Basic Training

by Kurt Vonnegut

  The General held his nose.

  “So I’ve been drinking,” said Roy, with a flourish of his hand. “S’matter of small importance in the face of that with which I have been faced with. I offer my heart to your daughter, and all I get from you is shame and abuse, that’s all.” He snapped his fingers. “I’m here to wake you all up, to get you out of your ruts.”

  The General gave an experimental sniff, winced, and held his nose again.

  “Oh, I’m on to you,” said Roy. “You’re trying to use psychology on me by making me think my breath smells bad, so I’ll get confused and forget what I wanted to say. I’m one jump ahead of you, mister.”

  “Can’t be the septic tank,” murmured the General.

  “Could be your soul,” said Roy hotly. “You don’t bother to think; you just say no to everything.” He squinted to bring the General into focus. “Well, I’m here to tell you that it won’t work on the Sun and the stars and the Moon, and it won’t work with love like Kitty’s and mine, either.”

  The General arose, grasped Roy by the collar and a handful of trouser-seat, and propelled him to the front door. His expression was placid, patient. “You say you want to marry my daughter, and I say no,” he explained, releasing Roy on the front porch. “I couldn’t stop the Sun and the Moon and the stars, if I wanted to — but I expect to be quite effective in your particular case.”

  Haley heard Roy shout from his motorcycle as he sped away with an angry clashing of gears: “I’ll be back!”

  “That’s not original with him, you know,” commented the General, returning to the sunroom.

  After dinner, seated on the kitchen steps, Haley outlined the conversation to Hope, who nodded thoughtfully and made him repeat portions of it. “Roy’s right about the way he tries to solve everything by saying no,” she sighed. “That’s how he got to be a general, I guess, but he sure isn’t much fun as a father.”

  “I’m sure he’s got a very good heart, and is just trying to do what he thinks best,” said Haley.

  “Who isn’t?” Hope shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, Haley. We love him dearly, and I think he loves us, too, probably lots more than most fathers love their children. But golly, his idea of doing us a favor is to discipline us every time we turn around.” A patch of light on the grass to their left, cast from Kitty’s window above, disappeared. Hope and Haley looked up at the darkened window. “Going to bed early,” said Hope. “Guess she’ll cry herself to sleep tonight.” Suddenly she motioned for silence. “Listen!”

  Haley heard a rustling in the untended barberry hedge bounding the driveway. A figure separated from the shadows, and Haley recognized Roy, who looked as though he had been eluding bloodhounds for a week. He spoke hoarsely, and was visible for only a minute — long enough to give them a note for Kitty, rumpled and moist from his perspiring hands. He retreated again into the hedge, and Hope ran upstairs with the message, leaving Haley alone on the kitchen steps. The light in Kitty’s room flashed on again, and Haley turned his head to see her standing in the window, waving her hands and nodding. A moment later, he saw Roy head across the barnyard toward the highway, running between patches of shadows in a low crouch.

  Hope returned, vibrant with excitement. “They’re going to get married anyway, Haley — tonight!”

  Haley laughed nervously, and found himself without adequate comment.

  “And the wonderful thing about it is that we get to see them elope!”

  “I’d rather keep out of it,” said Haley, his voice tinged with anxiety.

  “Oh, but you can’t,” said Hope, enthusiastically. “You’re absolutely crucial. They’re going to use your window, because it’s the farthest from the General’s room.”

  “Good grief! What if she gets caught by Annie or the General on her way out through my room? That’d look dandy for me.”

  “Oh, the General will never find out how she got out. He won’t find out she’s gone until morning. She’s making a dummy for her bed right now.”

  “All the same, I’d be happier if—”

  “You are a mouse, aren’t you,” said Hope.

  Haley suddenly hated himself for his querulousness. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he objected lamely. “It’s just that I want to make sure everything’s planned just right, that’s all.”

  They returned together, with Hope apparently mollified, into the brightly lighted sunroom, where the General and Annie perused respectively the first and second sections of the evening paper, with an occasional and complacent “huh” or “ha.”

  At 3 a.m., Caesar, the chastened horse, kicked the side of his stall twice, perhaps in token retribution for the saw-toothed bits. The solid thumps carried to the ears of Haley, who threw back his covers and ran to the window. In the silent patch of blues and blacks below him, he saw Roy, moving toward the house, staggering beneath the weight of a tall ladder. Roy stood the ladder upright, and leaned it in toward Haley’s windowsill. The ladder gathered speed as it fell toward the house, and Roy was without leverage to stop it as it threatened to hit the clapboard siding with a thundering whack. Haley leaned out and caught the ladder just before it hit, and his hand served as a cushion between it and the house. In spite of himself he cried out, and jerked his hand, which stung smartly and bled.

  Roy popped his colorful head into the window, and Hope and Kitty slipped through the bedroom door, looking furtively over their shoulders, and struggling with several large pieces of luggage.

  “Who yelled?” whispered Hope angrily.

