Basic Training (7 page)

Haley kept his distance until the policeman had finished his piece, then walked beside Mr. Banghart, who took no notice of him, but strode along, muttering to himself. Haley read his lips. “Keep out of trouble, keep out of trouble,” he was saying.

Haley nudged his arm to get his attention. His companion’s reaction was instant and violent. Haley felt himself seized by his gathered shirtfront and twisted to face Mr. Banghart. “Just let the others make sure
they
keep out of trouble, that’s all,” said Mr. Banghart fiercely. He relaxed his grip under the fascinated glances of passers-by eddying about them. “Sorry,” he said, “didn’t mean anything by it. I know you’re a friend.”

Haley’s impulse was to get away from Mr. Banghart, whose eyes grew more lunatic by the second, but the ranks of unfamiliar faces seemed the more ominous, so he continued to trudge, fearfully, by his side. Following the policeman’s directions, the two of them turned a corner and found themselves on a quiet side street, three blocks long. The city’s noises sounded like a distant surf behind them. Warehouse walls banked the street’s left side, their blank brick faces daubed with posters — tattered reminders of a war bond drive, a musical comedy, a political campaign, of The Greatest Show on Earth. Haley looked from these to the buildings facing them, his eyes running from the twin green globes marking a police station, the worst of Victorian architecture patinated with soot, to a dozen narrow-fronted hotels, taverns, pawnshops, and, at the far end, the blinking cross of the Mission. As though in bas relief, the still, gray figures of silent men stood in doorways or napped on stone steps and the lower treads of fire escapes.

“Hey, buddy, give a pal a smoke, will you?” said a toothless man, stepping from the shadows of an alley.

“I’m sorry, I don’t smoke,” said Haley weakly.

“Trash,” said Mr. Banghart. “Ignore them.”

“Hey pal, lemme talk to you a minute… Buddy, got a cigarette?… Spare a dime?” whined 100 voices as Haley and Mr. Banghart picked their way to the Mission. Annie would be preparing dinner now, Haley thought wistfully.

When they entered the Mission, which Haley saw was an old storeroom filled with benches, a pale young man was standing behind a pulpit, swinging his arms vigorously in time to the hymn he was leading. They took seats by themselves on the rear-most bench. From the room behind the pulpit came a clinking of heavy bowls and the dense smell of boiling kraut. Two dozen unkempt men mumbled the words in their hymnals under the haranguing of the leader. Haley yearned to get at the piano that stood in one corner, and wondered if he might not get permission to play it when the singing was at an end.

Mr. Banghart seemed soothed by the devotional atmosphere. He picked up two hymnals from a shelf along the wall, handed one to Haley, and burst into song with startling volume and brilliance. The young man directing the singing stared with surprise and gratitude, and his unwashed congregation turned their heads to squint in wonder.

“Welcome, brother,” said the young man at the end of the hymn. Mr. Banghart stood up, proud and poised, and bowed to the young man and then to the congregation. “I would now like to sing
Throw Out the Lifeline
,” he said.

“Excellent,” said the young man happily. “Let’s all turn to number 29.”

A short, stocky youth, wearing the threadbare remnants of an Army uniform, turned around in his seat on the bench in front of Haley and said in a loud hiss to Mr. Banghart, “Shut up, Buster, and sit down, or we’ll never get anything to eat.”

Mr. Banghart stopped his singing abruptly in mid-chorus, leaving only the reedy tenor of the leader and the apathetic murmur of the others to carry on. “I would appreciate an apology,” he said coldly.

“Go to hell,” said the youth, giving him an ugly grin. His two companions turned to sneer menacingly. The singing stopped completely.

Haley saw a look of fear pass over Mr. Banghart’s features, and then heard him shout wildly, “It’s a trap! They’re out to get us!” Mr. Banghart smashed his hard, massive fist into the youth’s insolent face, catapulting him over the bench and on to the floor.

