Ham on Rye: A Novel

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  My mother was looking at me.

  “Henry, I’m so proud of you!”

  Then my mother’s head turned. “Oh, there goes Abe and his parents! They’re such nice people! Oh, Mrs. Mortenson!”

  They stopped. My mother ran over and threw her arms about Mrs. Mortenson. It was Mrs. Mortenson who had decided not to sue after many, many hours of conversation upon the telephone with my mother. It had been decided that I was a confused individual and that my mother had suffered enough that way.

  My father shook hands with Mr. Mortenson and I walked over to Abe.

  “O. K., cocksucker, what’s the idea of giving me the finger?”

  “What?”

  “The finger!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “The finger!”

  “Henry, I really don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “All right, Abraham, it’s time to go!” said his mother.

  The Mortenson family walked off together. I stood there watching them. Then we started walking to our old car. We walked west to the corner and turned south.

  “Now that Mortenson boy really knows how to apply himself!” said my father. “How are you ever going to make it? I’ve never even seen you look at a schoolbook, let alone inside of one!”

  “Some books are dull,” I said.

  “Oh, they’re dull, are they? So you don’t want to study? What can you do? What good are you? What can you do? It has cost me thousands of dollars to raise you, feed you, clothe you! Suppose I left you here on the street? Then what would you do?”

  “Catch butterflies.”

  My mother began to cry. My father pulled her away and down the block to where their ten-year-old car was parked. As I stood there, the other families roared past in their new cars, going somewhere.

  Then Jimmy Hatcher and his mother walked by. She stopped. “Hey, wait a minute,” she told Jimmy, “I want to congratulate Henry.”

  Jimmy waited and Clare walked over. She put her face close to mine. She spoke softly so Jimmy wouldn’t hear. “Listen, Honey, any time you really want to graduate, I can arrange to give you your diploma.”

  “Thanks, Clare, I might be seeing you.”

  “I’ll rip your balls off, Henry!”

  “I don’t doubt it, Clare.”

  She went back to Jimmy and they walked away down the street.

  A very old car rolled up, stopped, the engine died. I could see my mother weeping, big tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Henry, get in! Please get in! Your father is right but I love you!”

  “Forget it. I’ve got a place to go.”

  “No, Henry, get in!” she wailed. “Get in or I’ll die!”

  I walked over, opened the rear door, climbed into the rear seat. The engine started and we were off again. There I sat, Henry Chinaski, Class of Summer ’39, driving into the bright future. No, being driven. At the first red light the car stalled. As the signal turned green my father was still trying to start the engine. Somebody behind us honked. My father got the car started and we were in motion again. My mother had stopped crying. We drove along like that, each of us silent.

  46

  Times were still hard. Nobody was any more surprised than I when Mears-Starbuck phoned and asked me to report to work the next Monday. I had gone all around town putting in dozens of applications. There was nothing else to do. I didn’t want a job but I didn’t want to live with my parents either. Mears-Starbuck must have had thousands of applications on hand. I couldn’t believe they had chosen me. It was a department store with branches in many cities.

  The next Monday, there I was walking to work with my lunch in a brown paper bag. The department store was only a few blocks away from my former high school.

  I still didn’t understand why I had been selected. After filling out the application, the interview had lasted only a few minutes. I must have given all the right answers.

  First paycheck I get, I thought, I’m going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

  As I walked along I didn’t feel so alone and I wasn’t. I noticed a starving mongrel dog following me. The poor creature was terribly thin; I could see his ribs poking through his skin. Most of his fur had fallen off. What remained clung in dry, twisted patches. The dog was beaten, cowed, deserted, frightened, a victim of Homo sapiens.

  I stopped and knelt, put out my hand. He backed off.

  “Come here, fellow, I’m your friend…Come on, come on…”

  He came closer. He had such sad eyes.

  “What have they done to you, boy?”

  He came still closer, creeping along the sidewalk, trembling, wagging his tail quite rapidly. Then he leaped at me. He was large, what was left of him. His forelegs pushed me backwards and I was flat on the sidewalk and he was licking my face, mouth, ears, forehead, everywhere. I pushed him off, got up and wiped my face.

  “Easy now! You need something to eat! FOOD!”

  I reached into my bag and took out a sandwich. I unwrapped it and broke off a portion.

  “Some for you and some for me, old boy!”

  I put his part of the sandwich on the sidewalk. He came up, sniffed at it, then walked off, slinking, staring back at me over his shoulder as he walked down the street away from me.

  “Hey, wait, buddy! That was peanut butter! Come here, have some bologna! Hey, boy, come here! Come back!”

  The dog approached again, cautiously. I found the bologna sandwich, ripped off a chunk, wiped the cheap watery mustard off, then placed it on the sidewalk.

  The dog walked up to the bit of sandwich, put his nose to it, sniffed, then turned and walked off. This time he didn’t look back. He accelerated down the street.

  No wonder I had been depressed all my life. I wasn’t getting proper nourishment.

