An old thin Mexican man stood up and began walking toward the doctor.
"Martinez? Martinez, old boy, how are you?"
"Sick, doctor . . . I think I die . . ."
"Well, now . . . Step in here . . ."
Martinez was in there a long time. I picked up a discarded newspaper
and tried to read it. But we were all thinking about Martinez. If Martinez
ever got out of there, someone would be next.
Then Martinez screamed. "AHHHHH! AHHHHH! STOP! STOP! AHHHH! MERCY! GOD!
PLEASE, STOP!"
"Now, now, that doesn't hurt . . ." said the doctor. Martinez screamed
again. A nurse ran into the examination room. There was silence. All we
could see was the black shadow of the half-open doorway. Then an orderly ran
into the examination room. Martinez made a gurgling sound. He was taken out
of there on a rolling stretcher. The nurse and the orderly pushed him down
the hall and through some swinging doors. Martinez was under a sheet but he
wasn't dead because the sheet wasn't pulled over his face.
The doctor stayed in the examination room for another ten minutes. Then
he came out with the clipboard.
"Jefferson Williams?" he asked. There was no answer.
"Is Jefferson Williams here?"
There was no response.
"Mary Blackthorne?"
There was no answer.
"Harry Lewis?"
"Yes, doctor?"
"Step forward, please . . ."
It was very slow. The doctor saw five more patients. Then he left the
examination room, stopped at the desk, lit a cigarette and talked to the
nurse for fifteen minutes. He looked like a very intelligent man. He had a
twitch on the right side of his face, which kept jumping, and he had red
hair with streaks of grey. He wore glasses and kept taking them off and
putting them back on. Another nurse came in and gave him a cup of coffee. He
took a sip, then holding the coffee in one hand he pushed the swinging doors
open with the other and was gone.
The office nurse came out from behind the desk with our long white
cards and she called our names. As we answered, she handed each of us our
card back. "This ward is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow if you
wish. Your appointment time is stamped on your card."
I looked down at my card. It was stamped 8:30 a.m.
30
I got lucky the next day. They called my name. It was a different
doctor. I stripped down. He turned a hot white light on me and looked me
over. I was sitting on the edge of the examination table.
"Hmmm, hmmmm," he said, "uh huh . . ."
I sat there.
"How long have you had this?"
"A couple of years. It keeps getting worse and worse."
"Ah hah."
He kept looking.
"Now, you just stretch out there on your stomach. I'll be right back."
Some moments passed and suddenly there were many people in the room.
They were all doctors. At least they looked and talked like doctors. Where
had they come from? I had thought there were hardly any doctors at L.A.
County General Hospital.
"Acne vulgaris. The worst case I've seen in all my years of practice!"
"Fantastic!"
"Incredible!"
"Look at the face!"
"The neck!"
"I just finished examining a young girl with acne vulgaris. Her back
was covered. She cried. She told me, 'How will I ever get a man? My back
will be scarred forever. I want to kill myself!' And now look at this
fellow! If she could see him, she'd know that she really had nothing to
complain about!"
You dumb fuck, I thought, don't you realize that I can hear
what you're saying? How did a man get to be a doctor? Did they take
anybody?
"Is he asleep?"
"Why?"
"He seems very calm."
"No, I don't think he's asleep. Are you asleep, my boy?"
"Yes."
They kept moving the hot white light about on various parts of
my body.
"Turn over."
I turned over.
"Look, there's a lesion inside of his mouth!"
"Well, how will we treat it?"
"The electric needle, I think . . .
"Yes, of course, the electric needle."
"Yes, the needle."
It was decided.
31
The next day I sat in the hall in my green tin chair, waiting to be
called. Across from me sat a man who had something wrong with his nose. It
was very red and very raw and very fat and long and it was growing upon
itself. You could see where section had grown upon section. Something had
irritated the man's nose and it had just started growing. I looked at the
nose and then tried not to look. I didn't want the man to see me looking, I
knew how he felt. But the man seemed very comfortable. He was fat and sat
there almost asleep.
They called him first: "Mr. Sleeth?"
He moved forward a bit in his chair.
"Sleeth? Richard Sleeth?"
"Uh? Yes, I'm here . . ."
He stood up and moved toward the doctor.
