me a pair. An old hardened stiff pair. I put them on.
Same old story: 3 sizes too small. My toes were crushed and bending under.
Then he gave me a bloody smock and a tin helmet. I stood there while he lit a cigarette, or
as the English might say: while he lighted his cigarette. He threw away the match with a
calm and manly flourish.
Come on.
They were all Negroes and when I walked up they looked at me as if they were Black
Muslims. I was nearly six feet but they were all taller than I, and if not thller then 2 or 3
times as wide.
Charley! Thurman hollered.
Charley, I thought. Charley, just like me. That's nice.
I was already sweating under the tin helmet.
Put 'im to WORK!
Jesus christ o jesus christ, what ever happened to sweet and easy nights? Why doesn't this
happen to Walter Winchell who believes in the American Way? Wasn't I one of the most
brilliant students in Anthropology? What happened?
Charley took me over and stood me in front of an empty truck a half block long that stood
in the dock.
Wait here.
Then several of the Black Muslims came running up with wheel-barrows painted a scabby
and lumpy white, like white was mixed in with henshit. And each wheel-barrow was loaded
with mounds of hams that floated in a thin and watery blood. No, they didn't float in the
blood, they sat in it, like lead, like cannonballs, like death.
One of the boys jumped into the truck behind me and the other began throwing the hams at
me and I caught them and threw them to the guy behind me who turned and threw the ham
into the back of the truck. The hams came fast FAST and they were heavy and they got
heavier. As soon as I threw one ham and turned another was already on the way to me
through the air. I knew that they were trying to break me. I was soon sweating sweating as
if faucets had been turned loose, and my back ached, my wrists ached, my arms hurt,
everything hurt and was down to the last impossible ounce of limp energy. I could barely
see, barely summon myself to catch one more ham and throw it, one more ham and throw
it. I was splashed in blood and kept getting the soft dead heavy FLUMP in my hands, the
ham giving a little like a woman's butt, and I'm too weak to talk and say, hey, what the
HELL's the matter with you guys? The hams are coming and I am spinning, nailed, like a
man on a cross under a tin helmet, and they keep running up barrows full of hams hams
hams and at last they are all empty, and I stand there swaying and breathing the yellow
electric light. It was night in hell. Well, I always liked night work.
Come on!
They took me into another room. Up in the air through a large entrance high in the far wall
one half a steer, or it might have been a whole one, yes, they were whole steers, thinking of
it, all four legs, and one of them came out of the hole on a hook, having just been
murdered, and the steer stopped right over me, it hung right over me there on that hook.
They've just killed it, I thought, they've killed the damn thing. How can they tell a
man from a steer? How do they know that I am not a steer?
ALL RIGHT – SWING IT!
Swing it?
That's right – DANCE WITH IT!
What?
O for christ's sake! GEORGE come here!
George got under the dead steer. He grabbed it. ONE. He ran forward. TWO. He ran
backwards. THREE. He ran forward. The steer was almost parallel to the ground.
Somebody hit a button and he had it. He had it for the meatmarkets of the world. He had it
for the gossiping cranky well-rested stupid housewives of the world at 2 o'clock in the
afternoon in their housesmocks, dragging red-stained cigarettes and feeling almost nothing.
They put me under the next steer. ONE. TWO. THREE.
I had it. Its dead bones against my living bones, its dead flesh against my living flesh, and
the bone and the weight cut in, I thought of operas by Wagner, I thought of cold beer, I
thought of sexy cunt sitting across from me on a couch with her legs crossed high and I have
a drink in my hand and am slowly and surely talking my way toward and into the blank
mind of her body, and Charley hollered HANG HER IN THE TRUCK!
I walked toward the truck. Out of the shame of defeat taught me in American schoolyards
as a boy I knew that I must not drop the steer to the ground because this would show that I
was a coward and not a man and that I didn't therefore deserve much, just sneers and
laughs and beatings, you had to be a winner in America, there wasn't any way out, and you
had to learn to fight for nothing, don't question, and besides if I dropped the steer I might
have to pick it up. Besides it will get dirty. I don't want it to get dirty, or rather – they don't
want it to get dirty.
I walked it into the truck.
HANG IT!
