Paul Theroux: Murder in Mount Holly

Now he was out of the army and it pained. Maybe it was the weather, but the weather had never caused him to pain before. Pain in his back, his neck, his finger joints. Or his clothes were damp. His clothes had never been damp before. And when he did not pain he felt sticky, or maybe one of his teeth would be giving him a time. In the army he never had a sick day, although the Doc and others examined his eyes now and then and prescribed “rest, lots and lots of rest for them eyes,” or “try a little epsom salts, Charlie, bathe them and then get some rest, lots of. .” Worse than all the civilian aches and pains was the one thought that occurred to him over and over again, the thought which zipped into his mind one morning and which stayed there, for good it seemed. Mr. Gibbon had been on his way to take a bath and did not feel a need to take the precaution of wearing a robe (besides, nakedness always reminded Mr. Gibbon pleasantly of the army). He was padding along the hall placidly, with a towel over his arm and his comb in his hand, and wearing his tennis shoes for slippers, and he passed one of the bedrooms and caught a glimpse of someone moving. He stopped and peeked through the door. He was right. In the full-length mirror he saw an old man, almost totally bald, carrying a broken comb and a tattered towel and wearing a suit of shrivelled fat.

It brought Mr. Gibbon up short. He tried to cover himself with the towel, but to no avail. The towel was too small and too shredded. Mr. Gibbon spilled over into the mirror. When he turned away from the mirror he got the most revolting view of all, a rear view, dying flesh retreating, and it was not starchy at all. It was just awful.

He could not forget the old man in the fat suit walking stupidly, awkwardly away from the full-length mirror. It had not been like that in the army. He had been a big strong man in the army. The army had promised to train Mr. Gibbon. They had kept their promise. They had trained him to check the firing pins on various large caliber shells; they had trained him to cook boiled cabbage and greens for upwards of three hundred hungry, dog-faced foot soldiers; they taught him to weld canteens, shout marching orders, cure rot, detect clap, and execute a nearly perfect about-face. These trades had kept Mr. Gibbon wise, his muscles in tune. In his thirty-eight army years Mr. Gibbon learned many trades up and down.

When he was discharged he found that army trades were not exactly civilian trades, although there were some similarities.

At first Mr. Gibbon did not try to get a job, but as he said, he had always been “on the go.” It was the army’s way to be always on the go. So twiddling his thumbs did not appeal to him. He was not a man of leisure. He took pride in making and doing a little each day. He had some money and a little pension, but it was not a question of money. Raising chickens was out, so was drinking coffee with unshaven men in the Automat, watching people go by, remembering number plates, spotting cars and playing cards. Mr. Gibbon was a little foolish, but he was not stupid and, perhaps worst of all, he had not yet been blessed with the time-consuming affliction of senility. He was in the still-awake period of dusk, which exists for old people in retirement between the last job and the first trembling signals of crotchety old age and near madness. Still lucid.

He could be useful. To himself and his country. But he was worried when he thought of his training; the army had trained him well, but what use is a firing-pin fixer, rot curer, cabbage boiler and canteen welder in the civilian world? What good? No good, Mr. Gibbon concluded. He took odd jobs at first, and even saw the humor in this. Gibbon, the taker of odd jobs. That’s what it had come to.

His first odd job was with the Municipal Council of Lower Holly, directing a road-fixing crew. But the workers would not be threatened with demerits and they did not have the respect (and fear) that recruits generally had for Mr. Gibbon. If Mr. Gibbon gave an order they paused, shuffled their feet, and from the middle of the group of workers another order would be shouted back: “Go back to the old folks’ home, Grandpa!” Once a man told him to go suck his thumb.

His next jobs were as an usher at the movies, a special policeman at the Holly Junction bathing beach and as a cabdriver on the late shift of the We-Drive-U-Kwik Cab Company. It was not long before Mr. Gibbon retired his flashlight and braided usher’s cap, his badge and night-stick. The odd job with the cab company bore some fruit, killed some time, and it even showed signs of speeding Mr. Gibbon right into his grave with no stopover at senility or madness.

It was his third week on the job that finished him. The week of the teeth. Mr. Gibbon had just gotten an upper plate of new false teeth.

“New false teeth,” Mr. Gibbon had said to the dispatcher. “ New false teeth. False and new. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

The cab dispatcher said that he had known a lot of people that had new false teeth. They liked them, the new false teeth. So why should Mr. Gibbon think they were so crazy?

“I didn’t say I thought they were crazy,” Mr. Gibbon corrected. “I said new false teeth sounded crazy. Like new used cars sounds crazy.”

The cab dispatcher did not see Mr. Gibbon’s point at all.

The teeth, both new and false, did not fit well. Or maybe it was Mr. Gibbon’s gums that did not fit. Whatever it was, it made his mouth sore, and Mr. Gibbon said he’d have to get his gums in shape before he could stand them a full day. It was toward the end of the third week that the accident happened. The teeth were resting on the seat beside Mr. Gibbon as he drove down Main Street late one night. Then he heard the familiar squawk from the sidewalk and whipped the cab over to the customer. The customer got in and sat on the front seat; Mr. Gibbon said, “Where to, Johnny?”

But when he said it he realized that his teeth were under the man. He reached for them. The man, far from indignant, took Mr. Gibbon’s arm and happily guided it. The two-way radio crackled. Mr. Gibbon gasped and struggled with the giggling man for full possession of his hand, his teeth, his wits. The car veered sharply and tore down the wrong lane of Holly Boulevard with the two reaching men, one grasping and wheezing, one delighted, in the front seat. The cab dispatcher back at the We-Drive-U-Kwik office listened to the wheezing and giggling. The cab dispatcher yelled into the microphone. Mr. Gibbon lunged for the radio. In doing so he lost control of the car completely and rammed a utility pole. Two voices — one from the radio, one from the seat next to him — sassed him, told him he was a useless old fool, a flop, and a tease.

The door slammed and the radio went dead. Mr. Gibbon left the We-Drive-U-Kwik Cab Company that same night. His sat-on teeth were broken, his pride had been toyed with, his age mocked once again, and for the first time in his life Mr. Gibbon had been chewed out. In a matter of minutes his job was taken from him. And it was a long time before he found another one.

Six months later Mr. Gibbon became a quality control inspector in the military department of the Kant-Brake Toy Factory. And, like all the other workers in the same department, he wore a uniform showing his rank and months of service. Medals were given for safety, punctuality, and high bowling scores. Mr. Gibbon was in heaven.

It was the logical place to go, but somehow the thought had not even occurred to Mr. Gibbon. Why not a toy factory? It was the only place outside of the army itself that made murderous weapons a speciality. Kant-Brake manufactured soldiers, millions of planes, gunboats, bombers, bullets, sub-machine guns, tents, tanks, Jeeps, and even little officer’s quarters right down, as the catalogue said, “to the geraniums on the general’s lawn.” Every weapon of war, murder, spying or sabotage could be found under the Kant-Brake roof. Some designs, which were under construction, had only just appeared on the drawing boards in the Pentagon. The Kant-Brake Company bragged that it turned out more planes, more ships, and more tanks “than all the world’s man-sized factories put together!” They made a nuclear sub that could fire sixteen high-powered missiles. The missiles alone that appeared at Kant-Brake were so many that they were equal in number “to all the bombs dropped by both sides during World War II.”