the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt eight)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

“May I ask you why you are resigning? Is it because of disciplinary procedures against you?”

“No.”

“Then what is the reason for your resignation?”

“To pursue a career.”

“To pursue a career?”

He looked at me. I was less than eight months from my 50th birthday. I knew what he was thinking.

“May I ask you what your ‘career’ will be?”

“Well, sir, I’ll tell you. The trapping season in the bayou only lasts from December through February. I’ve already lost a month.”

“A month? But you’ve been here 11 years.”

“All right, then, I’ve wasted 11 years. I can pick up 10 to 20 grand for three months trapping at Bayou La Fourche.”

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt seven)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

But, there were still bits of action. One guy was caught on the same stairway that I had been trapped on. He was caught there with his head under some girl’s skirt. Then one of the girls who worked in the cafeteria complained that she hadn’t been paid, as promised, for a bit of oral copulation she had supplied to a general foreman and three mailhandlers. They fired the girl and the three mailhandlers and busted the general foreman down to supervisor.

Then, I set the post office on fire.

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt six)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

She stopped, then came on over. “Hi, Hank. How are you?”

I knew her from the central post office. She worked another station, the one near the water fountain, but she seemed more friendly than most.

“I’ve got the low blues. Third funeral in two years. First my mother, then my father. Today, an old girl friend.”

She ordered something. I opened the Form.

“Let’s catch this second race.”

She came over and leaned a lot of leg and breast against me. There was something under that raincoat. I always look for the non-public horse who could beat the favorite. If I found nobody could beat the favorite, I bet the favorite.

I had come to the racetrack after the other two funerals and had won. There was something about funerals. It made you see things better. A funeral a day and I’d be rich.

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt five)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

Then he went to the back of the lecture platform and pulled down a big map. And I mean big. It covered half the stage. A light was shone upon the map. And the big Italiano took a pointer with the little rubber nipple on the end of it like they used in grammar school and he pointed to the map:

“Now, you see all this GREEN? Well, there’s a hell of a lot of it. Look!”

He took the pointer and rubbed it back and forth along the green.

There was quite a bit more anti-Russian feeling then than there is now. China had not yet begun to flex her muscles. Vietnam was just a little firecracker party. But I still thought, I must be crazy! I can’t be hearing right? But nobody in the audience protested. They needed jobs. And according to Joyce, I needed a job.

Then he said, “Look here. That’s Alaska! And there they are! Looks almost as if they could jump across, doesn’t it?”

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt four)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

You had to keep one foot on the floor at all times. One notch up on the restbar. What they called a “restbar” was a little round cushion set up on a stilt. No talking allowed. Two 10 minute breaks in eight hours. They wrote down the time when you left and the time when you came back. If you stayed 12 or 13 minutes, you heard about it.

But the pay was better than at the art store. And, I thought, I might get used to it. I never got used to it.

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt three)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

Then I started coming home unhappy.

“What’s the matter, Hank?”

I had to get drunk every night.

“It’s the manager, Freddy. He has started whistling this son. He’s whistling it when I come in in the morning and he never stops, and he’s whistling it when I go home at night. It’s been going on for two weeks!

“What’s the name of the song?”

“Around the World In Eighty Days. I never did like that song.”

the last book I ever read (Post Office by Charles Bukowski, excerpt two)

from Post Office: A Novel by Charles Bukowski:

There was death in that place on the hill. I knew it the first day I walked out the screen door and into the backyard. A zinging binging buzzing whining sound came right at me: 10,000 flies rose straight up into the air at once. All the backyards had these flies—there was this tall green grass and they nested in it, they loved it.

Oh Jesus Christ, I thought, and not a spider within five miles!

As I stood there, the 10,000 flies began to come back down out of the sky, settling down in the grass, along the fence, the ground, in my hair, on my arms, everywhere. One of the bolder ones bit me.

I cursed, ran out and bought the biggest fly sprayer you ever saw. I fought them for hours, raging we were, the flies and I, and hours later, coughing and sick from breathing the fly killer, I looked around and there was as many flies as ever. I think for each one I killed they got down in the grass and bred two. I gave it up.