Factotum Read online

  Charles Bukowski

  FACTOTUM

  For John & Barbara Martin

  The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, “seeing that his work was good.”

  —Andre Gide

  Contents

  Epigraph

  1

  I arrived in New Orleans in the rain at 5 o’clock…

  2

  I was in a room on the second floor across…

  3

  I went out on the street, as usual, one day…

  4

  He was a man behind the desk with a hearing…

  5

  It was a magazine publishers distributing house and we stood…

  6

  Monday I was hungover. I shaved off my beard and…

  7

  We were still in Louisiana. The long train ride through…

  8

  When the train stopped in Los Angeles we had a…

  9

  My mother screamed when she opened the door. “Son! Is…

  10

  My mother had found a job. She was to start…

  11

  The next day I went back to bed for a…

  12

  I stayed in my room until after they left the…

  13

  I woke up in a room. I was alone.

  14

  That night my father arrived with the thirty dollars. As…

  15

  I got a job in an auto parts warehouse just…

  16

  My bill for room, board, laundry, etc., was so high…

  17

  I had worked long enough to save up bus fare…

  18

  For four or five days I walked around. Then I…

  19

  It looked like a deserted store. There was a sign…

  20

  Two old guys were waiting for me. I met them…

  21

  The hours at the dog biscuit factory were from 4:30 p.m.…

  22

  After arriving in Philadelphia I found a roominghouse and paid…

  23

  When I arrived in St. Louis it was very cold,…

  24

  I found a job as a shipping clerk in a…

  25

  We were down in a cellar. The walls were painted…

  26

  Whenever I went out into the hall of the roominghouse…

  27

  After losing several typewriters to pawnbrokers I simply gave up…

  28

  I kept hand-printing my short stories. I sent most of…

  29

  I always walked to my room, it was six or…

  30

  I often saw Gertrude in the hall. We talked but…

  31

  When I got back to Los Angeles I found a…

  32

  Her name was Laura. It was 2 o’clock in the…

  33

  When we awakened, Laura told me about Wilbur. It was…

  34

  By the time we docked, Grace had joined us too.

  35

  Grace, Laura and I were sitting at the bar in…

  36

  Rows and rows of silent bicycles. Bins filled with bicycle…

  37

  She was the manager’s secretary. Her name was Carmen—but despite…

  38

  We all doubled up as both stock and shipping clerks.

  39

  Jan was an excellent fuck. She’d had two children but…

  40

  I arrived at the bicycle warehouse at 10:30 a.m. Starting…

  41

  I still had my thirty-five dollar car. The horses were…

  42

  We lived on the fourth floor of an old apartment…

  43

  I was too sick one morning to get up at…

  44

  I was finally hired on at an auto parts warehouse.

  45

  The next day at work we were questioned about our…

  46

  We ran through the tunnel as they were putting them…

  47

  The new life didn’t sit well with Jan. She was…

  48

  The arguments were always the same. I understood it too…

  49

  At the auto parts warehouse I did less and less.

  50

  I had my winnings and the bookie money and I…

  51

  Jan and I were at Los Alamitos. It was Saturday.

  52

  When I awakened I was sweating. Jan’s leg was thrown…

  53

  Miami was as far as I could go without leaving…

  54

  In the morning it was very quiet and I thought,…

  55

  The Florida State Department of Employment was a pleasant place.

  56

  I found a job through the newspaper. I was hired…

  57

  I don’t know how many weeks I worked there. I…

  58

  I got to my room and took my old pants…

  59

  It took four days and five nights for the bus…

  60

  I got hired immediately at a fluorescent light fixture company.

  61

  Feldman was trying to collect his insurance and go bankrupt…

  62

  I walked into the Times Building. I had taken two…

  63

  I awakened sick the next morning. It had been nearly…

  64

  I was there at 9 p.m. The Superintendent showed me…

  65

  The Superintendent’s full name was Herman Barnes. Herman met me…

  66

  The next night I did about four hours work then…

  67

  The next day about noon we started out again, Jan…

  68

  I took the card they gave me at the State…

  69

  I quickly lost that job, just as I lost many…

  70

  The Yellow Cab Company in L.A. is located on the…

  71

  Janeway Smithson was a little, insane, grey-haired bantam rooster of…

  72

  There were forty or fifty of us in the Training…

  73

  A couple of days later I found an ad in…

  74

  Business didn’t seem to be too good. Outgoing orders were…

  75

  Mary Lou was one of the girls in the front…

  76

  Bud came back pushing three one gallon cans of paint…

  77

  Paul was one of the clerks. He was fat, about…

  78

  Mr. Manders walked back to where I was working and…

  79

  The store was going broke. Each day the orders were…

  80

  The next thing that happened was that they hired a…

  81

  The next job didn’t last long either. It was little…

  82

  It was another fluorescent light fixture house: The Honeybeam Company.

