Run With the Hunted

charles bukowski

run with the hunted

a charles bukowski reader

edited by John Martin

For William Packard

The material in this Bukowski reader is taken from the more than twenty novels, books of short stories, and volumes of poetry that Bukowski has published with Black Sparrow Press over the past twenty-five years. Sometimes autobiographical and sometimes the result of Bukowski's wonderful gift for observation, these poems and prose pieces, taken together, serve to chronicle this writer's inner and outer life, from childhood to the present—and an astonishing and heroic life it is. So long as there are intelligent and courageous readers neither Bukowski's work nor his life, interwoven as they are, will soon be forgotten.

Dedication

Editor's Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Acknowledgments

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

 

The first thing I remember is being under something. It was a table, I saw a table leg, I saw the legs of the people, and a portion of the tablecloth hanging down. It was dark under there, I liked being under there. It must have been in Germany. I must have been between one and two years old. It was 1922. I felt good under the table. Nobody seemed to know that I was there. There was sunlight upon the rug and on the legs of the people. I liked the sunlight. The legs of the people were not interesting, not like the tablecloth which hung down, not like the table leg, not like the sunlight.

Then there is nothing … then a Christmas tree. Candles. Bird ornaments: birds with small berry branches in their beaks. A star. Two large people fighting, screaming. People eating, always people eating. I ate too. My spoon was bent so that if I wanted to eat I had to pick the spoon up with my right hand. If I picked it up with my left hand, the spoon bent away from my mouth. I wanted to pick the spoon up with my left hand.

Two people: one larger with curly hair, a big nose, a big mouth, much eyebrow; the larger person always seeming to be angry, often screaming; the smaller person quiet, round of face, paler, with large eyes. I was afraid of both of them. Sometimes there was a third, a fat one who wore dresses with lace at the throat. She wore a large brooch, and had many warts on her face with little hairs growing out of them. “Emily,” they called her. These people didn't seem happy together. Emily was the grandmother, my father's mother. My father's name was “Henry.” My mother's name was “Katherine.” I never spoke to them by name. I was “Henry, Jr.” These people spoke German most of the time and in the beginning I did too.

The first thing I remember my grandmother saying was, “I will bury
all
of you!” She said this the first time just before we began eating a meal, and she was to say it many times after that, just before we began to eat. Eating seemed very important. We ate mashed potatoes and gravy, especially on Sundays. We also ate roast beef, knockwurst and sauerkraut, green peas, rhubarb, carrots, spinach, string beans, chicken, meatballs and spaghetti, sometimes mixed with ravioli; there were boiled onions, asparagus, and every Sunday there was strawberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream. For breakfasts we had french toast and sausages, or there were hotcakes or waffles with bacon and scrambled eggs on the side. And there was always coffee. But what I remember best is all the mashed potatoes and gravy and my grandmother, Emily, saying, “I will bury
all
of you!”

She visited us often after we came to America, taking the red trolley in from Pasadena to Los Angeles. We only went to see her occasionally, driving out in the Model-T Ford.

I liked my grandmother's house. It was a small house under an overhanging mass of pepper trees. Emily had all her canaries in different cages. I remember one visit best. That evening she went about covering the cages with white hoods so that the birds could sleep. The people sat in chairs and talked. There was a piano and I sat at the piano and hit the keys and listened to the sounds as the people talked. I liked the sound of the keys best up at one end of the piano where there was hardly any sound at all—the sound the keys made was like chips of ice striking against one another.

“Will you stop that?” my father said loudly.

“Let the boy play the piano,” said my grandmother.

My mother smiled.

“That boy,” said my grandmother, “when I tried to pick him up out of the cradle to kiss him, he reached up and hit me in the nose!”

They talked some more and I went on playing the piano.

“Why don't you get that thing tuned?” asked my father.

—
H
AM ON
R
YE

I keep remembering the horses

under the moon

I keep remembering feeding the horses

sugar

white oblongs of sugar

more like ice,

and they had heads like

eagles

bald heads that could bite and

did not.

The horses were more real than

my father

more real than God

and they could have stepped on my

feet but they didn't

they could have done all kinds of horrors

but they didn't.

I was almost 5

but I have not forgotten yet;

o my god they were strong and good

those red tongues slobbering

out of their souls.

 

I had begun to dislike my father. He was always angry about something. Wherever we went he got into arguments with people. But he didn't appear to frighten most people; they often just stared at him, calmly, and he became more furious. If we ate out, which was seldom, he always found something wrong with the food and sometimes refused to pay. “There's flyshit in this whipped cream! What the hell kind of a place is this?”

“I'm sorry, sir, you needn't pay. Just leave.”

“I'll leave, all right! But I'll be back! I'll burn this god-damned place down!”

Once we were in a drug store and my mother and I were standing to one side while my father yelled at a clerk. Another clerk asked my mother, “Who
is
that horrible man? Every time he comes in here there's an argument.”

“That's my husband,” my mother told the clerk.

Yet, I remember another time. He was working as a milkman and made early morning deliveries. One morning he awakened me. “Come on, I want to show you something.” I walked outside with him. I was wearing my pajamas and slippers. It was still dark, the moon was still up. We walked to the milk wagon which was horsedrawn. The horse stood very still. “Watch,” said my father. He took a sugar cube, put it in his hand and held it out to the horse. The horse ate it out of his palm. “Now you try it …” He put a sugar cube in my hand. It was a very large horse. “Get closer! Hold out your hand!” I was afraid the horse would bite my hand off. The head came down; I saw the nostrils; the lips pulled back, I saw the tongue and the teeth, and then the sugar cube was gone. “Here. Try it again …” I tried it again. The horse took the sugar cube and waggled his head. “Now,” said my father, “I'll take you back inside before the horse shits on you.”

I was not allowed to play with other children. “They are bad children,” said my father, “their parents are poor.” “Yes,” agreed my mother. My parents wanted to be rich so they imagined themselves rich.

The first children of my age that I knew were in kindergarten. They seemed very strange, they laughed and talked and seemed happy. I didn't like them. I always felt as if I was going to be sick, to vomit, and the air seemed strangely still and white. We painted with watercolors. We planted radish seeds in a garden and some weeks later we ate them with salt. I liked the lady who taught kindergarten, I liked her better than my parents.

—
H
AM ON
R
YE

as a boy

I remember the sound

of:

“RAGS! BOTTLES! SACKS!”

“RAGS! BOTTLES! SACKS!”

it was during the

Depression

and you could hear the

voice

long before you saw the

old wagon

and the

old tired

swaybacked horse.

then you heard the

hooves:

clop, clop, clop
…

and then you saw the

horse and the

wagon

and it always seemed

to be

on the hottest summer

day:

“RAGS! BOTTLES! SACKS!”

oh

that horse was so

tired—

white streams of

saliva

drooling

as the bit dug into

the

mouth

he pulled an intolerable

load

of

rags, bottles, sacks

I saw his eyes

large

in agony

his ribs

showing

the giant flies

whirled and landed upon

raw places on his

skin.

sometimes

one of our fathers would

yell:

“
Hey! Why don't you

feed that horse, you

bastard!
”

the man's answer was

always the

same:

“RAGS! BOTTLES! SACKS!”

the man was

incredibly

dirty, un-

shaven, wearing a crushed

and stained

fedora

he

sat on top of

a large pile of

sacks

and

now and

then

as the horse seemed to

miss

a step

this man would

lay down

the long whip …

the sound was like a

rifle shot

a phalanx of flies would

rise

and the horse would