Ham on Rye: A Novel by Charles Bukowski

Author:Charles Bukowski [Bukowski, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061177583
Publisher: Ecco

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.

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