Paul Theroux - Murder in Mount Holly

Herbie tried to look as scrappy as possible. He looked at the twenty dollars’ worth of ribbons and string on the retired general’s chest. He tried to forget that his father was a runt and hoped that the retired general would forget it too.

“You got yourself a job, son.”

The man then introduced himself as General Digby Soulless, Retired, and took Herbie down into the workshops. Herbie would be in the motor pool with Mr. Gibbon. Herbie would have to know the ropes. He was issued a uniform, shoes, and a rucksack. He put on the uniform and worked for the rest of the day in silence. The rest of the men were good to him, told him dirty jokes and took him into their confidence. They saw that the old man himself had brought Herbie down and introduced him. So this is the army, Herbie thought throughout the day. At the end of the day Herbie went out through the main gate with the rest of the men. And when Skeeter, the sentry, saw Herbie approaching in uniform, he saluted grandly and nearly dropped his rifle.

Work at Kant-Brake went on. Millions of tanks, Jeeps, and rockets rolled off the assembly line without a hitch. Herbie got to enjoy working once he learned the routine. He sent money home, got an occasional note from his mother saying that she was keeping alive and well. Life at Miss Ball’s was fairly pleasant. Mr. Gibbon grumbled, barked a lot, but did not bite. Miss Ball was a sympathetic person, although she wore very heavy make-up. Herbie did not expect a woman with a perfectly white face, a little greasy red bow for lips, and hair that was sometimes blue, sometimes as silver as one of Kant-Brake’s fuselages, and always tight with hard little curls, to be a nice lady. But she was kind and tolerant. She said she owed all her tolerance to her membership in the D.A.R.

Herbie talked to Miss Ball about many things. She knew the movements of any actor, actress, or starlet he could name: who was queer, who was in Italy, who was really seventy and said he was forty-four. And late one evening, when they were talking about marriages, Herbie asked Miss Ball if she had ever been married. Juan was taken for granted. He was just one of the hired help and didn’t count.

“Sure,” said Miss Ball, “I’ve been married.”

“No kidding?”

“Wouldn’t think so, would you?”

“Why not?”

“Maybe I’m not the type.”

“What’s the type ?”

“With a flowered apron, hamburgers sizzling on the griddle, with shiny teeth and bouncy hair. My hair’s all dull and streaky.”

“That’s the type ?” Herbie thought only of his mother. She hadn’t had any of the things Miss Ball mentioned. All she had, as a married woman, was a scrappy little runt of a husband.

“That’s what they say.”

“I never heard it.”

“But,” Miss Ball smiled, “did you put your thinking-cap on?”

“Well, what about him?”

“Him? You mean my hus band?” A laugh did not quite make it out of Miss Ball’s throat, although there were signs of it approaching. It never came.

“Yes,” said Herbie. “Your husband. The man you married.”

“Whatever became of him,” sighed Miss Ball. “What shall I say? Shall I say we loved and then were, as they say, estranged? Or shall I tell you he was a big producer who did me dirt? Or shall I tell you he was a poor boy, a very mixed up young man that I found committing highly unnatural acts in the summer house with another twisted little fellow? Shall I tell you he was a bald-faced liar? Yes, that’s what he was, a liar.”

Miss Ball tried to flutter her hand to her lips. But it was late in the evening and her hand never got beyond her left breast.

“. . he did do me wrong. Very, very wrong. But I’m not him, thank God. I am not that man and I don’t have to live with his terrible conscience — I’d hate to be in his shoes right now.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s dead.”

“I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes either,” said Herbie.

“There was a bit of the Irish in him, you know,” said Miss Bail, abandoning the dramatic-hysteric role and lapsing into what she intended to be a brogue. “A bit of the oold sahd. .” She stopped and then went on. “Full o’ blarney, he was.” Miss Ball just could not get a twinkle out of her heavily made-up eyes. Her eyelids kept sticking. “The sonofabitch.”

Venom frothed and boiled out of some hidden nodes in Miss Ball’s body, surprising Herbie. Miss Ball cracked all her make-up to flakes in her rage. She was such a nice old lady, Herbie thought. And now Herbie didn’t know her.

“The no-good sonofabitch. Want to know what he used to do? Hated me so much he used to get up early in the morning, before me. Then he’d sit down — it was four in the morning — and just eat his Jungle Oats as nice as you please. Then coffee. Had to have his coffee. Then, when he finished, he’d take the coffeemaker, the electric coffeemaker, and pull the screws out and screw the top off and wind the friction-tape off the plug I had to fix about ten times because he was too lazy. Then he’d fill the sink with hot soapy water and dunk the coffeemaker into the water and leave it in the suds.”

“And where were you?”

“I was in bed! That’s where you belong at four in the morning — not taking coffeepots apart so your wife can’t have her coffee. But it doesn’t stop there,” said Miss Ball. “Not by a long shot it doesn’t stop there.”

“He does sound like a skunk,” Herbie offered.

“He was a regular S.O.B.,” said Miss Ball. “And I hope you know what that means.”

“I guess. .”

“But that wasn’t all, because then he had to yell in my room at the top of his lungs.”

“He had to?”

“That was part of the thing, the act he did. He always did the same thing every morning.”

“So what did he yell?”

Miss Ball stood up from her wing-chair and cupped her hand to her mouth like an umpire. She even raised her other arm as if she were signaling a safe catch. She twisted her mouth and shouted in an ear-splitting voice, “ When your ole lady died and went straight to hell she should have taken you with her and such and such and so and so! ” Miss Ball recovered, stared wide-eyed and said, “I wouldn’t repeat some of the things he said to me those times.”

“Then he left.”

“Then he left,” said Miss Ball. “But he came back.”

“Really?” Herbie steadied himself for another blast. He was getting worried.

“He left in the morning. In the night he came back. He went to church and work in between.”

“Church. Which church?”

“The stupid Irish church, that’s which church. He was what you might call a Catholic. He had to go to church.”

“I thought they just had to go on Sunday.”

“They don’t.”

“That’s not what I thought.”

“Not on Lent they don’t.”

“But Lent is only a month or two in the winter, isn’t it?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Miss Ball. “It was always Lent in our house. Lent and hate.”

“Maybe marriages can be based on hate instead of love,” Herbie said.

“Ours was. The girls down at the D.A.R. said to stay away from Catholics if you want to stay tolerant. But I wouldn’t listen. Sure, he wasn’t all bad — he used to pick up stray cats and stuff. The girls said that’s a sign of loneliness. He was probably lonely.”

“It was his way,” said Herbie. He had been waiting for a good chance to say it.

“Maybe that’s it. He was good about cats. And I really couldn’t divorce him for taking the coffeemaker apart. You don’t walk into a court and say, I want a divorce — my husband takes the coffeepot apart before church every morning. It doesn’t sound right. It wouldn’t even sound right in a movie if Ava Gardner said it. Besides, who else is there? There aren’t that many people in the world that you can just start tossing them away left and right just because they have a certain way about them. That’s what love is — sticking with the guy even though he has creepy habits. It’s learning to love the creepy habits so you can sleep in the same bed without killing the sonofabitch.”