Mentioned In Dispatches: Chapter 1

     ". . . I know, it's early," continued Hal; he flipped out his trousers legs and pulled them up, fetching a hand towel not quite dry from the humid night air.  The old tar soap and the not-new toothbrush were in his hand when he finished his thought, "and I know it might not come to a job today, but it's a chance, a strong chance.  Mr. Finkelstein said they're hiring as many as fifty men.  And Mr. Finkelstein's not wrong on this . . . if we're quick and early and get our names in."  Hal pushed into his work boots and, at the door, reminded Herbie, "Keep moving along."  

      N. Finkelstein, the dispatcher on Spruce Street who kept account of outgoing Staats Zeitung editions from the presses to the loading dock, was a cranky man who had been ancient when Hal, at fourteen, had worked for him in Hal's first summer in 

Manhattan; and ever since those torrid months, Finkelstein had been Hal's most reliable source of information.  When Finkelstein, who could tell astonishing, frightening, supernatural tales of his youth in East Prussia, said something was about to happen in a commercial way, it did: Finkelstein was Hal's equal to a portent certain, and the night before, as Hal and Herbie had taken the shortcut across City Hall Park and passed Finkelstein's tiny alcove of a dukedom on Spruce Street, Finkelstein had hailed Hal with the tip of an advertisement scheduled to run in this Sunday's automobile sections of the city papers inviting applicants to one of the swiftest-growing automobile enterprises, a Willys-Overland dealership uptown on Automobile Row.

      Hal's stepbrother Herbie did not answer as he, already washed and dressed--Herbie had been up for a half hour before Hal opened his eyes--was busy arranging the bedcovers for a third time, smoothing, tucking, tightening, and then he began again on the corners.

       ". . . and we'll find the money, you can count on it," Hal continued, returned from the landing toilet and washroom, "and if we can get these jobs, and we're more than qualified, we will have the money by next Christmas."  Hal spoke resolutely, not as if he were proposing a case, rather as if all was determined.  Herbie did not resist Hal's decisions.

      Herbie was satisfied with the bedcovers, the nightstand, the two-drawer bureau with their clothes; and he was now lacing his boots precisely to make the ends symmetrical the way he liked them.

      Hal finished his best blue knit tie, loaded his pockets with one quarter, six pennies, and his billfold with five single dollars in it--four for the rent and one for the weekend's meals--and led Herbie down the stairs onto the narrow sidewalk of Pearl Street, where the vibrating sounds from the El tracks above momentarily overwhelmed any conversation.  In the fresh first light from the east over the tenements, Hal saw the sharp shadows of the heavy cars approach from the south like a flight of swooping birds of prey, and then the train was overhead and on top of them as the brakes screamed, and the train halted at its Fulton Street station. The brothers turned the corner onto Fulton and, as the train moved on to the north, Hal could speak without shouting, "We've got time, we'll hoof it up Broadway and save the fare."

      Herbie said, "Yeah, good, Hal."

      "We'll get you breakfast at Herald Square."

      At Broadway, with the sunrise horse-drawn traffic growing quickly as the lumbering teams made the turn pulling tarp-covered loads onto Fulton toward the ferry, Hal paused while a half-full electric trolley passed them slowly moving north.  No, he thought.  Also, there was the stairwell down to the subway.  Save two fares, he thought.  That's ten cents we don't have to earn again.

      Hal faced Herbie.  Their daily commute was a comfortable round-trip walk to the National Biscuit Company garage at Fifteenth Street and Tenth Avenue.  It would be a hot walk to Automobile Row.  Hal didn't want them to present themselves caked with salty sweaty; it wouldn't look promising if they couldn't spare the carfare.  He took off his coat and hooked it over his left arm.  Herbie imitated him.   Hal took off his forage cap.  Herbie imitated him, and he also pushed his wavy brown hair back from his ears and off his thick brow.

 "We look like reliable men.  Sober, experienced and married.  Right?"

 "Good, Hal."

 
"We must say we are married men, you will remember?"

  "Yeah."

 "The advertisement is only for married men.  If they ask for your wife's name, say 'Annie.' You say 'Annie,' and I'll say 'Annie,' if they ask me, too.  Don't say 'Mrs. Hoffman.'  They don't care.   It's just part of the advertisement.  Annie said we can use her name.  She understands why we are doing it, and she says that she never had two such suitors in her time, and is sure we have wives named 'Annie' waiting for us in the future.  Now.  Who is my wife?" Hal questioned.

      "Annie," Herbie answered immediately with an uncontrolled grin.

      Mrs. Anna "Annie" Hoffman owned Hoffman's Restaurant on Pearl Street where Hal and Herbie took their evening meals.  Widowed, prominent in the neighborhood, good to Herbie, Annie had through the years in New York come to serve as their in-town mom; she was the younger sister of one of their mother's friends, another house matron, in Ossining.

      "Who is your wife?"

      Herbie answered cautiously, "Annie?"

      "Right."

      Herbie did not show a concern for the deception; instead, Herbie was planning for the moment: he was eyeing the restaurant already warmly lit for arriving customers on the other side of Broadway.

      Hal distracted Herbie from his hunger; "There're egg sandwiches for a good price, uptown."

Fit, conscientious, amiable; presentably dressed in their brushed working man's worsted wool, pinch-back brown suits, the two brothers--one a six-foot-tall, long-nosed, dark-lanky-haired, gracile twenty-two-year-old; the other a five-and-a- half-foot, squat, chestnut-haired, meaty-shouldered, full-moon-round-faced, lumbering and awkward nearly nineteen-year-old--followed the trolley tracks up Broadway past the façade of St. Paul's Church, past the looming monolith of the Woolworth Building and the chipped sandcastle of the Post Office and the leafy elms of City Hall Park, the frantic pedestrian flow on Newspaper Row--the carts were lined up like farm hands in front of the Trib, Sun and World buildings--and, crossing Chambers, they plunged into the rising canyon toward Union Square.   They saw the morning city population moving customarily to and from the trolleys, the storefronts and vending corners, the El and the underground stations, preparing for the pedestrian rush in the next hours.  They passed heaped rag carts and black-bearded ragmen, tiny newsboys and newsgirls crowding around the drop-offs, misshapen fellows with watering cans, bowler-wearing bootblacks, ash carts and their keepers, one-man street sweepers; the first deployment of peddlers of suspenders, of sponges, of shoe strings; pretzel vendors pushing brightly painted carts, a man with a grindstone on a small wagon, larger grindstones at work on the back of carts, an organ grinder moving to his corner in haste, two burly policemen, and the occasional young woman on her way home in last night's frock.  Passing Union Square's wide-open gardens dotted with hansom cabs seeking fares, and more peddlers dispersing up from the Ghetto, the brothers followed Broadway's thirty-degree turn to the west toward Midtown.  The buildings grew newer, with bright, striped awnings lowered for the rising sun.  By the time they reached the open spaces of Madison Square, where there were hansom cabs as well as double-decker autobuses at the curbs, they were both sweaty and thirsty, so Hal bought them two scoops of water from a clean-looking vendor; and when they reached Herald Square they were both beyond peckish.  The gathering clerks for Gimbel's, Macy's and Saks were parading with sweet buns or fruit.  Hal didn't want to linger; at a stand across from the Herald, where Hal and Herbie had worked as loaders one summer, he bought Herbie a runny egg sandwich the way he liked it, licking his fingers and using his kerchief as a tablecloth, and he got a hot buttered roll for himself.  They ate while pushing hard through a crowd gawking at a horse-drawn collision with an overloaded truck before the Opera House and then moved single-file into the dense pedestrian streams through the Forties as the early commuter cars delivered skimmer-hatted clerks and broad-brimmed straw hat-wearing, dour, white-bloused women in bountiful ankle-length black skirts.   North of the theatrical billboards for unsavory new plays and violent motion pictures, the horse-drawn traffic was overrun by the autotrucks and automobiles, which forced Hal and Herbie to leave the trolley tracks and pace along the curb.  The prominent Midtown hotels and clubs on Fifth Avenue wouldn't brighten with patrons for another two hours; already the disciplined battalions of servants and vendors were rushing to prepare for another steamy, thrifty Friday in early summer, June 23, 1916.

      Hal was relieved that the employee entrance was still locked at the prominent façade of the C. T. Silver Motor Company at the nine-storey 1760 Broadway building, beside the Broadway Tabernacle Church at Fifty-sixth Street.  By the clock on Broadway--Hal did not own a pocket watch--it was 6:20 A.M. and the managers must still be en route.

