The John Fante Reader by John Fante
He was beaten, routed. He had quit.
“My God!” I said, going to my knees and throwing my arms around Stupid’s neck. “Oh, my God, Jamie! What have we here?”
Jamie seized his collar.
“Let’s get him away before it starts again.”
“It’ll never start again. Rommel’s finished, wiped out. Look at him!”
Rommel was walking up the Kunz driveway toward the garage, tail between his legs.
“Let’s go,” Jamie said.
“We keep him.”
“You can’t. You promised mother.”
“It’s my dog, my house, my decision.”
“But he’s not yours.”
“He will be.”
“He’s trouble. He’s crazy.”
“He’s a fighter with style. He wins without throwing a punch.”
“He’s not a fighter, Dad. He’s a rapist.”
“We keep him.”
“Tell me why?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
We started back, Stupid between us, walking a gauntlet of barking dogs. I knew why I wanted that dog. It was shamelessly clear, but I could not tell the boy. It would have embarrassed me. But I could tell myself and it did not matter. I was tired of defeat and failure. I hungered for victory. I was fifty-five and there were no victories in sight, nor even a battle. Even my enemies were no longer interested in combat. Stupid was victory, the books I had not written, the places I had not seen, the Maserati I had never owned, the women I hungered for, Danielle Darrieux and Gina Lollobrigida and Nadia Grey. He was triumph over ex-pants manufacturers who had slashed my screenplays until blood oozed. He was my dream of great offspring with fine minds in famous universities, scholars with rich gifts for the world. Like my beloved Rocco he would ease the pain and bruises of my interminable days, the poverty of my childhood, the desperation of my youth, the desolation of my future.
He was a dog, not a man, but an animal, and in time he would be my friend, filling my skull with pride and fun and nonsense. He was closer to God than I would ever be, he could neither read nor write, and that was good too. He was a misfit and I was a misfit. I would fight and lose, and he would fight and win. The haughty Great Danes, the proud German shepherds, he would kick the shit out of them all, and fuck them too, and I would have my kicks.
—West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)
I NEEDED A DOG. He simplified the circle of my life. He was there in the yard, alive and friendly, taking the place of other dogs who were dead and in the same ground over which he roamed. I could understand that—my dog friends, living and dead, joined together on the same piece of ground. It made sense. My father and mother lay in a graveyard up north and I was still alive on Point Dume, walking the same crust of California earth that held them. I understood that too.
I could walk out into the night with my pipe and look from Stupid to the stars, and there was a connection. I liked that dog. When I was a boy in Colorado I used to sit with my dog and look up at the same stars. He was childhood again, bringing back the pages of my catechism. Who is God? God is the creator of heaven and earth and of all things. Is God everywhere? God is everywhere. Does God see us? God sees us and watches over us. Why did God make us? God made us to know him and to love him in this world and to be happy with him in the next.
I could sit on the grass with Stupid and believe every word of it. Sometimes as I sat there he would rise up and put his paws on my shoulders and try to screw me. So he loved me. How else could he express it? Write a poem, gather roses? I whacked him with an elbow, and that brought him down. Rocco had loved me too, and expressed it by biting my shoes or tearing apart something I owned, a shirt, a pair of socks, my hat, or, unhappily, the grips on my golf clubs. But Rocco was an out-going fellow who loved bitches, while Stupid had this problem with females, and it endeared him to me.
He was good for me. A month after he arrived I began a novel. Nothing unusual about that. I began novels all the time, filling the gaps between screen assignments. But they petered out for lack of confidence and discipline, and I abandoned them with a sense of relief.
Screenwriting was easier and brought more bread, a one-dimensional kind of scribbling asking no more of the writer than that he keep his people in motion. The formula was always the same: fightin’ and fuckin’. When finished you gave it to other people who tore it to pieces trying to put it on film.
But when you undertook a novel, the responsibility was awesome. Not only were you the writer but the star and all the characters, as well as director, producer and cameraman. If your screenplay didn’t come off you could blame a lot of people, from the director down. But if your novel bombed, you suffered alone.
I was fifteen thousand words into my novel, with no symptoms of collapse, when the old urge to ditch my family returned. The pages hummed and I wanted to be alone. Naturally I thought of Rome, and even toyed with the idea of taking Harriet with me. To get there we would first sell the establishment on Point Dume, an impossibility until we got the kids off our backs. As for the dog, I didn’t think he’d like Rome, where all dogs on a leash are muzzled by law. But somehow I never pictured Stupid with me in Rome. He was only useful until I could make my move. With the kids gone and the house sold I would be loaded, and free.
The more I planned and dreamed, the less Harriet figured in the project. I didn’t think she would care for Rome after all. Separated from friends, isolated by the language barrier and culturally alien she might find it a drag. Besides, she no longer had any particular affection for Italian things. I finally decided that the only solution was for her to rent an apartment in Santa Monica, and then I could take off for the Piazza Navonne and plunge into the new life.