"How are you today, Mr. Sleeth?"
"Fine . . . I'm all right . . ."
He followed the doctor into the examination room.
I got my call an hour later. I followed the doctor through some
swinging doors and into another room. It was larger than the examination
room. I was told to disrobe and to sit on a table. The doctor looked at me.
"You really have a case there, haven't you?"
"Yeah."
He poked at a boil on my back.
"That hurt?"
"Yeah."
"Well," he said, "we're going to try to get some drainage."
I heard him turn on the machinery. It made a whirring sound. I could
smell oil getting hot.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He pushed the electric needle into my back. I was being drilled. The
pain was immense. It filled the room. I felt the blood run down my back.
Then he pulled the needle out.
"Now we're going to get another one," said the doctor. He jammed the
needle into me. Then he pulled it out and jammed it into a third boil. Two
other men had walked in and were standing there watching. They were probably
doctors. The needle went into me again.
"I never saw anybody go under the needle like that," said one of the
men.
"He gives no sign at all," said the other man.
"Why don't you guys go out and pinch some nurse's ass?" I asked them.
"Look, son, you can't talk to us like that!"
The needle dug into me. I didn't answer.
"The boy is evidently very bitter . . ."
"Yes, of course, that's it."
The men walked out.
"Those are fine professional men," said my doctor. "It's not good of
you to abuse them."
"Just go ahead and drill," I told him.
He did. The needle got very hot but he went on and on. He drilled my
entire back, then he got my chest. Then I stretched out and he drilled my
neck and my face.
A nurse came in and she got her instructions. "Now, Miss Ackerman, I
want these . . . pustules . . . thoroughly drained. And when you get to the
blood, keep squeezing. I want thorough drainage."
"Yes, Dr. Grundy."
"And afterwards, the ultra-violet ray machine. Two minutes on each side
to begin with . . ."
"Yes, Dr. Grundy."
I followed Miss Ackerman into another room. She told me to lay down on
the table. She got a tissue and started on the first boil.
"Does this hurt?"
"It's all right."
"You poor boy . . ."
"Don't worry. I'm just sorry you have to do this."
"You poor boy . . ."
Miss Ackerman was the first person to give me any sympathy. It felt
strange. She was a chubby little nurse in her early thirties.
"Are you going to school?" she asked.
"No, they had to take me out."
Miss Ackerman kept squeezing as she talked.
"What do you do all day?"
"I just stay in bed."
"That's awful."
"No, it's nice. I like it."
"Does this hurt?"
"Go ahead. It's all right."
"What's so nice about laying in bed all day?"
"I don't have to see anybody."
"You like that?"
"Oh, yes."
"What do you do all day?"
"Some of the day I listen to the radio."
"What do you listen to?"
"Music. And people talking."
"Do you think of girls?"
"Sure. But that's out."
"You don't want to think that way."
"I make charts of airplanes going overhead. They come over at the same
time each day. I have them timed. Say that I know that one of them is going
to pass over at 11:15 a.m. Around 11:10, I start listening for the sound of
the motor. I try to hear the first sound. Sometimes I imagine I hear it and
sometimes I'm not sure and then I begin to hear it, 'way off, for sure. And
the sound gets stronger. Then at 11:15 a.m. it passes overhead and the sound
is as loud as it's going to get."
"You do that every day?"
"Not when I'm here."
"Turn over," said Miss Ackerman.
I did. Then in the ward next to us a man started screaming. We were
next to the disturbed ward. He was really loud.
"What are they doing to him?" I asked Miss Ackerman.
"He's in the shower."
"And it makes him scream like that?"
"Yes."
"I'm worse off than he is."
"No, you're not."
I liked Miss Ackerman. I sneaked a look at her. Her face was round, she
wasn't very pretty but she wore her nurse's cap in a perky manner and she
had large dark brown eyes. It was the eyes. As she balled up some tissue to
throw into the dispenser I watched her walk. Well, she was no Miss Gredis,
and I had seen many other women with better figures, but there was something
warm about her. She wasn't constantly thinking about being a woman.
"As soon as I finish your face," she said, "I will put you under the
ultra-violet ray machine. Your next appointment will be the day after
tomorrow at 8:30 a.m."
