Murder in Mount Holly

by Paul Theroux

  “I mean war,” said Herbie.

  “So does he,” said Miss Ball, amused.

  Mr. Gibbon grunted.

  “But you’ll get used to it. We all do. He’s not so bad. Just in the mornings he’s a little grumpy. Isn’t that right, Grumpy?”

  “You’re going to be late for school.”

  “Imagine,” said Miss Ball. “You both work at the same factory. Isn’t that something?”

  Herbie admitted that it was something, and then he saw Mr. Gibbon rise, click his heels, and march out the door. Herbie gulped his milk and followed.

  5

  Herbie trotted, skipped, and hopped after Mr. Gibbon, who was striding grimly down the sidewalk to the Kant-Brake Toy Factory. At first Herbie held the letter in his hand, but when he noticed that the envelope was getting sweaty and wrinkled he stuffed it into his pocket. Herbie had asked Mr. Gibbon who the man was whose name was on the envelope (a certain Mr. D. Soulless). “The old man himself,” Mr. Gibbon had answered, without breaking his stride.

  At the front gate there was a sentry box, striped with red and white, and in front of it, at attention, was a militarily dressed (V. F. W. blue cap, braids, puttees, combat boots, breeches, assorted stained medals and insignia) though very old sentry. The sentry held a thick M-1 rifle (obs.) in place.

  Mr. Gibbon snapped the sentry a salute and started through the gate with Herbie. “He’s okay,” said Mr. Gibbon to the sentry, jerking his thumb in Herbie’s direction. “Gonna see the old man. Business.”

  But the sentry came forward. Herbie saw that he was about ninety. He levelled his rifle at Herbie. The rifle shook and then inscribed an oval on Herbie’s chest.

  “Don’t you move,” the sentry said threateningly.

  “He’s okay,” Mr. Gibbon said. But he did not insist.

  “Can’t let him through without no authorization from the old man hisself.”

  “He’s new,” said Mr. Gibbon, but Mr. Gibbon’s heart was not in it. Rules were rules. He knew better than to ask the sentry to do something that was not allowed. He knew the sentry well. Skeeter, the guys called him. He had towed targets during one of the wars.

  “I got my orders,” said the sentry. His rifle was still weaving at Herbie and once it even stabbed Herbie’s shirt.

  Herbie tried to shrug, but he was afraid to shrug too hard. He thought it might make the gun go off. He imagined a fist-sized slug bursting through his chest.

  “I’ll call the C.O.,” said Mr. Gibbon. “I’ll clear it through him.”

  “How am I supposed to know who you are? Every man’s a Red until he can show me different,” the sentry said. Mr. Gibbon walked up the road to the main office. Apparently the sentry saw no point in talking to Herbie. He stopped. Perhaps he was out of breath.

  “Lots of security around here,” said Herbie, hoping to calm the man down.

  “Maybe,” was the cryptic reply.

  “I mean, for a toy factory. Most toy factories don’t have this much security, do they?”

  “Do they? I don’t know,” the sentry said coldly. “I never been in most toy factories. Just this one is all.”

  “Just asking.”

  “I heard you.”

  “A toy factory with a guard,” Herbie said to himself, and started to shake his head and smile.

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “Yes,” said Herbie. “No.”

  “Pretty funny for a wise guy, aren’t you?”

  “You think so?” It came out in the wrong tone of voice: an unintentional, but very distinct, rasp.

  “I think so.”

  “I was thinking,” said Herbie. “With you standing there with that loaded gun, waving it at people like me and getting mad . . .” Herbie’s voice trailed off, then started up again. “I was thinking, someone might get hurt. . . .”

  “Like you.”

  Herbie nodded. “Like me. Exactly.”

  “I got a job to do.”

  “That’s what I was saying. A toy factory with a guard.”

  “I’d shoot you down as look at you. I used to tow targets.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “I seen action. Lots of it.”

  Herbie noticed that although the sentry’s body was faced in his direction and the sentry’s rifle was still pointed in the general area of Herbie’s chest, the sentry’s eyes were glazed, his mind was somewhere else. Perhaps on some of the action he had seen.

  “Damn right,” said the sentry. “Plug you right there, if I had a mind to. I plugged lots of guys before. Wise guys, just like you, mostly. We had more trouble with the wise guys than the Jerries. So we plugged the wise guys. It was war. You can’t have wise guys in a war, or smart alecks either. I plugged my best friend. He used to wise around the place all the time. Had to give him the payoff. Sure, I hated to do it—he was my buddy, but that’s the way you lose wars. The wise guys lose them for you.”

  Herbie looked at the rifle riding up and down his torso. It had one eye.

  “I got my orders. I wouldn’t care. I’d just shoot!” The last word flew out angrily with a fine spray of spit.

  Herbie backed toward the gate and the safety of the sidewalk. The guard still aimed his rifle where Herbie had been. Just as Herbie was thinking seriously about running back to Miss Ball’s house Mr. Gibbon appeared.

  “You been cleared,” he shouted to Herbie. “It’s okay, Skeeter. He’s been cleared by the old man.”

  Skeeter, the sentry, wheeled around and jerked his rifle at the sky. Both Mr. Gibbon and Herbie flattened themselves on the driveway. Herbie waited for the explosion, numbness, death. But there was no explosion.

  “I woulda shot,” said Skeeter, the sentry.

  “I don’t blame you,” said Mr. Gibbon. He understood security.

  Herbie said nothing.

  Mr. Gibbon took Herbie to the main office and said, “You’re on your own now, sojer.”

  On the door to the main office was a plaque which read, gen’l digby soulless, united states army (ret’d.).

  “Come in!” bellowed a voice from inside.

  Herbie nodded to the bellow and went into the office of the retired general. Inside, he said good morning and started to sit down in a large chair.

  “Don’t bother to sit down,” said the man. He was, like Skeeter at the gate, wearing a fancy uniform. Very authentic-looking. “You won’t be here long.”

  Herbie remembered the letter. He pulled it out and handed it across the desk.

  The man with the fancy uniform read the letter quickly, then looked up. “So,” he said. He fixed his eyes on Herbie, wet his lips, and began to croak affectionately. He had known Herbie’s father damn well, about as well as one person can know another one. At least, the man qualified, these days. They had bowled together, had dime-beers together, grabbed ass together and been in tools together. Oh, it was all right in tools with the elder Gneiss, but he—after his retirement from the army—had moved up the ladder and built Kant-Brake from willing men and muscle, real pioneers, men with dreams and a lot of dough. Herbie’s father had gotten married and stayed in tools. General Soulless couldn’t stand tools himself. That is, tools as tools. He wanted to make something useful. He had a dream, too, if that didn’t sound like bullshit. He went into war toys.

  But he still had a hell of a lot of respect for Herbie’s old man. They had done a lot of things together when they were young. He could write a book about all those crazy adventures. He could write twenty books. How they used to go swimming in the raw, fishing in the lake. Times had changed, but he still couldn’t forget Herbie’s father, a scrappier little guy there never was.

  Herbie stood on one leg and then on the other. He agreed that his father certainly was a scrappy little guy. Herbie said that, of course, was bef
ore he was his father.

  The man laughed. “I’ll say!” he croaked. “You scrappy like your dad?”

  “I guess so,” said Herbie, “yes.” But all that Herbie could remember about his scrappy old dad was the large bowling ball with the undersized finger holes.

  “Them were the days,” the man said. He went on. He could—no he should—write a book about those days. It’d be a goddamned funny book, too. He said that some day he would write it. A big fat book. He’d put everything in it that had ever happened to Herbie’s scrappy dad and him. All the roughnecks and shitheads, all the skinny girls with flat chests and freckles, and that hungry rougey old bag they met one night. Did Herbie know about that? Probably not. But the retired general wouldn’t leave out a single word. He’d get it all down on paper when he had the chance. It wouldn’t be any sissy novel either. It would be a big lusty novel, sad sometimes, with all a kid’s important memories of growing up. The way kids see things, since kids really knew what was going on. That’s why the retired general was in that business, he said. He liked kids.

  Herbie wished the man luck with the novel. Then for no reason at all he thought of his mother. There was a novel, or maybe a folk opera: jazzy tunes, honky-tonk, the swish of brushes on drums as his mother gobbles sadly in front of the TV, a blue tube lighting up her bowls of ice cream. And then, mountainous, glutinous, and jiggling with the rhythm of the tunes, she slides out of the house, down the street to the brink of her open grave and then flops ever so quietly into it.

  “So you want a job, eh?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Like the place?”

  “Very much.”

  “It’s not just any old toy factory, y’understan’,” said the man. “We got style—that’s what counts nowadays. I mean, saleswise. You can’t fool kids. Kids are the darnedest little critics of things. They know when you’re putting the screws to them.”

  “Sure do,” said Herbie.

  The man continued. Kids were funny. They knew what they wanted, a certain color, size, shape, etc. They got books out of the library and studied about war and crap. They knew what was going on. If the retired general had his way he’d hire young kids, real young, impressionable, scrappy little bastards, instead of old men. But he’d get arrested, wouldn’t he?

  After saying this, the man laboriously got up out of his chair, walked around the desk to Herbie, and then skidded his fist over Herbie’s chin in what was meant as a playful gesture of affection that old men become incapable of and, often, arrested for. The man went back to his chair heavily and repeated that he liked kids a lot.

  Herbie said that if it weren’t for kids where would they be? Then he thought of what he said and licked his lips.

  Just the same, the man agreed.

  Herbie said that he was absolutely right.

  “You’re a lot like your old man.” The man wiped his mouth with a chevroned sleeve.

  Herbie tried to look as scrappy as possible. He looked at the twenty dollars’ worth of ribbons and string on the retired general’s chest. He tried to forget that his father was a runt and hoped that the retired general would forget it too.

  “You got yourself a job, son.”

  The man then introduced himself as General Digby Soulless, Retired, and took Herbie down into the workshops. Herbie would be in the motor pool with Mr. Gibbon. Herbie would have to know the ropes. He was issued a uniform, shoes, and a rucksack. He put on the uniform and worked for the rest of the day in silence. The rest of the men were good to him, told him dirty jokes and took him into their confidence. They saw that the old man himself had brought Herbie down and introduced him. So this is the army, Herbie thought throughout the day. At the end of the day Herbie went out through the main gate with the rest of the men. And when Skeeter, the sentry, saw Herbie approaching in uniform, he saluted grandly and nearly dropped his rifle.

  6

  Work at Kant-Brake went on. Millions of tanks, Jeeps, and rockets rolled off the assembly line without a hitch. Herbie got to enjoy working once he learned the routine. He sent money home, got an occasional note from his mother saying that she was keeping alive and well. Life at Miss Ball’s was fairly pleasant. Mr. Gibbon grumbled, barked a lot, but did not bite. Miss Ball was a sym­pathetic person, although she wore very heavy make-up. Herbie did not expect a woman with a perfectly white face, a little greasy red bow for lips, and hair that was sometimes blue, sometimes as silver as one of Kant-Brake’s fuselages, and always tight with hard little curls, to be a nice lady. But she was kind and tolerant. She said she owed all her tolerance to her membership in the D.A.R.

  Herbie talked to Miss Ball about many things. She knew the movements of any actor, actress, or starlet he could name: who was queer, who was in Italy, who was really seventy and said he was forty-four. And late one evening, when they were talking about marriages, Herbie asked Miss Ball if she had ever been married. Juan was taken for granted. He was just one of the hired help and didn’t count.

  “Sure,” said Miss Ball, “I’ve been married.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Wouldn’t think so, would you?”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe I’m not the type.”

  “What’s the type?”

  “With a flowered apron, hamburgers sizzling on the griddle, with shiny teeth and bouncy hair. My hair’s all dull and streaky.”

  “That’s the type?” Herbie thought only of his mother. She hadn’t had any of the things Miss Ball mentioned. All she had, as a married woman, was a scrappy little runt of a husband.

  “That’s what they say.”

  “I never heard it.”

  “But,” Miss Ball smiled, “did you put your thinking-cap on?”

  “Well, what about him?”

  “Him? You mean my husband?” A laugh did not quite make it out of Miss Ball’s throat, although there were signs of it approaching. It never came.

  “Yes,” said Herbie. “Your husband. The man you married.”

  “Whatever became of him,” sighed Miss Ball. “What shall I say? Shall I say we loved and then were, as they say, estranged? Or shall I tell you he was a big producer who did me dirt? Or shall I tell you he was a poor boy, a very mixed up young man that I found committing highly unnatural acts in the summer house with another twisted little fellow? Shall I tell you he was a bald-faced liar? Yes, that’s what he was, a liar.”

  Miss Ball tried to flutter her hand to her lips. But it was late in the evening and her hand never got beyond her left breast.

  “. . . he did do me wrong. Very, very wrong. But I’m not him, thank God. I am not that man and I don’t have to live with his terrible conscience—I’d hate to be in his shoes right now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes either,” said Herbie.

  “There was a bit of the Irish in him, you know,” said Miss Bail, abandoning the dramatic-hysteric role and lapsing into what she intended to be a brogue. “A bit of the oold sahd . . .” She stopped and then went on. “Full o’ blarney, he was.” Miss Ball just could not get a twinkle out of her heavily made-up eyes. Her eyelids kept sticking. “The sonofabitch.”

  Venom frothed and boiled out of some hidden nodes in Miss Ball’s body, surprising Herbie. Miss Ball cracked all her make-up to flakes in her rage. She was such a nice old lady, Herbie thought. And now Herbie didn’t know her.

  “The no-good sonofabitch. Want to know what he used to do? Hated me so much he used to get up early in the morning, before me. Then he’d sit down—it was four in the morning—and just eat his Jungle Oats as nice as you please. Then coffee. Had to have his coffee. Then, when he finished, he’d take the coffeemaker, the electric coffeemaker, and pull the screws out and screw the top off and wind the friction-tape off the plug I had to f
ix about ten times because he was too lazy. Then he’d fill the sink with hot soapy water and dunk the coffeemaker into the water and leave it in the suds.”

  “And where were you?”

  “I was in bed! That’s where you belong at four in the morning—not taking coffeepots apart so your wife can’t have her coffee. But it doesn’t stop there,” said Miss Ball. “Not by a long shot it doesn’t stop there.”

  “He does sound like a skunk,” Herbie offered.

  “He was a regular S.O.B.,” said Miss Ball. “And I hope you know what that means.”

  “I guess . . .”

  “But that wasn’t all, because then he had to yell in my room at the top of his lungs.”

  “He had to?”

  “That was part of the thing, the act he did. He always did the same thing every morning.”

  “So what did he yell?”

  Miss Ball stood up from her wing-chair and cupped her hand to her mouth like an umpire. She even raised her other arm as if she were signaling a safe catch. She twisted her mouth and shouted in an ear-splitting voice, “When your ole lady died and went straight to hell she should have taken you with her and such and such and so and so!” Miss Ball recovered, stared wide-eyed and said, “I wouldn’t repeat some of the things he said to me those times.”

  “Then he left.”

  “Then he left,” said Miss Ball. “But he came back.”

  “Really?” Herbie steadied himself for another blast. He was getting worried.

  “He left in the morning. In the night he came back. He went to church and work in between.”

  “Church. Which church?”

  “The stupid Irish church, that’s which church. He was what you might call a Catholic. He had to go to church.”

  “I thought they just had to go on Sunday.”

  “They don’t.”

  “That’s not what I thought.”

  “Not on Lent they don’t.”

  “But Lent is only a month or two in the winter, isn’t it?”