Basic Training

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Haley broke into his first heartfelt smile of the interview.

  “I’ve heard you’re pretty smart all the way around, too,” the General continued. He settled into a chair, and lit a cigarette. “Here you are sixteen, and you’ve already finished up high school. Wish you’d give some of your brains to Kitty. Looks like she’ll be in high school until the diamond jubilee of the atom bomb.” He motioned for Haley to sit down. “I hope you haven’t got a swelled head about your school record.”

  “I just liked school was all,” said Haley, blushing, “and I went to summer school. I don’t think I’m any smarter than—”

  “Don’t say Kitty,” warned the General. “I was just going to tell you a story about a man I grew up with, just in case you were cocky about being smart in school. I see you aren’t, but I’ll tell it to you anyway. I learned a lot from what happened to him.”

  “I’d like very much to hear about it,” said Haley.

  “Well, Haley, this boyhood chum of mine was a lot like you, from what I’ve heard about you. He was always reading books, books, books — everything he could get his hands on. We used to ask him to come fishing or to play baseball, and things like that, and he always had the same answer: ‘No thanks, I just got a new book that looks very interesting.’ Sometimes he’d forget to stop reading for meals. By the time he was fifteen, he knew more about the royal family of Siam and the slum problem in Vladivostok than I knew about the back of my hand. All his teachers swore he was a genius, and said he’d be at least President of the United States when he was thirty-five.” He paused to give Haley a meaningful look.

  Haley attempted to appear as solemn and absorbed as possible. “What finally became of him?” he asked soberly.

  The General seemed satisfied that his story was carrying the proper impact. “When World War II broke out, this man was immediately made an officer. Everybody expected him to win the war single-handed. But when the going got tough over there in France, he cracked up completely. It turned out he didn’t know the first thing about leadership, and he couldn’t even take care of himself, so he was sick all the time.” The General lowered his voice. “The morale in his company was so bad, that all his men had thrown away their gas-masks rather than carry them on marches. The first thing you know, the Jerries dropped mustard gas shells all over them. Zip! One whole company wiped out! And I’ll always say it was a library card that killed them. See my point?”

  “Yessir, I think so. He was one-sided. Is that it?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell,” said the General, beaming. “You expressed it perfectly. That’s why I brought my whole family out here to the farm to live after the war, to keep us all from getting soft, from getting one-sided. Now spruce up for supper. People with dirty fingernails don’t get to eat around here.”

  II.

  At 2 a.m., Central Standard Time, as reckoned by the parlor mantle clock in the home of Brigadier General William Cooley, retired, a light beam left the burning Sun. At 2:08 it glanced from the lip of a Moon crater, and a second later died on Earth, in the staring eyes of Haley Brandon.

  Haley lay sleepless between cool sheets, his thin arms folded behind his head, his eyes fixed on the window through which the wistful moonlight streamed. He felt wholly a stranger. None of the old, seemingly sweetly reasonable patterns of the past now applied. He was not actively melancholy — it was too soon for that. Rather, he was like a settler on his first day in a foreign land, bemused by his initial contacts with unfamiliar customs; not yet ready to admit that it would be those customs instead of his own that would enable him to remain and prosper.

  “We’ll see to it that you earn your way as best you can — with good, old-fashioned work. Sounds harsh, maybe, but you’ll thank us for it in later years. We’ll put some meat on you, too,” the General had said at supper. The sweat and sinew-worship that seemed to pervade life at Ardennes Farm was a great curiosity to Haley. Robust was the password. As a Manhattan cliffdweller, he had won the loyalty of his small circle of friends — most of them adults and fellow musicians — with the cleverness of his fingers on a piano keyboard, with his promise as a concert pianist. Now, he reflected, the emphasis had been changed to the cleanliness of his fingers, and to whether or not he could move a piano.

  Haley thought about the peculiar man into whose hands he had been delivered for guidance. The General, he knew from having heard his mother talk about him, was a competent manager, a brave soldier, and well off financially, though not given to exhibiting the last-named quality. He had taken over management of the old Cooley farmstead, run by tenants for nearly a generation, after his retirement from the Army. Haley remembered a few discussions between his mother and father as to the truth of his mother’s contention that the General, “down deep,” had a heart of gold. His mother had never been able to produce much evidence for the affirmative. His father, on the other hand, had always had dozens of incidents to recall, which seemed to back up his opinion that the General was a “pompous, selfish old teddy bear with sawdust for brains.” As he lay abed for his first night in his new home, Haley thought he liked the General. The man was gruff, certainly, but he always gave sound reasons for the things he did.

  Haley flexed his fingers and recalled the dream-like quality his music had given his life in the past; and a pleasurable shudder passed over him as he reminded himself that that part of his life would begin anew in thirty days — for the General had promised that he might go to Chicago to resume his studies then. That was all that really mattered, Haley decided. Knowing that that much of the future was assured, he decided that he could adjust to any of the new order’s rigors, and get along with just about anyone.

  It was certainly to the General’s credit as a man of compassion that he should understand the importance of music to his new charge, Haley thought, for the man was as tone-deaf as a sparrow, and so were two of his three daughters. Judging from the whistling and humming they did, only Hope was able to carry a tune. Haley had heard that this was a hereditary trait. His mother, or, as Annie had reminded him, his foster mother, had been similarly afflicted. In this thought Haley found some consolation for his not being a blood relative of the Cooleys. There were apparently no instruments on the farm, and the evening’s choice of radio programs had indicated that the General and his family found homicide far more entertaining than music. As Haley had undressed for bed, he had been surprised to hear an excellent, if untrained, tenor voice singing hymns in the barn, and had wondered who it might have been. It could not have been a Cooley, at any rate. He decided to ask about it in the morning.

  Tomorrow his new life would begin in earnest, in the vast, unfamiliar flatness of the Plain — a world of strange sounds and sights and attitudes. He was, the General had said, to help with the haying.

  He turned over, pulled the sheet over his head, and closed his eyes. Haley dreamed of saying goodnight to his mother and father, of wishing them, handsome and young in evening clothes, a pleasant time at their party. He dreamed of the friends who had come to get him the next morning, to tell him that he must stay with them for a little while, that there had been an automobile accident, that he mustn’t cry, that he must be a man…. He had cried.

  III.

  Haley was awakened the next morning by a banging on his door, a shout by his ear, and the shock of a cold washcloth on his face. He sat upright, and saw the General standing at the foot of the cot, squat, fat, and laughing. A towel was knotted about the man’s abdomen; with another he was rubbing his bare chest to a glowing pink. “You’re not in the music business, boy; you’re a farmer now. Take a cold shower, and be down for breakfast in ten minutes, or you don’t eat,” he trumpeted.

  “Yessir,” said Haley. Ten minutes later he was seated, puffing and shivering, at the long kitchen table, ducking his head now and then to avoid the flying elbows of Annie, who was energetically making flapjacks on the range behind him. The hot water faucet in the shower stall had been a cruel fraud, he reflected resentfully. Th
e glare from the naked bulb that hung over the table hurt his eyes. He looked away from it to the blackness outside the windows, and realized with sleepy awe that he would be seeing a sunrise for the first time in his life. “Good morning,” he said, after waiting fruitlessly for someone — Annie, Hope, or the General — to acknowledge his presence.

  The General and Hope sat across the table from him. Both gave him cursory nods. Hope’s expression was sullen, and the General’s boisterous spirits of a few minutes ago seemed to have fled. Haley supposed that they were still nourishing the unpleasantness of the previous afternoon. Uncomfortable in that sort of silence, Haley tried to break it again. “It’s a nice morning,” he said.