“Stop it!” cried the young man behind the pulpit.

The youth arose from the floor, and he and his two companions started toward Haley and Mr. Banghart. Haley raised his frail hands in a gesture of defense as one of them singled him out and charged. The blow of a fist on his temple spun him around. He sank to his knees, and looked up, stunned and frightened. He blinked dully at the flash of light from Mr. Banghart’s knife, heard a scream, and was knocked senseless by another blow from behind.

The scuffling and shouts dropped away from him as the din of a city drops away from a soaring balloon. The glint of the knife became the beam of a flashlight, playing on the buff walls of the secret room hollowed in hay bales in the loft. The beam lighted the round face of the General, reflecting from the lenses of his glasses so that his eyes could not be seen. “Haley,” intoned the General’s image, “you have been nothing but a burden since I took you into my home. You are without character, without character.”

The light moved to Annie’s placid features. “The General is right,” she said firmly.

The beam picked Hope’s angelic face from the still-aired darkness. She giggled derisively, heartlessly, lovelessly.

Haley moaned, and he heard another voice, coarse and unfamiliar. “Well, when this youngster comes around, he’ll tell us who it was. He came in with him, didn’t he?”

Haley opened his eyes to see the blue jacket and silver shield of a policeman who leaned over him. He was still in the Mission, lying flat on his back. A splitting headache made him want to tumble into oblivion once more.

The policeman shook him gently. “Feel O.K., kid?” Haley sat up slowly and looked about the chapel. He saw that it was almost empty. There were only the policeman, the young man who had been directing the singing, and the still form of the youth who had enraged Mr. Banghart. The youth was bowed over a toppled bench, with Mr. Banghart’s precious knife buried in his chest.

“Your buddy killed a man,” said the policeman. “What’s his name and where’s he from?”

“I don’t know,” said Haley thickly.

“Ask him if he knows who ‘the General’ is,” said the hymn leader.

“What about the General?” asked Haley, startled that they should know so much about him.

“Your buddy yelled something about settling up with the General next,” said the policeman. “Then he took off through the back door and down the alley. Come on, better tell us who he is.”

Haley shrugged wearily. “His name’s Banghart. He’s crazy, I guess.” He told of running away from the farm, with more pathos than pertinent detail, describing at length the whole of his dismal history and impressions leading up to his present condition. “That’s all I know,” he said. “The farm’s the only home I’ve got, but I don’t imagine they’ll want me back there.”

“That’s the way criminals get their start — in loveless homes,” said the hymn leader, shaking his head from side to side.

The policeman laughed and looked down at Haley. “This beanpole could be a crook just like I could be the Queen of England.” He lifted Haley to his feet. “Come on, strangler, can you walk to the station house?”

Leaning on the policeman, Haley stumbled from the Mission to the police station. They lay him down on a wicker couch in the Lieutenant’s anteroom. A few minutes later a doctor came in to prod and knead and pronounce him sound, save for a pair of important-looking welts.

“He’s pretty fragile to be on the bum, isn’t he?” asked the doctor.

“He’s been on the bum for less than twelve hours,” laughed the Lieutenant. “There’s already a call out for him on the teletype. The State Police will be over after him in an hour or so to take him back.”

“They want me back?” said Haley incredulously.

“Had quite a time, eh, Sonny?” said the Lieutenant. “Got your brains kicked out and got tied up in a murder to boot. Lucky you didn’t get knocked off for your shoes here on Skid Row. You’d rather be back on the farm than here, wouldn’t you?”

“People get killed for their shoes?” asked Haley, in a mood to consider the Lieutenant’s question seriously.

“Shoes, gold fillings, cigarettes, anything,” said the Lieutenant.

Haley ran his tongue-tip over the gold caps of two of his back teeth, and tried, at the same time, to imagine the General at his angriest. “Guess I better go back to the farm,” he said.