  I walked on toward the department store. It was the same street I had walked along to go to high school.

  I arrived. I found the employees’ entrance, pushed the door open and walked in. I went from bright sunlight into semi-darkness. As my eyes adjusted I could make out a man standing several feet away in front of me. Half of his left ear had been sliced off at some point in the past. He was a tall, very thin man with needlepoint grey pupils centered in otherwise colorless eyes. A very tall thin man, yet right above his belt, sticking out over his belt—suddenly—was a sad and hideous and strange pot belly. All his fat had settled there while the remainder of him had wasted away.

  “I’m Superintendent Ferris,” he said. “I presume that you’re Mr. Chinaski?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re five minutes late.”

  “I was delayed by…Well, I stopped to try to feed a starving dog,” I grinned.

  “That’s one of the lousiest excuses I’ve ever heard and I’ve been here thirty-five years. Couldn’t you come up with a better one than that?”

  “I’m just starting, Mr. Ferris.”

  “And you’re almost finished. Now,” he pointed, “the time-clock is over there and the card rack is over there. Find your card and punch in.”

  I found my card. Henry Chinaski, employee #687 54. Then I walked up to the timeclock but I didn’t know what to do.

  Ferris walked over and stood behind me, staring at the timeclock.

  “You’re now six minutes late. When you are ten minutes late we dock you an hour.”

  “I guess it’s better to be an hour late.”

  “Don’t be funny. If I want a comedian I listen to Jack Benny. If you’re an hour late you’re docked your whole god-damned job.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to use a timeclock. I mean, how do I punch in?”

  Ferris grabbed the card out of my hand. He pointed at it.

  “See this slot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, ‘yes.’”

  “O.K., that slot is for the first day of
the week. Today.”

  “Ah.”

  “You slip the timecard into here like this…”

  He slipped it in, then pulled it out.

  “Then when your timecard is in there you hit this lever.”

  Ferris hit the lever but the timecard wasn’t in there.

  “I understand. Let’s begin.”

  “No, wait.”

  He held the timecard in front of me.

  “Now, when you punch out for lunch, you hit this slot.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Then when you punch back in, you hit the next slot. Lunch is thirty minutes.”

  “Thirty minutes, I’ve got it.”

  “Now, when you punch out, you hit the last slot. That’s four punches a day. Then you go home, or to your room or wherever, sleep, come back and hit it four more times each working day until you get fired, quit, die or retire.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “And I want you to know that you’ve delayed my indoctrination speech to our new employees, of which you, at the moment, are one. I am in charge here. My word is law and your wishes mean nothing. If I dislike anything about you—the way you tie your shoes, comb your hair or fart, you’re back on the streets, get it?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  A young girl came flouncing in, running on her high heels, long brown hair flowing behind her. She was dressed in a tight red dress. Her lips were large and expressive with excessive lipstick. She theatrically pulled her card out of the rack, punched in, and breathing with minor excitement, she put her card back in the rack.

  She glanced over at Ferris.

  “Hi, Eddie!”

  “Hi, Diana!”

  Diana was obviously a salesgirl. Ferris walked over to her. They stood talking. I couldn’t hear the conversation but I could hear them laughing. Then they broke off. Diana walked over and waited for the elevator to take her to her work. Ferris walked back toward me holding my timecard.

  “I’ll punch in now, Mr. Ferris,” I told him.

  “I’ll do it for you. I want to start you out right.”

  Ferris inserted my timecard into the clock and stood there. He waited. I heard the clock tick, then he hit it. He put my card in the rack.

  “How late was I, Mr. Ferris?”

  “Ten minutes. Now follow me.”

  I followed along behind him.

  I saw the group waiting.

  Four men and three women. They were all old. They seemed to have salivary problems. Little clumps of spittle had formed at the corners of their mouths; the spittle had dried and turned white and then been coated by new wet spittle. Some of them were too thin, others too fat. Some were near-sighted; others trembled. One old fellow in a brightly colored shirt had a hump on his back. They all smiled and coughed, puffing at cigarettes.

  Then I got it. The message.

  Mears-Starbuck was looking for stayers. The company didn’t care for employee turnover (although these new recruits obviously weren’t going anywhere but to the grave—until then they’d remain grateful and loyal employees). And I had been chosen to work alongside of them. The lady in the employment office had evaluated me as belonging with this pathetic group of losers.

  What would the guys in high school think if they saw me? Me, one of the toughest guys in the graduating class.

  I walked over and stood with my group. Ferris sat on a table facing us. A shaft of light fell upon him from an overhead transom. He inhaled his cigarette and smiled at us.

  “Welcome to Mears-Starbuck…”

  Then he seemed to fall into a reverie. Perhaps he was thinking about when he had first joined the department store thirty-five years ago. He blew a few smoke rings and watched them rise into the air. His half-sliced ear looked impressive in the light from above.

  The guy next to me, a little pretzel of a man, knifed his sharp little elbow into my side. He was one of those individuals whose glasses always seem ready to fall off. He was uglier than I was.