—West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)
IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK, still hot and too early for bed. I went to my work room and turned on the light over the desk. I had seventy pages now, around twenty thousand words on yellow pages neatly stacked before me. Not once in the writing had I looked back, relying on instinct. Now I decided to read what I had done.
I got a terrible jolt. I could feel the blow in my gut and kidneys, sheer panic, creeping up my back and riffling the hair on my scalp. It wasn’t a novel at all. It was conceived as a novel but the wretched thing was actually a detailed screen treatment, a flat, sterile one-dimensional blueprint of a movie. It had dissolves and camera angles, and even a couple of fade-outs. One chapter began: “Full Establishing Shot—Apartment House—Day.”
Twenty-five years ago I would have seized that mass of yellow pages in my two hands and courageously torn it to pieces. Now I didn’t have the guts, or, for that matter, the strength in my hands.
So, as it must to all men, death had come to Henry J. Molise. The cop-out was complete. Molise would never write again. Molise, cheered by the critics for the four novels of his youth, now more dead than alive on Point Dume.
Reputed to be insane, suffering from ulcers, no longer attending Writers’ Guild meetings, regularly observed at the liquor store and the State Department of Employment. Or walking the beach with a large, idiotic and dangerous dog. Tedious bore at parties, talking of the good old days. Boozes it up every night watching talk shows on TV. Quarrelled with agent and currently unrepresented. Talks obsessively of Rome. Wanders aimlessly in his yard, chipping balls with a nine iron. Scorned by his four children. Oldest son rejects white race and will marry Negro. Second son on relief trying to become an actor. Third son too young to add to the disintegration of family. Daughter in love with beach bum. Loyal wife tends his personal needs, preparing wholesome meals of custards and soft-boiled eggs, frequently assists him to bathroom.
I lit a pipe, wandered out to the patio, and flopped into a chair. The hot night was very quiet on the surface, but beneath was the violent uproar of the battering tide, the hum of crickets, the twitter of restless birds, the barking of squirrels, the howl of twinkling jet planes, the crackling of pines and the eerie sense of fire in the air.
&n
Out of the darkness on noiseless paws Stupid appeared. He looked at my dangling leg and at me, considering the possibilities. Then he tried to straddle the leg. I pulled it out from under him. Disappointed, he rested his chin in my lap and I rubbed the back of his ears. I needed help.
—West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)
DENNY AND DOMINIC HAD GONE, Jamie was in bed, and [Harriet and I] sat in the living room watching the eleven o’clock movie. She was sipping sherry while I smoked my pipe and drank hot tea. The grass was in my shirt pocket. Question was, how did I get it down her lungs? She was one of those iron-spined people who would no more trifle with grass than smoke opium. I was no expert with the stuff, though I had taken it half a dozen times in my life. I could wish that I had been fortified by it when I learned of my father’s death, for I had gotten sickeningly drunk instead, deepening my grief. In truth, my father had been dead for ten years, and I still grieved over the loss of him. Marijuana might have made a difference. It was supposed to be the sure cure for a world falling apart.
The movie gave me a clue. It was literally a film about the dead. It starred Carole Lombard, who was dead. So were the others in the cast, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Eugene Palette and the supporting players. So were the director, the writer, and the producer. There they were, moving on film, now rotting in their graves, poor, lovely, beautiful creatures, and it was very sad, and I told Harriet I thought it was so very sad.
I got up and put some scotch in my tea, and at the commercial I got up and did it again. It’s sad, I told her, it’s heartbreaking. I said life was sad too, short and sad, and she agreed. I said it made me melancholy and unhappy, and she took my hand and smiled and said, don’t be.
I said, “If we could only break out of this trap, go somewhere, do something, forget our troubles for a while.”
She said, “It’s only eleven-thirty Do you want to drive in to the Cock ‘N’ Bull?”
“I don’t mean that. I mean finding peace, some euphoria to take us past this moment of crisis.”
“Why don’t you get drunk?” she said.
I told her I didn’t mean getting drunk. I meant total escape, the way the kids did it. Like smoking marijuana.
“Why don’t you?” she said. “I’m sure yotfll find some in the back bedrooms.”
“I have some here,” I said, patting my shirt.
“Well,” she said. “Smoke it if you like.”
“Alone? You don’t smoke pot alone. To enjoy it you have to share the pleasure with others.”
“No one else is here but me.”
“How about you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That figures,” I sneered.
“I’m sorry.”
“Leave it to you, of all people.”
“But I don’t want any!”
“You, the most abused, tormented person in this house, you, who made all the sacrifices, your whole world crumbling around you. …”
“My world isn’t crumblingl”
“You, who needs it more than anybody else, and you refuse it.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Better to have will-power, to grit your teeth and hang in there, absorb the punishment. The best steel comes from the hottest forge. Forget it. But I hope you don’t mind if I sit here and drink until I vomit. That’s about all that’s left for an embittered father, unless he goes to a saloon and tries to score with some tramp.”
She took my hand again. “Oh, come on now. You wouldn’t do a think like that. Get hold of yourself.”
