What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
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Authors: Charles Bukowski
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire.
for Marina Louise Bukowski
blue beads and bones
my father believed in work.
he was proud to have a
job.
sometimes he didn't have a
job and then he was very
ashamed.
he'd be so ashamed that he'd
leave the house in the morning
and then come back in the evening
so the neighbors wouldn't
know.
me,
I liked the man next door:
he just sat in a chair in
his back yard and threw darts
at some circles he had painted
on the side of his garage.
in Los Angeles in 1930
he had a wisdom that
Goethe, Hegel, Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, Freud,
Jaspers, Heidegger and
Toynbee would find hard
to deny.
we liked the priest because once we saw him buy
an icecream cone
we were 9 years old then and when I went to
my best friend's house his mother was usually
drinking with his father
they left the screen door open and listened
to music on the radio
his mother sometimes had her dress pulled
high and her legs excited me
made me nervous and afraid but excited
somehow
by those black polished shoes and those nylonsâ
even though she had buck teeth and a
very plain face.
when we were ten his father shot and
killed himself with a bullet through
the head
but my best friend and his mother went on
living in that house
and I used to see his mother going
up the hill to the market with her
shopping bag and I'd walk along beside
her
quite conscious of her legs and her
hips and her behind
the way they all moved together
and she always spoke nicely to me
and her son and I went to church and
confession together
and the priest lived in a cottage
behind the church
and a fat kind lady was always there
with him
when we went to visit
and everything seemed warm and
comfortable then in
1930
because I didn't know
that there was a worldwide
depression
and that madness and sorrow and fear were
almost everywhere.
his name was Eddie and he had a
big white dog
with a curly tail
a huskie
like one of those that pulled sleighs
up near the north pole
Igloo he called him
and Eddie had a bow and arrow
and every week or two
he'd send an arrow
into the dog's side
then run into his mother's house
through the yelping
saying that Igloo had fallen on
the arrow.
that dog took quite a few arrows and
managed to
survive
but I saw what really happened and didn't
like Eddie very much.
so when I broke Eddie's leg
in a sandlot football game
that was my way of getting even
for Igloo.
his parents threatened to sue my
parents
claiming I did it on purpose because
that's what Eddie
told them.
well, nobody had any money anyhow
and when Eddie's father got a job
in San Diego
they moved away and left the
dog.
we took him in.
Igloo turned out to be rather dumb
did not respond to very much
had no life or joy in him
just stuck out his tongue
panted
slept most of the time
when he wasn't eating
and although he wiped his ass
up and down the lawn after
defecating
he usually had a large fragrant smear of
brown
under his tail
when he was run over by an
icecream truck
3 or 4 months later
and died in a stream of scarlet
I didn't feel more than the
usual amount of grief
and loss
and I was still glad that I
had managed to
break Eddie's leg.
