Basic Training

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Haley asked to have a look at the knife. Mr. Banghart was hesitant. At last he handed it over, admonishing him to be careful. “It’d take your arm off quicker than you could say ‘Jack Robinson,’” he said proudly. “You’re the only one I’d ever let look at it except Hope,” he added. He shook his head mournfully. “A fellow’s in pretty sad shape when he can only trust two people, isn’t he, now?”

  Haley nodded, and found himself wondering who it was that he could trust. Everyone seemed intent on worrying him into a pattern of their own making, rather than trying to understand what it might be like to be Haley Brandon. He wondered most about Hope. With discomfiting insight, he recognized that any attention she might have shown him was probably a subtle defiance of her father. “Like protecting Caesar and Delores from him,” he thought ruefully.

  When they set about flinging bales onto the wagon, the circle of Haley’s thoughts grew smaller, with limits set at the hard work on hand. He was pleased to see that he was accomplishing nearly as much as Mr. Banghart. It was more a matter of rhythm than strength — swinging the bales several times, then giving them a hearty boost with a knee on their upward arcs. True, when the load was three bales high, pitches more hefty than Haley’s were called for, but he was able to make himself useful by sitting atop the load, and pulling the bales into place as Mr. Banghart tossed them.

  “It’s a load!” he cried, when the fifth tier was complete.

  Mr. Banghart shook his head. “We’ll stack her seven high and save time,” he said.

  “That’ll be above the stakes,” Haley warned.

  “I’ve done it a million times,” said Mr. Banghart. “Nothing to it. Just drive easy, that’s all.”

  Haley looked dubiously at the horses, who were keeping their harness taut and clinking with their restlessness. In a few minutes he was seated uneasily on a swaying load seven bales high, with Mr. Banghart beside him, singing, and preparing to start the team for the barn. He peered over the edge of the bales at the ground and had the chilly impression of being perched on a steep cliff overlooking a gorge miles below.

  At Mr. Banghart’s soft clucking, Caesar and Delores started off evenly and good-naturedly. The bales rocked as the wheels struck rocks and pits in the lane, but not one had dropped off when the wagon rolled at last onto the hard-packed earth of the barnyard near the house. Mr. Banghart had looked at the Sun and guessed that the time was between 8 and 9 o’clock. Haley noted that the General was no longer abed, for his beloved automobile, immaculate and glistening as a thousand-dollar casket, was out of the garage and parked in the driveway near the kitchen door. No one was outside.

  Suddenly the bales beneath Haley gave a great heave, and he felt himself hurtling downward, with Mr. Banghart shouting in mid-air beside him. The whack of his chest against the earth stunned away his breath and senses. When he regained them, it was in time to roll out of the way of Caesar and Delores, who had made a full circle in the barnyard, and now bore down upon him with fury. The emptied wagon clattered behind them, its steel-bound wheels screeching on dry bearings and striking sparks from rocks as it came. The team turned into the driveway at a full run. The wagon shot a spray of gravel rattling against the back of the house, and its right wheels skidded into a shallow ditch to set it careening at a crazy angle.

  Haley tried to shout at the horses, but managed only a whisper, which was immediately overwhelmed by a splintering, ripping, staggering crash, followed by silence, unruffled save for a muted, rhythmic roar in the now-motionless horses’ throats. On one side of the General’s new automobile stood Caesar, his harness askew and dragging, blood streaming from his wounded mouth. On the other side Delores lay gasping, festooned in a tangle of snapped lines and straps.

  “God save us,” moaned Mr. Banghart sitting up. “God save us,” he repeated, “look at the General’s car, would you.”

  Haley steered a wobbling course for the rear of the team, where he freed a line that still bound Caesar to the wagon. With a dreamy sort of horror, he saw that the wagon-tongue had plunged through the trunk door, burst the cushions of the back and front seats, and buried its iron head at last in the instrument panel, splintering the windshield above it.

  He looked up dumbly from the unholy wreck to see Hope running down the walk toward him. She examined the damage with profound respect. “Wow,” she said at last, under her breath. “It would have been kinder of you two to saw the General’s legs off.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” Haley protested.

  Hope looked at the car again and shook her head. “You poor kid; you’ve really managed to pack a lot into a few days, haven’t you?” she said, her eyes full of sympathy. “Boy, with this to top off Kitty’s elopement—”

  “What’ll I do?” asked Haley helplessly.

  Mr. Banghart had arisen from the ground and walked over to the car to study it in silence. He turned away from it after a few moments, and headed across the barnyard.

  “Where are you going?” called Hope.

  Mr. Banghart stopped. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Dallas, Scranton, Los Angeles — somewhere.”

  An upstairs window rattled open, and Annie appeared, clutching her flamboyant bathrobe together at her waist and neck. “Land of mercy!” she cried, her voice full of anguish. “What have you done to the General’s car, Haley?” Mr. Banghart resumed his flight with new vigor.

  “I hear the General!” said Hope.

  Haley looked up at Annie and then at Mr. Banghart, who was scaling a fence. “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” he heard himself saying. He broke into a run. As he loped after Mr. Banghart he told himself that he was no good to anyone; but by the time he had put the fence and barnyard between himself and the house, new strength flowed into his long legs — the quick, mad joy of liberation.

  He overtook Mr. Banghart in a small grove of elms, a few hundred feet from the highway. They trotted together to the road’s shoulder, and waved their thumbs at an approaching car. The General’s voice, shouting their names, reached them as clearly as though he were riding them pick-a-back. Haley laughed aloud; the sound was no more awesome than the chatter of two red squirrels in the elms to his back.

  The automobile, a new maroon sedan, came to a stop beside them. Mr. Banghart climbed in front, and Haley sat by himself on the broad rear seat. The driver was a husky, blond man of, Haley guessed, about forty. His chin was covered with stubble, and his eyes were red. “Been driving all night,” he said. “Need somebody to keep me awake. Where are you headed?”

  “Where are you headed?” asked Mr. Banghart.

  “Chicago.”

  “Yep, that’s where we’re going, too.”

  Haley watched through the back window as the car pulled away, and the silos and red roofs of Ardennes Farm slowly lost their identities in the buff horizon of grainland. The sway and hum of the automobile soon lulled him to sleep.

  VI.

  In his dreams Haley felt again the quake of the toppling bales and the sensation of falling. The image ended with a solid thump, and he awakened to find himself on the automobile floor, whence a sudden stop had rolled him.

  “All right back there?” called the driver. “Sorry, the light turned red just as we got to it.”

  “Yep, I’m O.K.,” yawned Haley, lifting himself back to the seat. “Where are we, and what time is it?” He looked out of the window, and was surprised to see crowds and blinking neon, and the window-checked walls of a city rising on either side. The fragrance of a nearby bakery filled his soul, and his stomach growled hungrily.

  “It’s late afternoon, and you’re in Chicago,” said the driver. “What part of town do you want to go to?”

  “Right along here will be just fine,” said Mr. Banghart in an offhand tone. “The boy and I might just as well start looking for jobs along here as anywhere.”

  The driver looked with curiosity from Haley to Mr. Banghart. “It’s Sunday, you know. What kind of jobs are you looking for?”

  “Oh, p
referably some sort of entertainment work,” said Mr. Banghart airily. “I sing.”

  The driver laughed incredulously. “Are those the only clothes you’ve got?”

  Haley looked down at his faded denim trousers and clay-caked workshoes. Mr. Banghart’s shirt, he remembered, was rent up the back, revealing a bright pink strip of sunburn.

  “What, these?” said Mr. Banghart; “Heavens, no. These old things are just for traveling. Our good clothes are at a relative’s house here in Chicago.”

  “What part of Chicago?”

  “Oh, just about here,” said Mr. Banghart, opening the car door and stepping onto the sidewalk. Haley followed, forgetting to thank the bemused driver, and pursued his companion, who disappeared into the tight currents of the city’s Sunday strollers.

  He caught up with him at an intersection, in the bizarre shadows of the elevated overhead. Mr. Banghart was talking earnestly with a policeman, who pointed down the street and shouted above the rumble of trains. “The employment office opens at 8 in the morning,” the policeman said. “Got any money for food and a bed tonight?” Mr. Banghart shrugged and grinned sheepishly. “Then hurry up and get over to the Mission before all the beds are gone,” said the policeman severely. He tapped Mr. Banghart’s shoulder lightly with his nightstick. “And keep out of trouble.”

  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, de
scribing 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.