      "We're on time," Hal told Herbie, "and doesn't this look promising?"

      The three show windows on Broadway were plush with gold-leafed signage, with matching dark awnings, brass accessories; and the windows displayed the heart of the marble-finished showroom with seven differently arranged, black, polished, opened-up and shining new Willys-Overland Six touring vehicles, five-seaters, with slip covers, shock absorbers, trunk racks, bumpers, tool kits.   Bunting for the approaching Fourth of July, and for the routine National Guard parades on Broadway these days, festooned the benches, chairs and tables surrounding the Overlands.  Salesman's desks were arranged on either side of the merchandise, like gun platforms, and in the rear there were several black doors leading to the interior, probably to the garage.  Tidy and rich, Hal thought, but I wonder where the new mechanics go?

      Within moments, a new Chalmers Roadster halted to let out a clean-shaven middle-aged gentleman, gray temples under his skimmer; he slipped between Hal and Herbie with an, "Excuse me, young gentlemen," and opened the employee door with a bright key on a chain.  He glanced around in puzzlement as Hal and Herbie both removed their caps.

      "Good morning, sir, I am Hal Coolidge and this is my partner, Herbie Hecht, born in Westchester, the both of us, and we are automobile mechanics and have come to apply for two of the fifty new mechanic positions to be advertised in the newspapers, offering a twenty-five per cent bonus to our weekly wages and a week's vacation," Hal enunciated his words as he'd studied to do, crisply, no drawling, few contractions.  "We are experienced, sober, married young men, with three years of work on all manner of internal combustion engines and vehicles at several garages on the West Side.  Willys-Overland certainly, as well as Packards, Maxwells, Hupmobiles, Fords, Stevens-Duryea, Coles, Pierce-Arrows, Wintons, Appersons, Studebakers--and Chalmers, too, and all trucks in the city, Packards, Whites, Quads, Macks, Saurers, FWDs, Locomobiles, Krebs.  We've taken them apart and fixed them right up, brakes, steering, axles, wheels.  We have references and an address on Pearl Street, and we're ready to work, whatever hours you need."

      "Well, now, well, now.  Two of the fifty I need?  Yes.  Come in."

      Two other trim, younger men, without skimmers, arrived to follow them into the showroom, and swiftly the newcomers attended to the morning chores: curtains parted and tucked, awnings lowered, windows opened, front doors unlocked, automobile doors opened, signs repositioned, one of which read, "The Handsomest 'Light Six' Offered for Sale."

      ". . . and what's this about applying for a job I haven't advertised yet?" asked the older man, who was now, as he stacked an ink pot beside the blotter on a desk and brought out a nameplate, was revealed as the modest proprietor of an immodest enterprise, Mr. C. T. Silver himself, smiling, curious.  "How did you hear about it?  My shop men, my son?"

      "We learned from a former employer of ours on Newspaper Row.   Mr. Finkelstein of Spruce Street," answered Hal precisely.  "And we came to put our names in as early as possible.  We can start today.  We have to give notice at out garage on Tenth, sir.  We can be back here tomorrow morning." 

     "Finkelstein of Spruce Street?"  Silver laughed genuinely.  "Don't recall seeing him at the Times office."  Silver took scratch paper from his desk and laid out a sheet before Hal.  He placed down an Eberhard Faber pencil.  "Put your names on this, and your addresses, for certain."  Silver hesitated at sharp sounds from the back of the building, the whoosh of an air compressor.  "Wait, my foreman's here."

      A long-armed, thick-black-haired young man in shirt and tie and clean gray overalls walked through the inner black door.    Silver introduced Hal and Herbie as applicants. The foreman's name over his pocket and pack of Helmar's was "Louis G. Duquet." "You're mechanics?"  Hal explained their experience quickly, leaving out most of the makes. "We sell Overlands," Duquet replied, not friendly.

      Hal answered, "Willys-Overlands are straightforward to maintain."

      Silver grunted.  "I've been listening to complaints about them for seven years."

      "I've found when you show the owner the problem, " Hal returned, "and how simple it is to fix, they cheer up and ask about other engines you can fix, and what you'd recommend for their next purchase.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Overlands."

      Silver laughed.  "That's natural salesmanship!"