  “Hi!” he whispered. “I’m Mewks. Odell Mewks.”

  “Hello, Mewks.”

  “Listen, kid, after work let’s you and me make the bars. Maybe we can pick up some girls.”

  “I can’t, Mewks.”

  “Afraid of girls?”

  “It’s my brother, he’s sick. I’ve got to watch over him.”

  “Sick?”

  “Worse. Cancer. He has to piss through a tube into a bottle strapped to his leg.”

  Then Ferris began again. “Your starting salary is forty-four-and-a-half cents an hour. We are non-union here. Management believes that what is fair for the company is fair for you. We are like a family, dedicated to serve and to profit. You will each receive a ten-percent discount on all merchandise you purchase from Mears-Starbuck…”

  “OH, BOY!” Mewks said in a loud voice.

  “Yes, Mr. Mewks, it’s a good deal. You take care of us, we’ll take care of you.”

  I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe inherit Ferris’ job when he retired.

  Ferris talked about which holidays we could look forward to and then the speech was over. We were issued our smocks and our lockers and then we were directed to the underground storage facilities.

  Ferris worked down there too. He manned the phones. Whenever he answered the phone he would hold it to his sliced left ear with his left hand and clamp his right hand under his left armpit. “Yes? Yes? Yes. Coming right up!”

  “Chinaski!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lingerie department…”

  Then he would pick up the order pad, list the items needed and how many of each. He never did this while on the phone, always afterwards.

  “Locate these items, deliver them to the lingerie department, obtain a signature and return.”

  His speech never varied.

  My first delivery was to lingerie. I located the items, placed them in my little green cart with its four rubber wheels and pushed it toward the elevator. The elevator was at an upper floor and I pressed the button and waited. After some time I could see the bottom of the elevator as it came down. It was very slow. Then it was at basement level. The doors opened and an albino with one eye stood at the controls. Jesus.

  He looked at me.

  “New guy, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think of Ferris?”

  “I think he’s a great guy.”

  They probably lived together in the same room and took turns manning the hotplate.

  “I can’t take you up.”

  “Why not?”

  “I gotta take a shit.”

  He left the elevator and walked off.

  There I stood in my smock. This was the way things usually worked. You were a governor or a garbageman, you were a tight-rope walker or a bank robber, you were a dentist or a fruit picker, you were this or you were that. You wanted to do a good job. You manned your station and then you stood and waited for some asshole. I stood there in my smock next to my green cart while the elevator man took a shit.

  It came to me then, clearly, why the rich, golden boys and girls were always laughing. They knew.

  The albino returned.

  “It was great. I feel thirty pounds lighter.”

  “Good. Can we go now?”

  He closed the doors and we rose to the sales floor. He opened the doors.

  “Good luck,” said the albino.

  I pushed my green cart down through the aisles looking for the lingerie department, a Miss Meadows.

  Miss Meadows was waiting. She was slender and classy-looking. She looked like a model. Her arms were folded. As I approached her I noticed her eyes. They were an emerald green, there was depth, a knowledge there. I should know somebody like that. Such eyes, such class. I stopped my cart in front of her counter.

  “Hello, Miss Meadows,” I smiled.

  “Where the hell have you been?” s
he asked.

  “It just took this long.”

  “Do you realize I have customers waiting? Do you realize that I’m attempting to run an efficient department here?”

  The salesclerks got ten cents an hour more than we did, plus commissions. I was to discover that they never spoke to us in a friendly way. Male or female, the clerks were the same. They took any familiarity as an affront.

  “I’ve got a good mind to phone Mr. Ferris.”

  “I’ll do better next time, Miss Meadows.”

  I placed the goods on her counter and then handed her the form to sign. She scratched her signature furiously on the paper, then instead of handing it back to me she threw it into my green cart.

  “Christ, I don’t know where they find people like you!”

  I pushed my cart over to the elevator, hit the button and waited. The doors opened and I rolled on in.

  “How’d it go?” the albino asked me.

  “I feel thirty pounds heavier,” I told him.

  He grinned, the doors closed and we descended.

  Over dinner that night my mother said, “Henry, I’m so proud of you that you have a job!”

  I didn’t answer.

  My father said, “Well, aren’t you glad to have a job?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? Is that all you can say? Do you realize how many men are unemployed in this nation now?”

  “Plenty, I guess.”

  “Then you should be grateful.”

  “Look, can’t we just eat our food?”

  “You should be grateful for your food, too. Do you know how much this meal cost?”

  I shoved my plate away. “Shit! I can’t eat this stuff!”

  I got up and walked to my bedroom.

  “I’ve got a good mind to come back there and teach you what is what!”

  I stopped. “I’ll be waiting, old man.”

  Then I walked away. I went in and waited. But I knew he wasn’t coming. I set the alarm to get ready for Mears-Starbuck. It was only 7:30 p.m. but I undressed and went to bed. I switched off the light and was in the dark. There was nothing else to do, nowhere to go. My parents would soon be in bed with the lights out.