“What a marriage, what a mockery! A man asks to smoke a little pot with his wife, and she chickens out. My God, I’m not asking you to shoot heroin. All I want is for the two of us—man and wife—to join hands in a journey to happyland, where the miseries of life are cast off for a little while.”
“I’m afraid it’ll make me sick.”
“Sick? It’s therapeutic! Relaxes the body, purifies the mind, restores the soul.”
She was silent awhile, nibbling on a fingernail.
“All right,” she relented. “But I know it’s going to make me sick.”
I put my hand over my heart. “I swear to you on my sacred honor you won’t be sick.”
“All right, then.”
In the half-light from the tube I rolled two joints and gave her one of them. “Smoke it like a cigarette. Inhale deeply. Don’t wolf it down fast. Take it slow and easy.”
We lit up and smoked in silence. She took several deep drags.
“I don’t feel a thing.”
“Patience. It takes time. Don’t hurry it.”
After a couple of drags my cigarette went out, but I did not relight it. She smoked hers down to the fingers before snuffing it out. Then she leaned back with beatific indolence, her eyes half closed as she watched the movie. I asked her how she felt.
“I don’t feel a thing,” she smiled.
Ten minutes passed.
“I’m proud of my children,” she said. “I love them dearly. They live in a terrible world, but they have the courage to face the future, and I’m not going to worry about them any more.”
I knew it was time to tell her.
“Did Dominic tell you about his marriage?”
“Dominic, married?”
“He and Katy were married Christmas day.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Katy’s pregnant.”
“How nice.”
I looked at her as she lay back in the big reclining chair. She was crying. She cried for two hours, until the pictureless white eye of the tube stared back, glistening on the beads of tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m so happy,” she said over and over again. “So happy.”
Moving like one spooked and shrouded in cobwebs, she clung to me as we floated back to the bedroom. I eased her to the bed, her neck like a broken doll’s, her hands limp as gloves. She pined for affection, cooing and groping for my face, her head on my shoulder, but she was so high she couldn’t even kiss me. I lowered her to the pillow, removed the rest of her clothes, and marveled at her whiteness, her nipples sweetly pink and reminding me of the four mouths that had got their sustenance from them. I touched her faintly golden pussy, wondering if she tinted it. Mine, all mine. Suddenly I had to have her and I tore off my clothes and was upon her in a frenzy. It was rape, her helplessness swirling me in an orgiastic delirium and I ravaged her with an evil joy, finding hitherto unviolated crevasses and cracks, the most ecstatic affair I ever had with her, and she slept through the whole thing without memory, recalling none of it when she wakened in the morning.
—West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)
I NEVER THOUGHT MUCH ABOUT JAMIE. I really didn’t want him born into the world so soon after Tina, who screamed horrifically past all endurance in her infancy, leaving me enraged and frightened. I vowed that three were enough and I pleaded with Harriet, no more for God’s sake, are you wearing that diaphragm, are you sure it’s in place. It was sheer panic with Tina wailing in another room, and when Harriet knew Jamie was coming she was afraid to tell me until the third month.
I was a real shit about it, busting out of the house and staying away two weeks in Palm Springs with a drunken writer who had six kids and blamed them for his alcoholism. I came home with abortion in mind but it was of course too late, and Harriet despised me and ordered me to get out and never come back. But we made a perilous truce blinded by hate and necessity and the coming child was never mentioned.
It was a hideous ordeal for Harriet. The bigger she got the bigger the monster in me. I drank wine through days and nights, slumped viciously in a chair, pu
Not only did she manage the pregnancy and three other children, she escaped alive from the coil of my despair. Two weeks before the baby was born I was offered a job in Rome. Harriet was so glad to have me out of that chair and I was so eager to get away that I left without packing a suitcase.
When I returned from Rome Jamie was five months old, and I still detested him because he had the colic and cried even more than Tina. The cry of a child! Give me ground glass and tear out my fingernails, but do not subject me to the cry of a child, for it hurts very deep into my umbilicus, hurts all the way back to the beginning of my life.
Harriet had named him Joseph after her father, but Joseph he was not, nor did he look like a Joseph, Jamie suited him better, and after a while the name clung, and we had it officially changed.
There was never enough time for Jamie. It was always Dominic or Tina who churned up the crises, and sometimes Denny, but never this curly-headed, hazel-eyed kid who smiled at the beginning of each new day and didn’t cry like the others that first time we took him to school and who spoke so hesitatingly, so falteringly, because nobody bothered to teach him how. But later we learned that he did cry a little every day, sitting in the schoolyard sandbox by himself, and when his teacher asked him why, he answered that there was something in his eye.
When he was six years old we took him to a neighborhood Fourth of July party where he wandered among a hundred guests, amazed and pleased at what he saw. On the way home Harriet asked if he had enjoyed himself, and he answered with sparkling eyes that a man had spoken to him, a nice man in a large black hat. Harriet asked what the man had said and Jamie fondled the delicious memory and sighed. “He said, ‘Get out of my way, kid.’”