Murder in Mount Holly

by Paul Theroux

  One Sunday the outing was held at the Mount Holly Botanical Gardens. Mr. Gibbon, as usual with map and compass, had led the way. They spread their blanket under a tree and ate, then turned on the radio and listened to news of the president’s kidneys and gallstones and negotiations with what Mr. Gibbon called “The Yellow Peril,” and then lolled about on the grass. The sky was filled with clouds that kept getting in the way of the sun. This irritated Mr. Gibbon. He said so. “Those clouds aggravate me,” was what he said. Lots of things galled him, he said, but life was still worth living. He said that he owed a great deal to Mrs. Gneiss. He had thought that his life was over, but Mrs. Gneiss had convinced him that he could move on. “If an old battle axe like me and an old biddy like you can fall in love,” he said, “then anything is possible.” He had wondered about this before. Now he knew it for sure.

  “Charlie,” said Mrs. Gneiss, “you’re the sweetest man in the world.” Without pausing she added, “Pass the salad, Miss Ball.”

  “Just because you’re a certain age,” said Miss Ball, passing the salad to Mrs. Gneiss, “doesn’t mean there’s anything you can’t do. Why, it should be easier when you’re old because you know more, but no one tries. That’s the fly in the ointment really.”

  “Sure is,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Sure is. Why, look at us. Three folks with lots of spunk left.”

  “Oodles of spunk left,” Miss Ball interjected. “Oodles.”

  “And it’s all going to waste. We’re just wasting away,” said Mrs. Gneiss, her mouth dripping mayonnaise.

  Mr. Gibbon smacked his lips in disgust. “That greenhorn doctor had the nerve to boot me out of the army. Why, I was old enough to be his father! If I had stayed in they wouldn’t be having so much trouble with their wars. Send me in! Give me fifteen men of my own choosing and we’ll blast all those yellow bastards to kingdom come! I been in three wars and I won all three. Give me another one, that’s what I say!”

  “Oh Charlie, you’re a real campaigner,” said the delighted Mrs. Gneiss.

  “Why not victory?” said Mr. Gibbon. “Just send me over!”

  Miss Ball had been shaking her head. “I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution,” she said, “and I’ve seen a lot of our boys murdered in cold blood by the Communists. The real problem is right here in our midst: the You-Know-Whos. If we didn’t have so many of them—and they’re all as Red as they are black, as I’m sure you know—this country would be ours again and we could put a big fence around it. We could start life all over again in our own backyard. You don’t have to scurry all over the world with your planes and such to find the enemy. Not when he’s there, smack in Mount Holly, emptying your trash-can, shining your shoes, cleaning your car, grinning at you, lying in his teeth, taking food out of your mouth and money out of your pocket!”

  “That’s it in a nut-cake!” said Mr. Gibbon, jumping to his feet. “The problem is right here. We can’t ignore it. And I say the best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner!”

  Saying this Mr. Gibbon looked across the grass, past the bunches of flowers, through the trees to the clouds—those fickle things that kept getting themselves in the way of the sun. He frowned at the clouds as if the clouds represented everything foul, all the You-Know-Whos that kept trying to prevent decent folk from having sunny days.

  “So we sit here blabbing about it,” said Mrs. Gneiss. “Why don’t we do something about it?”

  “What can we do?” asked Mr. Gibbon. “Oh, I know. It’s coming all right. Hate and bitterness.”

  “I hate bitterness,” said Miss Ball.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad,” said Mr. Gibbon, “if they were just shining your shoes and emptying your trash-cans. That wouldn’t be so bad. But did you ever see the beat of it when every You-Know-Who in the damn country decides to get uppity? You looked at any movies lately? They’re up there doing a soft-shoe with our womenfolk. Been in any drug stores the last year or two? There they are, sucking up Cokes. Been in a bank lately [“A bank!” Mrs. Gneiss gasped]—like that bank in town maybe? There they are, putting their crumby fingers over all the money. I tell you, it makes my blood boil! Why, I was in that bank cashing my pension check just the other day. Stood in line. There’s one behind the counter. Went to another counter. Another one in front of me and one in back. Complain, I says to myself. Do something. Decided to have a word in private with the manager. Waited in line outside his office. Finally went in. You guessed it! A coon in the chair! What could I do? I still haven’t cashed the damn pension check.”

  “It’s too much,” said Miss Ball.

  “Something should be done about it,” said Mr. Gibbon.

  Miss Ball tapped Mr. Gibbon on the shoulder, narrowed her eyes and said, “Sonny, you can do anything you want if you just get the bee in your bonnet.”

  They returned to Mount Holly to find Herbie slumped dejectedly in Miss Ball’s wing-chair. He was surprised to see his mother. He couldn’t remember having seen her out of the house for years. But he soon recaptured his dejection. There was a slip of yellow paper in his hand. A draft notice. Herbie was to report for his physical the next day. The country was at war.

  Part Two

  9

  They finally settled on a bank robbery. “It’s the logical thing to do when you stop and consider that I can’t even cash my U.S. Army pension check, the place is so loaded with coons and commies,” Mr. Gibbon explained. It would take some planning, but they would be able to do it. The robbery of a communist bank would prove to the world that old folks still had a lot of spunk left.

  The robbery became all the more important after Herbie passed his army physical. He was due to leave for boot camp in four days.

  “You’re a very lucky man,” Mr. Gibbon said to Herbie.

  Herbie thought otherwise. He didn’t want to go. But he didn’t know why he didn’t want to go. At first he thought of Kant-Brake. The place was full of soldiers. They weren’t bad. But there was something missing, and when Herbie finally thought of what was missing, a chill shot through the holes in his bones. Death was missing from Kant-Brake. That’s what the army made him think of: death.

  “This is a time for courage. This is a time when men of all races and creeds must join hands and make the world a safe place. This is not a time for us to waver. This is not a time for us to lose our nerve. This is a time for us to be strong,” the president had said in his now-legendary “This Is a Time” speech to Congress. Charlie Gibbon had wept.

  For Herbie this was not a time to go into the army. Be strong? He had seen all those people carrying signs.; the boys with the bushy hair and the woollen shirts; the girls with no make-up and necklaces made out of macaroni. They didn’t want war. Herbie had seen them dragged, kicking and screaming, into police vans. They didn’t think that this was a time to be strong. But when they mentioned God, Herbie thought of nothing. He just didn’t want to go. He had no reason for refusing. He would have felt foolish with a sign. A beard would have made his face pimply.

  And then, the day before he was to go to boot camp, he thought of his reason for not wanting to go into the army. I’m afraid, he thought: I don’t want to die, I don’t want to throw bombs at people and shoot guns, I don’t want to sleep in the jungle, march around in the mud and get shot at. Herbie remembered how quickly the sweet old Miss Ball had turned into an angry, cursing old bag. There was Mr. Gibbon’s buddy that didn’t say “sir” and got the living stuffings beaten out of him. There was Skeeter’s pal, the wise guy, that had to be shot because wise guys lose wars for you.

  Dying is easy, Herbie thought. So I go and get killed. My mother watches television. Mr. Gibbon crawls all over her, folds his paper bags in peace. Miss Ball and Juan have their jollies without the secret police breaking down the door. I die and life goes on in Mount Holly.

  Herbie didn’t hate anyone. He had even stopped wishing for his mothe
r’s death. Mr. Gibbon was in charge now. The care and feeding of Herbie’s mother was in Mr. Gibbon’s hands. Herbie could stay at Kant-Brake a while longer and make a few extra dollars. But the thought of going into the army scared him limp. Still, he knew that he would be laughed at if he said that his reason for not wanting to go in was strictly that he was chicken-livered. Not even the bushy people that carried the signs on the sidewalk would listen to him. The soldiers certainly wouldn’t listen. Herbie pictured himself going up to a general and saying, “I can’t fight, sir. I’m scared.” The picture faded. A boy with a sign and hair curling all over his horn-rimmed glasses like weeds appeared. Herbie said to the boy, “I don’t want to go into the army either. I’m scared.” Laughter from the general behind the desk and the boy on the sidewalk spattered Herbie. If you were scared you were no good.

