Read Online Run With the Hunted by Charles Bukowski - Free Book Online

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 bandage
    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.”
    â€œAw 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?”
    â€œNothing. 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.
    â€œAll right,” she said, “this is going to be your last ultra-violet ray treatment. Lay on your stomach.”
    â€œI know your first name now,” I told her. “Janice. That’s a pretty name. It’s just like you.”
    â€œOh, 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