Charles Bukowski - Ham On Rye

"Maybe we ought to burn the school down," said Red Kirkpatrick.

"Shit," said a guy from the back of the room, "every time I get an 'F' my father pulls out one of my fingernails."

We all looked at our examination sheets. I thought about my father. Then I thought about Lilly Fischman. Lilly Fischman, I thought, you are a whore, an evil woman, wiggling your body in front of us and singing like that, you will send us all to hell. Stanhope was watching us.

"Why isn't anybody writing? Why isn't anybody answering the questions? Does everybody have a pencil?"

"Yeah, yeah, we all got pencils," one of the guys said. Lilly sat up in front, right by Mr. Stanhope's desk. We saw her open her biology textbook and look up the answer to the first question. That was it. We all opened up our textbooks. Stanhope just sat there and watched us. He didn't know what to do. He began to sputter. He sat there a good five minutes, then he jumped up. He ran back and forth up and down the center aisle of the room.

"What are you people doing? Close those textbooks! Close those textbooks!"

As he ran by, the students would close their books only to open them again when he had run past.

Baldy was in the seat next to mine, laughing. "He's an asshole! Oh, what an old asshole!"

I felt a little sorry for Stanhope but it was either him or me. Stanhope stood behind his desk and screamed, "All textbooks must be closed or I will flunk the entire class!"

Then Lilly Fischman stood up. She pulled her skirt up and yanked at one of her silk stockings. She adjusted the garter, we saw white flesh. Then she pulled at and adjusted the other stocking. Such a sight we had never seen, nor had Stanhope ever seen anything like it. Lilly sat down and we all finished the exam with our textbooks open. Stanhope sat behind his desk, utterly defeated.

Another guy we jerked around was Pop Farnsworth. It began the first day in Machine Shop. He said, "Here we learn by doing. We will begin right now. You will each take an engine apart and put it back together, until it is in working order, during the semester. There are charts on the wall and I will answer your questions. You will also be shown movies about how an engine works. But right now please begin to dismantle your engines. The tools are on your workshelf."

"Hey, Pop, how about the movies first?" some guy asked.

"I said, 'Begin your project!"'

I don't know where they got all those engines. They were greasy and black and rusted. They looked really dismal.

"Fuck," said some guy, "this one is a hunk of clogged shit."

We stood over our engines. Most of the guys reached for monkey wrenches. Red Kirkpatrick took a screwdriver and scraped it slowly along the top of his engine carefully creating a black ribbon of grease two feet long.

"Come on, Pop, how about a movie? We just got out of gym, our asses are dragging! Wagner had us doing the hop, skip and jump like a bunch of frogs!"

"Begin your assignment as requested!"

We started in. It was senseless. It was worse than Music Appreciation. Some clanking of tools could be heard and some heavy breathing.

"FUCK!" hollered Harry Henderson, "I'VE JUST SKINNED MY WHOLE GODDAMNED KNUCKLE! THIS IS NOTHING BUT FUCKING WHITE SLAVERY!"

He wrapped a handkerchief tenderly around his right hand and watched the blood soak through. "Shit," he said.

The rest of us kept trying. "I'd rather stick my head up an elephant's cunt," said Red Kirkpatrick.

Jack Dempsey threw his wrench to the floor. "I quit," he said,

"do anything you want to me, I quit. Kill me. Cut my balls off. I quit."

He walked over and leaned against a wall. He folded his arms and looked down at his shoes.

The situation seemed truly terrible. There weren't any girls. When you looked out the back door of the shop you could see the open schoolyard, all that sunlight and empty space out there where there was nothing to do. And here we were bent over stupid engines that weren't even attached to cars, they were useless. Just stupid steel. It was dumb and it was hard. We needed mercy. Our lives were dumb enough. Something had to save us. We'd heard Pop was a soft touch but it didn't seem true. He was a giant son-of-a-bitch with a beer gut, dressed in his greasy outfit, and with hair hanging down in his eyes and grease on his chin.

Arnie Whitechapel threw down his wrench and walked up to Mr. Farnsworth. Arnie had a big grin on his face. "Hey, Pop, what the fuck?"

"Get back to your engine, Whitechapel!"

"Ah, come on. Pop, what the shit!"

Arnie was a couple of years older than the rest of us. He had spent a few years in some boys' correctional school. But even though he was older than we were, he was smaller. He had very black hair slicked back with vaseline. He would stand in front of the mirror in the men's crapper squeezing his pimples. He talked dirty to the girls and carried Sheik rubbers in his pockets.

"I got a good one for you. Pop!"

"Yeah? Get back to your engine, Whitechapel."

"It's a good one, Pop."

We stood there and watched as Arnie began to tell Pop a dirty joke. Their heads were close together. Then the joke was over, Pop began laughing. That big body was doubled over, he was holding his gut. "Holy shit! Oh my god, holy shit!" he laughed. Then he stopped. "O.K., Arnie, back to your machine!"

"No, wait, Pop, I got another one!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, listen…"

We all left our machines and walked over. We circled them, listening as Arnie told the next joke. When it was over Pop doubled up. "Holy shit, oh lord, holy shit!"

"Then there's another one, Pop. This guy is driving his car in the desert. He notices this guy jumping along the road. He's naked and his hands and feet arc tied with rope. The guy stops his car and asks the guy, 'Hey, buddy, what's the matter?' And the guy tells him, 'Well, I was driving along and I saw this bastard hitch-hiking so I stopped and the son-of-a-bitch pulls a gun on me, takes my clothes away and then ties me up. Then the dirty son-of-a-bitch reams me in the ass!' 'Oh yeah?' says the guy getting out of his car. 'Yeah, that's what that dirty son-of-a-bitch did!' says the man. 'Well,' says the guy unzipping his fly, 1 guess this just isn't your lucky day!"'

Pop began laughing, he doubled over. "Oh, no! Oh, NO! OH… HOLY.. . SHIT, CHRIST… HOLY SHIT…!"

He finally stopped.

"God damn," he said quietly, "oh my lord…"

"How about a movie, Pop?"

"Oh well, all right."

Somebody closed the back door and Pop pulled out a dirty white screen. He started the projector. It was a lousy movie but it beat working on those engines. The gas was ignited by the spark plugs and the explosion hit the cylinder head and the head was thrust down and that turned the crankshaft and the valves opened and closed and the cylinder heads kept going up and down and the crankshaft turned some more. Not very interesting, but it was cool in there and you could lean back in your chair and think about what you wanted to think about. You didn't have to bust your knuckles on dumb steel.

We never did get those engines taken apart let alone put back together again and I don't know how many times we saw that same movie. Whitechapel's jokes kept coming and we all laughed our heads off even though most of the jokes were pretty terrible, except to Pop Farnsworth who kept doubling over and laughing,

"Holy shit! Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!"

He was an O.K. guy. We all liked him.

Our English teacher, Miss Gredis, was the absolute best. She was a blonde with a long sharp nose. Her nose wasn't much good but you didn't notice it when you looked at the rest of her. She wore tight dresses and low v-necks, black high-heeled shoes and silk stockings. She was snake-like with long beautiful legs. She only sat behind her desk when she took roll call. She kept one desk vacant at the front of the room and after roll call she would come down and sit on that desk top, facing us. Miss Gredis sat perched there with her legs crossed and her skirt pulled high. Never had we seen such ankles, such legs, such thighs. Well, there was Lilly Fischman, but Lilly was a girl-woman while Miss Gredis was in full bloom. And we got to gaze upon her for a full hour each day. There wasn't a boy in that class who wasn't sad when the bell rang ending the English period. We'd talk about her.