      Duquet looked down at Herbie.  "You're this mechanic, too, hey?"

      Herbie crushed his cap like a towel, head down, making his tiny sigh to Hal.

      "What's wrong with him?" Duquet asked Hal.

      Silver frowned but didn't intervene.

      "Nothing at all," said Hal.  "How long you worked on automobile engines?"

      "As long as you, Hal."

      "What's that?" Duquet demanded of Herbie.

      Herbie repeated his words twice more in his wetly sibilant, poorly glottal pronunciation; it came out sadly indistinct on the third attempt at "Athongath ulemm, Howwl."  Herbie wanted to try a fourth time; Hal shook him off.

      Grunting, wiping palms on his overall pocket flaps, Duquet turned his gaze to his boss, but before he could comment, a young man in a trim blue suit, brilliant white shirt, carrying a skimmer and a cup of coffee, approached the desk. "Good morning, Father."

      "David, David, what are you doing in so early?"

      "Dropped by to get some cash from you, what else?"

      Silver laughed and laughed.  "David, I want you to meet two clever fellows, clever just like us."  Silver addressed Hal, "This is my son, and he's off to Mexico soon to whip those Mex', kee-rect?"

      "Preee-pared, Father!" was David Silver's jest.  He was a jovial, not tall, round-faced, well-barbered man a little older than Hal, pudgy and soft looking in his good clothes, with a big-toothed smile and long-fingered hands. He put down his cup and saucer on the desk.  ". . . not so clever today, marching in this heat wave, I'm afraid.  The regiment's called on parade at three-thirty from the Armory, to march down Fifth to Herald Square and then back to muster up Park and Lex.  Another recruiting drive.  We're woefully short, four hundred short at least, and we're not going to find more than a dozen before we go."

      "No?" said his father. "When?"

      "The latest guess is next week, but it's a guess."   David Silver shrugged manfully and shook his head to convey discretion.  "After the four miles today, is sure."

      His father slapped his tabletop.  "Are you ahorse, at least?"

      "Afoot.   The colonels will ride in style, of course."

      "One of mine?"

      "They're mightily tempted in this scorcher."

      C. T. Silver produced a roaring, unself-conscious laugh.  When he slapped his tabletop with both hands this time, he looked to Hal and Herbie.  "David's an officer with the Seventh, on Colonel Fiske's staff," he explained, as if Hal would understand him completely and demonstrate patriotic appreciation.

      Hal returned, "Very good."  Herbie was still.  What Hal could guess was that this was about the excitement of the last week, the presidential call-up of the famous New York National Guard because of an emergency in Mexico, perhaps because there was going to be a war with Mexico.  Finkelstein had said something about Mexico when he said there would presently be a shortage of trained mechanics everywhere in the city.  Since no one Hal knew was in the militia, and since Hal believed the militia was for the rich, the restless or the well-employed, the national preparedness crisis, so-called, had passed mostly by Hal's attention like a Fifth Avenue parade.

      C. T. Silver was explaining to his son that he'd found Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Hecht on his doorstep this morning because they wanted to apply for a mechanic's job that hadn't been advertised yet.   ". . . and they found out about it from Mr. Finkelstein of Spruce Street!"

      David Silver teased, "Maybe we should ask Mr. Finkelstein when we're departing for the border."  And to Hal, David Silver spoke generously, "Hope you get the job; I'm rooting for you," and he called after Hal with a cheerful, "Good luck!" before he turned to conferring with his father.

      Duquet ordered, "Come with me," and led the brothers into the interior of the building, a newly renovated garage with a double bay of doors onto Fifty-seventh Street.  The ground floor had two automobile elevators at the center that lifted the vehicles to the floor above.  "Six thousand square foot," cried out Duquet over the screeching of the motor and cables as the elevator engaged and descended.  They walked by a workbench where several thick-armed, clean-shaven men in gray "C. T. Silver Motors" overalls were setting up their tool racks for the day.  "Fireproof," said Duquet,  "All modern conveniences.  Not just for our own but also automobiles traded in or sold.  See?"

