Charles Bukowski - Short Stories Collection Part 25

moreland st."

"you mean Myra?"

"I don't know her name!"

"she's only 3."

"I don't know how old she is! she asked about the dog!"

"what about the dog?"

"she asked where it WAS!"

"come on, I'll help you get rid of the papers."

Kathy was climbing into an old ripped dress."

"I got rid of them. it's over. I dumped them into the back of that abandoned car."

"will they catch you?"

"f.u.c.k! who cares?"

I went into the kitchen and got a beer. when I got back Kathy was in bed again. I sat in the chair.

"Kathy?"

"uh?"

"you just don't realize who you're living with! I'm cla.s.s, real cla.s.s! I'm 34 but I haven't worked 6 or 7 months since I was 18 years old. and no money. look at my hands! I've got hands like a pianist!"

"Cla.s.s? you OUGHT to HEAR yourself when you're drunk!

you're horrible, horrible!"

"are you trying to start some s.h.i.+t again, Kathy? I've kept you in furs and hundred proof since I dug you outa that gin mill on Alvarado st."

Kathy didn't answer.

"in fact," I told here, "I am a genius but n.o.body knows it but me."

"I'll buy that," she said. then she dug her head into the pillow and went back to sleep.

I finished the beer, had another, then went 3 blocks over and sat on the steps of a closed grocery store that the map said would be the meeting place where the man would pick me up. I sat there from 10 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. 9t was dull and dry and stupid and torturous and senseless. then the rotten truck came at 2:30 p.m.

"hey. buddy?"

"yum?"

"you finished already?"

"yum."

"you're fast!"

"yep."

"I want you to help this one guy finish his route."

oh, f.u.c.k.

I got into the truck and then he let me off. here was this guy.

he was CREEPING. he threw each paper with great care upon each porch. each porch got special treatment. and he seemed to enjoy his work. he was on his last block. I finished the whole thing off in 5 minutes. then we sat and waited for the truck. for an hour.

they drove us back to the office and we sat in our school chairs again. then two snot-nosed kids came out with cans of beer in their hands. one called off names and the other gave each man his money.

on a blackboard written in chalk behind the heads of the snot-noses was a message: ANY MAN WHO WORKS FOR US 30 DAYS IN A ROW.

WITHOUT MISSING A DAY.

WILL BE GIVEN.

A FREE.

SECOND HAND SUIT.

I kept watching as each man was handed his money. it couldn't be true. it APPEARED that each man was given three one dollar bills. at the time, the lowest basic wage scale by law was one dollar an hour. I had been on that corner at 4:30 a.m. now it was 4:30 p.m. to me, that was 12 hours.

I was one of the last names called. I think I was 3rd from last.

not a one of those b.u.ms raised h.e.l.l. they just took the $3 and went out the door.

"Bukowski!" the snot-nosed kid hollered.

I walked up. the other snot-nosed kid counted out 3 very clean and crisp Was.h.i.+ngtons.

"listen," I said, "don't you guys realize that there is a basic wage law? one buck an hour."

the snot-nose raised his beer. "we deduct for transportation, breakfast and so forth. we only pay for average working time which we figure to be about 3 hours or so."

"I see twelve hours out of my life and I've got to take a bus downtown now to go get my car and drive in back in."

"you're lucky to have a car."

"and you're lucky I don't jam that can of beer up your a.s.s!"

"I don't set company policy, sir, please don't blame me."

"I'm going to report you to the State Labor Board!"