We didn't talk any more after that.
Then she was finished. I put on goggles and Miss Ackerman turned on the
ultra-violet ray machine.
There was a ticking sound. It was peaceful. It might have been the
automatic timer, or the metal reflector on the lamp heating up. It was
comforting and relaxing, but when I began to think about it, I decided that
everything that they were doing for me was useless. I figured that at best
the needle would leave scars on me for the remainder of my life. That was
bad enough but it wasn't what I really minded. What I minded was that they
didn't know how to deal with me. I sensed this in their discussions and in
their manner. They were hesitant, uneasy, yet also somehow disinterested and
bored. Finally it didn't matter what they did. They just had to do something
-- anything -- because to do nothing would be unprofessional.
They experimented on the poor and if that worked they used the
treatment on the rich. And if it didn't work, there would still be more poor
left over to experiment upon.
The machine signaled its warning that two minutes were up. Miss
Ackerman came in, told me to turn over, re-set the machine, then left. She
was the kindest person I had met in eight years.
32
The drilling and squeezing continued for weeks but there was little
result. When one boil vanished another would appear. I often stood in front
of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get. I would look at
my face in disbelief, then turn to examine all the boils on my back. I was
horrified. No wonder people stared, no wonder they said unkind things. It
was not simply a case of teen-age acne. These were inflamed, relentless,
large, swollen boils filled with pus. I felt singled out, as if I had
been selected to be this way. My parents never spoke to me about my
condition. They were still on relief. My mother left each morning to look
for work and my. father drove off as if he were working. On Saturdays people
on relief got free foodstuffs from the markets, mostly canned goods, almost
always cans of hash for some reason. We ate a great deal of hash. And
bologna sandwiches. And potatoes. My mother learned to make potato pancakes.
Each Saturday when my parents went for their free food they didn't go to the
nearest market because they were afraid some of the neighbors might see them
and then know that they were on the dole. So they walked two miles down
Washington Boulevard, to a store a couple of blocks past Crenshaw. It was a
long walk. They walked the two miles back, sweating, carrying their shopping
bags full of canned hash and potatoes and bologna and carrots. My father
didn't drive because he wanted to save gas. He needed the gas to drive to
and from his invisible job. The other fathers weren't like that. They just
sat quietly on their front porches or played horseshoes in the vacant lot.
The doctor gave me a white substance to apply to my face. It hardened
and caked on the boils, giving me a plaster-like look. The substance didn't
seem to help. I was home alone one afternoon, applying this substance to my
face and body. I was standing in my shorts trying to reach the infected
areas of my back with my hand when I heard voices. It was Baldy and his
friend Jimmy Hatcher. Jimmy Hatcher was a good looking fellow and he was a
wise-ass.
"Henry!" I heard Baldy calling. I heard him talking to Jimmy, Then he
walked up on the porch and beat on the door. "Hey, Hank, it's Baldy! Open
up!"
You damn fool, I thought, don't you understand that I don't want to see
anybody?
"Hank! Hank! It's Baldy and Jim!"
He beat on the front door.
I heard him talking to Jim. "Listen, I saw him! I saw him walking
around in there!"
"He doesn't answer."
"We better go in. He might be in trouble."
You fool, I thought, I befriended you. I befriended you when nobody
else could stand you. Now, look at this!
I couldn't believe it. I ran into the hall and hid in a closet, leaving
the door slightly open. I was sure they wouldn't come into the house. But
they did. I had left the back door open. I heard them walking around in the
house.
"He's got to be here," said Baldy. "I saw something moving in here..."
Jesus Christ, I thought, can't I move around in here? I live in this
house.
I was crouched in the dark closet. I knew I couldn't let them find me
in there.
I swung the closet door open and leaped out. I saw them both standing
in the front room. I ran in there.
"GET OUT OF HERE, YOU SONS-OF-BITCHES!"
They looked at me.
"GET OUT OF HERE! YOU'VE GOT NO RIGHT TO BE IN HERE! GET OUT OF HERE
BEFORE I KILL YOU!"
They started running toward the back porch.
"GO ON! GO ON, OR I'LL KILL YOU!"
