We Are What We Pretend to Be (7 page)

“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 piggyback. 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, preferably 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 work shoes. 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 brick faces daubed with posters—tattered reminders of a war-bond drive, a musical comedy, a political campaign, and 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 a hundred 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 rearmost 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 onto the floor.

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

The youth rose 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 was leaning 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, stranger. Can you walk to the station house?”

Leaning on the policeman, Haley stumbled from the Mission to the police station. They laid 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.

VII.

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 potshotting 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 five hundred 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.