The Road to Los Angeles (9 page)

It was cool in the room with so much water always running in the trough. I went to the window and relaxed, with my face in my hands, watching the afternoon sun cut a bar of silver through the dust. There was a wire net across the window, with holes an inch square. I thought about the Black Hole of Calcutta. The English soldiers had died in a room no larger than this. But this was an altogether different kind of room. There was more ventilation in it. All of this thinking was only of the moment. It had nothing to do with anything. All little rooms reminded me of the Black Hole of Calcutta, and that made me think of Macaulay. So now I stood at the window thinking of Macaulay. The stench was endurable now; it was unpleasant, but I had got used to it. I was hungry without an appetite, but I couldn't think about food. I still had to face again the boys in the labeling crew. I looked about for another cigarette butt, but could not find any. Then I walked out.

Three Mexican girls walked down the path toward the washroom. They had just come out of the cutting room. I rounded the corner of the building, which was bashed in, as if a truck had smashed it. The girls saw me and I saw them. They were right in the middle of the path. They put their heads together. They were saying that here was that writer again, or something like that.

I drew nearer. The girl in boots nodded toward me. When I came closer they all smiled. I smiled back. We were ten feet apart. I could feel the girl in boots. It was because of her high breasts, they excited me so, all of a sudden, but it was nothing, only a flash, something to think about later on. I stopped in the middle of the path. I spread my legs and barred the path. Frightened, they slowed down; the writer was up to something.

The girl in the house cap spoke heatedly to the girl in boots.

"Let's go back," the girl in boots said.

I could feel her again, and I made up my mind to give her a great deal of thought some other time. Then the third girl, the girl who smoked a cigarette, spoke in quick sharp Spanish. Now the three of them tipped their heads arrogantly and started toward me. I addressed the girl in boots. She was the prettiest. The others were not worth speaking to, being much inferior in looks to the girl in boots.

"Well well well," I said. "Greetings to the three pretty Filipino girls!"

They weren't Filipinos at all, not in the least, and I knew it and they knew I knew it. They breezed by snootily, their noses in the air. I had to get out of their way or be bumped off the path. The girl in boots had white arms that curved as easily as a milk bottle. But near her I saw that she was ugly, with tiny purple pimples and a smear of powder on her throat. It was a disappointment. She turned around and made a face at me; she stuck out her pink tongue and puckered her nose.

This was a surprise, and I was glad, because I was expert at making horrible faces. I pulled my eyelids down, showed my teeth, and screwed up my cheeks. The face I made was much more horrible than hers. She walked backward, facing me, her pink tongue out, making all kinds of faces, but all of them variations of the stick-out-your-tongue kind. Each of mine was better than hers. The two other girls walked straight ahead. The boots of the girl-in-boots were too big for her feet; they slushed in the dust as she walked backward. I liked the way the hem of her dress flapped over her legs, the dust coming aburst like a big gray flower all around her.

"That's no way for a Filipino girl to act!" I said.

It infuriated her.

"We're not Filipinos!" she screamed. "You're the Filipino! Filipino! Filipino!"

The other girls turned around. They pitched into the refrain. All three of them walked backward, arm in arm, and shrilled in sing-song.

"Filipino! Filipino! Filipino!"

They made more monkey faces and thumbed their noses at me. The distance between us widened. I raised my arm for them to keep still a minute. They had done most of the talking and shouting. I had scarcely said anything yet. But they kept up the sing-song. I waved my arms and put my finger to my lips for quiet. Finally they consented to stop and listen. At last I had the floor. They were so far away, and there was so much noise coming from the buildings that I had to cup my hands and yell.

"I beg your pardon!" I yelled. "Excuse me for making a mistake! I'm awfully sorry! I thought you were Filipinos. But you're not. You're a lot worse! You're Mexicans! You're Greasers! You're Spick sluts! Spick sluts! Spick sluts!"

