We Are What We Pretend to Be

by Kurt Vonnegut

  “Annie’ll get you some coffee, Mr. Banghart,” said the General. “By the way, you haven’t met my nephew, have you? Mr. Banghart, this is Haley Brandon. You two will be working together as C-squad on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturday mornings.”

  Haley and Mr. Banghart rose and shook hands. “A pleasure, I’m sure,” said Mr. Banghart.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Haley. “Are you by any chance the man who was singing in the barn last night?”

  “The same. Did you enjoy it?”

  “You have an awfully good voice, I think,” said Haley.

  Mr. Banghart, who had dropped Haley’s hand, startled him by grabbing it again and squeezing it hard. “That’s the first kind word anybody’s ever had for me,” he said solemnly.

  “That’s simply not so,” said the General, in a half-laughing, patronizing tone.

  Mr. Banghart ignored him. “I’d be glad to sing for you any time,” he said to Haley. “What would you like to hear?”

  Haley was startled by the reaction his pleasantry had started. He had never before set a man seething with gratitude, and the situation confused him. “‘Rock of Ages’ is very nice,” he said at last, recalling that Mr. Banghart had done justice to this hymn the night before.

  Mr. Banghart’s lungs swelled like blacksmiths’ bellows, and the room was filled with his powerful singing voice. Haley took a step backward. The General hammered on the table. “Not during breakfast!” he bawled above the singing, as though he were commanding a regiment.

  Mr. Banghart stopped his singing immediately. “Now you’re against me,” he said reproachfully.

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, I am not against you,” said the General irritably, “but I certainly will be if you do that again.”

  “Sorry,” said Mr. Banghart, “but more for your sake than for mine.” He shrugged and resumed his seat by the range.

  “All right, all right,” said the General soothingly. He looked up at the clock and fidgeted. “Now where’s that Kitty?” he said. “What time did she get in last night, Annie?”

  “Three in the morning,” said Annie, handing Mr. Banghart his coffee. “She was out with that Roy Flemming again,” she added. Haley saw Hope glare at her sister.

  “That’s the end, the absolute end,” said the General. “You can tell her, when she gets up, that every minute after six that she slept is one weekend night that she has to stay in. You can also tell her that Mr. Flemming and his motorcycle are no longer welcome at Ardennes Farm. Put that on the bulletin board,” he ordered.

  Annie nodded in agreement. “Good,” she said.

  “Know where the bulletin board is?” the General asked Haley.

  “I think I saw it there in the sunroom. Is that it, sir?”

  “That’s it, allrighty. You just watch the bulletin board. Annie keeps it up for me, and it’ll help you stay out of mischief. Your name appeared on it for the first time today.”

  “What did it say about me?” asked Haley, with a trace of anxiety.

  “You get up at 5 sharp, take a cold shower, brush your teeth for two minutes, pick up your pajamas and hang them on the hook inside the closet door; eat breakfast, go help with the haying; eat lunch, go out and hay some more; eat supper, listen to the radio for an hour, brush your teeth for two minutes, take a cold shower, hang up your clothes, and go to bed. Every minute’s accounted for,” said the General proudly. He looked again at the kitchen clock. “H-hour,” he announced, and D-squad marched out into the vermilion sunrise.

  By 11 a.m., the wagon was stacked high with the day’s sixth load of hay. The hay, the General had explained to Haley, had been pounded and bound into bales by a machine that had passed over the field the day before. The dense bundles were as high as Haley’s chest, weighed about half of what he imagined Hope to weigh, and were as wide and thick as the General’s middle. There was room for three more bales on top. Haley hung his baling hook on a wheel spoke, swept away the sweat that streamed into his eyes, and begged for a rest.

  “You just had a rest period, Haley,” said the General. “You’ll find you won’t get tired as quickly if you keep at it steadily. Breaking up your rhythm with rest periods all the time, no wonder you’re pooped. You’ll never get your second wind that way.” He was atop the load, reins in hand, with Hope seated beside him, her legs dangling over the side.