  So he did not say he was scared. He told no one. He merely sat around the house thinking, my death will keep that television going. If I don’t die and someone else dies I’ll come back and watch it. At least I have a home to come back to.

  The Kant-Brake employees gave Herbie a knife (“Get a few for us, Herbie”) and a Kant-Brake Front Lines First Aid Kit, every detail done in perfect scale. A memento. General Digby Soulless slapped Herbie on the back and said that he had gone into the army when he was half Herbie’s age. He added, “This is the real thing, boy. Get the lead out of your pants.”

  On the day Herbie left for boot camp Mr. Gibbon told him how much he envied him. Beans tasted so good cooked in a foxhole. He told him how to creep under barbed wire and bursting guns, how to clean his mess kit while on bivouac (with sand), how to cure rot and so forth. He presented Herbie with a new comb and told Herbie about his aunt. He told Herbie, in a whisper, not to worry about his mom. Mr. Gibbon would take care of her. “Confidentially, she’s fat and sassy, and that’s just the way I like ’em.”

  Miss Ball said it thrilled her to know that Herbie was actually going to war. She had read about so many of “our boys” going off, never to be heard from again. Now she could say that she knew one.

  Everyone was happy for Herbie and wished him well. His mother was on the verge of tears. She stayed on the verge. She told Herbie very calmly to be a good boy and mind his manners when he got to the war.

  Herbie, numb with fear, promised he would. He noticed at the railroad station that their cab held four suitcases instead of two.

  “Half the luggage is mine,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

  “Are you coming along?”

  “Goodness, no!” said Mrs. Gneiss. “I’m moving into your room at Miss Ball’s. I can be near Charlie that way. I just sold the house.”

  Herbie nodded goodbye, had his picture taken with the rest of the Mount Holly draftees and the chairman of the Mount Holly draft board, and then joined the mob of boys in the car reserved for them. Herbie sat next to the window and looked at the three old people on the platform waving their hankies.

  “Smile, Herbie,” his mother said.

  “He looks scared to death,” Mr. Gibbon said.

  “It takes all kinds,” Miss Ball said.

  10

  A dusty twenty-five-watt bulb flickered in Miss Ball’s dining-room. The less light the better, they had all decided. The three of them sat around the large mahogany table. Mr. Gibbon was wearing his khakis. His pistol was strapped on. In the dim light of the room the faces of the three people looked even older than they were, bloodless, almost ghoulish. Mr. Gibbon was doing all the talking. Only a few of his fifteen teeth were visible and his mouth seemed latched like a dummy’s. His whole chin gabbled up and down.

  “It’s all relative,” he was saying. “Even though it doesn’t look on the up and up if you say, we gotta rob a bank and we may have to shoot somebody to do it right, it’s okay in this case. The country is at stake, and we’re the only ones that realize it. Herbie’s gone now to do his bit. It’s up to us to do our bit even if the only place we can do it is right here in Mount Holly. It’s the enemy within we’re after. The ones right here grinning at us in our own backyard, as Miss Ball rightly said. It’s all relative. Why, I know what it’s like to be an American. You take your average American. He can’t find his ass with both hands, can he? Bet your life he can’t. It’s all relative. A commie bank is right here in our midst picking our pockets. And what do we do? We rob that bank right down to the last cent, and if we get any lip from the You-Know-Whos we blast ’em.”

  Mrs. Gneiss interrupted. “I hate to mention this,” she said, “but won’t it be against the law to do this? I agree with you one hundred percent that something’s got to be done—why, if the communists ran this country we’d starve in two days. But there’s the law to think about . . .”

