Ham On Rye

Suddenly the worst happened. Two planes tangled wings while circling the pylons. They both spun down and crashed and both caught on fire. The ambulance and fire engine ran up again. We saw them pull the two guys out and put them on stretchers. It was sad, those two brave good guys, both probably crippled for life or dead.

That left only two planes, number 5 and number 2, going for the grand prize. Number 5 was the slim plane almost without wings and it was much faster than number 2. Number 2 was the football, he didn't have much speed, but he made up a lot of ground on the turns. It didn't help much. The 5 kept lapping the 2.

"Plane number 5," said the a

It looked like number 5 was going to get the grand prize. Then he ran into a pylon. Instead of making the turn he just ran into the pylon and knocked the whole thing down. He kept going, straight down the field, lower and lower, the engine at full throttle, and then he hit the ground. The wheels hit and the plane bounced high into the air, flipped over, skidded along the ground. The ambulance and fire engine had a long way to go.

Number 2 just kept circling the three pylons that were left and the one fallen pylon and then he landed. He had won the grand prize. He climbed out. He was a fat guy, just like his airplane. I had expected a handsome tough guy. He had been lucky. Hardly anybody applauded.

To close the show they had a parachute contest. There was a circle painted on the ground, a big bullseye, and the one who landed the closest won. It seemed dull to me. There wasn't much noise or action. The jumpers just bailed out and aimed for the circle.

"This isn't very good," I told Frank.

"Naw," he said.

They kept coming down near the circle. More jumpers bailed out of the planes overhead. Then the crowd started oohing and ahhhing.

"Look!" said Frank.

One chute had only partially opened. There wasn't much air in it. He was falling faster than the others. You could see him kicking his legs and working his arms trying to untangle the parachute.

"Jesus Christ," said Frank.

The guy kept dropping, lower and lower, you could see him better and better. He kept yanking at the cords trying to untangle the chute but nothing worked. He hit the ground, bounced just a bit, then fell back and was still. The half-filled chute came down over him.

They cancelled the remainder of the jumps. We walked out with the people, still watching out for Daniel.

"Let's not hitch-hike back," I said to Frank.

"All right," he said.

Walking out with the people, I didn't know which was more exciting, the air race, the parachute jump that failed, or the cunt.

19

The 5th grade was a little better. The other students seemed less hostile and I was growing larger physically. I still wasn't chosen for the homeroom teams but I was threatened less. David and his violin had gone away. The family had moved. I walked home alone. I was often trailed by one or two guys, of whom Juan was the worst, but they didn't start anything. Juan smoked cigarettes. He'd walk behind me smoking a cigarette and he always had a different buddy with him. He never followed me alone. It scared me. I wished they'd go away. Yet, in another way, I didn't care. I didn't like Juan. I didn't like anybody in that school. I think they knew that. I think that's why they disliked me. I didn't like the way they walked or looked or talked, but I didn't like my father or mother either. I still had the feeling of being surrounded by white empty space. There was always a slight nausea in my stomach. Juan was dark-ski

Mrs. Fretag was our English teacher. The first day in class she asked us each our names.

"I want to get to know all of you," she said. She smiled.

"Now, each of you has a father, I'm sure. I think it would be interesting if we found out what each of your fathers does for a living. We'll start with seat number one and we will go around the class. Now, Marie, what does your father do for a living?"

"He's a gardener."

"Ah, that's nice! Seat number two… Andrew, what does your father do?"

It was terrible. All the fathers in my immediate neighborhood had lost their jobs. My father had lost his job. Gene's father sat on his front porch all day. All the fathers were without jobs except Chuck's who worked in a meat plant. He drove a red car with the meat company's name on the side.

"My father is a fireman," said seat number two.

"Ah, that's interesting," said Mrs. Fretag. "Seat number three."

"My father is a lawyer."

"Seat number four."

"My father is a… policeman…"

What was I going to say? Maybe only the fathers in my neighborhood were without jobs. I'd heard of the stock market crash. It meant something bad. Maybe the stock market had only crashed in our neighborhood.

"Seat number eighteen."

"My father is a movie actor…"

"Nineteen…"

"My father is a concert violinist…"

"Twenty…"

"My father works in the circus…"

"Twenty-one…"

"My father is a bus driver…"

"Twenty-two…"

"My father sings in the opera…"

"Twenty-three…"

Twenty-three. That was me.

"My father is a dentist," I said.

Mrs. Fretag went right on through the class until she reached number thirty-three.

"My father doesn't have a job," said number thirty-three. Shit, I thought, I wish I had thought of that.

One day Mrs. Fretag gave us an assignment.

"Our distinguished President, President Herbert Hoover, is going to visit Los Angeles this Saturday to speak. I want all of you to go hear our President. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about what you think of President Hoover's speech."

Saturday? There was no way I could go. I had to mow the lawn. I had to get the hairs. (I could never get all the hairs.) Almost every Saturday I got a beating with the razor strop because my father found a hair. (I also got stropped during the week, once or twice, for other things I failed to do or didn't do right.) There was no way I could tell my father that I had to go see President Hoover.

So, I didn't go. That Sunday I took some paper and sat down to write about how I had seen the President. His open car, trailing flowing streamers, had entered the football stadium. One car, full of secret service agents went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave men with guns to protect our President. The crowd rose as the President's car entered the arena. There had never been anything like it before. It was the President. It was him. He waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls circled overhead as if they too knew it was the President. And there were skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like "Prosperity is just around the corner." The President stood up in his car, and just as he did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. It was almost as if God knew too. Then the cars stopped and our great President, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker's platform. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky and landed on the speaker's platform near him. The President waved to the bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the people listened. I couldn't quite hear the speech because I was sitting too near a popcorn machine which made a lot of noise popping the kernels, but I think I heard him say that the problems in Manchuria were not serious, and that at home everything was going to be all right, we shouldn't worry, all we had to do was to believe in America. There would be enough jobs for everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open again. Our friends in South America would pay their debts. Soon we would all sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever…