Free The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante Page B

spot on my shirt where the fish had lain. A bold fly landed on my arm and stubbornly refused to move, even though I warned him by shaking my arm. This made me insanely angry with him. I slapped him, killing him on my arm. But I was still so furious with him that I put him in my mouth and chewed him to bits and spat him out. Then I got the fish again, placed him on a level spot in the sand, and jumped on him until he burst open. The whiteness of my face was a thing I could feel, like plaster. Every time I moved a hundred flies dispersed. The flies were such idiotic fools. I stood still, killing them, but even the dead among them taught the living nothing. They still insisted on annoying me. For some time I stood patiently and quietly, scarcely breathing, watching the flies move into a position where I could kill them.

    The nausea was past. I had forgotten that part of it. What I hated was the laughter, the flies, and the dead fish. Again I wished that fish had been alive. He would have been taught a lesson not soon forgotten. I didn't know what would happen next. I would get even with them. Bandini never forgets. He will find a way. You shall pay for this — all of you.

    Just across the way was the lavatory. I started for it. Two impudent flies followed me. I stopped dead in my tracks, fuming, still as a statue, waiting for the flies to land. At last I got one of them. The other escaped. I pulled off the fly's wings and dropped him to the ground. He crawled about in the dirt, darting like a fish, thinking he would escape me in that fashion. It was preposterous. For a while I let him do so to his heart's desire. Then I jumped on him with both feet and crushed him into the ground. I built a mound over the spot, and spat upon it.

    In the lavatory I swayed back and forth like a rocking chair, standing and wondering what to do next, trying to get hold of myself. There were too many cannery workers for a fight. I had already settled with the flies and the dead fish, but not the cannery workers. You couldn't kill cannery workers the way you killed flies. It had to be something else, some way of fighting without fists. I washed my face in cold water and thought about it.

    In walked a dark Filipino. He was one of the boys from the labeling crew. He stood at the trough along the wall, fighting buttons impatiently and frowning. Then he solved the buttons and was relieved, smiling all the time and shivering a bit for ease. Now he felt a lot better. I leaned over the sink at the opposite wall and let the water run through my hair and over my neck. The Filipino turned around and began again with the buttons. He lit a cigarette and stood against the wall watching me. He did it on purpose, watching me in such a way that I would know he was watching me and nothing else. But I wasn't afraid of him. I was never afraid of him. Nobody in California was ever afraid of a Filipino. He smiled to let me know he didn't think much of me either, or of my weak stomach. I straightened up and let the water drip from my face. It fell to my dusty shoes, making bright dots on them. The Filipino thought less and less of me. Now he was no longer smiling but sneering.

    "How you feel?" he said.

    "What business is it of yours?"

    He was slender and over medium height. I wasn't as large as he, but I was perhaps as heavy. I leered at him from head to foot. I even stuck out my chin and pulled back my lower lip to denote the zenith of contempt. He leered back, but in a different way, not with his chin out. He was not in the least afraid of me. If something didn't happen to interrupt it, his courage would soon be so great that he would insult me.

    His skin was a nut brown. I noticed it because his teeth were so white. They were brilliant teeth, like a row of pearls. When I saw how dark he was I suddenly knew what to say to him. I could say it to all of them. It would hurt them every time. I knew because a thing like that had hurt me. In grade school the kids used