It was Annie who answered when Haley’s state trooper escort knocked on the farmhouse door two hours before sunrise. “Here’s another one back to roost,” said the trooper dryly. “Anybody else missing?”

“Nope. Two was all we wanted back — this one and Kitty.” Annie yawned and rubbed her eyes. Haley saw that there was a light on in the sunroom.

“Any sign of Banghart?” asked the trooper.

“Nope, but we’re ready for him, I guess. The General’s got enough guns for a regiment — all loaded.”

“O.K.,” laughed the trooper; “just don’t go pot-shotting everything that moves. Remember, we’ve got a man posted out front. We’d hate to lose our boy Dave. Keep your eyes open,” he added seriously. “A switchman in town said he thought he saw someone drop off a slow freight on its way through.”

“If he does show up, he’ll look like a piece of Swiss cheese before he gets within 500 yards of the front door,” said Annie, unimpressed. She thanked the trooper for his trouble, and marched the sullen Haley into the sunroom. Haley was repeating to himself the speech he had prepared during the long trip back from Chicago.

The General did not look up when Haley walked into his presence. He was wearing an oily undershirt and khaki trousers, and was swabbing the cavernous bore of a single-barreled duck gun. Haley looked about the room and saw that every surface was cluttered with firearms and ammunition. “Sir,” Haley began, “I guess we’ve both been pretty childish, and I, for one, am willing to—”

The General looked up from his shotgun as though he were surprised to see Haley standing before him. “Well, sir,” he interrupted, “and what sunshine are you going to bring into our lives today? Shall we poison the well or burn the house down?”

Haley swallowed hard, turned, and shuffled upstairs to his room, past the darkened, closed door of Kitty, who mumbled in her sleep, and the open door of the beloved Hope. He paused a moment, to listen to her breathing.

Pinned to his bedsheet was a typewritten note, signed by Annie. There was a certain sweetness in his slumber, for before he closed his eyes, he concluded that insofar as disciplinary measures went, the General must have reached the limits of his imagination. He even managed a soft chuckle as he bunched his shirt under his head. “No pillow for three months,” the note had said.

Haley’s conclusion was an accurate one, apparently, for nothing new in the way of punishments was forthcoming during the next two weeks. True, Haley was reminded again that his defections had killed his opportunities in the world of music; Hope was ordered to fill out application papers for a Miss Dingman’s School for Ladies, located on an inaccessible ridge in the White Mountains, and Haley’s, Hope’s, and Kitty’s pillows remained under padlock in the basement fruit locker, but no more devastation seemed likely.

Kitty flounced and pined about the house, but without conviction. She hadn’t the wit to camouflage the fact that her twenty hours with Roy and his motorcycle had been something less than a string of pearls. This was disturbing to Hope and Haley, for the General took it as a demonstration of his infallible judgment. “Whatever became of that nice Flemming boy and his gasoline bicycle?” he would chortle at mealtimes. “Never seems to show his intelligent face around here anymore.” Kitty offered no rebuttal.

As the time for Hope’s incarceration in the New Hampshire highlands drew near, she abandoned her stoicism to plead with the General to relent. It was after dinner one night, and Haley listened with excitement, for if Hope could win leniency, then so might he.

The General gave her his thoughtful attention, and nodded now and then at her more salient arguments. “Are you through?” he asked.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Uh huh, very moving,” he said. He looked seriously from Hope to Haley and back again. “I once knew a man, grew up with him, in fact,” said the General. “When he was a boy, his parents would threaten to take away his bicycle if he did something bad. Well, sir, he’d go right ahead and do whatever bad thing it was, and they’d let him keep his bicycle anyway. They didn’t have the heart to take it away. Instead, they’d tell him if he did it again, they wouldn’t let him have any ice cream for a year. He’d do it again, and they wouldn’t have the heart to keep him from eating ice cream. And so it went; his parents would make terrible threats, but they never carried them out, not one.”