While Mortals Sleep Part 6

"I'll forget you when I forget my own name, Hotbox," said Harry. He looked meaningfully at the box he was carrying, and winked. "The stuff that came through was mostly junk, or stuff you already had, so I didn't bother calling. But there's one thing, Hotbox-" He looked at the box again, coyly. "You'll be the first one to see it, next to my wife. n.o.body else even knows I got it."

Earl clapped him on his arm. "There's a friend for you!"

"I try to be, Hotbox," said Harry. He laid the box on the edge of the layout, and lifted the lid slowly. "First one in the state, Hotbox." There in the box, twinkling like a tiara, lay a long, sleek locomotive, silver, orange, black, and chromium.

"The Westinghouse gas-turbine job," said Earl huskily, awed.

"And only sixty-eight forty-nine," said Harry. "That's practically cost for me, and I got it at a steal. It's got a whine and a roar built in."

Reverently, Earl set it on the tracks, and gently fed power to it. Without a word, Harry took over the controls, and Earl stalked about the layout, spellbound, watching the dream locomotive from all angles, calling out to Harry whenever the illusion of reality was particularly striking.

"Earl-" called Ella.

He didn't answer.

"Hotbox!"

"Hmm?" he said dreamily.

"Come on, if we're going to get any supper."

"Listen," called Earl, "put on another plate, will you? Harry's going to stay for supper." He turned to Harry. "You will, won't you? You'll want to be here when we find out just what this baby can do."

"Pleasure, Hotbox."

"We're going out for supper," said Ella.

Earl straightened up. "Oh-for gosh sakes. That's right, we were."

"Listen to this," said Harry, and the locomotive blew its horn, loud and dissonant.

Earl shook his head in admiration. "Monday," he called to Ella. "We'll go out Monday. Something big has just come up, Sweetheart. Wait'll you see."

"Earl, we haven't got anything much in the house for supper," said Ella desolately.

"Sandwiches, soup, cheese-anything at all," said Earl. "Don't knock yourself out on our account."

"Now, get a load of the reserve power, Hotbox," said Harry. "She's taking that grade without any trouble at half-throttle. Now watch what happens."

"Whoooooooey!" said Earl. He felt a hand on his shoulder. "Oh-hi Mom." He pointed at the new locomotive. "What do you think of that, eh? That's the new era in railroading you see there, Mom. Turbine job."

"Earl, you can't do that to Ella," she said. "She was all dressed up and excited, and then you let her down like this."

"Didn't you hear me give her a rain check?" said Earl. "We're going out on Monday instead. Anyway, she's nuts about the pike now. She understands. We had a whale of a time down here, this afternoon."

"I've never been so disappointed in anyone in all my life," said his mother evenly.

"It's just something you aren't in a position to understand."

She turned her back without another word, and left.

Ella brought Earl and Harry sandwiches, soup, and beer, for which they thanked her gallantly.

"You wait until Monday," said Earl, "and we're going out and have us a time, Sweetheart."

"Fine," said Ella spiritlessly. "Good. Glad."

"You and Mom going to eat upstairs?"

"Mom's gone."

"Gone? Where?"

"I don't know. She called a cab and went."

"She's always been like that," said Earl. "Gets something in her head, and the next thing you know, bing bing, she's gone ahead and done it. Any crazy darn thing. No holding her. Independent as h.e.l.l."

The telephone rang, and Ella excused herself to answer it.

"For you, Harry," she called down. "It's your wife."

When Harry Zellerbach returned, he was smiling broadly. He put his arm around Earl's shoulder, and, to Earl's surprise, he sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

"Happy birthday, dear Hotbox," he concluded, "happy birthday ta-hoo yooooooooou."

"That's sweet," said Earl, "but it's nine months off."

"Oh? Huh. That's funny."

"What's going on?"

"Well-your mother was just over at the hobby shop, and bought you a present. Told my old lady it was for your birthday. Maude called me so I could be the first to congratulate you." Maude called me so I could be the first to congratulate you."

"What'd she buy?" said Earl.

"Guess I better not tell you, Hotbox. Supposed to be a surprise. I've said too much already."

"Scaled to HO?" wheedled Earl.

"Yeah-she made sure about that. But that's all I'm going to tell you."

"Here she comes now," said Earl. He could hear the swish of wheels through the gravel of the driveway. "She's a sweet old lady, you know, Harry?"

"She's your mother, Hotbox," said Harry soberly.

"She used to have a heck of a temper, and she could run like the wind, and every so often she used to catch me and wallop me a good one. But, you know, I had it coming to me every time-in spades."

"Mum knows best, Hotbox."

"Mother," said Ella at the top of the stairs, "what on earth have you got? For heaven's sakes, what are you going to do? Mother-"

"Quick," Earl whispered to Harry, "let's be fooling around with the pike, so she won't know we know something special is going on. Let her surprise us."

The two busied themselves with the trains, as though they didn't hear the footsteps coming down the stairs. "OK," said Earl, "let's try this for a situation, Harry. There's a big Shriners' convention in Harrisonburg, see, and we've got to put on a couple of specials to-" He let the sentence die. Harry was looking in consternation at the foot of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps.

The air was rent with a bloodcurdling cry.

Earl, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, faced his mother.

She loosed the cry again. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeoooowwwwrrrr!" "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeoooowwwwrrrr!"

Earl gasped and recoiled. His mother was glaring at him through the goggles of an aviator's helmet. She held a model H-36 at arm's length, and, with terrifying sound effects, was making it dive and climb.

"Mother! What are you doing?"

"Hobby? Hrrrrrrrowowowow Hrrrrrrrowowowow. Pilot to bombardier. Bombardier to pilot. Roger. Wilco. Rumrumrumrum." Rumrumrumrum."

