Run With the Hunted (31 page)

fathoms, risks,

knowledgeable surrender,

rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad

without a chance,

hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,

I lean upon this,

I lean on all of this

and I know:

her dress upon my arm:

but

they will not

give her back to me.

225 days under grass

and you know more than I.

they have long taken your blood,

you are a dry stick in a basket.

is this how it works?

in this room

the hours of love

still make shadows.

when you left

you took almost

everything.

I kneel in the nights

before tigers

that will not let me be.

what you were

will not happen again.

the tigers have found me

and I do not care.

the blossoms shake

sudden water

down my sleeve,

sudden water

cool and clean

as snow—

as the stem-sharp

swords

go in

against your breast

and the sweet wild

rocks

leap over

and

lock us in.

 

 

Then I developed a new system at the racetrack. I pulled in $3,000 in a month and a half while only going to the track two or three times a week. I began to dream. I saw a little house down by the sea. I saw myself in fine clothing, calm, getting up mornings, getting into my imported car, making the slow easy drive to the track. I saw leisurely

everything

at once

almost alike,

the horses at peace with

each other

before the drunken war

and I am under the grandstand

feeling for

cigarettes

settling for coffee,

then the horses walk by

taking their little men

away—

it is funereal and graceful

and glad

like the opening

of flowers.

 

 

Somehow the money slipped away after that and soon I left the track and sat around in my apartment waiting for the 90 days' leave to run out. My nerves were raw from the drinking and the action. It's not a new story about how women descend upon a man. You think you have space to breathe, then you look up and there's another one. A few days after returning to work, there was another one. Fay. Fay had grey hair and always dressed in black. She said she was protesting the war. But if Fay wanted to protest the war, that was all right with me. She was a writer of some sort and went to a couple of writers' workshops. She had ideas about Saving the World. If she could Save it for me, that would be all right too. She had been living off alimony checks from a former husband—they had had three children—and her mother also sent money now and then. Fay had not had more than one or two jobs in her life.

Meanwhile Janko had a new load of bullshit. He sent me home each morning with my head aching. At the time I was getting numerous trafsteak dinners, preceded and followed by good chilled drinks in colored glasses. The big tip. The cigar. And women as you wanted them. It's easy to fall into this kind of thinking when men handed you large bills at the cashier's window. When in one six furlong race, say in a minute and nine seconds, you make a month's pay.

So I stood in the tour superintendent's office. There he was behind his desk. I had a cigar in my mouth and whiskey on my breath. I felt like money. I looked like money.

“Mr. Winters,” I said, “the post office has treated me well. But I have outside business interests that simply must be taken care of. If you can't give me a leave of absence, I must resign.”

“Didn't I give you a leave of absence earlier in the year, Chinaski?”

“No, Mr. Winters, you turned down my request for a leave of absence. This time there can't be any turndown. Or I will resign.”

“All right, fill out the form and I'll sign it. But I can only give you 90 working days off.”

“I'll take 'em,” I said, exhaling a long trail of blue smoke from my expensive cigar.

—
P
OST
O
FFICE

I'll settle for the 6 horse

on a rainy afternoon

a paper cup of coffee

in my hand

a little way to go,

the wind twirling out

small wrens from

the upper grandstand roof,

the jocks coming out

for a middle race

silent

and the easy rain making

fic citations. It seemed that every time I looked into the rear view mirror there were the red lights. A squad car or a bike.

I got to my place late one night. I was really beat. Getting that key out and into the door was about the last of me. I walked into the bedroom and there was Fay in bed reading
The New Yorker
and eating chocolates. She didn't even say hello.

I walked into the kitchen and looked for something to eat. There was nothing in the refrigerator. I decided to pour myself a glass of water. I walked to the sink. It was stopped-up with garbage. Fay liked to save empty jars and jar lids. The dirty dishes filled half the sink and on top of the water, along with a few paper plates, floated these jars and jar lids.

I walked back into the bedroom just as Fay was putting a chocolate in her mouth.

“Look, Fay,” I said, “I know you want to save the world. But can't you start in the kitchen?”