"Robinson!" the other snot-nose hollered.

the next to last burn got p from his seat for his $3 as I walked out the door and on up to Beverly blvd. to wait for the bus. by the time I got home and got a drink in my hand it was 6 p.m. or so. I really got drunk then. I was so frustrated I banged Kathy 3 times.

broke a window. cut my foot on broken gla.s.s. sang songs from Gilbert and Sullivan, which I once learned from an insane English teacher who taught an English cla.s.s which began at 7 a.m. in the morning. L.A.City College. Richardson was his name. and maybe he wasn't insane. but he taught me Gilbert and Sullivan and gave me a "d" in English for showing up no sooner than 7:30 a.m. with hangover, WHEN I showed. but that's something else. Kathy and I had some laughs that night, and although I broke a few things I was not as nasty and stupid as usual.

and that Tuesday at Hollywood Park I won $140 at the races and I was once again the quite casual lover, hustler, gambler, rea"

formed pimp and tulip grower. I drove slowly up the driveway, savoring the last of the evening sun. then I strolled in through the back door. Kathy had on some meat loaf with plenty of onions and c.r.a.p and spices in it just the way I liked it. she was bent over at the stove and I grabbed her from the back.

"ooooo-"

"listen, baby-"

"yeah?"

she stood there with the large dripping spoon in her hand. I slipped ten into the neck of her dress.

"I want you to get me a fifth of whiskey."

"sure, sure."

"and some beer and cigars. I'll watch the food."

she took off her ap.r.o.n and went into the bathroom for a moment. I could hear her humming. a moment later I sat in my chair and listened to her heels clicking down the drive. there was a tennis ball. I took the tennis ball and bounced it on the floor so it hit the wall and zoomed high into the air. the dog who was 5 feet long and 3 feet tall, + wolf, leaped into the air, there was the snap of teeth and he had that tennis ball, up near the ceiling. for a moment he seemed to hang up there. what a beautiful dog, what a beautiful life.

when he hit the floor I got up to check the meatloaf. it was all right.

everything was.

**NON-HORSEs.h.i.+T HORSE ADVICE**

so, the Hollywood Park meet has begun, and naturally I have been out a couple of times, and the scene is not very variable: the horses look the same and the people a little worse, the horseplayer is a combination of extreme conceit, madness and greed. one of Freud's main pupils(I don't recall his name right now, only remember reading the book) said that gambling is a subst.i.tute for masturbation. of course, the problem with any direct statement is that it can easily become an untruth, a part truth, a lie or a wilted gardenia. yet, checking out the ladies (between races) I do find the same oddity: before the first race they sit with their skirts down as much as possible, and as each race proceeds the skirts climb higher and high-er, until just before the 9th race it takes all one's facilities not to commit rape upon one of the darlings. whether it is a sense of masturbation that causes this or whether the dear little things need rent and bean money, I don't know, probably a combo. I saw one lady leap over 2 or 3 rows of seats after getting a winner, and screaming, screeching, divine as an iced-grapefruit vodka across the top of a hangover. "she's getting hers now," said my girlfriend.

"yeah," I said, "but I wish I had gotten there first."

for those of you unfamiliar with the basic principles of horse-wagering, allow me to divert you with a few basics. the difficulty in the average person leaving the track with any money at all is easily propounded if you will follow this - the track and the state take roughly 15% out of each dollar bet, plus breakage. the 15% is di= vided about in half between the state and the track. in other words, 85 cents out of each dollar is returned to the holders of winning tickets. breakage is the penny difference on the ten cent breakdown of the payoff. in other words, say if the totalizer machine breaks the payoff down to a $16.84 payoff, then the winning player gets $16.80, the 4 cents on each winning bet going elsewhere. now I am not sure, because the thing in not publicized but I also believe that on, say, a $16.89 payoff, the payoff is still $16.80 and the 9 cents goes elsewhere, but I am not positive of this and "Open City" certainly can't afford a libel suit now or ever and neither can I, so I will not make this a positive presumption, but if any "Open City" reader has the facts on this, I do wish he would write O.C. and advise me, this penny breakage alone could make millionaires out of any of us.

now take the average goof who has worked all week and is looking for a little bit of luck, entertainment, masturbation, take 40 of them, give them each $100, and presuming that they are average bettors, the general medium based upon a 15% take, forgetting breakage, would have 40 of them leaving with $85. but it doesn't work that way 0 35 of them will leave almost completely broke, one or two of them will win $85 or $150 by sheer fortune of falling upon the right horses and not knowing why. the 3 or 4 others will break even.