"Have you lost your mind?"

She circled the oil burner noisily, putting the s.h.i.+p through loops and barrel rolls. "Roger. Wilco. Owrrrr. Rattattattatt! Owrrrr. Rattattattatt! Got 'em!" Got 'em!"

Earl switched off the power to the layout, and waited limply for his mother to emerge from behind the furnace.

She appeared with a roar, and, before Earl could stop her, she climbed onto the layout with amazing agility, and put one foot on a mirror lake, the other in a canyon. The plywood quaked under her.

"Mother! Get off!"

"Bombs away!" she cried. She whistled piercingly, and kicked a trestle to splinters. "Kaboom!" "Kaboom!"

The plane was in a climb again. "Yourrrowrrrourrrrrr. Pilot to bombardier. Got the A-bomb ready?"

"No, no, no!" begged Earl. "Mother, please-I surrender, I give up!"

"Not the A-bomb," said Harry, aghast.

"A-bomb ready," she said grimly. The bomber's nose dropped until it pointed at the roundhouse. " dropped until it pointed at the roundhouse. "Mmmmmmeeeeeeeeeewwwwtttrr! There she goes!" There she goes!"

Earl's mother sat with all her might on the roundhouse. "Blamme!" "Blamme!"

She stepped down from the table, and before Earl could order his senses, his mother was upstairs again.

When Earl finally came upstairs, shocked and weary, he found only his wife, Ella, who sat on the couch, her feet thrust straight out. She looked dazed.

"Where's Mom?" said Earl. There was no anger in his voice-only awe.

"On her way to a movie," said Ella, not looking at Earl but at a blank place on the wall.

"She had the cab waiting outside."

"Blitzkrieg," said Earl, shaking his head. "When she gets sore, she gets sore."

"She isn't sore anymore," said Ella. "She was singing like a lark when she came upstairs."

Earl mumbled something and shuffled his feet.

"Hmm?" said Ella.

He reddened, and squared his shoulders. "I said, I guess I had it coming to me." He mumbled again.

"Hmm?"

He cleared his throat. "I said, I'm sorry about the way I double-crossed you tonight. Sometimes my mind doesn't work too hot, I guess. We've still got time for a show. Would you go out with me?"

"Hey, Hotbox!" cried Harry Zellerbach, hurrying into the room. "It's the nuts. It's terrific!"

"What is?"

"It really looks like it's been bombed. No kidding. You photograph it the way it is, and show people the picture, and they'd say, "Now there's there's a battlefield." I'll go down to the shop and get some gun turrets from model airplane kits, and tonight we can convert a couple of your trains into armored trains, and camouflage 'em. And I've got a half-dozen HO Pers.h.i.+ng tanks I could let you have." a battlefield." I'll go down to the shop and get some gun turrets from model airplane kits, and tonight we can convert a couple of your trains into armored trains, and camouflage 'em. And I've got a half-dozen HO Pers.h.i.+ng tanks I could let you have."

Earl's eyes grew bright with excitement, like incandescent lamps burning out, and then dimmed again. "Let's run up white flags, Harry, and call it a night. You know what Sherman said about war. I'd better see what I can do about making an honorable peace."

GIRL POOL.

My good, beloved wife, nee Amy Lou Little, came to me from the girl pool. And there's an enchanting thought for lonely men-a pool of girls, teeming, warm, and deep.

Amy Lou Little was a pretty, confident, twenty-year-old girl from Birmingham, Alabama. When my wife-to-be graduated from secretarial school in Birmingham, the school said she was fast and accurate, and a recruiter from the Montezuma Forge and Foundry Company, way up north, offered her a very good salary if she would come to Pittsburgh.

When my wife-to-be got to Pittsburgh, they put her in the Montezuma Forge and Foundry Company's girl pool, with earphones and a Dictaphone and an electric typewriter. They put her at a desk next to Miss Nancy Hostetter, leader of section C of the girl pool, who had been in the girl pool for twenty-two years. Miss Hostetter was a great elk of a woman, righteous, healthy and strong, and inconceivably fast and accurate. She said Amy was to look upon her as a big sister.

I was in the Montezuma Forge and Foundry Company, too, a rootless pleaser of unseen customers. The customers wrote to the company, and twenty-five of us replied, genially, competently. I never saw the customers, and the customers never saw me, and no one suggested that we exchange snapshots.

All day long, I talked into a Dictaphone, and messengers carried off the records to the girl pool, which I'd never seen.

There were sixty girls in the girl pool, ten to a section. Bulletin boards in every office said the girls belonged to anyone with access to a Dictaphone, and almost any man would have found a girl to his taste among the sixty. There were maidens like my wife-to-be, worldly women made up like showgirls, moon-faced matrons, and erect and self-sufficient spinsters, like Miss Hostetter.

The walls of the girl pool were eye-rest green, and had paintings of restful farm scenes on them, and the air was a rhapsody of girls' perfumes and the recorded music of Andre Kostelanetz and Mantovani. From morning until night, the voices of Montezuma's men, transcribed on Dictaphone records, filled the girls' ears.

But the men sent only their voices, never their faces, and they talked only of business. And all they ever called a girl was "operator."

"Molybdenum, operator," said a voice in Amy's ear, "spelled m-o-l-y-b-d-e-n-u-m."

The nasal Yankee voice hurt Amy's ears-sounded, she said, like somebody beating a cracked bell with a chain. It was my voice.

"Clangbang," said Amy to my voice.

"The unit comes with silicone gaskets throughout," said my voice. "That's s-i-l-i-c-o-n-e, operator."