I heard them run up the driveway and out onto the sidewalk. I didn't
want to watch them. I went into my bedroom and stretched out on the bed. Why
did they want to see me? What could they do? There was nothing to be done.
There was nothing to talk about.
A couple of days later my mother didn't leave to go job hunting, and it
wasn't my day to go to the L.A. County General Hospital. So we were in the
house together. I didn't like it. I liked the place to myself. I heard her
moving about the house and I stayed in my bedroom. The boils were worse than
ever. I checked my airplane chart. The 1:20 p.m. flight was due. I began
listening. He was late. It was 1:20 and he was still approaching. As he
passed over I timed him as being three minutes late. Then I heard the
doorbell ring. I heard my mother open the door.
"Emily, how are you?"
"Hello, Katy, how are you?"
It was my grandmother, now very old. I heard them talking but I
couldn't make out what they were saying. I was thankful for that. They
talked for five or ten minutes and then I heard them walking down the hall
to my bedroom.
"I will bury all of you," I heard my grandmother say. "Where is the
boy?"
The door opened and my grandmother and mother stood there.
"Hello, Henry," my grandmother said.
"Your grandmother is here to help you," my mother said. My grandmother
had a large purse. She set it down on the dresser and pulled a huge silver
crucifix out of it.
"Your grandmother is here to help you, Henry . . ."
Grandmother had more warts on her than ever before and she was fatter.
She looked invincible, she looked as if she would never die. She had gotten
so old that it was almost senseless for her to die.
"Henry," said my mother, "turn over on your stomach."
I turned over and my grandmother leaned over me. From the corner of my
eye I saw her dangling the huge crucifix over me. I had decided against
religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of
people, or it drew fools. And if it weren't true, the fools were all the
more foolish.
But it was my grandmother and my mother. I decided to let them have
their way. The crucifix swung back and forth above my back, over my boils,
over me.
"God," prayed my grandmother, "purge the devil from this poor boy's
body! Just look at all those sores! They make me sick, God! Look at
them! It's the devil, God, dwelling in this boy's body. Purge the devil from
his body, Lord!"
"Purge the devil from his body, Lord!" said my mother. What I need is a
good doctor, I thought. What is wrong with these women? Why don't they leave
me alone?
"God," said my grandmother, "why do you allow the devil to dwell inside
this body's body? Don't you see how the devil is enjoying this? Look at
these sores, 0 Lord, I am about to vomit just looking at them! They are red
and big and full!"
"Purge the devil from my boy's body!" screamed my mother.
"May God save us from this evil!" screamed my grandmother. She took the
crucifix and poked it into the center of my back, dug it in. The blood
spurted out, I could feel it, at first warm, then suddenly cold. I turned
over and sat up in the bed.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
"I am making a hole for the devil to be pushed out by God!" said my
grandmother.
"All right," I said, "I want you both to get out of here, and fast! Do
you understand me?"
"He is still possessed!" said my grandmother.
"GET THE FUCKING HELL OUT OF HERE!" I screamed.
They left, shocked and disappointed, closing the door behind them.
I went into the bathroom, wadded up some toilet paper and tried to stop
the bleeding. I pulled the toilet paper away and looked at it. It was
soaked. I got a new batch of toilet paper and held it to my back awhile.
Then I got the iodine. I made passes at my back, trying to reach the wound
with the iodine. It was difficult. I finally gave up. Who ever heard of an
infected back, anyhow? You either lived or died. The back was something the
assholes had never figured out how to amputate.
I walked back into the bedroom and got into bed and pulled the covers
to my throat. I looked up at the ceiling as I talked to myself.
All right, God, say that You are really there. You have put me in this
fix. You want to test me. Suppose I test You? Suppose I say that You are not
there? You've given me a supreme test with my parents and with these boils.
I think that I have passed Your test. I am tougher than You. If You will
come down here right now, I will spit into Your face, if You have a face.
And do You shit? The priest never answered that question. He told us not to
doubt. Doubt what? I think that You have been picking on me too much sol am
asking You to come down here so I can put You to the test!
I waited. Nothing. I waited for God. I waited and waited. I believe I
slept.