The hook which hung from the roof was dull as a man's thumb without a fingernail. You let
the bottom of the steer slide back and went for the top, you poked that top part against the
hook again and again but the hook would not go through. MOTHER ASS!!! It was all
gristle and fat, tough, tough.
COME ON! COME ON!
I gave it my last reserve and the hook came through, it was a beautiful sight, a miracle, that
hook coming through, that steer hanging there by itself completely off my shoulder,
hanging for the housedresses and butchershop gossip.
MOVE ON!
A 285 pound Negro, insolent, sharp, cool, murderous, walked in, hung his meat with a snap,
looked down at me.
We stays in line here!
O.K., ace.
I walked on in front of him. Another steer was waiting for me.
Each time I loaded one I was sure that was the last one I could handle but I kept saying
one more
just one more then I quit.
Fuck it.
They were waiting for me to quit, I could see the eyes, the smiles when they thought
I wasn't looking. I didn't want to give them victory. I went for another steer. The player.
One last lunge of the big-time washed-up player. I went for the meat.
2 hours went on then somebody hollered BREAK. I had made it. A ten minute rest, some
coffee, and they'd never make me quit. I walked out behind them toward a lunch-wagon
that had drawn up. I could see the steam rising in the night from the coffee; I could see the
doughnuts and cigarettes and coffee - cokes and sandwiches under the electric lights.
HEY, YOU!
It was Charley. Charley like me.
Yeah, Charley?
Before you take your break, get in that truck and move it out and over to stall 18.
It was the truck we had just loaded, the one half a block long. Stall 18 was across the yard.
I managed to open the door and get up inside the cab. It had a soft leather seat and the seat
felt so good that I knew if I didn't fight it I would soon be asleep. I wasn't a truck driver. I
looked down and it looked like a half-dozen gear shifts, brakes, pedals and so forth. I
turned the key and managed to start the engine. I played with the pedals and gear shifts until
the truck started to roll and then I drove it across the yard to stall 18, thinking all the while
– by the time I get back the lunch-wagon will be gone. This was tragedy to me, real
tragedy. I parked the truck, cut the engine and sat there a minute feeling the soft goodness
of that leather seat. Then I opened the door and got out. I missed the step or whatever was
supposed to be there and I fell to the ground in my bloody smock and christ tin helmet like
a man shot. It didn't hurt, I didn't feel it. I got up just in time to see the lunch-wagon driving
off through the gate and on down the street. I saw them walking back in toward the dock
laughing and lighting cigarettes.
I took off my boots, I took off my smock, I took off my tin helmet and walked to the shack
at the yard entrance. I threw the smock, helmet and boots across the counter. The old man
looked at me:
What? You quittin' this GOOD job?
Tell 'em to mail me my check for 2 hours or tell 'em to stick it up their ass, I don't
give a damn!
I walked out. I walked across the street to a Mexican bar and drank a beer and then got a
bus to my place.
The American schoolyard had beat me again.
wild-eyed, weak; too depressed to find my usual stop-gap, rest-up job as shipping clerk or
stock boy, so I went down to the meat packing plant and walked into the office.
Haven't I seen you before? The man asked.
No, I lied.
I'd been there 2 or 3 years before, gone through all the paper work, the medical and so
forth, and they had led me down steps, 4 floors down and it had gotten colder and colder
and the floors had been covered with a sheen of blood, green floors, green walls. I had been
explained my job – which was to push a button and then through this hole in the wall there
was a noise like the crushing of fullbacks or elephants falling in lay, and here it came –
something dead, a lot of it, bloody, and he showed me, you take it and throw it on the truck
and then push the button and another one comes along, then he walked away. When he did
I took off my smock, my tin hat, my boots (issued 3 sizes too small) and walked up the
stairway and out of there. Now I was back, struck down again.
You look a little old for the job.
I want to toughen up. I need hard work, good hard work, I lied.
Can you handle it?
I'm nothing but guts. I used to be in the ring. I've fought the best.
Oh, yes?
Yeah.
Umm, I can see by your face. You must have been in some fierce ones.
Never mind my face. I had fast hands. Still have. I had to take some dives, had to
make it look good.
I follow boxing. I don't recall your name.
I fought under another name, Kid Stardust.
Kid Stardust? I don't recall a Kid Stardust.