  The General looked up. “Brush your teeth this morning, boy?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good,” said the General firmly. “Dirtiest place in the world, next to the fingernails, the human mouth is.”

  “Speak for yourself,” muttered Hope. Haley was grateful that only he seemed to have heard her. The General gave no sign, devoting his full attention to the flapjacks Annie had placed before him. As had been the case at supper the night before, the General was the first to be served. Haley gathered that it was customary not to talk during breakfast.

  As he gulped the last of his strong, black coffee, the back door opened, and a muscular, black-haired man, apparently in his thirties, entered. His clothes were threadbare denim, but his manners were wonderfully courtly, Haley thought, and his grooming faultless. His face was shaved and scrubbed to the luster of wax apples, and his heavily pomaded hair resembled a patent-leather helmet as he crossed the room to a chair next to the range. He made a brief bow to each person at the table, and sat down.

  “Annie’ll get you some coffee, Mr. Banghart,” said the General. “By the way, you haven’t met my nephew, have you? Mr. Banghart, this is Haley Brandon. You two will be working together as C-squad on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturday mornings.”

  Haley and Mr. Banghart arose, and shook hands. “A pleasure, I’m sure,” said Mr. Banghart.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Haley. “Are you by any chance the man who was singing in the barn last night?”

  “The same. Did you enjoy it?”

  “You have an awfully good voice, I think,” said Haley.

  Mr. Banghart, who had dropped Haley’s hand, startled him by grabbing it again, and squeezing it hard. “That’s the first kind word anybody’s ever had for me,” he said solemnly.

  “That’s simply not so,” said the General, in a half-laughing, patronizing tone.

  Mr. Banghart ignored him. “I’d be glad to sing for you any time,” he said to Haley. “What would you like to hear?”

  Haley was startled by the reaction his pleasantry had started. He had never before set a man seething with gratitude, and the situation confused him. “Rock of Ages is very nice,” he said at last, recalling that Mr. Banghart had done justice to this hymn the night before.

  Mr. Banghart’s lungs swelled like blacksmiths’ bellows, and the room was filled with his powerful singing voice. Haley took a step backwards. The General hammered on the table. “Not during breakfast!” he bawled above the singing, as though he were commanding a regiment.

  Mr. Banghart stopped his singing immediately. “Now you’re against me,” he said reproachfully.

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, I am not against you,” said the General irritably, “but I certainly will be if you do that again.”

  “Sorry,” said Mr. Banghart, “but more for your sake than for mine.” He shrugged, and resumed his seat by the range.

  “All right, all right,” said the General soothingly. He looked up at the clock and fidgeted. “Now Where’s that Kitty?” he said. “What time did she get in last night, Annie?”

  “Three in the morning,” said Annie, handing Mr. Banghart his coffee. “She was out with that Roy Flemming again,” she added. Haley saw Hope glare at her sister.

  “That’s the end, the absolute end,” said the General. “You can tell her, when she gets up, that every minute after six that she slept is one week-end night and she has to stay in. You can also tell her that Mr. Flemming and his motorcycle are no longer welcome at Ardennes Farm. Put that on the bulletin board,” he ordered.

  Annie nodded in agreement. “Good,” she said.

  “Know where the bulletin board is?” the General asked Haley.

  “I think I saw it there in the sunroom. Is that it, sir?”

  “That’s it, allrighty. You just watch the bulletin board. Annie keeps it up for me, and it’ll help you stay out of mischief. Your name appeared on it for the first time today.”

  “What did it say about me?” asked Haley, with a trace of anxiety.

  “You get up at 5 sharp, take a cold shower, brush your teeth for two minutes, pick up your pajamas and hang them on the hook inside the closet door; eat breakfast, go help with the haying, eat lunch, go out and hay some more; eat supper, listen to the radio for an hour, brush your teeth for two minutes, take a cold shower, hang up your clothes, and go to bed. Every minute’s accounted for,” said the General proudly. He looked again at the kitchen clock. “H-hour,” he announced, and D-squad marched out into the vermilion sunrise.

