“You don’t even know my mother.”
“But you meet her and then decide. She raised me, okay. Never hit me once. Now she goes and makes me get this job. She doesn’t have it so bad and certainly isn’t poor.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“She likes to eat. She eats like a hog.”
“What’s wrong with eating?”
“No one said anything’s wrong with eating.”
“I’m an old man. Ate my way through three wars.”
“It’s some people’s hobby. It’s her job.”
“I’m partial to eating myself,” said Mr. Gibbon after a pause.
And they both went on eating.
After work Mr. Gibbon said, “I’d like to meet your mother. Bet she’s a fine woman.”
Herbie thought a moment. He had told his mother that he would come home once in a while. The weekend was coming and if Mr. Gibbon came Herbie wouldn’t have to explain the Kant-Brake operation to her. Mr. Gibbon would do all the talking. Herbie wouldn’t have to say a word.
“I’m going home on Friday. You can come along if you want.”
“Well,” said Mr. Gibbon, “I’d like that fine. There’s not a hell of a lot to do on the weekend you know. Just my paper bags and cleaning my brass and such. And Miss Ball’s got that gentleman friend that usually drops in.”
Herbie felt foolish. There he was, walking down the street with an old man. But not just any old man. No, this old man was a real fuddy-duddy. There was something queer about it. Mr. Gibbon was taller than Herbie, like a big bear, a bear with a cardboard rump ambling next to a little monkey of a boy. It was Herbie and not Mr. Gibbon that had simian features.
It looked as though there should be a leash between them. One of them should have had a collar on, but it was a toss-up as to which one should be holding the leash.
Herbie had never walked so close to an old man before. Or an old lady, either. That included his mother. Herbie’s mother didn’t get out much. So when she opened the door to greet them her complexion was the color of newsprint, the kind of skin color that one would expect of a person who lived in a living room, slept on a sofa, and ate chocolates with the shades drawn. To Herbie she looked disturbingly well.
She motioned for them to sit down. The TV show wasn’t over yet. She kept her eyes fixed on the blue tube and shook a fistful of chocolates at some chairs. The screen jaggered and the picture went to pieces. Herbie got up to adjust the set. Mrs. Gneiss waved him back to his seat. Then she stomped on the carpet with her foot. Her shapeless felt slipper came off, but her bare foot raised itself for another go. The TV snapped back to life, the picture composed itself on the command of Mrs. Gneiss’s big foot.
The show went on for several hours. First there was a newsreel, then something entitled “Irregularity and You,” then a half-hour of folk songs which concerned themselves with bombs and deformed babies, then a documentary about the human scalp, a dance show complete with disc jockey showed teenaged girls and boys bumping themselves against each other, and finally a panel of Negroes and Mexicans discussed who had been abused the most seriously. When they started feverishly stripping off their shirts to show their wounds and scars, Mrs. Gneiss stomped on the floor again and the TV shut itself off.
“Television,” Mr. Gibbon said. And that was all he said.
Mrs. Gneiss looked at him. She chewed at him.
“Mr. Gibbon,” Herbie said, “this is my mother.”
“Well, any friend of Herbie’s,” said Mrs. Gneiss. Then she picked up a large piece of chocolate. It was an odd shape, perhaps in the shape of a fish. She threw it into her mouth, and once her mouth was filled she said, “Can I offer you something to eat?”
Herbie swallowed, determined not to vomit.
“Say,” said Mr. Gibbon, “is that an Eskimo Pie?”
“Thipth,” said Mrs. Gneiss. But she could not speak. She wagged her finger negatively.
“Looks like one,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago we used to have them. My buddies used to eat ’em like candy.”
“They were candy, weren’t they?” said Mrs. Gneiss, once she had swallowed most of the chocolate.
“You got something there,” said Mr. Gibbon.
“Mr. Gibbon was in three wars,” said Herbie.
“What ever happened to Eskimo Pies,” said Herbie’s mother.
“That’s what I say,” said Mr. Gibbon brightening.
“Even if they did have them today they’d be little dinky things.”
“That’s the God’s truth,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago the Hershey Bars were the big things.”
“Nowadays they’re a gyp,” said Mrs. Gneiss. “I try to tell Herbie how much he’s being gypped nowadays, but he never listens. He just laps up all those lies.”
“Big ideas!” Mr. Gibbon started. He crept over to the sofa and sat next to Mrs. Gneiss. When he got there he was almost out of breath. “Big ideas,” he finally said again. “I think years ago people were smarter than they are now, but they didn’t have any smart ideas like people do now.”
“Right!” said Herbie’s mother. “I knew a lot of people in my day, but I never met one with any smart ideas. Boy, I remember those big Hersheys!”
“Trollies, too,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Years ago we used to hitch rides on ’em. Loads of fun, believe me. But today? I’d like to see you try that today?”
“Try what today?” asked Herbie.
“Hitchin’ a trolley-bus,” said Mr. Gibbon.
“You mean riding?”
“No, I mean hitching. You crawl on the back of the thing and hold on with your fingernails. Doesn’t cost a penny. Nowadays you’d get killed on a bus. You could do it easy then.”
“What for?” Herbie asked. But no one answered.
Herbie’s mother and Mr. Gibbon continued to talk excitedly of the past. They talked of penny candy, nickel ice creams and dime novels. Mr. Gibbon said that he had once bought a whole box of stale White Owl cigars for five cents and then smoked the whole boxfull under his front steps. He had been violently ill.
“The things you could do with a nickel,” Herbie’s mother said nostalgically.
“Remember Hoot Gibson?”
“Whatever became of Hoot Gibson?”
“The old story.”
“Isn’t it always the way.”
“No one cares.”
They talked next of Marx and Lincoln. Not the famous German economist and the Great Emancipator, but Groucho and Elmo. Mr. Gibbon went on to tell how he had run away from school at a very early age. He said that kids nowadays didn’t have the guts to do that. How he used to go fishing with a bent pin and a bamboo pole, how he had joined the army at a very early age. No fancy ideas. Nowadays it was the fancy ideas that were ruining people.
“I don’t have any fancy ideas,” said Herbie.
“You do, and you know it,” said his mother, silencing him.
“Years ago,” said Mr. Gibbon, “good food, clean living, nice kids.”
“Nowadays,” said Mrs. Gneiss, “I don’t know how I stand it.”
Mr. Gibbon said that he had known a girl in his youth that looked just the way Herbie’s mother must have looked. Full of freckles and vanilla ice cream, plump, but not fat. Just the prettiest little thing on earth!
“You’ll stay, of course,” said Mrs. Gneiss.
“Course,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Us old folks got a lot of things to talk about.”
“Sure do,” said Mrs. Gneiss.
“Probably wouldn’t interest the youngster,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Now if I’m imposing you just tell me to scoot the blazes out of here.”
“Imposing! I should say not. We’ll just pop a couple of TV dinners in the oven. No trouble ay-tall! Unless you mind instant coffee.”