“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.
10
A dusty twenty-five-watt bulb flickered in Miss Ball’s dining-room. The less light the better, they had all decided. The three of them sat around the large mahogany table. Mr. Gibbon was wearing his khakis. His pistol was strapped on. In the dim light of the room the faces of the three people looked even older than they were, bloodless, almost ghoulish. Mr. Gibbon was doing all the talking. Only a few of his fifteen teeth were visible and his mouth seemed latched like a dummy’s. His whole chin gabbled up and down.