Basic Training

by Kurt Vonnegut

  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 hear 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 tenant’s 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 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, 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. 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 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 ha
d 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.

  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.

  “Now take the case of the 240 howitzer,” said the General. “Far more effective against concrete bunkers than aerial bombardment. I remember just before the Bulge, the glamour boys dropped everything they had on a Jerry pillbox, and didn’t even chip it. So I called back to First Army Headquarters. ‘Send up some 240s,’ I said. Well sir…”

  Haley nodded, and turned his face toward the sunroom windows to hide his yawn from the General. Nothing moved in his line of sight save Mr. Banghart, who bobbed in the distance on the springing seat of a moving machine, circling again and again a shrinking island of standing alfalfa. It was Saturday afternoon; an afternoon, as the bulletin board decreed, for “recreation and cleanup.” Haley had tuned in a concert broadcast on the sunroom’s small radio, but when the General had started to shout war stories above the music, Annie had turned it off. From overhead came a muffled scuffing, Kitty and Hope moving about their rooms, tidying them up. Annie sat in a rocker near Haley, attentive to the General’s words, and seemingly very entertained.

  Haley wondered if he should tell the General about Mr. Banghart’s knife. Hope had made him promise not to say anything about it. She had laughed the matter off, and repeated what he had heard from others on the farm, that Mr. Banghart was no more dangerous than the mice in the corncrib. Still and all, he reflected, the combination of jangled brains and an eight-inch Bowie knife would be reassuring to very few persons. But the last thing he wanted to do was to go against Hope’s judgment…

  “I told Banghart to quit at noon, and he got surly with me,” said the General as an aside, apparently seeing that Haley’s attention had wandered from the turning-point of World War II to the distant Mr. Banghart.

  “He didn’t even stop for lunch,” said Annie.

  “Too bad it’s just the nuts that work that hard,” said the General. “Seems like he does something like this every time the temperature gets above ninety. Remember the time he had the manure-spreader out until midnight? That was a hot day.” The General snickered. “Boy, the farm help you get these days. The darnedest thing happened this morning. I went over to the hog barn to watch Banghart feed the pigs. For no reason at all, he got sore as the devil when he saw me. He threw down the bucket, and can you imagine what he said?”

  “I can’t imagine. What did he say?” said Annie. Haley noted with distaste that her conversations consisted mainly of questions of this sort, and of echoes.

  “He told me that I was going to cross him up once too often, and get mine along with the rest of them. Can you imagine?” The General was laughing.

  “Maybe you’d better get rid of him,” Haley blurted.

  The General looked at him with surprise. “I’d sooner get rid of the tractor. He’s nothing to worry about. I’ve got him right under this.” The General held up a broad, flat thumb and winked. “Well, where was I? Oh, yes; ‘Send me up some 240s,’ I said, and…”

  Haley’s thoughts strayed again, taking him back to the events of lunchtime, when Roy Flemming, Kitty’s current love, had appeared in the kitchen, having walked into the house without knocking. Haley had never seen anything quite like Roy before. His red hair, his freckled moon-face and childish blue eyes were familiar enough, but his bearing and thin mustache seemed as out of keeping with these as an olive in the bottom of a milkshake. Haley wondered just what Roy imagined himself to represent. His swagger and attire — gleaming riding boots, enormously wide belt spangled with bits of colored glass; crushed and twisted Army officer’s hat, and polo shirt decorated with palm trees — might be proper, Haley decided, for the leader of a bandit band in a musical comedy.

  The General had spoken to Roy without looking up from his food. “Get out,” he had said. Kitty had told Roy to sit down, that her father was joking. The General had thereupon offered to fill his “smart young behind with bird-shot” if he showed up again.

  Roy had started to back out of the room, embarrassed, and bereft of all save the glittering trappings of his devil-may-care role. Kitty had dragged him back into the kitchen. “Tell him what you came for,” Kitty had said. Roy had managed to clear his throat several times, and that was all.

  “Well?” the General had said.

  “Sir, your daughter and I want to get married, sir,” Roy had said at last.

  “I’d see her first in Hell,” the General had said. He had stamped his foot suddenly, and Haley had jumped. “Scat!” Roy Flemming had fled…

  Haley’s recollection faded, as the General’s voice lifted from a monotone to a loud staccato. He was imitating the crash of 240 howitzer shells on a doomed German pillbox. “Ker-wham! Kerwham! Kerwham! After an hour of that — kerwham! — we sent the Second Battalion in — rattattattatat — and there wasn’t a Jerry left to fire a shot.” The General chuckled. Annie snickered appreciatively, and Haley forced a smile.

  “And then there was the time at Aachen, when the Jerries were using a church steeple for an observation post,” the General began afresh. His back was to the doorway, and he twisted around in his chair to see what it was behind him that was distracting his audience. Kitty stood in the doorway. “Hello, dear,” he said to her, in a kindly tone. “I hope you’ve gotten over any ill feelings you may have had against your old father.”

  “I’m going to marry him, and that’s that.”

  The General shrugged. He took her hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “What do you want to do — mother a race of super-idiots? He can’t concentrate on anything but his motorcycle for more than twenty seconds at a time. If you two were married and down to your last five dollars, he’d blow it on two fox tails and a chromium-plated exhaust-pipe extension. If it came to a choice between you or the motorcycle, sister, you’d lose.”

  “He’s brilliant,” declared Kitty. “He knows more about motors than anybody. And, while we’re getting mean about it, what about you? You’re as much in love with that German limousine of yours as Roy i
s with his motorcycle.”

  Haley saw that this rankled the General a little. “That car,” he said crisply, “is the only one of its kind in the world. It couldn’t be replaced for thirty thousand dollars. Moreover, young lady, I do have other interests. Take away Roy’s motorcycle, and he’d vanish. I could build a better man with an Erector Set.”

  Kitty turned white with fury. “He’s brilliant, and he’s good looking, and he’s a gentleman, and he’s considerate, and he’s from a good family, and he’s—”

  The roar of a motorcycle in the driveway cut her short. The front door slammed, and Roy Flemming marched into the sunroom. Haley saw that his movements were ponderous, imprecise, and that he brought with him a withering effluvium of whisky. “I know when I’ve been insulted,” Roy said hoarsely, “and I don’t have to stand for it, either. I don’t care if you’re King of the Universe, I still don’t have to. Nope.”