       Hal was especially impressed by the disciplined labor, the extravagant dimensions, the quality of the equipment and the comfortable working conditions: well-lit, airy, with just the correct aroma of gasoline, grease and rubber.  There were already six autos lined up tightly in a row to be directed to the service area: Hal counted a Stevens-Duryea seven-passenger touring car, a new Hudson, a 1915 Pierce-Arrow, a 1916 Peerless, a 1916 Mercer toy tonneau, a 1915 Maxwell, and a Garford "Six" seven-passenger touring with wire wheels, clearly a prized property of a chauffeur and a big house.   A stubby Hupmobile was parked by the workbench with its cowl off, its engine swung up on tackle and blocks.

      When Duquet turned his back, Hal confided to Herbie, "We're doin' great," and Herbie nodded and beamed.

      "This is our beauty," Duquet announced.  He stopped beside a stock 22-72 Mercer raceabout.  "We put her into races for engines up to the 450 cubic inch piston displacement range.  The twin of this won a challenge in Havana some weeks back."

      Hal responded, "That's not 300 cubic inches, is it?"

      Duquet blinked with what might have been pleasure.  "It's 298.2.  You race?"

      "We'd like to.  We won a truck race once.  FWDs.  Long distance.  Fourteenth Street to Peekskill and return.  It wasn't about speed.  It was keeping the road."

      By the time they stepped through the service area onto Fifty-seventh Street, pushing through a line of glamorous young men in fine summer suits and $5 skimmers, waiting fretfully for their machines as if this was a maternity ward and not a gasoline alley, Hal was too headlong to think about the day other than as their first break they'd had since Herbie's dad had died two years before.  C. T. Silver Motors was heaven.  It was better than any garage Hal had seen or heard about in New York, and the pay was twenty-five per cent better by arrangement.   Mother was going to whoop with joy.  Twenty-four months' working and saving, maybe thirty-six, and they'd have what they needed to purchase their own dealership, or a sizeable share --

      ". . . said I want to see you alone," Duquet repeated.

      Hal recognized from the gruffness that bad news was coming.  They stood in the breeze, stepping free of a Winton Six that turned in from Fifty-sixth, the driver in overalls calling to Duquet, "Mornin', Lou."

      "Here now," Duquet started; he was going to smoke.  "We need you.  We've got this place for Chalmers, and down Broadway at Fiftieth, a whole new building by Thanksgiving, and I need all he experienced men I can find."

      Hal heard discomfort; he tried, "That's us."

      "You."  Lighting his cigarette, he exhaled.   "Just you."

      Hal glanced at his brother.  "Herbie Hecht and I are partners."

      "How much you take home?"

      Hal spoke accurately, "Forty-nine dollars a month.  We both do, at the National Biscuit Garage at Thirteenth and Eleventh.  Trucks mostly.  Our foreman's Mr. Archie Vernon."

      "We'll pay $80.  When can you start?"

      Hal knew this was defeat; he tried a last time, "We can start soon tomorrow."

      Duquet spoke unambiguously, "I can't help your pal there.  Nobody can."  Duquet turned his back and strode into his automobile paradise.

      Later, as they passed the chugging locomotive equipment in the New York Central and Hudson yards along Tenth Avenue, Herbie was waving at the fresh 

Pullman cars making up for points west as if they were friendly horses, while Hal was cheering them on, ". . . and if we keep this pace up, we can punch in by eight, like I told Mr. Vernon," and they cut along from Chelsea Park to reach Eleventh and downhill to National Biscuit.  The last four blocks, Hal said, "Race ya," and they accelerated with laughs, two young men in high spirits.  Herbie didn't mind about C. T. Silver Motors; it was all the same to Herbie if they worked just anywhere, even if they committed their dreams to marching the trolley tracks of New York in search of a pot of gold.   Only Hal felt bashed by the rejection, and as he ran along, he preached to himself a version of his mother's golden proverb, "Other ways to get ahead.  Way will open, way always does open."

      Hal continued this debate with himself in his waking sleep the next morning, when he came out of his exhaustion--"Hal Coolidge!  Herbie Hecht!" --and then he was alert to realize the voice was from the landing outside his door.  "A gent fer ya!"  It was the landlord, Mr. Burnius, a solitary squirrel of a miser, bellowing from his own door on the ground floor. Mr. Burnius had been adamant the time Hal and Herbie had roomed here that he was not a messenger or postman for his tenants.  "I come up, cost ya day's rent!"

      Dressed hastily, Hal and Herbie reached Mr. Burnius as he slammed his door, and they found outside in the cool sunrise a gleaming Overland Six, top down, door open, David Silver standing at alert.