  Haley shook his head wearily and sat down on the ground, panting, wishing to Heaven that the nightmare of heat, creeping time, and lamed muscles would end. “I’ll be all right in a minute, I guess—soon as I get my breath,” he said. Mr. Banghart, who had been working on the opposite side of the wagon, walked over to him and told him to climb onto the wagon, that he would finish the load.

  “Let him learn to pull his own weight, Mr. Banghart,” warned the General. “He can do it. Come on, boy, three to go.”

  Limply, painfully, Haley sank his hook into a nearby bale. He worried it along the ground to the wagon. Hope waited, hook poised, for him to swing it upward to where she could catch it and drag it into place.

  “Put your back into it, boy,” shouted the General, and Haley swung the bale. Hope made a grab for it, but missed, for it was a full yard beyond her hook. Haley staggered backward under the weight, his eyes and lungs filled with the dust and splinters that showered down from the bale. His feet tangled, and he fell hard on the sharp stubble, the bale on top of him.

  He was yanked to his feet at once by Mr. Banghart, who, with his mouth close to Haley’s ear, whispered, “Don’t you worry—we’ll take care of that old devil when the right time comes. Wait and see.”

  Haley rubbed his smarting eyes and brought into focus the face of Hope, who was rocking from side to side with laughter. He felt utterly humiliated standing before her, comical in his weakness, and in his clothing—cast-off work clothes of the General, too short, too wide, high on his ankles and wrists, bunched at his waist. Exhaustion and sudden loneliness billowed in his narrow breast. He sank to the ground again.

  The General eased himself down from his perch and stood over him, kicking gently at the soles of his shoes and chiding, “Come on, boy, get up. All right, get up.” Haley stood. The General seemed more embarrassed than angry. “That’s enough of that,” he said. “Mooning and malingering will get you nowhere around here, do you understand? I’m ashamed of you.”

  “Leave him alone,” Haley heard Hope call.

  Blushing and apologizing in half-soliloquy, Haley clambered atop the wagon, unable to look at Hope. Mr. Banghart swung three more bales up to Hope, and the wagon moved, jolting and creaking, toward the barnyard.

  In the still, dry heat of the loft, under a tin roof too hot to touch, Hope, Haley, and Mr. Banghart dragged bale after bale from the wagon over the splintered floor to a growing stack deep in the shadows of one end. The General remained on the wagon to steady the horses. Tormenting himself, Haley tried to imagine what the others were thinking of him. Hope was the only one he really cared about. The two of them worked together, their hooks driven into the same bale. She said nothing, concentrating her attention on the hard work to be done. He was bewildered by the effect her presence had had upon him since the first instant he had seen her. He now found her more beautiful than ever, with her hair lightened by dust, and with heat bringing her loose clothes into conformity with the lines of her young figure.

  Mr. Banghart rolled a cigarette, politely excused himself, and went out into the barnyard to smoke it. The General joined him with a cigar, leaving Haley and Hope alone in the barn. Haley sat down on a bale next to Hope. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get used to farmwork after a while,” she said. “We all did. Takes about a month.”

  For want of a rational comment on this message, Haley changed the subject. “Mr. Banghart is a funny one,” he said. “I never knew anyone to talk to himself so much.”

  Hope giggled. “He’s got a screw loose, all right, but the General says he’s the best worker we ever had on the farm,” she said. “Try and he
ar what he talks to himself about sometime. It’s all about what he’s going to do to people he thinks are out to get him—which is practically everybody. You’re lucky—he liked you right away, and that’s unusual.” She became more thoughtful. “I shouldn’t laugh. It’s kind of sad about him, I guess.”

  “Has he ever done anything to anybody?” asked Haley uneasily.

  “Oh, no, he just talks about it. He has one of the tenants’ houses all to himself, and he spends most of his spare time there. He never goes into town, and the General has him working by himself, or with us, so there isn’t much chance for him to get into trouble with anybody.”

  “Is he married? What does he do with his money?”

