all to hear, “Mr. Chinaski, I’ll see you after class.”

afterwards she looked up at me from her

desk.

“I’ve watched that horseplay all term long. what do you

have to say about it?”

I didn’t answer.

“Mr. Chinaski, I am going to give you an ‘F’ in English.”

“all right…”

“you can go now.”

I didn’t attend English class after that but I saw Burns in

my other classes and since he didn’t touch me or

speak to me and since I never saw him look at me, I

didn’t have to kill him.

all I continued to hear was his wheezing.

and worse, I began to feel guilty as if I had committed a

hideous

wrong.

I felt as if I had locked him up in some terrible way, in some

dark and lonely place.

but I left him there, alone.

at my back, on my neck.

Class of Summer

’39.

field exercises

is what they called them in the

R.O.T.C.

in the hills and fields on the

hottest summer days,

the Reds vs. Blues,

we had rifles but no bullets

and the officers had wooden sabers

and we’d run forward and

dive on our bellies,

take cover behind brush

while the general stood on the

hill,

he would be the final

judge as to who

won.

they were teaching us

how to kill each

other.

but the funniest thing was

when the opposing sides

happened to come upon

one another

unexpectedly,

the Reds and the Blues

(what told us apart were

the colored ribbons on

our rifles).

but I had long ago

torn mine off,

and we closed in

upon each other, got

excited,

began using rifle

butts

and the officers swung

their sabers about

each claiming victory

and there were bloody

noses, fractured skulls.

one broken arm

and I sat under a

tree watching it

all

as high on the

hill

the general stood

looking through his

dusty

binoculars.

he was senile

and drooled

little goblets out of

each side of his

mouth.

Los Angeles, Calif.,

summer 1938.

Saturday.

death had a little

black moustache

and he waited for

us

and many of us

went.

what will the neighbors think?

I think that was the question asked most of me

by my parents.

of course, I didn’t really care what the

neighbors thought.

I felt sorry for the neighbors, those frightened

people peeking from behind their

curtains.

the whole neighborhood was watching

itself

and in the 1930s there wasn’t much else to

watch.

except me coming in drunk late at

night.

“this is going to kill your mother,”

my father told me,

“and besides what will the

neighbors think?”

me, I thought I was doing very well.

one way or the other

I managed to get drunk

without having any

money at all.

a trick that would stand me in good

stead

later in my life.

to make things worse for my poor

parents