Murder in Mount Holly (6 page)

Throughout the night Herbie was awakened by wheezing and groaning and the creaking of springs. That was that. He tried to prevent his mind from making a picture of it, but the more he tried the sharper the picture became. He switched on the radio to keep his mind off the noise in the next room. The news was on. The president had just had his kidney stone and gallbladder removed. The commentator said, “the stone had the appearance of an irregular gold nugget or arrowhead. The opened gallbladder was reddish brown and the greenish half-inch gallstone, which infected, was visible in the lower left fold near the cystic duct. . . .” After this the president himself came on and said that he just had to get out of the hospital and do his work, even if it meant further infection. There was a war on and that had to be tended to.

With the radio buzzing about the movements of troops, Herbie went softly to sleep.

8

Mr. Gibbon became a frequent visitor to Herbie's house.

Herbie stopped going home altogether. Instead, he went for walks around Mount Holly, met a girl and took her to bed. The first time they went to bed the girl said, “New, new, new!” which struck Herbie as odd. But they made love just the same. Afterward, when Herbie offered the girl a cigarette, she said simply, “New, thank you.” Like Herbie the girl had no plans, and Herbie had no plans for her.

Herbie's mother became more hostile, but also less demanding. Herbie sent her less and less money each week. She did not mention this in her letters. Instead she sent more letters and started using phrases like, “Life is just beginning for me,” “a big new world is opening up,” “Charlie has taught me how to live and love,” “old people have feelings too,” “the sky's the limit” and “dawn is breaking.” They were very uncharacteristic phrases. Mr. Gibbon had apparently kindled a flame inside his mother, Herbie thought.

Indeed, Mr. Gibbon had done just that. Mrs. Gneiss, Mr. Gibbon, and Miss Ball had started an outing club to get fresh air. They walked, brought cold lunches, ate devilled eggs, and listened to their transistor radio. Some color—not much, but
some
—came into Mrs. Gneiss's face. It would be rash to say she had a ruddy complexion, but it certainly wasn't chalky. It was lemony after a few picnics, and then it took on a slightly veined pinkish hue. The outings were doing her good. The walking increased her appetite, which Mr. Gibbon was now paying for. She gained weight, but the new bulk was not perceptible. Only other really fat people notice changes in a fat person. Mrs. Gneiss was not embarrassed by the added weight. She repeated that everything she ate turned to fat. There was no question that she was coming alive. She had started wearing dresses and muu-muus and had burned her tattered kimono. She took to walking and sweating. Firmness came into her hams and trotters just as color came into her jowls.

One Sunday the outing was held at the Mount Holly Botanical Gardens. Mr. Gibbon, as usual with map and compass, had led the way. They spread their blanket under a tree and ate, then turned on the radio and listened to news of the president's kidneys and gallstones and negotiations with what Mr. Gibbon called “The Yellow Peril,” and then lolled about on the grass. The sky was filled with clouds that kept getting in the way of the sun. This irritated Mr. Gibbon. He said so. “Those clouds aggravate me,” was what he said. Lots of things galled him, he said, but life was still worth living. He said that he owed a great deal to Mrs. Gneiss. He had thought that his life was over, but Mrs. Gneiss had convinced him that he could move on. “If an old battle axe like me and an old biddy like you can fall in love,” he said, “then anything is possible.” He had wondered about this before. Now he knew it for sure.

“Charlie,” said Mrs. Gneiss, “you're the sweetest man in the world.” Without pausing she added, “Pass the salad, Miss Ball.”

“Just because you're a certain age,” said Miss Ball, passing the salad to Mrs. Gneiss, “doesn't mean there's anything you can't do. Why, it should be easier when you're old because you know more, but no one tries. That's the fly in the ointment really.”

“Sure is,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Sure is. Why, look at us. Three folks with lots of spunk left.”

“Oodles of spunk left,” Miss Ball interjected. “Oodles.”

“And it's all going to waste. We're just wasting away,” said Mrs. Gneiss, her mouth dripping mayonnaise.

Mr. Gibbon smacked his lips in disgust. “That greenhorn doctor had the nerve to boot me out of the army. Why, I was old enough to be his father! If I had stayed in they wouldn't be having so much trouble with their wars. Send me in! Give me fifteen men of my own choosing and we'll blast all those yellow bastards to kingdom come! I been in three wars and I won all three. Give me another one, that's what
I
say!”