      "Good morning, forgive me, for waking you, I couldn't think what else to do to reach you before Monday.  Father gave me your address.  Forgive me."  He bowed, lifting his $5 skimmer; he was dressed in sporting clothes, a bright blue and white striped tie and gleaming gold buttons on his blazer.  "We met yesterday morning at my father's office."

      "No trouble," Hal answered, curious.  "It's getting on to work time for us."

      "Let me buy you breakfast.  Is there somewhere?"

      Soon they were at Mrs. Hoffman's Restaurant, at the clean wooden counter top, sitting elbow to elbow on tottering stools, served strong coffee, flapjacks with once-over eggs, and Hal's favorite, ham toast, made to Hal's taste with three ounces of whipping cream and heavy cayenne.  David Silver liked the flapjacks immediately, swallowing in gulps.  "I know that Lou Duquet offered you one job, not two," started David Silver.  "And I know you turned it down, which I admire.  What my old teacher would call an act of a man with bottom."

      Hal put down his cup.  "Herbie and I work together."

     "Yes.  Here.  I'm asking you here to sign on to my regiment, the Seventh, as privates assigned to headquarters company, same as I am.  We need you to care for the Overlands my father has presented my colonels.  The regiment is short of everything, with many men away and a deal of married men begging to be excused.  But of twelve or thirteen hundred men, not one mechanic.  My father's garage is full of mechanics, and hiring more, but they won't go with us; they say the same thing, family men.  And here you and Mr. Hecht arrive on the week we need you, and we do need you.  I should say, your country needs you, but that seems out of line with what I'm thinking.  Let's leave patriotism aside and keep to the terms of employment.  What do you say?"

      Hal looked at Herbie, who kept eating his eggs, more eggs.  Hal replied candidly, "I'll have to say, thank you for your kind words and thinking of us, but we're building our savings, and we have a plan for a National Automobile Association dealership in White Plains or Yonkers.  Another year or two, and we can have what we need.  Three thousand dollars for the both of us."

      "It's the income, then, not the militia, not going off to Mexico in this Villa and Carranza crisis?"  David Silver put down his fork on the flapjacks.  "This is too good."

     "I didn't know much about Mexico," Hal commented, meaning to be modest but at the same time thorough.  "After your father spoke of you going to Mexico, I asked Mr. Finkelstein about it--last night on the way home.  Now I know the President has ordered you to be prepared to go to the border. Certainly I heard about the parade last week, when the Sixty-ninth Regiment went to Peekskill.  Now I know it involves the Mexicans in a civil war.  Now I know who President Carranza is, who used to be Mr. Wilson's friend, and I certainly know who Pancho Villa is and how he's murdered Americans in New Mexico.  I don't read the papers regularly, but we discuss them at the garage, and Mr. Finkelstein explains to me the political life when I ask him.  President Wilson is running for re-election, I know to be true, and I know that his call-up of the militia took place just after the Democratic Convention finished.  Is it a coincidence?  I don't know.  Mr. Finkelstein says we can say it's a convenience.  The Trib and the World and the Sun think not, if you read them.  I don't know about the Herald, the American or the Times.  Mr. Finkelstein says the German paper, Staats Zeitung, thinks the United States is going to invade Mexico."

      David Silver commented, "You know a deal, you and Mr. Finkelstein."

      Hal added, ". . . but no, it's not that, it's not about my opinion of the crisis, as they call it, the newspapers call it, the 'Preparedness Crisis.'  It's that Herbie and I don't think of us as fellows who have the time, or the funds, to join up and go away.  We have a mother in Ossining, who needs us, and we have a chance now to make something of ourselves.  To be something better, sir."

      "You're frank as well as honest."

      "Not so that I didn't deceive your father yesterday when I said we were married men," Hal replied. "You understand what we are.  Two mechanics with plans.  It's automobiles that are changing the United States, not going off to Mexico."

      David Silver laughed at Hal's cautious irony and finished his coffee.  "I spoke to my father about you and Mr. Hecht.  Father knows you aren't married men.  Neither am I.   We each have plans.  Right now, my plan is to provide mechanics for the two Overlands my father has given my colonels.  Your plan is to save money for your own business.  I have a compromise.  What if I tell you that Father agrees, like many other firms in New York, that Father agrees to pay your wages while you are on service with the Seventh?  Pay the wages you would receive at Silver Motors.  What would that be?"

