Paul Theroux - Murder in Mount Holly

“Do they? I don’t know,” the sentry said coldly. “I never been in most toy factories. Just this one is all.”

“Just asking.”

“I heard you.”

“A toy factory with a guard,” Herbie said to himself, and started to shake his head and smile.

“You think it’s funny?”

“Yes,” said Herbie. “No.”

“Pretty funny for a wise guy, aren’t you?”

“You think so?” It came out in the wrong tone of voice: an unintentional, but very distinct, rasp.

“I think so.”

“I was thinking,” said Herbie. “With you standing there with that loaded gun, waving it at people like me and getting mad. .” Herbie’s voice trailed off, then started up again. “I was thinking, someone might get hurt. . ”

“Like you.”

Herbie nodded. “Like me. Exactly.”

“I got a job to do.”

“That’s what I was saying. A toy factory with a guard.”

“I’d shoot you down as look at you. I used to tow targets.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.”

“I seen action. Lots of it.”

Herbie noticed that although the sentry’s body was faced in his direction and the sentry’s rifle was still pointed in the general area of Herbie’s chest, the sentry’s eyes were glazed, his mind was somewhere else. Perhaps on some of the action he had seen.

“Damn right,” said the sentry. “Plug you right there, if I had a mind to. I plugged lots of guys before. Wise guys, just like you, mostly. We had more trouble with the wise guys than the Jerries. So we plugged the wise guys. It was war. You can’t have wise guys in a war, or smart alecks either. I plugged my best friend. He used to wise around the place all the time. Had to give him the payoff. Sure, I hated to do it — he was my buddy, but that’s the way you lose wars. The wise guys lose them for you.”

Herbie looked at the rifle riding up and down his torso. It had one eye.

“I got my orders. I wouldn’t care. I’d just shoot !” The last word flew out angrily with a fine spray of spit.

Herbie backed toward the gate and the safety of the sidewalk. The guard still aimed his rifle where Herbie had been. Just as Herbie was thinking seriously about running back to Miss Ball’s house Mr. Gibbon appeared.

“You been cleared,” he shouted to Herbie. “It’s okay, Skeeter. He’s been cleared by the old man.”

Skeeter, the sentry, wheeled around and jerked his rifle at the sky. Both Mr. Gibbon and Herbie flattened themselves on the driveway. Herbie waited for the explosion, numbness, death. But there was no explosion.

“I woulda shot,” said Skeeter, the sentry.

“I don’t blame you,” said Mr. Gibbon. He understood security.

Herbie said nothing.

Mr. Gibbon took Herbie to the main office and said, “You’re on your own now, sojer.”

On the door to the main office was a plaque which read, gen’l digby soulless, united states army (ret’d.).

“Come in!” bellowed a voice from inside.

Herbie nodded to the bellow and went into the office of the retired general. Inside, he said good morning and started to sit down in a large chair.

“Don’t bother to sit down,” said the man. He was, like Skeeter at the gate, wearing a fancy uniform. Very authentic-looking. “You won’t be here long.”

Herbie remembered the letter. He pulled it out and handed it across the desk.

The man with the fancy uniform read the letter quickly, then looked up. “So,” he said. He fixed his eyes on Herbie, wet his lips, and began to croak affectionately. He had known Herbie’s father damn well, about as well as one person can know another one. At least, the man qualified, these days. They had bowled together, had dime-beers together, grabbed ass together and been in tools together. Oh, it was all right in tools with the elder Gneiss, but he — after his retirement from the army — had moved up the ladder and built Kant-Brake from willing men and muscle, real pioneers, men with dreams and a lot of dough. Herbie’s father had gotten married and stayed in tools. General Soulless couldn’t stand tools himself. That is, tools as tools. He wanted to make something useful. He had a dream, too, if that didn’t sound like bullshit. He went into war toys.

But he still had a hell of a lot of respect for Herbie’s old man. They had done a lot of things together when they were young. He could write a book about all those crazy adventures. He could write twenty books. How they used to go swimming in the raw, fishing in the lake. Times had changed, but he still couldn’t forget Herbie’s father, a scrappier little guy there never was.

Herbie stood on one leg and then on the other. He agreed that his father certainly was a scrappy little guy. Herbie said that, of course, was before he was his father.

The man laughed. “I’ll say!” he croaked. “You scrappy like your dad?”

“I guess so,” said Herbie, “yes.” But all that Herbie could remember about his scrappy old dad was the large bowling ball with the undersized finger holes.

“Them were the days,” the man said. He went on. He could — no he should —write a book about those days. It’d be a goddamned funny book, too. He said that some day he would write it. A big fat book. He’d put everything in it that had ever happened to Herbie’s scrappy dad and him. All the roughnecks and shitheads, all the skinny girls with flat chests and freckles, and that hungry rougey old bag they met one night. Did Herbie know about that? Probably not. But the retired general wouldn’t leave out a single word. He’d get it all down on paper when he had the chance. It wouldn’t be any sissy novel either. It would be a big lusty novel, sad sometimes, with all a kid’s important memories of growing up. The way kids see things, since kids really knew what was going on. That’s why the retired general was in that business, he said. He liked kids.

Herbie wished the man luck with the novel. Then for no reason at all he thought of his mother. There was a novel, or maybe a folk opera: jazzy tunes, honky-tonk, the swish of brushes on drums as his mother gobbles sadly in front of the TV, a blue tube lighting up her bowls of ice cream. And then, mountainous, glutinous, and jiggling with the rhythm of the tunes, she slides out of the house, down the street to the brink of her open grave and then flops ever so quietly into it.

“So you want a job, eh?”

“Yessir.”

“Like the place?”

“Very much.”

“It’s not just any old toy factory, y’understan’,” said the man. “We got style — that’s what counts nowadays. I mean, saleswise. You can’t fool kids. Kids are the darnedest little critics of things. They know when you’re putting the screws to them.”

“Sure do,” said Herbie.

The man continued. Kids were funny. They knew what they wanted, a certain color, size, shape, etc. They got books out of the library and studied about war and crap. They knew what was going on. If the retired general had his way he’d hire young kids, real young, impressionable, scrappy little bastards, instead of old men. But he’d get arrested, wouldn’t he?

After saying this, the man laboriously got up out of his chair, walked around the desk to Herbie, and then skidded his fist over Herbie’s chin in what was meant as a playful gesture of affection that old men become incapable of and, often, arrested for. The man went back to his chair heavily and repeated that he liked kids a lot.

Herbie said that if it weren’t for kids where would they be? Then he thought of what he said and licked his lips.

Just the same, the man agreed.

Herbie said that he was absolutely right.

“You’re a lot like your old man.” The man wiped his mouth with a chevroned sleeve.