Ham On Rye

I heard my father come in. He always slammed the door, walked heavily, and talked loudly. He was home. After a few moments the bedroom door opened. He was six feet two, a large man. Everything vanished, the chair I was sitting in, the wallpaper, the walls, all of my thoughts. He was the dark covering the sun, the violence of him made everything else utterly disappear. He was all ears, nose, mouth, I couldn't look at his eyes, there was only his red angry face.

"All right, Henry. Into the bathroom."

I walked in and he closed the door behind us. The walls were white. There was a bathroom mirror and a small window, the screen black and broken. There was the bathtub and the toilet and the tiles. He reached and took down the razor strop which hung from a hook. It was going to be the first of many such bearings, which would recur more and more often. Always, I felt, without real reason.

"All right, take down your pants."

I took my pants down.

"Pull down your shorts."

I pulled them down.

Then he laid on the strop. The first blow inflicted more shock than pain. The second hurt more. Each blow which followed increased the pain. At first I was aware of the walls, the toilet, the tub. Finally I couldn't see anything. As he beat me, he berated me, but I couldn't understand the words. I thought about his roses, how he grew roses in the yard. I thought about his automobile in the garage. I tried not to scream. I knew that if I did scream he might stop, but knowing this, and knowing his desire for me to scream, prevented me. The tears ran from my eyes as I remained silent. After a while it all became just a whirlpool, a jumble, and there was only the deadly possibility of being there forever. Finally, like something jerked into action, I began to sob, swallowing and choking on the salt slime that ran down my throat. He stopped.

He was no longer there. I became aware of the little window again and the mirror. There was the razor strop hanging from the hook, long and brown and twisted. I couldn't bend over to pull up my pants or my shorts and I walked to the door, awkwardly, my clothes around my feet. I opened the bathroom door and there was my mother standing in the hall.

"It wasn't right," I told her. "Why didn't you help me?"

"The father," she said, "is always right."

Then my mother walked away. I went to my bedroom, dragging my clothing around my feet and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress hurt me. Outside, through the rear screen I could see my father's roses growing. They were red and white and yellow, large and full. The sun was very low but not yet set and the last of it slanted through the rear window. I felt that even the sun belonged to my father, that I had no right to it because it was shining upon my father's house. I was like his roses, something that belonged to him and not to me…

9

By the time they called me to di

"I told Sullivan to combine three routes into two and let one man go from each shift. Nobody is really pulling their weight around there…"

"They ought to listen to you, Daddy," said my mother.

"Please," I said, "please excuse me but I don't feel like eating…

"You'll eat your FOOD!" said my father. "Your mother prepared this food!"

"Yes," said my mother, "carrots and peas and roast beef."

"And the mashed potatoes and gravy," said my father.

"I'm not hungry."

"You will eat every carrot, and pee on your plate!" said my father.

He was trying to be fu

"DADDY!" said my mother in shocked disbelief. I began eating. It was terrible. I felt as if I were eating them, what they believed in, what they were. I didn't chew any of it, I just swallowed it to get rid of it. Meanwhile my father was talking about how good it all tasted, how lucky we were to be eating good food when most of the people in the world, and many even in America, were starving and poor.

"What's for dessert. Mama?" my father asked. His face was horrible, the lips pushed out, greasy and wet with pleasure. He acted as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't beaten me. When I was back in my bedroom I thought, these people are not my parents, they must have adopted me and now they are unhappy with what I have become.

10

Lila Jane was a girl my age who lived next door. I still wasn't allowed to play with the children in the neighborhood, but sitting in the bedroom often got dull. I would go out and walk around in the backyard, looking at things, bugs mostly. Or I would sit on the grass and imagine things. One thing I imagined was that I was a great baseball player, so great that I could get a hit every time at bat, or a home run anytime I wanted to. But I would deliberately make outs just to trick the other team. I got my hits when I felt like it. One season, going into July, I was hitting only. 139 with one home run. HENRY CHINASKI IS FINISHED, the newspapers said. Then I began to hit. And how I hit! At one time I allowed myself 16 home runs in a row. Another time I batted in 24 runs in one game. By the end of the season I was hitting.523.

Lila Jane was one of the pretty girls I'd seen at school. She was one of the nicest, and she was living right next door. One day when I was in the yard she came up to the fence and stood there looking at me.

"You don't play with the other boys, do you?"

I looked at her. She had long red-brown hair and dark brown eyes.

"No," I said, "no, I don't."

"Why not?"

"I see them enough at school."

"I'm Lila Jane," she said.

"I'm Henry."

She kept looking at me and I sat there on the grass and looked at her. Then she said, "Do you want to see my panties?"

"Sure," I said.

She lifted her dress. The panties were pink and clean. They looked good. She kept holding her dress up and then turned around so that I could see her behind. Her behind looked nice. Then she pulled her dress down. "Goodbye," she said and walked off.

"Goodbye," I said.

It happened each afternoon. "Do you want to see my panties?"

"Sure."

The panties were nearly always a different color and each time they looked better.

One afternoon after Lila Jane showed me her panties I said,

"Let's go for a walk."

"All right," she said.

I met her in front and we walked down the street together. She was really pretty. We walked along without saying anything until we came to a vacant lot. The weeds were tall and green.

"Let's go into the vacant lot," I said.

"All right," said Lila Jane. We walked out into the tall weeds.

"Show me your panties again."

She lifted her dress. Blue panties.

"Let's stretch out here," I said.

We got down in the weeds and I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her. Then I pulled up her dress and looked at her panties. I put my hand on her behind and kissed her again. I kept kissing her and grabbing at her behind. I did this for quite a long time. Then I said, "Let's do it." I wasn't sure what there was to do but I felt there was more.

"No, I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"Those men will see."

"What men?"

"There!" she pointed. I looked between the weeds. Maybe half a block away some men were working repairing the street.

"They can't see us!"

"Yes, they can!"

I got up. "God damn it!" I said and I walked out of the lot and went back home.

I didn't see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn't matter. It was football season and I was - in my imagination - a great quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best ru