I never slept on my back. But when I awakened I was on my back and it
surprised me. My legs were bent at the knees in front of me, making a
mountain-like effect with the blankets. And as I looked at the blanket-
mountain before me I saw two eyes staring at me. Only the eyes were dark,
black, blank . . . looking at me from underneath a hood, a black hood with a
sharp tall peak, like a ku-klux-klansman. They kept staring at me, dark
blank eyes, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was truly
terrified. I thought, it's God but God isn't supposed to look like that.
I couldn't stare it down. I couldn't move. It just stayed there looking
at me over the mound of my knees and the blanket. I wanted to get away. I
wanted it to leave. It was powerful and black and threatening.
It seemed to remain there for hours, just staring at me. Then it was
gone . . . I stayed in bed thinking about it.
I couldn't believe that it had been God. Dressed like that. That would
be a cheap trick. It had been an illusion, of course.
I thought about it for ten or fifteen minutes, then I got up and went
to get the little brown box my grandmother had given me many years ago.
Inside of it were tiny rolls of paper with quotations from the Bible. Each
tiny roll was held in a cubicle of its own. One was supposed to ask a
question and the little roll of paper one pulled out was supposed to answer
that question. I had tried it before and found it useless. Now I tried it
again. I asked the brown box, "What did that mean? What did those eyes
mean?"
I pulled out a paper and unrolled it. It was a tiny stiff white piece
of paper. I unrolled and read it. GOD HAS FORSAKEN YOU.
I rolled the paper up and stuck it back into its cubicle in the brown
box. I didn't believe it. I went back to bed and thought about it. It was
too simple, too direct. I didn't believe it. I considered masturbating to
bring me back to reality. I still didn't believe it. I got back up and
started unrolling all the little papers inside the brown box. I was looking
for the one that said, GOD HAS FORSAKEN YOU. I unrolled them all. None of
them said that. I read them all and none of them said that. I rolled them up
and put them carefully back into their cubicles in the little brown box.
Meanwhile, the boils got worse. I kept getting onto streetcar #7 and
going to L. A. County General Hospital and I began to fall in love with Miss
Ackerman, my nurse of the squeezings. She would never know how each stab of
pain caused courage to well up in me. Despite the horror of the blood and
the pus, she was always humane and kind. My love-feeling for her wasn't
sexual. I just wished that she would enfold me in her starched whiteness and
that together we could vanish forever from the world. But she never did
that. She was too practical. She would only remind me of my next
appointment.
33
The ultra-violet ray machine clicked off. I had been treated on both
sides. I took off the goggles and began to dress. Miss Ackerman walked in.
"Not yet," she said, "keep your clothes off."
What is she going to do to me, I thought?
"Sit up on the edge of the table."
I sat there and she began rubbing salve over my face. It was a thick
buttery substance.
"The doctors have decided on a new approach. We're going to bandage
your face to effect drainage."
"Miss Ackerman, what ever happened to that man with the big nose? The
nose that kept growing?"
"Mr. Sleeth?"
"The man with the big nose."
"That was Mr. Sleeth."
"I don't see him anymore. Did he get cured?"
"He's dead."
"You mean he died from that big nose?"
"Suicide." Miss Ackerman continued to apply the salve. Then I heard a
man scream from the next ward, "Joe, where are you? Joe, you said you'd
come back! Joe, where are you?"
The voice was loud and so sad, so agonized.
"He's done that every afternoon this week," said Miss Ackerman, "and
Joe's not going to come get him."
"Can't they help him?"
"I don't know. They all quiet down, finally. Now take your finger and
hold this pad while I bandage you. There. Yes. That's it. Now let go. Fine."
"Joe! Joe, you said you'd come back! Where are you, Joe?"
"Now, hold your finger on this pad. There. Hold it there. I'm going to
wrap you up good! There. Now I'll secure the dressings."
Then she was finished.
"O.K., put on your clothes. See you the day after tomorrow. Goodbye,
Henry."
"Goodbye, Miss Ackerman."
I got dressed, left the room and walked down the hall. There was a
mirror on a cigarette machine in the lobby. I looked into the mirror. It was
great. My whole head was bandaged. I was all white. Nothing could be seen
but my eyes, my mouth and my ears, and some tufts of hair sticking up at the
top of my head. I was hidden. It was wonderful. I stood and lit a
cigarette and glanced about the lobby. Some in-patients were sitting about
reading magazines and newspapers. I felt very exceptional and a bit evil,
Nobody had any idea of what had happened to me. Car crash. A fight to the
death. A murder. Fire. Nobody knew.