I was a hundred feet away, but I could feel their sudden apathy. It came down upon each of them, jarring them, hurting them silently, each ashamed to admit the pain to the other, yet each giving away the secret hurt by keeping so still. That had happened to me too. Once I licked a boy in a fight. I felt fine until I began to walk away. He got up and ran toward home, shouting that I was a Dago. There were other boys standing around. The shouts of the retreating boy made me feel as the Mexican girls felt. Now I laughed at the Mexican girls. I lifted my mouth to the sky and laughed, not once turning to look back, but laughing so loud I knew they heard me. Then I went inside.

"Nyah nyah nyah!" I said. "Jabber jabber jabber!"

But I felt crazy for doing it. And they thought I was crazy.

They looked dumbfounded at one another and then back at me. They didn't know I was trying to ridicule them. No, the way they shook their heads they were convinced I was a lunatic.

But now for the young fellows in the labeling room. This was going to be the hardest. I walked in with quick meaningful strides, whistling all the time, and taking deep breaths to show them the stench had no effect upon me. I even rubbed my chest and said, ah! The boys were packed around the can dump, directing the flow of cans as they tumbled toward the greasy belt that carried them to the machines. They were crowded shoulder to shoulder around the box-shaped dump that measured ten feet square. The room was as noisy as it was stinking, full of all manner of dead fish odors. There was such noise that they didn't notice me coming. I nudged my shoulder between two big Mexicans who were talking as they worked. I made a big fuss, squirming and prying my way through. Then they looked down and saw me between them. It annoyed them. They couldn't understand what I was trying to do until I spread them apart with my elbows and my arms were finally free.

I yelled, "One side, you Greasers!"

"Bah!" the largest Mexican said. "Leave heem alone, Joe. The leetle son of a beetch is crazee."

I plunged in and worked, straightening cans for their positions on the conveyor belts. They were leaving me alone for sure, with plenty of freedom. Nobody spoke. I felt alone indeed. I felt like a corpse, and that the only reason I was there was because they could do nothing about it.

The afternoon waned.

I stopped work only twice. Once to get a drink of water, and the other time to write something in my little notebook. Every one of them stopped work to watch me when I stepped off the platform to make the notation in my book. This was to prove to them without a doubt that after all I wasn't fooling, that I was a real writer among them, the real thing, and not a fake. I looked scrutinizingly at every face and scratched my ear with a pencil. Then for a second I gazed off into space. Finally I snapped my fingers to show that the thought had come through with flying colors. I put the notebook on my knee and wrote.

I wrote: Friends, Romans, and countrymen! All of Gaul is divided into three parts. Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip. Time and tide wait for no man. Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands. Then I stopped to sign it with a flourish. Arturo G. Bandini. I couldn't think of anything else. With popping eyes they watched me. I made up my mind that I must think of something else. But that was all. My mind had quit functioning altogether. I could not think of another item, not even a word, not even my own name.

I put the notebook back into my pocket and took my place on the can dump. None of them said a word. Now their doubts were surely shaken. Hadn't I stopped work to do a bit of writing? Perhaps they had judged me too hastily. I hoped someone would ask me what I had written. Quickly I would tell him that it was nothing important, merely a notation concerning the foreign labor conditions in my regular report to the House Ways and Means Committee; nothing you'd understand, old fellow; it's too deep to explain now; some other time; perhaps at lunch some day.

Now they began talking again. Then together they laughed. But it was all Spanish to me, and I understood nothing.

The boy they called Jugo jumped out of line as I had done and pulled a notebook from his pocket too. He ran to where I had stood with my notebook. For a second thought he must really be a writer who had observed something valuable. He took the same position I had taken.

He scratched his ear the way I had scratched mine. He looked off into space the way I had done. Then he wrote. Roars of laughter.

"Me writer too!" he said. "Look!"

He held the notebook up for all to see. He had drawn a cow. The cow's face was spotted as if with freckles. This was unquestionably ridicule, because I had a face filled with freckles. Under the cow he had written "Writer." He carried the notebook around the can dump.

"Very funny," I said. "Greaser comedy."

