"Чарльз Буковски. Бутерброд с дерьмом (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

went back home.


I didn't see Lila Jane again for a while in the afternoons. It didn't
matter. It was football season and I was -- in my imagination -- a great
quarterback. I could throw the ball 90 yards and kick it 80. But we seldom
had to kick, not when I carried the ball. I was best running into grown men.
I crushed them. It took five or six men to tackle me. Sometimes, like in
baseball, I felt sorry for everybody and I allowed myself to be tackled
after only gaining 8 or 10 yards. Then I usually got injured, badly, and
they had to carry me off the field. My team would fall behind, say 40 to 17,
and with 3 or 4 minutes left to play I'd return, angry that I had been
injured. Every time I got the ball I ran all the way to a touchdown. How the
crowd screamed! And on defense I made every tackle, intercepted every pass.
I was everywhere. Chinaski, the Fury! With the gun ready to go off I took
the kickoff deep in my own end zone. I ran forward, sideways, backwards. I
broke tackle after tackle, I leaped over fallen tacklers. I wasn't getting
any blocking. My team was a bunch of sissies. Finally, with five men hanging
on to me I refused to fall and dragged them over the goal line for the
winning touchdown.


I looked up one afternoon as a big guy entered our yard through the
back gate. He walked in and just stood there looking at me. He was a year or
so older than I was and he wasn't from my grammar school. "I'm from Marmount
Grammar School," he said.
"You better get out of here," I told him. "My father will be coming
home soon,"
"Is that right?" he asked. I stood up. "What are you doing here?"
"I hear you guys from Delsey Grammar think you're tough."
"We win all the inter-school games."
"That's because you cheat. We don't like cheaters at Marmount."

He had on an old blue shirt, half unbuttoned in front. He had a leather
thong on his left wrist.
"You think you're tough?" he asked me.
"No."
"What do you have in your garage? I think I'll take something from your
garage."
"Stay out of there."
The garage doors were open and he walked past me. There wasn't much in
there. He found an old deflated beach ball and picked it up.
"I think I'll take this."
"Put it down."
"Down your throat!" he said and then he threw it at my head. I ducked.
He came out of the garage toward me. I backed up.
He followed me into the yard. "Cheaters never prosper!" he said. He
swung at me. I ducked. I could feel the wind from his swing. I closed my
eyes, rushed him and started punching. I was hitting something, sometimes. I
could feel myself getting hit but it didn't hurt. Mostly I was scared. There-