I walked out of the lobby and out of the building and I stood on the
sidewalk. I could still hear him. "Joe! Joe! Where are you,Joe!"
Joe wasn't coming. It didn't pay to trust another human being.
Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.
On the streetcar ride back I sat in the back smoking cigarettes out of
my bandaged head. People stared but I didn't care. There was more fear than
horror in their eyes now. I hoped I could stay this way forever.
I rode to the end of the line and got off. The afternoon was going into
evening and I stood on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Westview
Avenue watching the people. Those few who had jobs were coming home from
work. My father would soon be driving home from his fake job. I didn't have
a job, I didn't go to school. I didn't do anything. I was bandaged, I was
standing on the corner smoking a cigarette. I was a tough man, I was a
dangerous man. I knew things. Sleeth had suicided. I wasn't going to
suicide. I'd rather kill some of them. I'd take four or five of them with
me. I'd show them what it meant to play around with me.
A woman walked down the street toward me. She had fine legs. First I
stared right into her eyes and then I looked down at her
legs, and as she passed I watched her ass, I drank her ass in. I
memorized her ass and the seams of her silk stockings. I never could have
done that without my bandages.
34
The next day in bed I got tired of waiting for the airplanes and I
found a large yellow notebook that had been meant for high school work. It
was empty. I found a pen. I went to bed with the notebook and the pen. I
made some drawings. I drew women in high-heeled shoes with their legs
crossed and their skirts pulled back.
Then I began writing. It was about a German aviator in World War 1.
Baron Von Himmlen. He flew a red Fokker. And he was not popular with his
fellow fliers. He didn't talk to them. He drank alone and he flew alone. He
didn't bother with women, although they all loved him. He was above that. He
was too busy. He was busy shooting Allied planes out of the sky. Already he
had shot down 110 and the war wasn't over. His red Fokker, which he referred
to as the "October Bird of Death," was known everywhere. Even the enemy
ground troops knew him as he often flew low over them, taking their gunfire
and laughing, dropping bottles of champagne to them suspended from little
parachutes. Baron Von Himmlen was never attacked by less than five Allied
planes at a time. He was an ugly man with scars on his face, but he was
beautiful if you looked long enough -- it was in the eyes, his style, his
courage, his fierce aloneness.
I wrote pages and pages about the Baron's dog fights, how he would
knock down three or four planes, fly back, almost nothing left of his red
Fokker. He'd bounce down, leap out of the plane while it was still rolling
and head for the bar where he'd grab a bottle and sit at a table alone,
pouring shots and slamming them down. Nobody drank like the Baron. The
others just stood at the bar and watched him. One time one of the other
fliers said, "What is it, Himmlen? You think you're too good for us?" It was
Willie Schmidt, the biggest, strongest guy in the outfit. The Baron downed
his drink, set down his glass, stood up and slowly started walking toward
Willie who was standing at the bar. The other fliers backed off.
"Jesus, what are you going to do?" asked Willie as the Baron
advanced.
The Baron kept moving slowly toward Willie, not answering.
"Jesus, Baron, I was just kidding! Mother's honor! Listen to me,
Baron . . . Baron . . . the enemy is elsewhere! Baron!"
The Baron let go with his right. You couldn't see it. It smashed into
Willie's face propelling him over the top of the bar, flipping him over
completely! He crashed into the bar mirror like a cannonball and the bottles
tumbled down. The Baron pulled a cigar out and lit it, then walked back to
his table, sat down and poured another drink. They didn't bother the Baron
after that. Behind the bar they picked Willie up. His face was a mass of
blood.
The Baron shot plane after plane out of the sky. Nobody seemed to
understand him and nobody knew how he had become so skillful with the red
Fokker and in his other strange ways. Like fighting. Or the graceful way he
walked. He went on and on. His luck was sometimes bad. One day flying back
after downing three Allied planes, limping in low over enemy lines, he was
hit by shrapnel. It blew off his right hand at the wrist. He managed to
bring the red Fokker in. From that time on he flew with an iron
hand in place of his original right hand. It didn't affect his flying.