I hated him so much it nauseated me. I hated every one of them and the clothes they wore and everything about them. We worked until six o'clock. All that afternoon Shorty Naylor did not appear. When the whistle blew the boys dropped everything and rushed from the platform. I stayed on a few minutes, picking up cans that had fallen to the floor. I hoped Shorty would return at that moment. For ten minutes I worked, but not a soul came to watch me, so I quit in disgust, throwing all the cans back on the floor.

Chapter Eleven

AT A QUARTER after six I was on my way home. The sun was slipping behind the big dock warehouses and the long shadows were on the ground. What a day! What a hell of a day! I walked along talking to myself about it, discussing it. I always did that, talking aloud to myself in a heavy whisper. Usually it was fun, because I always had the right answers. But not that night. I hated the mumbling that went on inside my mouth. It was like the drone of a trapped bumblebee. The part of me which supplied answers to my questions kept saying Oh nuts! You crazy liar! You fool! You jackass! Why don't you tell the truth once in a while? It's your fault, so quit trying to shift the blame onto somebody else.

I crossed the schoolyard. Near the iron fence was a palm tree growing all by itself. The earth was freshly turned about the roots, a young tree I had never seen before growing in that place. I stopped to look at it. There was a bronze plaque at the foot of the tree. It read: Planted by the children of Banning High in commemoration of Mother's Day.

I took a branch of the tree in my fingers and shook hands with it. "Hello," I said. "You weren't there, but whose fault would you say it was?"

It was a small tree, no taller than myself, and not more than a year old. It answered with a sweet plashing of thick leaves. "The women," I said. "Do you think they had anything to do with it?"

Not a word from the tree.

"Yes. It's the fault of the women. They have enslaved me. They alone are responsible for what happened today."

The tree swayed slightly.

"The women have got to be annihilated. Positively annihilated. I must get them out of my mind forever. They and they alone have made me what I am today.

"Tonight the women die. This is the hour of decision. The time has come. My destiny is clear before me. It is death, death, death for the women tonight. I have spoken."

I shook hands with the tree again and crossed the street. Traveling with me was the stench of fish, a shadow that could not be seen but smelled. It followed me up the apartment steps. The moment I stepped inside the apartment the smell was everywhere, drifting straight for every corner of the apartment. Like an arrow it traveled to Mona's nostrils. She walked out of the bedroom with a nail file in her hand and a searching look in her eyes.

"Peeeew!" she said. "What is that?"

"It's me. The smell of honest labor. What of it?"

She put a handkerchief to her nose.

I said, "It's probably too delicate for the nostrils of a sanctified nun."

My mother was in the kitchen. She heard our voices. The door swung open and she emerged, moving into the room. The stench attacked her. It hit her in the face like a lemon pie in the two-act comedies. She stopped dead in her tracks. A sniff and her face tightened. Then she backed up.

"Smell him!" Mona said.

"I thought I smelt something!" my mother said.

"It's me. The smell of honest labor. It's a man's smell. Not for effetes and dilettantes. It's fish."

"It's disgusting," Mona said.

"Bilge," I said. "Who are you to criticize a smell? You're a nun. A female. A mere woman. You're not even a woman because you're a nun. You're only half-woman."

"Arturo," my mother said. "Let's not have any talk like that."

"A nun ought to like the smell of fish."

"Naturally. That's what I've been telling you for the last half hour."

My mother's hands rose to the ceiling, her fingers trembling. It was a gesture that always came before tears. Her voice cracked, went out of control, and the tears burst forth. "Thank God! Oh thank God!"

"A lot he had to do with it. I got this job myself. I'm an atheist. I deny the hypothesis of God." Mona sneered.

"How you talk! You couldn't get a job to save your life. Uncle Frank got it for you."

"That's a lie, a filthy lie. I tore up Uncle Frank's note."

"I believe that."

"I don't care what you believe. Anybody who gives credence to the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection is a plain boob whose beliefs are all under suspicion." Silence.

"I am now a worker," I said. "I belong to the proletariat. I am a writer-worker." Mona smiled.

"You'd smell much better if you were only a writer."

"I love this smell," I told her. "I love its every connotation and ramification; every variation and implication fascinates me. I belong to the people." Her mouth puckered.