all right, then, who is getting all this money that the little bettor who works a turret lathe or drives a bus all week, losers? easy: the betting stables who send off bad-form horses in a spot that it is profitable for them to win in. stables cannot make it upon purse money alone, that is, most of them can't. give a stable a top handicap horse and they are in, but even they must resort to pulls and deliberately bad races in order to get weight off for a top money race. in other words, say a top-weighted horse gifted with 130 pounds by the track handicapper for an early $25,000 race will tend to lose this race and get weight off on that performance for a later $100,000 race. now these statements cannot be proven but if you will follow this conjecture you might make a little money or at least save a little. but it is the stables who must race in the lower cla.s.s races with lower purses who must maneuver their horses for a price. in some cases, the owner of the horse or horses himself is not aware of the maneuvering; this is because trainers and grooms, hot-walkers, exercise jocks are grossly underpaid (in time and effort put in, compared to other industries) and their only way to get out is to put one over. the racetracks are aware of this and attempt to keep the game clean, to give it a holy sheen of honesty, but for all their efforts-barring tough guys, cons, syndicates, operators, from the track, there are still "goodies" put over on the crowd, a so-called pig who "wakes up" and wins by 3 to 10 lengths at odds of 5 to up to 50 to1. but these are only animals, not machines. so there's an excuse, an excuse to haul away millions in wheelbarrows from the racetrack, tax-free. human greed will not relent, it will continue to feed itself. the com-munist party be d.a.m.ned.

all right, that's bad enough. let's take something else. besides the public being automatically wrong just by instinct (ask the stockbroker - when you want to know which way to move just move the opposite from the big crowd with the small, *scared, tight money). but the something else is this: a possible mathematic. taking the dollar base - you invest the first dollar, you get back 85 cents. automatic take. second race, you have to a.s.s15 cents, then another 15% take. now take 9 races and take a 15% take on a break-even basis - upon your original dollar. is it just 9 times 15% or is it much more? it would take one of these Caltaech cats to tell me and I don't know any Caltech cats. anyway, if you have followed me up to here, you must realize that it is very difficult to make a "living" at the racetrack as some starry-eyed dreamers would like to do.

I am a "hard-nose": that is, any given day at any track you just ain't gonna take much money from me; on the other hand, I ain't gonna make much. naturally, I have some good plays and I'd be a d.a.m.n fool to reveal them to everybody because then they would not work. once the public gets onto something it is dead and it changes. the public is not allowed to win in any game ever invented and that includes the American Revolution. but for "Open City" readers I have a few basics that might save you a little money. take heed.

a/ watch your underlay shots. an underlay is a horse that closes in odds under the trackman's morning line. in other words, the trackman lists the horse 10 t0 1 and it is going off at 6 to 1. money is much more serious than anything else. check your underlays carefully, and if the line is just not a careless mistake by the trackman and the horse dos not show any recent fast works or a switch to a "name" jockey, and if the horse is not dropping weight and is running against the same cla.s.s, you will probably get a fairly good run for your money.

b/ lay off the closers. this is a horse, that say closed from 5 to 16 lengths from the beginning call to the last and still did not win and is coming back against the same or similar. the crowd loves the "closer," through fear $ tight money and stupidity, but the closer is generally a lard-a.s.s, lazy and only pa.s.ses tired horses who have been running and fighting for the front end. not only does the crowd love this type of junk-horse but they will consistently bet him down to odds less than 1/3 of his worth. even though this type of horse continually runs out, the crowd out of fear will go to him because they are tight up against the rent money and feel that a closer possesses some kind of super stength. 90% of the races are won by horses on the front end or near the front end of all the running, at plausible and reasonable prices.

c/ if you must bet a "closer" bet him in shorter races, 6 or 7 furlongs, where the crowd believes he does not have time "to get up." here they go for the speed and are stuck again. 7 furlongs is the best closer's race in the business because of only one curve. a speed horse gets the advantage of being out in front and saving ground on the turns. 7 furlongs with one curve and the long backstretch is the perfect closer's race; much better than a mile and a quarter, even better than a mile and one half. I am giving you some good stuff here, I hope you heed it.