  Haley appealed with his eyes to Roy for vindication, but Roy, florid and perspiring, was staring amazed at the baggage Kitty expected to carry away on the nuptial motorcycle. Haley guessed, from what little he knew of Roy, that the idea of spiriting his love away had delighted him, but that the mechanical difficulties inherent in the desperate venture now depressed him terribly. Haley counted seven separate pieces of luggage.

  “Darling,” whispered Kitty, throwing her arms about Roy’s neck.

  Roy received the embrace woodenly. “Gee whiz, Kitty, half that stuff won’t even fit through the window, let alone fit in the saddle bags,” he said forlornly.

  “You said we might be on the road for ten days; right in black and white you said that.”

  “Sure, Honey, but we aren’t going in a moving van.”

  “Better get going while the going’s good,” warned Hope.

  Kitty began to look rattled. “What’re you taking?” she asked.

  “Change of socks, change of underwear,” said Roy.

  “Here, take this one and beat it,” urged Hope, handing Kitty a small bag.

  “It’s all packed according to a system,” said Kitty helplessly. “And I thought it was so good, too. There’s underwear in one, skirts in another, blouses and sweaters in that big one.” She looked at the bag in her hand. “I forget what’s in this one.”

  “Is that the one with your toothbrush?” asked Roy.

  “It could be,” said Kitty, apparently not at all sure.

  “That’s the one we want,” said Roy, taking it from her. “Let’s go!”

  Kitty hesitated, looked longingly at the baggage she was going to have to abandon, then squirmed through the window and onto the ladder.

  Haley, Hope by his side, listened to the lovers’ conversation as they descended.

  “I got you a new kidney belt for the trip,” said Roy affectionately.

  “I think this is the bag with the hankies and the stockings,” said Kitty.

  Kitty and Roy, stumpy, grotesque, long-shadowed figures as seen by Haley and Hope from the bedroom window, were absorbed by the shadows of the barn, reappeared for a moment as they crossed the fence into the elm grove, and were lost from sight for good. Haley and Hope heard the roar and backfire of the motorcycle starting on the highway, then its even rumble, then hum, as it carried Roy and Kitty to joy everlasting.

  “Well, I never,” said Annie, filling the door with her breadth, the more impressive for bei
ng sheathed in an orange, daisy-spattered bathrobe. Haley’s heart pumped harder and faster as Annie scratched herself and blinked at them sleepily. “Well, I never,” she repeated at last. “What’s going on at this hour?”

  “Haley’s window wouldn’t open, and he asked me to help him get it unstuck,” said Hope.

  Annie’s gaze, move wakeful now, turned toward the window. Haley closed his eyes. “What’s that ladder and luggage doing there?” she demanded, taking a step forward. The drone of Roy’s motorcycle was still audible, and, when Haley opened his eyes for an instant, he saw Annie’s head cocked to one side, in an attitude of listening and incredulity. “She ran off with him, didn’t she?” she cried.

  “Hush!” hissed Hope, and the General stepped from the darkness of the hallway.

  “Kitty’s run off with Roy, and these two helped her,” said Annie, livid. “What’ll we do?”

  The General breathed heavily, his eyes moving about the small room — from Annie to the ladder and luggage, to Haley and Hope. “I’ll see you two downstairs in the sunroom in fifteen minutes, on the dot,” he said.

  “You’ll see,” said Annie, and she followed the General down the hall.

  Haley could hear the General dialing, then shouting into the telephone. “He always yells into the telephone,” said Hope. Haley sensed that some of her defiant poise was gone, that she was worried. “He’s talking to the police,” she said with awe. They lapsed into despondent silence until Hope’s watch indicated that the time for their hearing had come.

  The General was at his desk, his back to them. Annie sat on the edge of the couch, pouring two cups of coffee. She told them to sit down, and so they sat, with only their sins and the coffee’s fragrance to contemplate for perhaps ten minutes. Haley examined the back of his hand, which had begun to ache from the ladder’s blow. A long welt crossed the back of it, and the skin was broken in three places along the knuckles.

  “I have a theory,” the General began suddenly, “that everybody with any sense has a good idea of how he looks to others. Let’s put it to a test, shall we?” His tone was polite, impersonal, like that of a lecturer, Haley thought. “Hope?”

  “Yes?” Her voice was faint.

  “You and I are pretty much strangers. You weren’t much more than a baby when I went away to war, so we never did have much time to get to know each other.” He paused to light a cigarette. “You don’t like me because you think I’m a bully, that it’s fun for me to push other people around.”

  “Noooo,” objected Hope, tearfully. “I love you, Daddy, really I do.”

  “Don’t doubt it. Never did. That’s an entirely different matter.”

  Hope started to plead again, but the General cut her short by addressing Haley. “As for you, young man, I don’t think I’m far from the mark when I say that you think I’m pretty funny, even though you are scared to death of me. I’m a joke, an old fool who can’t forget for a minute that he was a General. Maybe it was your father who taught you that.”

  “Hardly, sir,” said Haley, embarrassed, but at a loss as to how he might argue the point.