I fought in South America, Africa, Europe, the islands. I fought in the tank towns.
That's why there's all these gaps in my employment records – I don't like to put down boxer
because people think I am kidding or lying. I just leave the blanks and to hell with it.
All right, show up for med. at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow. And we'll put you to work. You
say you want hard work?
Well, if you have something else …
No, not right now. You know, you look close to 50 years old. I wonder if I'm doing
the right thing? We don't like you people to waste our time.
I'm not people – I'm Kid Stardust.
o.k., kid, he laughed, we'll put you to WORK!
I didn't like the way he said it.
2 days later I walked through the passgate into the wooden shack where I showed an old
man my slip with my name on it: Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr., and he sent me on to the
loading dock – I was to see Thurman. I walked on over. There were a row of men sitting on
a wooden bench and they looked at me as if I were a homosexual or a basket case. I looked
at them with what I imagined to be easy disdain and drawled in my best back-alley fashion:
Where's Thurman? I'm supposed to see the guy.
Somebody pointed.
Thurman?
Yeah?
I'm workin' for ya.
Yeah?
Yeah.
He looked at me.
Where's yor boots?
Boots? Got none, I said.
He reached under the bench and handed me a pair. An old hardened stiff pair. I put them on.
Same old story: 3 sizes too small. My toes were crushed and bending under.
Then he gave me a bloody smock and a tin helmet. I stood there while he lit a cigarette, or
as the English might say: while he lighted his cigarette. He threw away the match with a
calm and manly flourish.
Come on.
They were all Negroes and when I walked up they looked at me as if they were Black
Muslims. I was nearly six feet but they were all taller than I, and if not thller then 2 or 3
times as wide.
Charley! Thurman hollered.
Charley, I thought. Charley, just like me. That's nice.
I was already sweating under the tin helmet.
Put 'im to WORK!
Jesus christ o jesus christ, what ever happened to sweet and easy nights? Why doesn't this
happen to Walter Winchell who believes in the American Way? Wasn't I one of the most
brilliant students in Anthropology? What happened?
Charley took me over and stood me in front of an empty truck a half block long that stood
in the dock.
Wait here.
Then several of the Black Muslims came running up with wheel-barrows painted a scabby
and lumpy white, like white was mixed in with henshit. And each wheel-barrow was loaded
with mounds of hams that floated in a thin and watery blood. No, they didn't float in the
blood, they sat in it, like lead, like cannonballs, like death.
One of the boys jumped into the truck behind me and the other began throwing the hams at
me and I caught them and threw them to the guy behind me who turned and threw the ham
into the back of the truck. The hams came fast FAST and they were heavy and they got
heavier. As soon as I threw one ham and turned another was already on the way to me
through the air. I knew that they were trying to break me. I was soon sweating sweating as
if faucets had been turned loose, and my back ached, my wrists ached, my arms hurt,
everything hurt and was down to the last impossible ounce of limp energy. I could barely
see, barely summon myself to catch one more ham and throw it, one more ham and throw
it. I was splashed in blood and kept getting the soft dead heavy FLUMP in my hands, the
ham giving a little like a woman's butt, and I'm too weak to talk and say, hey, what the
HELL's the matter with you guys? The hams are coming and I am spinning, nailed, like a
man on a cross under a tin helmet, and they keep running up barrows full of hams hams
hams and at last they are all empty, and I stand there swaying and breathing the yellow
electric light. It was night in hell. Well, I always liked night work.
Come on!
They took me into another room. Up in the air through a large entrance high in the far wall
one half a steer, or it might have been a whole one, yes, they were whole steers, thinking of
it, all four legs, and one of them came out of the hole on a hook, having just been
murdered, and the steer stopped right over me, it hung right over me there on that hook.
They've just killed it, I thought, they've killed the damn thing. How can they tell a
man from a steer? How do they know that I am not a steer?
ALL RIGHT – SWING IT!
Swing it?
That's right – DANCE WITH IT!
What?
O for christ's sake! GEORGE come here!
George got under the dead steer. He grabbed it. ONE. He ran forward. TWO. He ran
backwards. THREE. He ran forward. The steer was almost parallel to the ground.
