The Bell Tolls for No One. Charles Bukowski

      “The juice! The juice! We’ve got the juice!” Anderson would shout.

      I’d spin on Anderson. “What’d you say? Did you say you had the juice?”

      “What?”

      I’d point to Anderson. “Look, fellows, here’s the man with the juice! He said he had the juice! Give us our juice, man!”

      “What juice?”

      “I heard you say you had the juice! What’d you do with our juice?”

      “Yes, give us our juice!”

      “Give us our juice!”

      “Hey, man, give us our juice!”

      Anderson would back off.

      “I don’t have the juice!”

      I would follow him. “Listen, I heard you say you had the juice! I distinctly heard you say you had the juice! What did you do with our juice, man? Give us our juice!”

      “Yeah, yeah! Give us our juice!”

      Then Anderson would scream at me, “God damn you, Bukowski—I don’t have the juice!”

      Then I’d turn to the fellows: “Look, men, now he’s lying! He claims he doesn’t have the juice!”

      “Stop that lying!”

      “Give us our juice!”

      Anderson and I went through that every night. As I say, it was a very pleasant place.

      One day I found a broken hoe in the yard. The hoe itself was all right but somebody had broken the handle almost all the way down. I brought the hoe back into the ward and hid it under my bed. I also found a trash can where they used to throw the empty medicine bottles. I’d keep dipping in there and hiding the stuff under my gown and carrying it back to my cabinet. I hid it all in my cabinet. They were careless. Some of those bottles were 1/5 full. You could still get some good highs off them.

      Then they found the hoe under my bed. I was called in Dr. McLain’s office.

      “Sit down, Bukowski.”

      He pulled out the hoe and sat it on the desk. I looked at the hoe.

      “What were you doing with this under your bed?” he asked.

      “It’s mine,” I said. “I found it out in the yard.”

      “What were you going to do with this hoe?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Why did you bring it from the yard?”

      “I found it there. I put it under my bed.”

      “You know we can’t let you have things like that, Bukowski.”

      “It’s just a hoe.”

      “We realize that it is a hoe.”

      “What do you want with it, doctor?”

      “I don’t want it.”

      “Then give it back. It’s mine. I found it in the yard.”

      “You can’t have it. Come with me.”

      The doctor had a male nurse with him. They walked up to my bed. The male nurse opened the doors of my bedstand.

      “Well, look at this!” said the doctor. “Bukowski’s got a regular pharmacy here! Do you have a prescription for this stuff, Bukowski?”

      “No, but I’m saving it. It’s mine. I found it.”

      “Dump it out, Mickey,” the doctor said.

      The male nurse pulled up a trash can and threw it all in there.

      I was denied my juice for the next three nights. Sometimes they were quite unfair, I thought.

      It wasn’t very hard to get out. I just climbed a wall and dropped to the other side. I was barefooted and in my gown. I walked down to the bus stop, waited, and when the bus stopped I got on. The driver said, “Where’s your money?”

      “I don’t have any,” I answered.

      “He’s a looney,” somebody said.

      The bus was moving. “Who’s a looney?” I asked. “Who said I was a looney?”

      Nobody answered.

      “They took my juice because of a hoe. I’m not staying there.”

      I walked down and sat next to a woman.

      “Let’s make it, baby!” I said.

      She turned away. I reached out and pulled her breast. She screamed.

      “Hey, look, fellow!”

      “Somebody call me?”

      “I did.”

      I looked around. It was a big guy.

      “You leave that woman alone,” he told me.

      I got up and hit him in the mouth. When he rolled from his seat I kicked his head two or three times, and although I didn’t have shoes on, I never cut my toenails.

      “Oh, God oh Mighty, help, help!” he screamed.

      I pulled the bus cord. When the bus stopped, I got out the back door. I walked into a drugstore. I picked up a pack of smokes from the counter, found some matches and lit a cigarette.

      There was a little girl in there, about seven, with her mother. “Look at that funny man!” the girl said to her mother.

      “Leave the man alone, Daphine.”

      “I’m God,” I told the little girl.

      “Mommy! That man says he’s God! Is he God, Mommy?”

      “I don’t think so,” said Mama.

      I walked up to the little girl, lifted her dress and pinched her behind. The little girl screamed. Mama screamed. I walked out of the drugstore. It was a hot day in early September. The little girl had had on nice blue panties. I looked down upon my body and grinned as the sky fell down. I had a whole day before I decided to go back or not.

       Dancing Nina

      Nina was what you might call a flirt, a vamp. Her hair was long, her eyes strange and cruel, but she knew how to kiss and dance. And when she kissed and danced, she had a way of offering herself to every man that few women had. That made up for a lot of deficiencies and Nina had a hell of a lot of deficiencies.

      But Nina was what she was.

      She was a tease. She’d almost rather tease than do the actual thing. What Nina lacked was the ability to choose—she simply couldn’t tell a good man from a bad one. The American female, in general, has this same frailty. Nina simply had an overdose.

      I met her through a circumstance in Los Angeles that I will not bore you with.

      She was hot and she was laughter and she made good love on the bed. Neither of us wanted marriage (she was married before) and I thought, at first, I have finally met my miracle woman.

      I noticed her absentness of mind, her repeating of phrases, her telling the same stories again and again. Most of her speech and ideas were borrowed, heard from other minds. But she had this certain invisible flair which I didn’t recognize then as the ability to tease.

      I thought she simply loved me.

      But at the first party I took her to, I looked up and thought, great god, what have I got hold of here? She didn’t simply dance, she actually copulated in front of everybody. It was her right, of course, to copulate in front of everybody. Of course, she didn’t copulate, it only appeared that she