And the fellows at the bar were more careful than ever when they talked to
him.
Many more things happened to the Baron after that. Twice he crashed in
no-man's-land and each time he crawled back to his squadron, half-dead,
through barbed wire and flares and enemy fire. Many times he was given up
for dead by his comrades. Once he was gone for eight days and the other
flyers were sitting in the bar, talking about what an exceptional man he had
been. When they looked up, there was the Baron standing in the doorway,
eight- day beard, uniform torn and muddy, eyes red and bleary, iron hand
glinting in the bar light. He stood there and he said, "There
better be some god-damned whiskey in this place or I'm tearing it
apart!"
The Baron went on doing magic things. Half the notebook was filled with
Baron Von Himmlen. It made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man
needed somebody. There wasn't anybody around, so you had to make up
somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn't make-
believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating: living
your life without a man like him around.
35
The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up
with something. The boils drained. They didn't vanish but they flattened a
bit. Yet some new ones would appear and rise up again. They drilled me and
wrapped me again.
My sessions with the drill were endless. Thirty-two, thirty-six, thirty-
eight times. There was no fear of the drill anymore. There never had been.
Only an anger. But the anger was gone. There wasn't even resignation on my
part, only disgust, a disgust that this had happened to me, and a disgust
with the doctors who couldn't do anything about it. They were helpless and I
was helpless, the only difference being that I was the victim. They could go
home to their lives and forget while I was stuck with the same face.
But there were changes in my life. My father found a job. He passed an
examination at the L.A. County Museum and got a job as a guard. My father
was good at exams. He loved math and history. He passed the exam and finally
had a place to go each morning. There had been three vacancies for guards
and he had gotten one of them.
L.A. County General Hospital somehow found out and Miss Ackerman told
me one day, "Henry, this is your last treatment. I'm going to miss you."
"Aw come on," I said, "stop your kidding. You're going to miss me like
I'm going to miss that electric needle!"
But she was very strange that day. Those big eyes were watery. I heard
her blow her nose.
I heard one of the nurses ask her, "Why, Janice, what's wrong
with you?"
"Nothing. I'm all right."
Poor Miss Ackerman. I was 15 years old and in love with her
and I was covered with boils and there was nothing that either of
us could do.
"All right," she said, "this is going to be your last ultra-violet ray
treatment. Lay on your stomach."
"I know your first name now," I told her. "Janice. That's a
pretty name. It's just like you."
"Oh, shut up," she said.
I saw her once again when the first buzzer sounded. I turned over,
Janice re-set the machine and left the room. I never saw her again.
My father didn't believe in doctors who were not free. "They make you
piss in a tube, take your money, and drive home to their wives in Beverly
Hills," he said.
But once he did send me to one. To a doctor with bad breath and a head
as round as a basketball, only with two little eyes where a basketball had
none. I didn't like my father and the doctor wasn't any better. He said, no
fried foods, and to drink carrot juice. That
was it.
I would re-enter high school the next term, said my father.
"I'm busting my ass to keep people from stealing. Some nigger broke the
glass on a case and stole some rare coins yesterday. I caught the bastard.
We rolled down the stairway together. I held him until the others came. I
risk my life every day. Why should you sit around on your ass, moping? I
want you to be an engineer. How the hell you gonna be an engineer when I
find notebooks full of women with their skirts pulled up to their ass? Is
that all you can draw? Why don't you draw flowers or mountains or the
ocean? You're going back to school!"
I drank carrot juice and waited to re-enroll. I had only missed one
term. The boils weren't cured but they weren't as bad as they had been.
"You know what carrot juice costs me? I have to work the first hour
every day just for your god-damned carrot juice!"
I discovered the La Cienega Public Library. I got a library card. The
library was near the old church down on West Adams. It was a very small
library and there was just one librarian in it. She was class. About 38 but
with pure white hair pulled tightly into a bun behind her neck. Her nose was
sharp and she had deep green eyes behind rimless glasses. I felt that she
knew everything.
I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the
shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There
were pages and pages of words that didn't say anything. Or if they did say
something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you
already were too tired to have it matter at all. I tried book after book.
Surely, out of all those books, there was one.
