Then the soup walked past. He stopped and looked at me. I slowed down.
“How are you doing, Mr. Chinaski?”
I growled at him, waved a magazine in the air as if I were going insane, said something to myself, and he walked on.
9
Fay was pregnant. But it didn’t change her and it didn’t change the post office either.
The same clerks did all the work while the miscellaneous crew stood around and argued about sports. They were all big black dudes—built like professional wrestlers. Whenever a new one came into the service he was tossed into the miscellaneous crew.
This kept them from murdering the supervisors. If the miscellaneous crew had a supervisor you never saw him. The crew brought in truckloads of mail that arrived via freight elevator.
This was a 5 minute on the hour job. Sometimes they counted the mail, or pretended to. They looked very calm and intellectual, making their counts with long pencils behind one ear. But most of the time they argued the sports scene violently. They were all experts—they read the same sports writers.
“All right, man, what’s your all time outfield?”
“Well, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Cobb.”
“What? What?”
“That’s right, baby!”
“What about the Babe? Whatta ya gonna do with the Babe?”
“O.K., O.K., who’s your all star outfield?”
“All time, not all star!”
“O.K., O.K., you know what I mean, baby, you know what I mean!”
“Well, I’ll take Mays, Ruth and Di Maj!”
“Both you guys are nuts! How about Hank Aaron, Baby? How about Hank?”
At one time, all miscellaneous jobs were put on bid. Bids were filled mostly on a basis of seniority. The miscellaneous crew went about and ripped the bids out of the order books. Then they had nothing to do. Nobody filed a complaint. It was a long dark walk to the parking lot at night.
10
I began getting dizzy spells. I could feel them coming. The case would begin to whirl. The spells lasted about a minute. I couldn’t understand it. Each letter was getting heavier and heavier. The clerks began to have that dead grey look. I began to slide off my stool. My legs would barely hold me up. The job was killing me.
I went to my doctor and told him about it. He took my blood pressure.
“No, no, your blood pressure is all right.”
Then he put the stethoscope to me and weighed me.
“I can find nothing wrong.”
Then he gave me a special blood test. He took blood from my arm three times at intervals, each time lapse longer than the last.
“Do you care to wait in the other room?”
“No, no, I’ll go out and walk around and come back in time.”
“All right but come back in time.”
I was on time for the second blood extraction. Then there was a longer wait for the 3rd one, 20 or 25 minutes. I walked out on the street. Nothing much was happening. I went into a drugstore and read a magazine. I put it down, looked at the clock and went outside. I saw this woman sitting at the bus stop. She was one of those rare ones. She was showing plenty of leg. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. I crossed the street and stood about 20 yards away.
Then she got up. I had to follow her. That big ass beckoned me. I was hypnotized. She walked into a post office and I walked in behind her. She stood in a long line and I stood behind her. She got 2 postcards. I bought 12 airmail postcards and two dollars worth of stamps.
When I came out she was getting on the bus. I saw the last of that delicious leg and ass get on the bus and the bus carried her away.
The doctor was waiting.
“What happened? You’re 5 minutes late!”
“I don’t know. The clock must have been wrong.”
“THIS THING MUST BE EXACT!”
“Go ahead. Take the blood anyhow.”
He stuck the needle into me…
A couple of days later, the tests said there was nothing wrong with me. I didn’t know if it was the 5 minutes difference or what. But the dizzy spells got worse. I began to clock out after 4 hours work without filling out the proper forms.
I’d walk in around 11 p.m. and there would be Fay. Poor pregnant Fay.
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t take any more,” I’d say, “too sensitive…”
11
The boys on Dorsey station didn’t know my problems.
I’d enter through the back way each night, hide my sweater in a tray and walk in to get my timecard:
“Brothers and sisters!” I’d say.
“Brother, Hank!”
“Hello, Brother Hank!”
We had a game going, the black-white game and they liked to play it. Boyer would walk up to me, touch me on the arm and say, “Man, if I had your paint job I’d be a millionaire!”
“Sure you would, Boyer. That’s all it takes: a white skin.”
Then round little Hadley would walk up to us.
“There used to be this black cook on this ship. He was the only black man aboard. He cooked tapioca pudding 2 or 3 times a week and then jacked-off into it. Those white boys really liked his tapioca pudding, hehehehe! They asked him how he made it and he said he had his own secret recipe, hehehehehehe!”
We all laughed. I don’t know how many times I had to hear the tapioca pudding story…
“Hey, poor white trash! Hey, boy!”
“Look, man, if I called you ‘boy’ you might draw steel on me. So don’t call me ‘boy.’”
“Look, white man, what do you say we go out together this Saturday night? I got me a nice white gal with blonde hair.”
“And I got myself a nice black gal. And you know what color her hair is.”
“You guys been fucking pur women for centuries. We’re trying to catch up. You don’t mind if I stick my big black dick into your white gal?”
“If she wants it she can have it.”
“You stole the land from the Indians.”
“Sure I did.”
“You won’t invite me to your house. If you do, you’ll ask me to come in the back way, so no one will see my skin…”
“But I’ll leave a small light burning.” It got boring but there was no way out.
12
Fay was all right with the pregnancy. For an old gal, she was all right. We waited around at our place. Finally the time came. “It won’t be long,” she said. “I don’t want to get there too early.”
I went out and checked the car. Came back.
“Oooh, oh,” she said. “No, wait.”
Maybe she could save the world. I was proud of her calm. I forgave her for the dirty dishes and the New Yorker and her writers’ workshop. The old gal was only another lonely creature in a world that didn’t care.
“We better go now,” I said.
“No,” said Fay, “I don’t want to make you wait too long. I know you haven’t been feeling well.”
“To hell with me. Let’s make it.”
“No, please, Hank.” She just sat there. “What can I do for you?” I asked. “Nothing.” She sat there ten minutes. I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came out she said, “You ready to drive?”
“Sure.”
“You know where the hospital is?”
“Of course.”
I helped her into the car. I had made two practice runs the week earlier. But when we got there I had no idea where to park. Fay pointed up a runway.
“Go in there. Park in there. We’ll go in from there.”
“Yes, mam,” I said…
She was in bed in a back room overlooking the street. Her face grimaced. “Hold my hand,” she said.