Basic Training Read Free

first?”
     
    “Yessir.”
     
    “Good. Then I don’t have to justify my actions. You saw the outrage that gave me no alternative.” He dismissed the matter with a shrug. “Well, first let me say that we’re glad you’re here. My sister brought you up as her own, and that’s what I intend to do. I know a good bit about you already from your mother’s letters. You’re thinner than I expected — a whole lot thinner — but otherwise she kept me pretty well posted. She was a lot better letter writer than I am. I know you’re quite a piano player, for one thing, and that you were looking forward to going to Chicago to study at the Conservatory this winter, before all this happened. That right?”
     
    “Yessir, it is. I—”
     
    “Good for you. If there’s anything I admire in a man, it’s ambition. Frankly, wanting to be a piano player seems like a funny one to me, but, like I’ve told the girls a million times, ‘I don’t care what you want to be, just as long as it’s honest, and you want to be the best there is.’ I think maybe we can send you to Chicago, all right.”
     
    Haley broke into his first heartfelt smile of the interview.
     
    “I’ve heard you’re pretty smart all the way around, too,” the General continued. He settled into a chair, and lit a cigarette. “Here you are sixteen, and you’ve already finished up high school. Wish you’d give some of your brains to Kitty. Looks like she’ll be in high school until the diamond jubilee of the atom bomb.” He motioned for Haley to sit down. “I hope you haven’t got a swelled head about your school record.”
     
    “I just liked school was all,” said Haley, blushing, “and I went to summer school. I don’t think I’m any smarter than—”
     
    “Don’t say Kitty,” warned the General. “I was just going to tell you a story about a man I grew up with, just in case you were cocky about being smart in school. I see you aren’t, but I’ll tell it to you anyway. I learned a lot from what happened to him.”
     
    “I’d like very much to hear about it,” said Haley.
     
    “Well, Haley, this boyhood chum of mine was a lot like you, from what I’ve heard about you. He was always reading books, books, books — everything he could get his hands on. We used to ask him to come fishing or to play baseball, and things like that, and he always had the same answer: ‘No thanks, I just got a new book that looks very interesting.’ Sometimes he’d forget to stop reading for meals. By the time he was fifteen, he knew more about the royal family of Siam and the slum problem in Vladivostok than I knew about the back of my hand. All his teachers swore he was a genius, and said he’d be at least President of the United States when he was thirty-five.” He paused to give Haley a meaningful look.
     
    Haley attempted to appear as solemn and absorbed as possible. “What finally became of him?” he asked soberly.
     
    The General seemed satisfied that his story was carrying the proper impact. “When World War II broke out, this man was immediately made an officer. Everybody expected him to win the war single-handed. But when the going got tough over there in France, he cracked up completely. It turned out he didn’t know the first thing about leadership, and he couldn’t even take care of himself, so he was sick all the time.” The General lowered his voice. “The morale in his company was so bad, that all his men had thrown away their gas-masks rather than carry them on marches. The first thing you know, the Jerries dropped mustard gas shells all over them. Zip! One whole company wiped out! And I’ll always say it was a library card that killed them. See my point?”
     
    “Yessir, I think so. He was one-sided. Is that it?”
     
    “That’s it in a nutshell,” said the General, beaming. “You expressed it perfectly. That’s why I brought my whole family out here to the farm to live after the war, to keep us all from getting