“Oh Charlie, you're a real campaigner,” said the delighted Mrs. Gneiss.

“Why not victory?” said Mr. Gibbon. “Just send me over!”

Miss Ball had been shaking her head. “I'm a Daughter of the American Revolution,” she said, “and I've seen a lot of our boys murdered in cold blood by the Communists. The real problem is right here in our midst: the You-Know-Whos. If we didn't have so many of them—and they're all as Red as they are black, as I'm sure you know—this country would be ours again and we could put a big fence around it. We could start life all over again in our own backyard. You don't have to scurry all over the world with your planes and such to find the enemy. Not when he's there, smack in Mount Holly, emptying your trash-can, shining your shoes, cleaning your car, grinning at you, lying in his teeth, taking food out of your mouth and money out of your pocket!”

“That's it in a nut-cake!” said Mr. Gibbon, jumping to his feet. “The problem is right here. We can't ignore it. And I say the best fertilizer for a piece of land is the footprints of its owner!”

Saying this Mr. Gibbon looked across the grass, past the bunches of flowers, through the trees to the clouds—those fickle things that kept getting themselves in the way of the sun. He frowned at the clouds as if the clouds represented everything foul, all the You-Know-Whos that kept trying to prevent decent folk from having sunny days.

“So we sit here blabbing about it,” said Mrs. Gneiss. “Why don't we
do
something about it?”

“What can we do?” asked Mr. Gibbon. “Oh, I know. It's coming all right. Hate and bitterness.”

“I hate bitterness,” said Miss Ball.

“It wouldn't be so bad,” said Mr. Gibbon, “if they were just shining your shoes and emptying your trash-cans. That wouldn't be so bad. But did you ever see the beat of it when every You-Know-Who in the damn country decides to get uppity? You looked at any movies lately? They're up there doing a soft-shoe with our womenfolk. Been in any drug stores the last year or two? There they are, sucking up Cokes. Been in a bank lately [“A
bank
!” Mrs. Gneiss gasped]—like that bank in town maybe? There they are, putting their crumby fingers over all the money. I tell you, it makes my blood boil! Why, I was in that bank cashing my pension check just the other day. Stood in line. There's one behind the counter. Went to another counter.
Another
one in front of me and one in back. Complain, I says to myself. Do something. Decided to have a word in private with the manager. Waited in line outside his office. Finally went in. You guessed it! A coon in the chair! What could I do? I still haven't cashed the damn pension check.”

“It's too much,” said Miss Ball.

“Something should be done about it,” said Mr. Gibbon.

Miss Ball tapped Mr. Gibbon on the shoulder, narrowed her eyes and said, “Sonny, you can do anything you want if you just get the bee in your bonnet.”

They returned to Mount Holly to find Herbie slumped dejectedly in Miss Ball's wing-chair. He was surprised to see his mother. He couldn't remember having seen her out of the house for years. But he soon recaptured his dejection. There was a slip of yellow paper in his hand. A draft notice. Herbie was to report for his physical the next day. The country was at war.

Part Two

9

They finally settled on a bank robbery. “It's the logical thing to do when you stop and consider that I can't even cash my U.S. Army pension check, the place is so loaded with coons and commies,” Mr. Gibbon explained. It would take some planning, but they would be able to do it. The robbery of a communist bank would prove to the world that old folks still had a lot of spunk left.

The robbery became all the more important after Herbie passed his army physical. He was due to leave for boot camp in four days.

“You're a very lucky man,” Mr. Gibbon said to Herbie.

Herbie thought otherwise. He didn't want to go. But he didn't know why he didn't want to go. At first he thought of Kant-Brake. The place was full of soldiers. They weren't bad. But there was something missing, and when Herbie finally thought of what was missing, a chill shot through the holes in his bones. Death was missing from Kant-Brake. That's what the army made him think of: death.

“This is a time for courage. This is a time when men of all races and creeds must join hands and make the world a safe place. This is not a time for us to waver. This is not a time for us to lose our nerve. This is a time for us to be strong,” the president had said in his now-legendary “This Is a Time” speech to Congress. Charlie Gibbon had wept.

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.