  By 11 a.m. the wagon was stacked high with the day’s sixth load of hay. The hay, the General had explained to Haley, had been pounded and bound into bales by a machine that had passed over the field the day before. The dense bundles were as high as Haley’s chest, weighed about half of what he imagined Hope to weigh, and were as wide and thick as the General’s middle. There was room for three more bales on top. Haley hung his baling hook on a wheel spoke, swept away the sweat that streamed into his eyes, and begged for a rest.

  “You just had a rest period, Haley,” said the General. “You’ll find you won’t get tired as quickly if you keep at it steadily. Breaking up your rhythm with rest periods all the time, no wonder you’re pooped. You’ll never get your second wind that way.” He was atop the load, reins in hand, with Hope seated beside him, her legs dangling over the side.

  Haley shook his head wearily, and sat down on the ground, panting, wishing to Heaven that the nightmare of heat, creeping time, and lamed muscles would end. “I’ll be all right in a minute, I guess — soon as I get my breath,” he said. Mr. Banghart, who had been working on the opposite side of the wagon, walked over to him and told him to climb onto the wagon, that he would finish the load.

  “Let him learn to pull his own weight, Mr. Banghart,” warned the General. “He can do it. Come on, boy, three to go.”

  Limply, painfully, Haley sank his hook into a nearby bale. He worried it along the ground to the wagon. Hope waited, hook poised, for him to swing it upward to where she could catch it and drag it into place.

  “Put your back into it, boy,” shouted the General, and Haley swung the bale. Hope made a grab for it, but missed, for it was a full yard beyond her hook. He staggered backwards under the weight, his eyes and lungs filled with the dust and splinters that showered down from the bale. His feet tangled, and he fell hard on the sharp stubble, the bale on top of him.

  He was yanked to his feet at once by Mr. Banghart, who, with his mouth close to Haley’s ear, whispered, “Don’t you worry — we’ll take care of that old devil when the right time comes. Wait and see.”

  Haley rubbed his smarting eyes, and brought into focus the face of Hope, who was rocking from side to side with laughter. He felt utterly humiliated standing before her, comical in his weakness, and in his clothing — cast-off work clothes of the General, too short, too wide, high on his ankles and wrists, bunched at his waist. Exhaustion and sudden loneliness billowed in his narrow breast. He sank to the ground again.

  The General eased himself down from his perch, and stood over him, kicking gently at the soles of his shoes, and chiding, “Come on, boy, get up. All right, get up.” Haley stood. The General seemed more embarrassed than angry. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “Mooning and malingering will get y
ou nowhere around here, do you understand? I’m ashamed of you.”

  “Leave him alone,” Haley heard Hope call.

  Blushing and apologizing in half-soliloquy, he clambered atop the wagon, unable to look at Hope. Mr. Banghart swung three more bales up to Hope, and the wagon moved, jolting and creaking, toward the barnyard.

  In the still, dry heat of the loft, under a tin roof too hot to touch, Hope, Haley, and Mr. Banghart dragged bale after bale from the wagon, over the splintered floor, to a growing stack deep in the shadows of one end. The General remained on the wagon to steady the horses. Tormenting himself, Haley tried to imagine what the others were thinking of him. Hope was the only one he really cared about. The two of them worked together, their hooks driven into the same bale. She said nothing, and concentrated her attention on the hard work to be done. He was bewildered by the effect her presence had had upon him since the first instant he had seen her. He now found her more beautiful than ever, with her hair lightened by dust, and with heat bringing her loose clothes into conformity with the lines of her young figure.

  Mr. Banghart rolled a cigarette, politely excused himself, and went out into the barnyard to smoke it. The General joined him with a cigar, leaving Haley and Hope alone in the barn. Haley sat down on a bale next to Hope. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get used to farm work after a while,” she said. “We all did. Takes about a month.”