Absence of the Hero Read Online Free PDF Page A

downtown, moving up and down shady department store aisles, touching things, buying things, moving around. I was just some sort of animal, some sort of animal outcast. I had no rights. The Mrs. Webers were not for me. Yet, I couldn’t help thinking about her.
    â€œHey, he’s growing !” screamed the little girl. “He’s growing real big !”
    I rinsed the soap off of myself, pulled the plug, and stepped out of the tub. I began to dry myself off and the kid was drying off the worm when, so help me, Mrs. Weber stepped into the bathroom. I hadn’t heard her come in at all.
    Of course, she’d never seen me that way before. And I didn’t have time to explain.
    She just stood there and began to scream just like the kid had screamed, only better—I mean, worse: louder and with a trill that sent whirlings up and down my spine.
    I ran up to her and put my hand on her mouth to try to keep her quiet while I explained. I could feel the texture of her new dress against my skin. It felt funny. It felt like another animal or something.
    But under the texture was Mrs. Weber and I was frightened. She bit my hand as I tried to hold it over her mouth and she began to scream again.
    I had to hit her. I knocked her down.
    I felt real sorry for Mrs. Weber as she lay there on the floor, her new dress mussed on the wet, steamy floor. I could see where her rolled stockings ended and the flesh began.
    I was going to help her up but then the little girl began to scream. I ran to the little girl and grabbed her and tried to keep her quiet.
    But then Mrs. Weber began. Then, all I could do, was run back and forth, back and forth, grabbing and hitting, grabbing and hitting, hardly knowing what I was doing.
    And now, I’m in this goddamned jail and I never did get my cardboard.
    I never even got a little drink of wine out of the whole thing.
    They’ve got me up for two counts of rape, child molestation, breaking and entering, and everything else.
    The doctors claim that both of them had been raped. Maybe so. I hardly knew what I was doing, trying to keep them quiet, trying to keep them from screaming.
    I say not guilty. It wasn’t my fault. I never did get my cardboard or even a little drink. I have shown you how it wasn’t my fault. Do you believe me? Or don’t you believe me?
    I keep thinking of myself in high school in a clean blue sweater. I used to have a friend named Jimmy. We would listen to the high school orchestra in the auditorium sometimes during homeroom period. We would go around singing songs later that the orchestra had played. Songs like “Ave Maria” and “When the Deep Purple Falls Over Sleepy Garden Walls” and “God Bless America.”
    Don’t you believe me? Doesn’t anybody believe me?

80 Airplanes Don’t Put You in the Clear
    When I was a young one, I used to read The Collected Poems of Richard Aldington to my friend Baldy while we were drinking. To me, there was no greater honor (to Aldington) than to sing his things out over wine, under the bright electricity of my cheap room. Baldy did not rise to my enthusiasm—and I could never really understand; Aldington was a clear poet: clear, emotional, and forward. I think he has affected me more than the greater-rated poets, but my friend Baldy never praised R.A., never rejected. He simply sat and drank with Bacchus.
    He praised not Aldington (which I was trying to get him to see) but me. “Jesus,” he’d say the next day, “Hank was really drunk last night! He got out the old book of poetry. He can really read that stuff too! I never heard any body read poetry the way Hank does!”
    Baldy happened to say just this one day to Helen, a woman who cleaned the rooms.
    So, following with the informality of the situation, I put forth: “How’s about a little snip, Helen?”
    She didn’t answer. They had the damnedest people around there. They never said anything