Basic Training by Kurt Vonnegut Read Free Book Online Page A

of dreams he had brought with him into his new home was hopelessly smashed.
     
    “That is all. Goodnight,” said the General, without rancor.
     
    “But, Daddy,” began Hope.
     
    “I said goodnight.”
     
    Annie had sat quietly, nodding in agreement whenever the General had spoken. “Better go now,” she said. She arose, and shooed them from the room. “What in Heaven’s name happened to your hand, Haley?”
     
    “The ladder banged it. It doesn’t hurt much.”
     
    “You come with me,” said Annie. She took him up to the bathroom, and painted his cuts with iodine. Involuntarily, Haley jerked back his hand. “Hurt?” asked Annie.
     
    “A little,” said Haley, sucking in air between his teeth.
     
    “Fine,” said Annie, plainly satisfied. “Shows it’s doing some good.”
     

V.
     
    “Quite a ruckus last night, eh?” called Mr. Banghart to Haley, above the rattling and creaking of the empty wagon on its way to the fields. Haley sat on the rear corner of the wagon, kicking dispiritedly at the fragile white heads of milkweeds lining the lane. He did not hear Mr. Banghart’s question; his senses were turned inward, examining his conscience.
     
    Annie had aroused him this morning, and reminded him that he and Mr. Banghart were to work today, even though it was Sunday. The radio had predicted rain, she had said, and the hay bales would be too heavy to lift, too wet to store, if they were not brought in before the downpour. The General and Hope still slumbered, and Annie had returned to bed after warming coffee left over from the night before, and after laying out a bowl of cold cereal and an orange for Haley’s breakfast. He had met Mr. Banghart in the barn, and done what he could to help harness Caesar and Delores. The coffee had purged him of his sleepiness, giving him in its stead a keen, tense wakefulness.
     
    He was willing to admit that he had done a bad thing in helping Kitty elope with the somewhat substandard Roy Flemming. He did then, for his own good, as the General had said, deserve to be punished. But he searched his conscience in vain for a grain of remorse to justify the desolating punishment the General had promised. “When you punish somebody, you take something away from them that they want,” he reasoned. “All I had in the whole wide world was my music, so that’s what I lost — everything.”
     
    As he reviewed his condition again and again in the light of a spotless conscience, he found himself starting to derive from it the pungent, bittersweet pleasure of righteous indignation. Another thought, however, nagging on the fringes of his consciousness, soon came into view to spoil his pleasure. He lived again his ignominious flight from the secret room in the loft, and his abandoning of Hope, and his spirits tumbled into depths of recrimination.
     
    He looked up at Mr. Banghart, and wondered how he had found out about the turmoil of the night before. “Probably watched it all through the windows,” he thought. “Hope said he did a lot of that.”
     
    “Horses seem pretty frisky this morning,” said Mr. Banghart, tugging gently on the reins to slow the pace of Caesar and Delores. Haley stood up and walked to Mr. Banghart’s side. He saw that the corners of the horses’ mouths were raw, and that every pull on the edged bits made them swing their heads wildly from side to side.
     
    Mr. Banghart took out his hunting knife and began shaving fat splinters from a wagonstake. The cuts were effortless, Haley noted, with a youngster’s admiration for a keen edge. “There’s a great day coming,” his companion crooned. “There are a lot of people around who are going to be wishing they had been a lot nicer to old Bing.” He winked and returned the knife to its case. “A man can stand so much and no more, and they’re all going to have to learn
that
the hard way.”
    Haley asked to have a look at the knife. Mr. Banghart was hesitant. At last he handed it over,