  83

  National Bakery Goods was located nearby. They gave me a…

  84

  The Hotel Sans was the best in the city of…

  85

  Sundays were best because I was alone and soon I…

  86

  The Farm Labor Market was at Fifth and San Pedro…

  87

  Workmen For Industry was located right on the edge of…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Charles Bukowski

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

 
; 1

  I arrived in New Orleans in the rain at 5 o’clock in the morning. I sat around in the bus station for a while but the people depressed me so I took my suitcase and went out in the rain and began walking. I didn’t know where the rooming houses were, where the poor section was.

  I had a cardboard suitcase that was falling apart. It had once been black but the black coating had peeled off and yellow cardboard was exposed. I had tried to solve that by putting black shoepolish over the exposed cardboard. As I walked along in the rain the shoepolish on the suitcase ran and unwittingly I rubbed black streaks on both legs of my pants as I switched the suitcase from hand to hand.

  Well, it was a new town. Maybe I’d get lucky.

  The rain stopped and the sun came out. I was in the black district. I walked along slowly.

  “Hey, poor white trash!”

  I put my suitcase down. A high yellow was sitting on the porch steps swinging her legs. She did look good.

  “Hello, poor white trash!”

  I didn’t say anything. I just stood there looking at her.

  “How’d you like a piece of ass, poor white trash?”

  She laughed at me. She had her legs crossed high and she kicked her feet; she had nice legs, high heels, and she kicked her legs and laughed. I picked up my suitcase and began to approach her up the walk. As I did I noticed a side curtain on a window to my left move just a bit. I saw a black man’s face. He looked like Jersey Joe Wolcott. I backed down the pathway to the sidewalk. Her laughter followed me down the street.

  2

  I was in a room on the second floor across from a bar. The bar was called The Gangplank Cafe. From my room I could see through the open bar doors and into the bar. There were some rough faces in that bar, some interesting faces. I stayed in my room at night and drank wine and looked at the faces in the bar while my money ran out. In the daytime I took long slow walks. I sat for hours staring at pigeons. I only ate one meal a day so my money would last longer. I found a dirty cafe with a dirty proprietor, but you got a big breakfast—hotcakes, grits, sausage—for very little.

  3

  I went out on the street, as usual, one day and strolled along. I felt happy and relaxed. The sun was just right. Mellow. There was peace in the air. As I approached the center of the block there was a man standing outside the doorway of a shop. I walked past.

  “Hey, BUDDY!”

  I stopped and turned.

  “You want a job?”

  I walked back to where he stood. Over his shoulder I could see a large dark room. There was a long table with men and women standing on both sides of it. They had hammers with which they pounded objects in front of them. In the gloom the objects appeared to be clams. They smelled like clams. I turned and continued walking down the street.

  I remembered how my father used to come home each night and talk about his job to my mother. The job talk began when he entered the door, continued over the dinner table, and ended in the bedroom where my father would scream “Lights Out!” at 8 p.m., so he could get his rest and his full strength for the job the next day. There was no other subject except the job.

  Down by the corner I was stopped by another man.

  “Listen, my friend…” he began.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “Listen, I’m a veteran of World War I. I put my life on the line for this country but nobody will hire me, nobody will give me a job. They don’t appreciate what I did. I’m hungry, give me some help…”

  “I’m not working.”

  “You’re not working?”

  “That’s right.”

  I walked away. I crossed the street to the other side.

  “You’re lying!” he screamed. “You’re working. You’ve got a job!”

  A few days later I was looking for one.