  “As far as we know, he’s a bachelor, but he keeps that house cleaner than a woman would. The General thinks he’s got his money hidden in the house somewhere, because he never goes anywhere where he could spend it. We do all his shopping for him, and he never buys anything but food and tobacco and padlocks,” Hope explained matter-of-factly. “That’s the really funny thing about him—the locks. If you make a trip into town, chances are he’ll ask you to get him one. He’s got padlocks all over that house. There were four on his front door the last time I counted.”

  The General called from below, “Lunch time!” To Haley the announcement was incredible. At 9 a.m., after watching four rural hours inch by, he had concluded that the clocks of Ardennes Farm were lubricated with molasses, and that noon was still a century away in terms of time as he had known it in the city.

  Noon brought with it the solid blessings of strong coffee and whole milk, of strawberry jam and biscuits, of ham and gravy. It was an hour of peace and plenty, reminding Haley of a medieval custom he had read about—whereby a condemned man was hanged and skillfully revived several times before being permitted to expire completely. The analogy did not spoil his appetite. He wolfed his food, excused himself, and lay down on the sunroom couch.

  Bits of conversation from the kitchen infiltrated his consciousness. He stored them away, too weary to think much about them. Kitty, who, Annie had said, had slept until 11, was defending her relationship with Roy Flemming, her beau of the night before. She seemed agitated, punctuating her replies to the General’s poignant assaults on Roy’s character with nose blowing. She declared that she loved Roy, and that this was one romance her father was not going to break up. There seemed to have been plenty of cases where the General had succeeded in doing just that.

  “Until you’re twenty-one, young lady, let me be the judge of who your associates should be,” Haley heard the General say. “After that, you’re free to marry anybody, simply anybody—Flemming, Mr. Banghart, or the next bum who stops for a handout. Until that happy day, however, I am very much in charge. Do we understand each other?” Kitty hastened past Haley’s aching form and hurried up the stairs to slam her bedroom door on a loveless world for lovers.

  “H-hour!” shouted the General, and he harangued his flagging troops into the field once more.

  In an eon came evening, to cool and to displace the sounds of daytime with whispers and croaks and sounds like rusty hinges from grass-tuft sanctuaries in woods and pastures and from lily pads a quarter of a mile away.

  Annie had prepared supper an hour ago, and, from the small window at the end of a long corridor between bales in the loft, Haley could see her putting it into the oven to keep it warm. He, Hope, and Mr. Banghart, meeting a quota set by the General, were stacking the last wagonload in the barn. The General had returned to the house, leaving the three of them to handle what remained without his supervision. It was much cooler now, and, with him gone, an element of playfulness came into the business of lugging bales. Haley found his burdens miraculously lightened. Mr. Banghart sang a medley of rhythmic spirituals, setting a tempo by which they tugged and lifted. The work was done.

  They sat down in the corridor between bales to get their breaths and to shake the dust and straw-bits from their hair. As bad as his first taste of rural life had been, Haley found himself looking with pride at the results of their labor, stacked bales rising like skyscrapers on either side of them. Mr. Banghart sat still for only a minute, arising again to feel along the upper surface of a rafter until he found what he wanted, a flashlight. “We can show Haley our secret, can’t we, Hope?” he asked.

  “I suppose so. It’s really kind of silly, though.”

  “I’d like very much to see it. I wouldn’t tell anybody,” Haley promised.

  They led him down the corridor to within a few feet of the window at its end. The bales had been stacked here before Haley’s arrival at Ardennes Farm. Mr. Banghart pointed his flashlight at a bale in the bottom row. “Notice anything different about that one?” he asked.

  “Well, there’s a piece of cloth tied around the baling wire,” said Haley.

  “That’s a marker,” said Mr. Banghart. “Try and move that one.”

  Haley tugged at the bale dutifully. He was surprised to find that it slid from its place easily, that the bales above did not rest upon it.

  “It’s a tunnel!” Mr. Banghart announced happily. He dropped onto all fours and crawled into the opening and out of sight.