      "Mr. Duquet offered me $80 a month."

      "Done," confirmed David Silver.  "Plus fifty cents a day for each of you, the militia's wages for a private.  It'll be sixty cents when you make first-class, and seventy and eighty when you make corporal, and a dollar as sergeant, when you get your stripes, as I know you will."

      "Fifty cents a day to start," Hal repeated the figures slowly and definitively, a man writing a contract in the air.  If Mrs. Hoffman had been up yet, he would have asked her to write it out.  "Three dollars and fifty cents a week each.  That's fifteen dollars a month each.  Plus eighty dollars from your Father.  That's ninety-five dollars each a month total.  Each, is that correct?  To join the Seventh Regiment and go with you to Mexico?"

      "Yes, it is."  David Silver loosed his right hand from his jacket pocket.  "And we can shake hands on it?"

      "Herbie, you're listening to this?"

      Herbie dipped into more ham toast and spoke with a mouthful.  "Yeah.  Good."

      Hal wanted to say, Done, also, but this wouldn't be responsible until he visited with Mother to win her approval.  "We have to visit with our mother, first."

      "And your family?" David Silver asked Herbie.

      Herbie spoke while chewing, "We're brothers," and David Silver couldn't hope to understand him.

      "Herbie's my step-brother," said Hal.  "My mother married his father.  Before his dad passed away.  We're family."

      "We thought it was like that."  David Silver lowered his head.  "I have to get on to my mother's.  We both have mothers."  The counter was now crowded with hungry working men.  More food arrived for Hal, also another serving of ham toast and a ham omelet that Herbie had ordered in his enthusiasm to dine on someone else's pocketbook.    "Can you walk me back to my auto?" David Silver asked Hal.  "I have to get to the Armory before going upriver and tell them you're coming by . . ." David Silver paid the bill, $.65, left a quarter and a dime on the counter, and led the way to his Overland.  "You'll let me know your decision today?" David Silver asked.  "We're departing next week.  Perhaps Monday or Tuesday, not later than Thursday.  You can go to the Armory on Sixty-seventh and Park today . . ."

      "Tomorrow."  Hal pressed, not about to forgo a day's wages in hand.  "We don't want to miss any more hours, and we have to say goodbye to Mr. Vernon and tell him."

      "Then, tomorrow.  And please give my name to the recruiter, First Sergeant Bigelow, who will have your names.  Here's my card to show if anyone asks, but I'll be waiting in the building.  It's liable to be-- pandemonium."

      "When we get back from church," Hal corrected.  "From church with Mother.  When we get back in the afternoon."  Hal breathed out and accepted the card.  It read: "First Lieutenant David A. Silver, Headquarters Company, Seventh Regiment, New York National Guard."  Hal added, "Depending upon my mother's opinion."

      At the open door, David Silver finished his thoughts, "I want you to hear something unfortunate but true from me.  There's an investigation just now into why Jews are barred from enlisting in the New York National Guard, did you know that?   Conducted by General Stotesbury for Governor Whitman, upon a complaint by the Kehillah Committee for the Protection of the Good Name of Immigrant Peoples.   It won't come to much, but it's official.   The regimental colonels will say it's not anti-Semitism, that is, religious prejudice; they will says it's because Jews are unpleasant, or overly sensitive, or squeamish, or needing gloves.  I'm a Jew, as you know, and I want you to know that I while I am not cranky or delicate, I am nonetheless the only Jew who is an officer in the Seventh Regiment.  And it's not unheard of to hear the remark from some knotheads that I am a showpiece, or perhaps that my father purchased my commission.  I joined last year after I left law school.  Law's not for me, as plain as that.  There are several Jews in the ranks, two of the non-commissioned officers, Coen and Braun, but I am the only officer.  A quartermaster.  It's called the Jewish Cavalry."

      Hal puzzled.  An El rounded the bend and started to break for the Fulton Street station.  Hal had regarded Silver Motors in many ways, luxurious, prestigious, 

unapproachable; he had not thought: Jews, or anything close to Jews.  Certainly the Silvers were nothing like the Jews in the streams of gnarled, bearded slum dwellers and their rheumy kin shoveled into the Ghetto north of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Hal knew Jews like Finkelstein, who looked like a Jew, the long curved nose, the finger-waving speechifying.  David Silver looked and acted like a clubman stepped out of the Union League, a rich man's frothy, pin-cushion portly son.  Hal raised his voice over the screeching El, "I guess I didn't think you were a Jew!"

