Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante Read Free Book Online

toward the greatest author in America. It was a blind, crazy impulse. Suddenly I stood before Lewis’s booth. Absorbed in conversation with the women, he did not see me. I smiled at his thinning red hair, his rather freckled face, and his long delicate hands.
    “Sinclair Lewis,” I said.
    He and his friends looked up at me.
    “You’re the greatest novelist this country ever produced,” I spluttered. “All I want is to shake your hand. My name is Arturo Bandini. I write for H. L. Muller, your best friend.” I thrust out my hand. “I’m glad to know you, Mr. Lewis.”
    He fixed me with a bewildered stare, his eyes blue and cold. My hand was out there across the table between us. He did not take it. He only stared, and the women stared too. Slowly I drew my hand away.
    “It’s nice to know you, Mr. Lewis. Sorry I bothered you.” I turned in horror, my guts falling out, as I hurried between the tables and back to the bar, and joined Frank Edgington. I was raging, sick, mortified, humiliated. I snatched Frank’s Scotch and soda and gulped it down. The bartender and Frank exchanged glances.
    “Give me a pencil and paper, please.”
    The bartender put a notepad and a pencil before me. Breathing hard, the pencil trembling, I wrote:
    Dear Sinclair Lewis:
    You were once a god, but now you are a swine. I once reverenced you, admired you, and now you are nothing. I came to shake your hand in adoration, you, Lewis, a giant among American writers, and you rejected it. I swear I shall never read another line of yours again. You are an ill-mannered boor. You have betrayed me. I shall tell H. L. Muller about you, and how you have shamed me. I shall tell the world.
    Arturo Bandini
    P.S. I hope you choke on your steak.
    I folded the paper and signalled a waiter. He walked over. I handed him the note.
    “Would you please give this to Sinclair Lewis.”
    He took it and I gave him some money. He entered the dining room. I stood in the doorway watching him approach Lewis’s table. He handed Lewis the note. Lewis held it before him for some moments, then leaped to his feet, looking around, calling the waiter back. He stepped out of the booth and the waiter pointed in my direction. Carrying his napkin, Lewis took big strides as he came toward me. I shot out of there, out the front door, and down the street to the parking lot, to Frank’s Cadillac, and leaped into the back seat. I could see the street from where I sat, and in a moment Lewis appeared nervously on the sidewalk, still clutching his napkin. He glanced about, agitated.
    “Bandini,” he called. “Where are you? I’m Sinclair Lewis. Where are you, Bandini?”
    I sat motionless. A few moments, and he walked back toward the restaurant. I sat back, exhausted, bewildered, not knowing myself, or my capabilities. I sat with doubts, with shame, with torment, with regret. I lit a cigarette and sucked it greedily. In a little while Frank Edgington walked out of the restaurant and came to the car. He leaned inside and looked at me.
    “You okay?”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “What happened?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What was that note you wrote?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You’re crazy. You want to eat?”
    “Not here. Let’s go someplace else.”
    “It’s up to you.” He got behind the wheel and started the engine.

Chapter Nine
    I was born in a basement apartment of a macaroni factory in North Denver. When my father learned that his third child was also a son he reacted in the same fashion as when my two brothers came into the world—he got drunk for three days. My mother found him in the back room of a saloon down the street from our apartment and dragged him home. Beyond that my father paid little attention to me.
    One day in my infancy I stood outside the bathroom window of my aunt’s house and watched my cousin Catherine standing before the dresser mirror combing out her long red hair. She was stark naked except for her mother’s high-heeled shoes, a