Basic Training Read Free Page B

entertaining than music. As Haley had undressed for bed, he had been surprised to hear an excellent, if untrained, tenor voice singing hymns in the barn, and had wondered who it might have been. It could not have been a Cooley, at any rate. He decided to ask about it in the morning.
     
    Tomorrow his new life would begin in earnest, in the vast, unfamiliar flatness of the Plain — a world of strange sounds and sights and attitudes. He was, the General had said, to help with the haying.
     
    He turned over, pulled the sheet over his head, and closed his eyes. Haley dreamed of saying goodnight to his mother and father, of wishing them, handsome and young in evening clothes, a pleasant time at their party. He dreamed of the friends who had come to get him the next morning, to tell him that he must stay with them for a little while, that there had been an automobile accident, that he mustn’t cry, that he must be a man…. He had cried.
     

III.
    Haley was awakened the next morning by a banging on his door, a shout by his ear, and the shock of a cold washcloth on his face. He sat upright, and saw the General standing at the foot of the cot, squat, fat, and laughing. A towel was knotted about the man’s abdomen; with another he was rubbing his bare chest to a glowing pink. “You’re not in the music business, boy; you’re a farmer now. Take a cold shower, and be down for breakfast in ten minutes, or you don’t eat,” he trumpeted.
     
    “Yessir,” said Haley. Ten minutes later he was seated, puffing and shivering, at the long kitchen table, ducking his head now and then to avoid the flying elbows of Annie, who was energetically making flapjacks on the range behind him. The hot water faucet in the shower stall had been a cruel fraud, he reflected resentfully. The glare from the naked bulb that hung over the table hurt his eyes. He looked away from it to the blackness outside the windows, and realized with sleepy awe that he would be seeing a sunrise for the first time in his life. “Good morning,” he said, after waiting fruitlessly for someone — Annie, Hope, or the General — to acknowledge his presence.
     
    The General and Hope sat across the table from him. Both gave him cursory nods. Hope’s expression was sullen, and the General’s boisterous spirits of a few minutes ago seemed to have fled. Haley supposed that they were still nourishing the unpleasantness of the previous afternoon. Uncomfortable in that sort of silence, Haley tried to break it again. “It’s a nice morning,” he said.
     
    The General looked up. “Brush your teeth this morning, boy?”
     
    “Yessir.”
     
    “Good,” said the General firmly. “Dirtiest place in the world, next to the fingernails, the human mouth is.”
     
    “Speak for yourself,” muttered Hope. Haley was grateful that only he seemed to have heard her. The General gave no sign, devoting his full attention to the flapjacks Annie had placed before him. As had been the case at supper the night before, the General was the first to be served. Haley gathered that it was customary not to talk during breakfast.
     
    As he gulped the last of his strong, black coffee, the back door opened, and a muscular, black-haired man, apparently in his thirties, entered. His clothes were threadbare denim, but his manners were wonderfully courtly, Haley thought, and his grooming faultless. His face was shaved and scrubbed to the luster of wax apples, and his heavily pomaded hair resembled a patent-leather helmet as he crossed the room to a chair next to the range. He made a brief bow to each person at the table, and sat down.
     
    “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 arose, and shook hands. “A pleasure, I’m sure,” said Mr.