Paul Theroux - Murder in Mount Holly

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 mother’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.

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. .”