Paul Theroux - Murder in Mount Holly

She motioned for them to sit down. The TV show wasn’t over yet. She kept her eyes fixed on the blue tube and shook a fistful of chocolates at some chairs. The screen jaggered and the picture went to pieces. Herbie got up to adjust the set. Mrs. Gneiss waved him back to his seat. Then she stomped on the carpet with her foot. Her shapeless felt slipper came off, but her bare foot raised itself for another go. The TV snapped back to life, the picture composed itself on the command of Mrs. Gneiss’s big foot.

The show went on for several hours. First there was a newsreel, then something entitled “Irregularity and You,” then a half-hour of folk songs which concerned themselves with bombs and deformed babies, then a documentary about the human scalp, a dance show complete with disc jockey showed teenaged girls and boys bumping themselves against each other, and finally a panel of Negroes and Mexicans discussed who had been abused the most seriously. When they started feverishly stripping off their shirts to show their wounds and scars, Mrs. Gneiss stomped on the floor again and the TV shut itself off.

“Television,” Mr. Gibbon said. And that was all he said.

Mrs. Gneiss looked at him. She chewed at him.

“Mr. Gibbon,” Herbie said, “this is my mother.”

“Well, any friend of Herbie’s,” said Mrs. Gneiss. Then she picked up a large piece of chocolate. It was an odd shape, perhaps in the shape of a fish. She threw it into her mouth, and once her mouth was filled she said, “Can I offer you something to eat?”

Herbie swallowed, determined not to vomit.

“Say,” said Mr. Gibbon, “is that an Eskimo Pie?”

“Thipth,” said Mrs. Gneiss. But she could not speak. She wagged her finger negatively.

“Looks like one,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago we used to have them. My buddies used to eat ’em like candy.”

“They were candy, weren’t they?” said Mrs. Gneiss, once she had swallowed most of the chocolate.

“You got something there,” said Mr. Gibbon.

“Mr. Gibbon was in three wars,” said Herbie.

“What ever happened to Eskimo Pies,” said Herbie’s mother.

“That’s what I say,” said Mr. Gibbon brightening.

“Even if they did have them today they’d be little dinky things.”

“That’s the God’s truth,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago the Hershey Bars were the big things.”

“Nowadays they’re a gyp,” said Mrs. Gneiss. “I try to tell Herbie how much he’s being gypped nowadays, but he never listens. He just laps up all those lies.”

“Big ideas!” Mr. Gibbon started. He crept over to the sofa and sat next to Mrs. Gneiss. When he got there he was almost out of breath. “Big ideas,” he finally said again. “I think years ago people were smarter than they are now, but they didn’t have any smart ideas like people do now.”

“Right!” said Herbie’s mother. “I knew a lot of people in my day, but I never met one with any smart ideas. Boy, I remember those big Hersheys!”

“Trollies, too,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago we used to hitch rides on ’em. Loads of fun, believe me. But today? I’d like to see you try that today?”

“Try what today?” asked Herbie.

“Hitchin’ a trolley-bus,” said Mr. Gibbon.

“You mean riding?”

“No, I mean hitching . You crawl on the back of the thing and hold on with your fingernails. Doesn’t cost a penny. Nowadays you’d get killed on a bus. You could do it easy then.”

“What for?” Herbie asked. But no one answered.

Herbie’s mother and Mr. Gibbon continued to talk excitedly of the past. They talked of penny candy, nickel ice creams and dime novels. Mr. Gibbon said that he had once bought a whole box of stale White Owl cigars for five cents and then smoked the whole boxfull under his front steps. He had been violently ill.

“The things you could do with a nickel,” Herbie’s mother said nostalgically.

“Remember Hoot Gibson?”

“Whatever became of Hoot Gibson?”

“The old story.”

“Isn’t it always the way.”

“No one cares.”

They talked next of Marx and Lincoln. Not the famous German economist and the Great Emancipator, but Groucho and Elmo. Mr. Gibbon went on to tell how he had run away from school at a very early age. He said that kids nowadays didn’t have the guts to do that. How he used to go fishing with a bent pin and a bamboo pole, how he had joined the army at a very early age. No fancy ideas. Nowadays it was the fancy ideas that were ruining people.

“I don’t have any fancy ideas,” said Herbie.

“You do, and you know it,” said his mother, silencing him.

“Years ago,” said Mr. Gibbon, “good food, clean living, nice kids.”

“Nowadays,” said Mrs. Gneiss, “I don’t know how I stand it.”

Mr. Gibbon said that he had known a girl in his youth that looked just the way Herbie’s mother must have looked. Full of freckles and vanilla ice cream, plump, but not fat. Just the prettiest little thing on earth!

“You’ll stay, of course,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

“Course,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Us old folks got a lot of things to talk about.”

“Sure do,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

“Probably wouldn’t interest the youngster,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Now if I’m imposing you just tell me to scoot the blazes out of here.”

“ Imposing! I should say not. We’ll just pop a couple of TV dinners in the oven. No trouble ay-tall ! Unless you mind instant coffee.”

“Drink it all the time. Makes me big and strong,” said Mr. Gibbon, his eyes glinting, his lips wet and pink.

“You’re a card,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

“Not so bad yourself, Grandma!”

“Ha-ha-ha,” said Mrs. Gneiss.

“So’s your ole man,” said Mr. Gibbon.

“I’m tired,” said Herbie. “I think I’ll go to bed.” He took ten dollars out of his pay envelope and gave his mother the remainder. She thanked him. Herbie stared at the money on his mother’s lap. Then he went to bed.

Just before he got into bed he heard Mr. Gibbon say, “They had all-day suckers then. You never see an all-day sucker nowadays. Not one.”

Throughout the night Herbie was awakened by wheezing and groaning and the creaking of springs. That was that. He tried to prevent his mind from making a picture of it, but the more he tried the sharper the picture became. He switched on the radio to keep his mind off the noise in the next room. The news was on. The president had just had his kidney stone and gallbladder removed. The commentator said, “the stone had the appearance of an irregular gold nugget or arrowhead. The opened gallbladder was reddish brown and the greenish half-inch gallstone, which infected, was visible in the lower left fold near the cystic duct. . ” After this the president himself came on and said that he just had to get out of the hospital and do his work, even if it meant further infection. There was a war on and that had to be tended to.

With the radio buzzing about the movements of troops, Herbie went softly to sleep.

Mr. Gibbon became a frequent visitor to Herbie’s house.

Herbie stopped going home altogether. Instead, he went for walks around Mount Holly, met a girl and took her to bed. The first time they went to bed the girl said, “New, new, new!” which struck Herbie as odd. But they made love just the same. Afterward, when Herbie offered the girl a cigarette, she said simply, “New, thank you.” Like Herbie the girl had no plans, and Herbie had no plans for her.

Herbie’s mother became more hostile, but also less demanding. Herbie sent her less and less money each week. She did not mention this in her letters. Instead she sent more letters and started using phrases like, “Life is just beginning for me,” “a big new world is opening up,” “Charlie has taught me how to live and love,” “old people have feelings too,” “the sky’s the limit” and “dawn is breaking.” They were very uncharacteristic phrases. Mr. Gibbon had apparently kindled a flame inside his mother, Herbie thought.