  “Let me remind you, Toots, that the law you’re so worried about is the law that’s made by the You-Know-Whos for the You Know-Whos. It’s not made for decent people like us. The law is made by coons. You got any objections against breaking the coon law? You don’t think decent folk should break the coon law? When we rob this bank we’ll be heroes. People will be brought to their senses. We’ll be doing our country a turn and making the world safe for good government, small government. Now anybody knows that it’s not legal to rob a bank. But is it legal for some bastard with dark skin and a party card, all niggered-up with fancy clothes, to walk into your own bank and put his fingers all over your money? If that’s legal, then what do you call it when decent people want to set an example for their country? Okay, call it illegal if you want. It’s all relative. But I’ll tell you something: it broke my heart to fight the Germans. I was in that war and, Goddamit, I couldn’t help but think that they knew what they were doing all along. I knew it in my heart. I said to myself, CharIie, it’s all relative . . .”

  “I’m not being an old sceptic,” said Miss Ball, “but when we get the money, what do we do with it? I mean, it won’t be ours, now will it?”

  Mr. Gibbon shook his head in impatience. He had the feeling he wasn’t being understood. “We’re not going to steal the damn money. We’re just going to transfer it. I suppose we could give it to our favorite charities. Personally, I’d like to see a company like Kant-Brake, a company that’s got a heart and thinks about the country, get a little of the dough. I’d like to see the V.F.W. get a little, the Boy Scouts a little, the White Citizens Council a little—spread it around, you see? Lots of people are entitled to it. We’ll be fair . . .”

  “I’d like to see the D. A.R. get a little bit. They deserve it. They’re dedicated.”

  Mrs. Gneiss did not name her favorite charity. She had some reservations about the robbery. It sounded like a lot of work. Give the You-Know-Whos a few swift kicks. They’d learn. Why rob a bank? And, if they went through with it, it seemed only fair that they themselves should be entitled to some of the cash. She thought of truckloads of Hershey bars, gallons of vanilla ice cream, a new television and, in general, goodies in return for their pains. But she kept silent.

  “So it’s settled. We knock off the bank and in the process we might have to break a few eggs—that’s how you make omelettes, eh? I’ve got my old trusty .45.”

  “You mean you might shoot your gun?” Miss Ball asked, her eyebrows popping up.

  “Right,” said Mr. Gibbon. “How do you like them apples?”

  Information was needed. Plans had to be made. The next two months were spent poring over detective novels and thrillers, watching spy movies, preparing disguises, masks, and learning to pick up items without leaving ­fingerprints. Miss Ball was in charge of disguises, Mr. Gibbon had the novels, Mrs. Gneiss had television robbery-movies. Mrs. Gneiss watched all the programs on TV just the same, so it was no extra trouble. It just meant changing channels once in a while. When a detective story was over on one channel, another was starting on another channel. She flicked the knob and settled back with her food.

  Mr. Gibbon continued working at Kant-Brake. H
e was excited about the robbery—it compared favorably with his best experiences in the army. He read the pulp thrillers during the lunch hour and earned the title of “professor” for doing so. The other employees credited the reading and contentment to “Charlie’s new lady-friend.”

  At the end of two months they met again, and this time used the stump of a candle for light. They had a map of Mount Holly in front of them. The Mount Holly Trust Company was marked with an X, and an escape route plotted out on it with one of Miss Ball’s E-Z Mark crayons, which she had cleverly snatched from the kindergarten.

  Plans were going well, said Mr. Gibbon. They had picked the masks they were going to use, the gloves and special shoes. And they had the escape route decided in advance. There was only one problem. They didn’t know where the safe was. They had no floor plan of the bank.

  “Oh, shucks!” said Miss Ball. “How can we rob a bank if we don’t know where the money is?”

  “But the employees know,” said Mr. Gibbon.

  “A lot of good that does us,” Mrs. Gneiss said.

  “Now just keep your shirts on,” said Mr. Gibbon. He explained his plan. What they would do was kidnap one of the bank guards, a white one, and beat the stuffings out of him unless he told them where the safe was. First, of course, they would divulge their plan. But if he didn’t want to cooperate they would have to beat him up. He would be able to tell them where the safe was, the strongboxes, the money, the keys, the emergency alarms. “We’ll have to kidnap him. It’s the only way.”