Somebody hit a button and he had it. He had it for the meatmarkets of the world. He had it
for the gossiping cranky well-rested stupid housewives of the world at 2 o'clock in the
afternoon in their housesmocks, dragging red-stained cigarettes and feeling almost nothing.
They put me under the next steer. ONE. TWO. THREE.
I had it. Its dead bones against my living bones, its dead flesh against my living flesh, and
the bone and the weight cut in, I thought of operas by Wagner, I thought of cold beer, I
thought of sexy cunt sitting across from me on a couch with her legs crossed high and I have
a drink in my hand and am slowly and surely talking my way toward and into the blank
mind of her body, and Charley hollered HANG HER IN THE TRUCK!
I walked toward the truck. Out of the shame of defeat taught me in American schoolyards
as a boy I knew that I must not drop the steer to the ground because this would show that I
was a coward and not a man and that I didn't therefore deserve much, just sneers and
laughs and beatings, you had to be a winner in America, there wasn't any way out, and you
had to learn to fight for nothing, don't question, and besides if I dropped the steer I might
have to pick it up. Besides it will get dirty. I don't want it to get dirty, or rather – they don't
want it to get dirty.
I walked it into the truck.
HANG IT!
The hook which hung from the roof was dull as a man's thumb without a fingernail. You let
the bottom of the steer slide back and went for the top, you poked that top part against the
hook again and again but the hook would not go through. MOTHER ASS!!! It was all
gristle and fat, tough, tough.
COME ON! COME ON!
I gave it my last reserve and the hook came through, it was a beautiful sight, a miracle, that
hook coming through, that steer hanging there by itself completely off my shoulder,
hanging for the housedresses and butchershop gossip.
MOVE ON!
A 285 pound Negro, insolent, sharp, cool, murderous, walked in, hung his meat with a snap,
looked down at me.
We stays in line here!
O.K., ace.
I walked on in front of him. Another steer was waiting for me.
Each time I loaded one I was sure that was the last one I could handle but I kept saying
one more
just one more then I quit.
Fuck it.
They were waiting for me to quit, I could see the eyes, the smiles when they thought
I wasn't looking. I didn't want to give them victory. I went for another steer. The player.
One last lunge of the big-time washed-up player. I went for the meat.
2 hours went on then somebody hollered BREAK. I had made it. A ten minute rest, some
coffee, and they'd never make me quit. I walked out behind them toward a lunch-wagon
that had drawn up. I could see the steam rising in the night from the coffee; I could see the
doughnuts and cigarettes and coffee - cokes and sandwiches under the electric lights.
HEY, YOU!
It was Charley. Charley like me.
Yeah, Charley?
Before you take your break, get in that truck and move it out and over to stall 18.
It was the truck we had just loaded, the one half a block long. Stall 18 was across the yard.
I managed to open the door and get up inside the cab. It had a soft leather seat and the seat
felt so good that I knew if I didn't fight it I would soon be asleep. I wasn't a truck driver. I
looked down and it looked like a half-dozen gear shifts, brakes, pedals and so forth. I
turned the key and managed to start the engine. I played with the pedals and gear shifts until
the truck started to roll and then I drove it across the yard to stall 18, thinking all the while
– by the time I get back the lunch-wagon will be gone. This was tragedy to me, real
tragedy. I parked the truck, cut the engine and sat there a minute feeling the soft goodness
of that leather seat. Then I opened the door and got out. I missed the step or whatever was
supposed to be there and I fell to the ground in my bloody smock and christ tin helmet like
a man shot. It didn't hurt, I didn't feel it. I got up just in time to see the lunch-wagon driving
off through the gate and on down the street. I saw them walking back in toward the dock
laughing and lighting cigarettes.
I took off my boots, I took off my smock, I took off my tin helmet and walked to the shack
at the yard entrance. I threw the smock, helmet and boots across the counter. The old man
looked at me:
What? You quittin' this GOOD job?
Tell 'em to mail me my check for 2 hours or tell 'em to stick it up their ass, I don't
give a damn!
I walked out. I walked across the street to a Mexican bar and drank a beer and then got a
bus to my place.
The American schoolyard had beat me again.
Re: A History of My Employment. Part the First: From 'umble Beginnings
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Date: September 19, 2019 12:04AM
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