Charles Bukowski - Factotum

"O.K.," he said, "Bowers, you're first: Get this cocksucker up to forty-five miles per hour and hold her there. I've got this gun in my right hand and a stopwatch in my left hand. When I fire, you hit the brakes. If you ain't got the reflexes to stop her quick enough, you'll be selling green bananas at noon at Seventh and Broadway… No, you fucker! Don't watch my trigger finger! Look straight ahead! I'm going to sing you a little song. I'm going to lull you to sleep. You'll never guess when this son of a bitch is going to go off!"

It went off right then. Bowers hit the brakes. We lurched and skidded and spun. Clouds of dust billowed up from under the wheels as we whizzed between huge concrete pillars. Finally the cab screeched to a stop and rocked back and forth. Somebody in the back seat got a nosebleed.

"Did I make it?" Bowers asked.

"I ain't gonna tell you," said Smithson, making a notation in his little black book. "O.K., De Esprito, you're next."

De Esprito took the wheel and we went through more of the same. The drivers kept changing as we ran up and down the L.A. riverbed, burning brakes and rubber and shooting off the pistol. I was last to try it. "Chinaski," said Smithson.

I took the wheel and ran the cab up to fifty m.p.h.

"You set the record, eh Pops? I'm going to shoot your ass right off the map!"

"What?"

"Blow out the earwax! I'm going to take you, Pops! I once shook' hands with Max Baer! I was once a gardener for Tex Ritter! Kiss your ass goodbye!"

"You're _ridin'_ the god damned brake! Take your foot off the god damned brake!"

"Sing me a song, Pops! Sing me your little song! I've got forty love letters from Mae West in my dufflebag!"

"_You can't beat me!_"

I didn't wait for the gun. I hit the brakes. I guessed right. The gun and my foot hit at the same time. I beat his world record by fifteen feet and nine-tenths of a second. That's what he said at first. Then he changed his tune and said that I had cheated. I said, "O.K., write me up for whatever you want, but just get us out of the L.A. River. It's not going to rain so we won't be able to catch any fish."

There were forty or fifty of us in the Training Class. We all sat at little desks, rows of them bolted to the floor. Each desk had a flat area like an arm rest to the right hand side. It was just like the old days in a biology or chemistry class. Smithson called roll.

"Peters!"

"Yep."

"Calloway."

"Uh huh."

"McBride…"

(Silence).

"McBride?"

"Oh, ya."

The roll call continued. I thought it was very nice that there were so many job openings, yet it worried me too-we'd probably be pitted against one another in some way. Survival of the fittest. There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men-many men-unfortunately aren't anything.

The roll call was over. Smithson looked around the room. "We are gathered here," he began, then stopped. He looked at a black man in the first row. "Spencer?"

"Yes."

"You took the wire out of your cap, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Now you see, you'll be sitting in your cab with your cap down over your ears like Doug McArthur and some old woman with a shopping bag will walk up and want to take a cab and you'll be sitting there like that with your arm hanging out the window and she'll think you're a cowboy. She'll think you're a cowboy and she won't ride with you. She'll take a bus. That stuff is all right in the army, but this is _Yellow Cab_."

Spencer reached down on the floor, got the wire and put it back in his cap. He needed the job.

"Now most guys think they know how to drive. But the fact is very few people know how to drive, they just steer. Everytime I drive down the street I marvel at the fact that there isn't an accident every few seconds. Every day I see two or three people simply run through red lights as if they didn't exist. I'm no preacher but I can tell you this-the lives that people lead are driving them crazy and their insanity comes out in the way they drive. I'm not here to tell you how to live. You'll have to see your rabbi or your priest or your local whore. I'm here to teach you how to drive. I'm trying to keep our insurance rates down, and to fix it so you can get back to your room alive at night."

"God damn," said the kid next to me, "old Smithson's something, ain't he?"

"Every man is a poet," I said.

"Now," said Smithson, "and, god damn you, McBride, wake up and listen to me… now, when is the only time a man can lose control of his cab and won't be able to help it?"

"When I get a hard-on?" said some cracker.

" Mendoza, if you can't drive with a hard-on we can't use you. Some of our best men drive with hard-ons all day long and all night too."

The boys laughed.

"Come on, when is the only time a man can lose control of his cab and won't be able to help it?" Nobody answered. I raised my hand.

"Yes, Chinaski?"

"A man might lose control of his cab when he sneezed."

"That's correct."

I felt like a star pupil again. It was like the old L.A. City College days-bad grades, but good with the mouth.

"All right, when you sneeze, what do you do?"

As I raised my hand again the door opened and a man entered the room. He walked down the aisle and stood before me. "Are you Henry Chinaski?"

"Yes."

He snatched my cabbie's cap from my head, almost angrily. Everybody looked at me. Smithson's face was expressionless and impartial.

"Follow me," said the man.

I followed him out of the study hall and into his office.

"Sit down."

I sat down.

"We ran a check on you, Chinaski."

"Yes?"

"You have eighteen common drunks and one drunk driving."

"I thought if I put it down I wouldn't get hired."

"You lied to us."

"I've stopped drinking."

"It doesn't matter. Once you've falsified your application, you're disqualified."

I got up and walked out. I walked down the sidewalk past the Cancer Building. I walked back to our apartment. Jan was in bed. She was wearing a torn pink slip. One shoulder strap was held together by a safety pin. She was already drunk. "How'd you make out, daddy?"

"They don't want me."

"How come?"

"They don't want homosexuals."

"Oh, well. There's wine in the fridge. Get yourself a glass and come on to bed."

That I did.

A couple of days later I found an ad in the paper for a shipping clerk in an art supply store. The store was very close to where we lived but I overslept and it wasn't until 3 p.m. that I got down there. The manager was talking to an applicant when I arrived. I didn't know how many others he had interviewed. A girl gave me a form to fill out. The guy seemed to be making a good impression on the manager. They were both laughing. I filled out the form and waited. Finally the manager called me over.

"I want to tell you something. I already accepted another job this morning," I told him. "Then I happened to see your ad. I live right around the corner. I thought it might be nicer to work so close to home. Besides, I paint as a hobby. I thought I might get a discount on some of the art supplies I need."

"We give 15% off to employees. What is the name of this other place that hired you?"

"Jones-Hammer Arc Light Company. I'm to supervise their shipping department. They're on lower Alameda Street just below the slaughterhouse. I'm supposed to report at 8 a.m."