“Kitchens aren't important,” she said.

It was difficult to hit a woman with grey hair so I just went into the bathroom and let the water run into the tub. A burning bath might cool the nerves. When the tub was full I was afraid to get into it. My sore body had, by then, stiffened to such an extent that I was afraid I might drown in there.

I went into the front room and after an effort I managed to get out of my shirt, pants, shoes, stockings. I walked into the bedroom and climbed into bed next to Fay. I couldn't get settled. Every time I moved, it cost me.

The only time you are alone, Chinaski, I thought, is when you are driving to work or driving back.

I finally worked my way to a position on my stomach. I ached all over. Soon I'd be back on the job. If I could manage to sleep, it would help. Every now and then I could hear a page turn, the sound of chocolates being eaten. It had been one of her writers' workshop nights. If she would only turn out the lights.

“How was the workshop?” I asked from my belly.

“I'm worried about Robby.”

“Oh,” I asked, “what's wrong?”

Robby was a guy nearing 40 who had lived with his mother all his life. All he wrote, I was told, were terribly funny stories about the Catholic Church. Robby really laid it to the Catholics. The magazines just weren't ready for Robby, although he had been printed once in a Canadian journal. I had seen Robby once on one of my nights off. I drove Fay up to this mansion where they all read their stuff to each other. “Oh! There's Robby!” Fay had said, “he writes these very funny stories about the Catholic Church!”

She had pointed. Robby had his back to us. His ass was wide and big and soft; it hung in his slacks. Can't they see that? I thought.

“Won't you come in?” Fay had asked.

“Maybe next week …”

Fay put another chocolate into her mouth.

“Robby's worried. He lost his job on the delivery truck. He says he can't write without a job. He needs a feeling of security. He says he won't be able to write until he finds another job.”

“Oh hell,” I said, “I can get him another job.”

“Where? How?”

“They are hiring down at the post office, right and left. The pay's not bad.”

“THE POST OFFICE! ROBBY'S TOO SENSITIVE TO WORK AT THE POST OFFICE!”

“Sorry,” I said, “thought it was worth a try. Good night.”

Fay didn't answer me. She was angry.

—
P
OST
O
FFICE

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,

and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like

insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,

says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too.

“I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are

at work.”

He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he

fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like

a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.

He feels the hatred and discard of the world, sharper than

his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he

self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his

hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.

Daumier. Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.)

Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale
.

“She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.”

“What is it? A love affair?”

“Silly. I can't love a woman. Besides, she's pregnant.”

I can paint—a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a

lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,

and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that

clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy …

men drive cars and paint their houses,

but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.

Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine
.

Paris, Louvre
.

“I must write Kaiser, though I think he's a homosexual.”

“Are you still reading Freud?”

“Page 299.”

She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one

arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the

snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h've

time and the dog.

About church: the trouble with a mask is it

never changes.

So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.

So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs

and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the

wind like the end of a tunnel.

He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some

segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.

When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches

warmer and more blood-real than the dove.

Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross
.

Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library
.

He burned away in sleep.

 

 

Fay was pregnant. But it didn't change her and it didn't change the post office either.

The same clerks did all the work while the miscellaneous crew stood around and argued about sports. They were all big black dudes—built like professional wrestlers. Whenever a new one came into the service he was tossed into the miscellaneous crew. This kept them from murdering the supervisors. If the miscellaneous crew had a supervisor you never saw him. The crew brought in truckloads of mail that arrived via freight elevator. This was a five minute on the hour job. Sometimes they counted the mail, or pretended to. They looked very calm and intellectual, making their counts with long pencils behind one ear. But most of the time they argued the sports scene violently. They were all experts—they read the same sports writers.

“All right, man, what's your all time outfield?”

“Well, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Cobb.”

“What? What?”

“That's right, baby!”

“What about the Babe? Whatta ya gonna do with the Babe?”

“O.K., O.K., who's your all star outfield?”

“All time, not all star!”

“O.K., O.K., you know what I mean, baby, you know what I mean!”