d/ watch your toteboard - money in American society is more serious than death and you hardly get anything for nothing. if a horse is listed at 6 to 1 on the morning line and he is going off at 114 to 25 to 1, forget it. either the trackman had a hangover when he made his morning line or the stable just isn't going that race. you don't get anything free in this world; if you don't know anything about racing, do bet horses that go off to their morning line. large overlays are nil and almost impossible. all the little grandmamas go home to eat bitter toast with gummed teeth upon Papa's retire-ment death certificate.

e/ only bet when you can lose. I mean without ending up sleeping on a park bench or missing 3 or 4 meals. the main thing, get the rent down first. avoid pressures. you will be luckier. and remember what the pros say, "If you've got to lose, lose in front." in other words, make them beat you. if you're going to lose anyhow, then to h.e.l.l with it, get you a dancer out of the gate, you've got it won until they beat you, until they pa.s.s you. the price is usually generous because the public hates what they call a "quitter" - a horse that opens daylight on the pack and still manages to lose. this looks bad to them. to me a "quitter" is any horse that does not win a race.

f/ any profit-loss venture is not based upon the number of winners you have but upon the number of winners at the price. to basics, you can have three 6 to 5 winners in 9 races and wash out, but you can have one 9 to 1 and one 5 to 1 and get over. this does not always mean that a 6 to 5 is a bad bet, but if you know little or next to nothing about racing, it might be best to hold your bets between 7 to 2 and 9 to 1. or if you must indulge in wild fancies, keep your bets between 11 and 1q9 to 1. in fact, many 18 or 19 to 1's bounce in if you can find the right ones.

but, actually, a man can never know enough about horse rac-ing or anything else. just when he thinks he knows he is just beginning. I remember one summer I won 4 grand at Hollypark and I went down to Del Mar in a new car, c.o.c.ky, poetic, knowledgeable, I had the world by the nuts, and I rented myself a little motel by the sea and the ladies showed up as the ladies will when you are drinking and laughing and don't care and have some money (a fool and his money are soon parted) and I had a party every night and a new broad every other night, and it was a kind of joke I used to tell them, the place was right over the sea, and I'd say, after much drinking and talking, "Baby, I come with the WOOSH OF THE SEA!"

ANOTHER HORSE STORY.

the harness racing season has been under way, as they say, for a week or 2 now, and I have been out 5 or 6 times, perhaps breaking even for the course, which is a h.e.l.l of a waste of time - anything is a waste of time unless you are f.u.c.king well or creating well or getting well or looming toward a kind of phantom love-happiness. we will all end up in the crud-pot of defeat - call it death or error. I am not a word-man. I do suppose, tho, as one keeps making adjustments to the tide, we can call it experience even if we are not so sure that it is wisdom. then too, it is possible for a man to live a whole life of constant error in a kind of numb and terrorized state. You've seen the faces. I've seen my own.

so during all the heat wave they are still out there, the bettors, having gotten a little money somewhere, the hard way, and trying to beat the 15 percent take. I sometimes think of the crowd as hypno-tized, a crowd that has nowhere to go. and after the races they get into their old cars, drive to their lonely rooms and look at the walls. Wondering why they did it a" heels run down, bad teeth, ulcers, bad jobs, men without women, women without men. Nothing but s.h.i.+t.

there are some laughs. there have to be. walking into the men's room between races the other day I came upon a young man gagging, then shouting in fury: "G.o.d d.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h, some G.o.d d.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h didn't flush his s.h.i.+t away! HE LEFT IT THERE! the son of a b.i.t.c.h, I walked in and there it WAS! I'll be he does that at home too!"

this boy was screaming. the rest of us were standing there p.i.s.sing or was.h.i.+ng our hands, thinking about the last race or the next one. I know some freaks that would be delighted to come upon a potful of fresh t.u.r.ds.but that's the way it works - the wrong guy gets it.