  “Good — the cards are on the table,” said the General. “In case you haven’t figured out for yourselves just what I think of you, I’ll clear that up, too. First of all, I’m fond of you both. I think you’re too soft and spoiled for your own good. I want you to be happy, and I get no fun at all out of hurting you. But you’re still children, and I’m supposed to take care of you to the best of my ability. If I can teach you one simple lesson, I’ll have done a good job of it. You’re evidently going to have to learn the hard way that your happiness for the rest of your lives depends on how well you fit yourselves into other people’s plans, not vice versa; and on how willing you are to submit to the judgment of someone who knows more than you do. Am I right or wrong?”

  “You’re right,” faltered Hope.

  “Yessir,” said Haley. The lesson sounded like an eminently reasonable one, easily committed to memory.

  “What you have done tonight has hurt, not helped, all of us,” said the General, “and poor, hare-brained Kitty most of all. You’ll see. Because you helped her run away with that crude, asinine chimpanzee, she is in for nothing but grief. We’ll get her back, because she’s too young to marry without my say so, but she’ll never be the same again — because you didn’t have the good sense to stop her. Am I right or wrong?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” moaned Haley. Hope remained silent.

  “Do you feel I have stated the situation fairly, and that you have done something quite bad?” asked the General, his eyebrows arched.

  Haley and Hope nodded.

  “Very well, then, some kind of punishment is in order. Hope, Annie and I have decided that you should be sent away to some boarding school. I’ll look into the matter tomorrow, and pick one where you’ll be watched carefully and kept in line. I think one of your big troubles has been the smart-aleck company you’ve been keeping at the high school.”

  “Daddy!” cried Hope.

  “Haley, I have decided that for your own good you’d better not go to the Conservatory. You will work around the farm instead. I wouldn’t class that as punishment, actually. It’s the greatest kind of character training a man can get.”

  Haley did not believe it. He shut out the sound of the General’s voice, and nodded mechanically. It was hours later that a chill passed over him, and he knew that the small parcel of dreams he had brought with him into his new home was hopelessly smashed.

  “That is all. Goodnight,” said the General, without rancor.

  “But, Daddy,” began Hope.

  “I said goodnight.”

  Annie had sat quietly, nodding in agreement whenever the General had spoken. “Better go now,” she said. She arose, and shooed them from the room. “What in Heaven’s name happened to your hand, Haley?”

  “The ladder banged it. It doesn’t hurt much.”

  “You come with me,” said Annie. She took him up to the bathroom, and painted his cuts with iodine. Involuntarily, Haley jerked back his hand. “Hurt?” asked Annie.

  “A little,” said Haley, sucking in air between his teeth.

  “Fine,” said Annie, plainly satisfied. “Shows it’s doing some good.”

  V.

  “Quite a ruckus last night, eh?” called Mr. Banghart to Haley, above the rattling and creaking of the empty wagon on its way to the fields. Haley sat on the rear corner of the wagon, kicking dispiritedly at the fragile white heads of milkweeds lining the lane. He did not hear Mr. Banghart’s question; his senses were turned inward, examining his conscience.

  Annie had aroused him this morning, and reminded him that he and Mr. Banghart were to work today, even though it was Sunday. The radio had predicted rain, she had said, and the hay bales would be too heavy to lift, too wet to store, if they were not brought in before the downpour. The General and Hope still slumbered, and Annie had returned to bed after warming coffee left over from the night before, and after laying out a bowl of cold cereal and an orange for Haley’s breakfast. He had met Mr. Banghart in the barn, and done what he could to help harness Caesar and Delores. The coffee had purged him of his sleepiness, giving him in its stead a keen, tense wakefulness.

  He was willing to admit that he had done a bad thing in helping Kitty elope with the somewhat substandard Roy Flemming. He did then, for his own good, as the General had said, deserve to be punished. But he searched his conscience in vain for a grain of remorse to justify the desolating punishment the General had promised. “When you punish somebody, you take something away from them that they want,” he reasoned. “All I had in the whole wide world was my music, so that’s what I lost — everything.”

  As he reviewed his condition again and again in the light of a spotless conscience, he found himself starting to derive from it the pungent, bittersweet pleasure of righteous indignation. Another thought, however, nagging on the fringes of his consciousness, soon came into view to spoil his p
leasure. He lived again his ignominious flight from the secret room in the loft, and his abandoning of Hope, and his spirits tumbled into depths of recrimination.

  He looked up at Mr. Banghart, and wondered how he had found out about the turmoil of the night before. “Probably watched it all through the windows,” he thought. “Hope said he did a lot of that.”

  “Horses seem pretty frisky this morning,” said Mr. Banghart, tugging gently on the reins to slow the pace of Caesar and Delores. Haley stood up and walked to Mr. Banghart’s side. He saw that the corners of the horses’ mouths were raw, and that every pull on the edged bits made them swing their heads wildly from side to side.

  Mr. Banghart took out his hunting knife and began shaving fat splinters from a wagonstake. The cuts were effortless, Haley noted, with a youngster’s admiration for a keen edge. “There’s a great day coming,” his companion crooned. “There are a lot of people around who are going to be wishing they had been a lot nicer to old Bing.” He winked and returned the knife to its case. “A man can stand so much and no more, and they’re all going to have to learn that the hard way.”