  4

  He was a man behind the desk with a hearing aid and the wire ran down along the side of his face and into his shirt where he hid the battery. The office was dark and comfortable. He was dressed in a worn brown suit with a wrinkled white shirt and a necktie frayed at the edges. His name was Heathercliff.

  I had seen the ad in the local paper and the place was near my room.

  Need ambitious young man with an eye to the future. Exper. not necessary. Begin in delivery room and work up.

  I waited outside with five or six young men, all of them trying to look ambitious. We had filled out our employment applications and now we waited. I was the last to be called.

  “Mr. Chinaski, what made you leave the railroad yards?”

  “Well, I don’t see any future in the railroads.”

  “They have good unions, medical care, retirement.”

  “At my age, retirement might almost be considered superfluous.”

  “Why did you come to New Orleans?”

  “I had too many friends in Los Angeles, friends I felt were hindering my career. I wanted to go where I could concentrate unmolested.”

  “How do we know that you’ll remain with us any length of time?”

  “I might not.”

  “Why?”

  “Your ad stated that there was a future for an ambitious man. If there isn’t any future here then I must leave.”

  “Why haven’t you shaved your face? Did you lose a bet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?”

  “No; I bet my landlord that I could land a job in one day even with this beard.”

  “All right, we’ll let you know.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Chinaski.”

  I left and went back to my room. I went down the dirty hall and took a hot bath. Then I put my clothes back on and went out and got a bottle of wine. I came back to the room and sat by the window drinking and watching the people in the bar, watching the people walk by. I drank slowly and began to think again of getting a gun and doing it quickly—without all the thought and talk. A matter of guts. I wondered about my guts. I finished the bottle and went to bed and slept. About 4 p.m. I was awakened by a knock on the door. It was a Western Union boy. I opened the telegram:

  MR. H. CHINASKI. REPORT TO WORK 8 AM TOMORROW. R.M. HEATHERCLIFF CO.

  5

  It was a magazine publishers distributing house and we stood at the packing table checking the orders to see that the quantities coincided with the invoices. Then we signed the invoice and either packed the order for out of town shipment or set the magazines aside for local truck delivery. The work was easy and dull but the clerks were in a constant state of turmoil. They were worried about their jobs. There was a mixture of young men and women and there didn’t seem to be a foreman. After several hours an argument began between two of the women. It was something about the magazines. We were packing comic books and something had gone wrong across the table. The two women became violent as the argument went on.

  “Look,” I said, “these books aren’t worth reading let alone arguing about.”

  “All right,” one of the women said, “we know you think you’re too good for this job.”

  “Too good?”

  “Yes, your attitude. You think we didn’t notice it?”

  That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.

  I worked there three or four days, then on Friday we were paid right up to the hour. We were given yellow envelopes with green bills and the exact change. Real money, no checks.

  Toward quitting time the truck driver came back a little early. He sat on a pile of magazines and smoked a cigarette.

  “Yeah, Harry,” he said to one of the clerks, “I got a raise today. I got a two dollar raise.”

  At quitting time I stopped for a bottle of wine, went up to my room, had a drink then went downstairs and phoned my company. The phone rang a long time. Finally Mr. Heathercliff answered. He was still there.

  “Mr. Heathercliff?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Chi
naski.”

  “Yes, Mr. Chinaski?”

  “I want a two dollar raise.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. The truck driver got a raise.”

  “But he’s been with us two years.”

  “I need a raise.”

  “We’re giving you seventeen dollars a week now and you’re asking for nineteen?”

  “That’s right. Do I get it or not?”

  “We just can’t do it.”

  “Then I quit.” I hung up.

  6

  Monday I was hungover. I shaved off my beard and followed up an ad. I sat across from the editor, a man in shirt sleeves with deep hollows under his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week. It was cool and dark in there. It was the composing room of one of the town’s two newspapers, the small one. Men sat at desks under reading lamps working at copy.

  “Twelve dollars a week,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll take it.”

  I worked with a little fat man with an unhealthy looking paunch. He had an old-fashioned pocket watch on a gold chain and he wore a vest, a green sunshade, had thick lips and a meaty dark look to his face. The lines in his face had no interest or character; his face looked as if it had been folded several times and then smoothed out, like a piece of cardboard. He wore square shoes and chewed tobacco, squirting the juice into a spitoon at his feet.