Paul Theroux: Murder in Mount Holly

A decent interval after his father died, about a month or so, Herbie Gneiss bought the Mount Holly Chickadee, studied the classified ads and said, “Hee-hee-hee.”

Late the same evening he picked up the newspaper again, ripped out a little section and laughed again. His laughter came in bursts, like a tire-pump being plunged very quickly.

The next day he stood in a phone booth and dialed a number. Although he frowned several times while he was speaking on the phone, he smiled when he left the booth.

Mr. Gibbon squinted at the grey specks moving toward him. Soon he made out the distinctive shape of a Patton tank leading a convoy of supply trucks. Jeeps loaded with troops followed the trucks. Far behind were the soldiers, thousands of troops wearing field packs, carrying the wounded, staggering, pushing toward Mr. Gibbon who stood at attention in his starched uniform. Far to the rear were the guided missiles on flat-cars, the big bombers overhead, crates and crates of ammo stenciled with the familiar battalion insignia (a jackdaw with a worm in its beak; the motto Pro Futuro Aedificamus ). Mr. Gibbon’s heart skipped slightly as he raised his hand and waved the convoy past him. He saluted the big brass in the jeeps, the old man himself, tough, steely, sitting there with a bottle of bourbon clenched between his knees. He nodded to the foot soldiers.

Everything was okay.

“Roger,” said Mr. Gibbon. He licked his pencil and made a notation on a clipboard.

In the cloakroom of the Mount Holly Kindergarten Miss Ball counted coins from a jam jar into a dark hand. When she had counted all the coins she gestured for them to be put back into the jar. The counting started again.

The coins had been counted four times when Miss Ball turned the jam jar over and tapped on the bottom. Then she shook it. There was no sound.

The dark hand closed on the coins.

“Mucho, mucho,” Miss Ball said. Then she said, “Better hurry off pronto.”

Herbie had no choice. He had to get a job, for his mother’s sake anyway. They weren’t dirt-poor and chewing their nails, but his father’s death insurance did not cover everything. At his mother’s request he had to quit college and come home. His mother now thought she would starve. Herbie would have to work to support his mother; she was a very fat lady.

“I eat like a bird, but everything I eat turns to fat,” was Mrs. Gneiss’s explanation as she stared wide-eyed at her enormous knees.

Herbie imagined everything she ate adhering to the inside of her skin, inflating her. Nothing ever left his mother’s body. Everything stuck.

“I’ve raised you good,” she would say in her suety voice, her lips never touching. “And I think it’s high time you made things a little easier for me. I haven’t got long and I want it to be sweet.”

Herbie had entered college happily. He had been told dozens of times that he was not, as they say, “college material,” but from what he could gather neither were any of the other 30,000 students. And if they were, and if the cross notes from the professors had any truth in them, then ( a ) it either took a long time to find the slobs, separate the wheat from the chaff or ( b ) any college worth its salt could tolerate a few ignoramuses or, as Herbie pictured himself, late-bloomers. He had planned on staying.

Once when he went home — it was Easter — he noticed that his father’s processes seemed to be slowing down. A visit home after being away for more than a month made it clear to him that his father was slowly dying. Things were stopping in him, like lights being switched off in different parts of a city as you watch from a hill.

When Herbie got the news that it was all over he stomped his new wastebasket flat. Then he went home, rented a black suit, went to his father’s funeral, was consoled by some people he didn’t know, and before he knew it was back at college.

Almost as soon as he got off the bus after returning to college Herbie had trouble calling up the image of his father’s face. He wished that his father had had a craggy face, an awful grin or a bald head, if only to remember him by. But Herbie could not remember what his father looked like. His father had no evidence of his having passed through and on, no evidence except some unpaid bills in the bottom bureau drawer and a bowling ball in the closet with undersized finger holes. It was his father’s pride and joy. He had it specially made for his small hands. Mrs. Gneiss discovered to her horror that, because of the holes, it was nearly unpawnable.

Fearing the worst, death by starvation, Mrs. Gneiss ate everything there was to eat in the house the evening Mr. Gneiss died. For a month this went on. She ran up bills and stocked the house with food, bought more and ran up more bills. Any hour of the day Mrs. Gneiss could be seen in front of the television set licking her fingers.

One day Herbie got the letter he had been expecting:

Dear Herbert,

I think it’s finally coming. Death, I mean. But that’s okay. You go on with your studies and you study hard like you always meant to and someday you’ll know what it’s like to be a parent who is dying and has only a few moments to live (I wonder if I’ll even have time to sign this letter?????). You be an awfully good boy and “brace up” and remember to send your kids to college like I worked and slaved to. Teach them never to be “ungrateful” and “smart-alecky” and not to smoke in bed. I better stop now because my eyes are all sandy and tearing from crying and I need more light. Guess this is it. Oops, another pain. In the chest this time. Hope you’re getting all “A’s” in all your subjects. Guess this is “Goodbye” like they say. If you need anything just ask for it. I’ll be glad to do anything you want for you. You only have to ask, I’m always here.

So long from,

Your Sick “Mom”

He left the next day. When he arrived home his mother met him on the porch. She greeted him with a heavy and prolonged belch. She thumped her chest and reminded Herbie that that’s where the pains were. Right (urp) there.

“Hello, Ma.”

“I’m dying, Herbie.”

“I know.”

“This time it’s for real.”

“I got your letter.”

Mrs. Gneiss returned to where she had been sitting. A bowl of ice cream, half-full, rested on the coffee table. Nearby there was a bag of potato chips. Mrs. Gneiss cradled the bowl in her lap and picked up the potato chip bag and placed it next to her on the sofa. Then she dunked a potato chip into the ice cream, scooped up some ice cream and tossed the whole mess into her mouth. She licked and chewed and waited for Herbie to speak.

Herbie couldn’t think of anything to say.

“A mother’s got rights,” Mrs. Gneiss said thickly. Her next potato chip scoop broke under the strain of so much ice cream. “What ever happened to those man-sized chips?” she asked, glancing around the room.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You see any?”

“Any what?”

“Man-sized chips for the ice-cream dip.”

Herbie stood up and went to the far corner of the room. Then, at a safe distance, he shouted: “Look, I don’t mind getting your lousy letters and I don’t mind coming back to this stinking house, but I do mind leaving college for good, moving out of the dorm, selling my bike. .”

“Your gorgeous bike,” Herbie’s mother mocked.

“. . I said to myself, What’s a semester? I said to myself. .”

“You’re going to give your mother a semester to die in?”

“. . I thought you were lonely. I thought you needed someone around the house. I thought you were in trouble, sick or something. .”