Each day I walked down to the library at Adams and La Brea and
there was my librarian, stern and infallible and silent. I kept pulling the
books off the shelves. The first real book I found was by a fellow named
Upton Sinclair. His sentences were simple and he spoke with anger. He wrote
with anger. He wrote about the hog pens of Chicago. He came right out and
said things plainly. Then I found another author. His name was Sinclair
Lewis. And the book was called Main Street. He peeled back the layers
of hypocrisy that covered people. Only he seemed to lack passion. I went
back for more. I read each book in a single evening. I was walking around
one day sneaking glances at my librarian when I came upon a book with the
title Bow Down To Wood and Stone. Now, that was good, because that
was what we were all doing. At last, some fire.' I opened the book.
It was by Josephine Lawrence. A woman. That was all right. Anybody could
find knowledge. I opened the pages. But they were like many of the other
books: milky, obscure, tiresome. I replaced the book. And while my hand was
there I reached for a book nearby. It was by another Lawrence. I opened the
book at random and began reading. It was about a man at a piano. How false
it seemed at first. But I kept reading. The man at the piano was troubled.
His mind was saying things. Dark and curious things. The lines on the page
were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not "Joe, where are you?" More
like Joe, where is anything? This Lawrence of the tight and bloody
line. I had never been told about him. Why the secret? Why wasn't he
advertised?
I read a book a day. I read all the D. H. Lawrence in the library. My
librarian began to look at me strangely as I checked out the books.
"How are you today?" she would ask. That always sounded so good. I felt
as if I had already gone to bed with her. I read all the books by D.
H. And they led to others. To H.D., the poetess. And Huxley, the youngest of
the Huxleys, Lawrence's friend. It all came rushing at me. One book led to
the next. DOS Passes came along. Not too good, really, but good enough. His
trilogy, about the U.S.A., took longer than a day to read. Dreiser didn't
work for me. Sherwood Anderson did. And then along came Hemingway. What a
thrill! He knew how to lay down a line. It was a joy. Words weren't dull,
words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let
yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter
what happened to you.
But back at home . . .
"LIGHTS OUT!" my father would scream. I was reading the Russians now,
reading Turgenev and Gorky. My father's rule was that all lights were to be
out by 8 p.m. He wanted to sleep so that he could be fresh and effective on
the job the next day. His conversation at home was always about "the job."
He talked to my mother about his "job" from the moment he entered the door
in the evenings until they slept. He was determined to rise in the ranks.
"All right, that's enough of those god-damned books! Lights out!"'
To me, these men who had come into my life from nowhere were my only
chance. They were the only voices that spoke to me.
"All right," I would say.
Then I took the reading lamp, crawled under the blanket, pulled the
pillow under there, and read each new book, propping it against the pillow,
under the quilt. It got very hot, the lamp got hot, and I had trouble
breathing. I would lift the quilt for air.
"What's that? Do I see a light? Henry, are your lights out?"
I would quickly lower the quilt again and wait until I heard my
father snoring.
Turgenev was a very serious fellow but he could make me laugh because a
truth first encountered can be very funny. When someone else's truth is the
same as your truth, and he seems to be saying it just for you, that's great.
I read my books at night, like that, under the quilt with the
overheated reading lamp. Reading all those good lines while suffocating. It
was magic.
And my father had found a job, and that was magic for him . . .
36
Back at Chelsey High it was the same. One group of seniors had
graduated but they were replaced by another group of seniors with sports
cars and expensive clothes. I was never confronted by them. They left me
alone, they ignored me. They were busy with the girls. They never spoke to
the poor guys in or out of class.
About a week into my second semester I talked to my father over dinner.
"Look," I said, "it's hard at school. You're giving me 50 cents a week
allowance. Can't you make it a dollar?"
"A dollar?"
"Yes."
He put a forkful of sliced pickled beets into his mouth and chewed.
Then he looked at me from under his curled-up eyebrows,
"If I gave you a dollar a week that would mean 52 dollars a year, that
would mean I would have to work over a week on my job just so you
could have an allowance."
I didn't answer. But I thought, my god, if you think like that, item by
item, then you can't buy anything: bread, watermelon, newspapers, flour,
milk or shaving cream. I didn't say any more because when you hate, y