  “Go on in, Haley,” said Hope. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Haley followed Mr. Banghart into the dark passage, finding that there was barely room in which to squirm. After snaking his way through nine feet of the snug, airless tunnel, with claustrophobia beginning to give him twinges of panic, he found himself in a chamber in which he could stand, lighted by Mr. Banghart’s flashlight. It was a room hollowed in the stacked bales, as long and wide as the sunroom couch, with a ceiling, resting on planks, that barely brushed the top of his head.

  Hope emerged from the passage as he stood blinking in disbelief. “This is one place where the General and Annie can never find you,” she said. “And there’ll be times when you’ll be glad there is such a place.” She sat down in a corner. “It was just a crazy thing to do to break the monotony, but it’s a good job, if I do say so myself. I’m the architect; Mr. Banghart’s the builder. Like it?”

  “It’s a fine job,” said Haley, impressed.

  “A fellow likes to get away from it all now and then,” Mr. Banghart observed thoughtfully. They sat in silence for a few minutes, digesting this wisdom. Mr. Banghart spoke up again. “Want to know another secret?” he whispered. There was no need for whispering, Haley thought, with the walls three yards thick.

  “Certainly we want to know another secret,” said Hope. “Let’s have it.”

  Mr. Banghart reached inside his faded shirt, bringing forth a long leather sheath. He drew from the sheath a double-edged hunting knife, with a blade the length of his hand. He twisted it before his eyes slowly—affectionately, Haley thought—and its bright surfaces sent flecks of light racing along the walls. “It’s so sharp I can shave with it,” he said, running a moistened finger over the edge. “Honed it for two hours last night.” He smiled proudly. “Now I’m ready for anything.”

  “You wouldn’t really use it on somebody,” said Haley, making an effort to appear as undisturbed by the knife as Hope seemed to be. Though he managed to keep his voice casual, he was wishing that he had not settled in the corner farthest from the tunnel, with Mr. Banghart between him and the outside world.

  “Oh, wouldn’t I use it, though?” said Mr. Banghart. He jabbed the blade into a bale. “Wouldn’t I, though? Let me tell you something, Haley: If they want to play rough, so can I.”

  Haley looked questioningly at Hope and caught her laughing quietly at his discomfort. He remembered that when he had quizzed her about Mr. Banghart’s hallucinations of a world out to get him, she had shrugged them off as being amusing and nothing more. “I think we’d better go to supper,” Haley murmured.

  Hope agreed and started for the tunnel. Mr. Banghart did not budge but continued to stare at the blade. Hope nudged him gently to break his fascination. The flashlight slipped from his hand to bang on the floor and go out.<
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  The shock of sudden darkness released Haley’s dammed-up fear. He plunged toward the tunnel, driving with every bit of strength in his legs. His shoulder struck something soft, and he heard Hope cry out in anger. He wriggled into the passageway and made his way to the corridor in a few seconds, emerging breathless and badly scratched by the splintery floor. He was almost to the loft ladder before realization of what he had done broke his frantic stride. Worse than leaving Hope to defend herself, he had knocked her aside in order to save his own skin.

  Fear and conscience struggled for mastery of his feet. Conscience gained an almost imperceptible advantage, and Haley found himself returning slowly to the tunnel. In his hand was a claw hammer he had found by the ladder.

  His rescue mission was frustrated, his honor unredeemed. He was met in the corridor by Hope, who was massaging her right arm, and by Mr. Banghart, whose knife was sheathed and tucked beneath his belt.

  “What on earth got into you, all of a sudden?” asked Mr. Banghart solicitously.

  “I tripped and fell in the dark,” said Haley quickly. He turned to Hope and prayed that his lie would make him whole again in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Hope. I didn’t mean to fall against you.”

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t be helped, I guess. Don’t worry about it—just a bruise.”

  Haley sighed gratefully. They descended the ladder and walked from the barn together. Mr. Banghart struck out for his own house, and Haley and Hope mounted the back steps to the kitchen. Just before she pushed open the screen door, Hope turned to Haley, who was congratulating himself on having talked his way out of a perfectly desolate situation.

  “If you flop as a piano player, you can always make a good living as a bodyguard,” she said.

  IV.