      David Silver asked loudly, "You have doubts about a business offer from a Jew?"

      "No.  No.  Ninety-five a month, each?   It's my lucky morning."  The five El cars banged to a humming stop.  Hal was overwhelmed with wonder at this turn of events; he shouted, "We're delighted!  I'm amazed!"

      "My grandfather's from near Vienna," declared David as the dust rained down from the tracks.  "And I tell you this so you have my open motive for asking you to join up.  It will make me look good that I provided, in the nick of time, the mechanics we needed for Father's gifts.  The Overlands will go with us with the horses, and they're yours to care for.  I will look very good."  The El banged to a start and the cars rumbled and clacked heavily north.  "And that's important to me!"  David Silver shouted.  "I want to serve my country!  I'm loyal to my family, like you!  We Jews are loyal!  And I like loyalty like yours!"  His hand came out.  "Shake on it?"

      "Yes."  Hal gave his hand; and afterward, as he stood by watching his benefactor David Silver depart Pearl Street, Hal thought, Way opened, just as Mother said.  And he laughed and cried, "Opened!"

  
 ____________________

      The widow Mrs. Rosalind Coolidge Hecht, at forty-five petite and oval-faced like a brown hare, dressed in her happiest fine-flowered voile dress with a ribboned girdle and wearing top her favorite wide-brimmed Leghorn straw hat, rocked with her notes from the hymnal to show her thankfulness at the surprise of having her two sons join her at services.  In the pew beside them were Mrs. Hecht's affectionate church friends, with whom she usually sat, the widows Mrs. Gee and Mrs. Chatfield, who, like Mrs. Hecht, were veteran senior house matrons from Ossining estates above the Hudson; and Mrs. Hecht was assured of a week of sweetly competitive conversation in at least three manses about how handsome and mature Hal looked, how loving and heart-breakingly devoted Herbie was to his mother.  Thankful Mrs. Hecht raised her alto to match Hal's sonorous, gravelly baritone and Herbie's rich tenor - Herbie sang more discernibly than he spoke -- for the fourth verse, 

      "Stand up! Stand up for Jesus, the strife will not be long;

      this day the noise of battle, the next the victor's song;

      to him who overcometh, a crown of life shall be;

      he with the King of Glory shall reign eternally." 

      The recessional hymn arrived, followed by the closing prayer, the organ solo, the heartfelt "Amens" from the parishioners, and then Hal followed his mother and Herbie slowly in the receiving line to greet the full-bearded, pince-nez-wearing pastor--"What a gift for your Mother to have her boys surprise her . . ."   Spread out on the lawn beside the chapel, under the usefully fine weather of northern Westchester, the Briarcliff congregation divided along class lines, the newly prosperous villagers relocated from the city to one side, the long-time Yankee servants from the manses on another, and a handful of the widows of estate owners who did not favor the Anglican services up at the crossroads.   The gregarious, egalitarian pastor roamed among the knots of the old hands and the newcomers, mostly staying with the fresh families.   Hal and Herbie did not much like tea, so they stood patiently with their mother in their brown worsted wool suits, with ginger cake on a plate, to listen to Mrs. Gee's and Mrs. Chatfield's questions while they all waited to be fetched to the Baillie's estate by Ed Day.

      "Your mother says you have news?" asked Mrs. Gee.  "It must be good news?"

      "It's a new employment?" said Mrs. Chatfield.

      "I wouldn't let a son of mine keep a secret," said the daughters-only, tiny Mrs. Gee; in a cotton voile dress with a Persian design, she was even smaller than the petite Mrs. Hecht, nearly an elf, with curly fair hair beneath her flapping straw hat; she had raised her three surviving girl babies to become house servants like herself, now distributed up and down the Hudson River estates.

      Mrs. Chatfield, a ruddy-cheeked, corpulent woman in a prosperous blue Chinese pongee silk dress, was originally from Yonkers, not Vermont like her two friends; she was the most worldly of the trio, and therefore the most confrontational, burying two husbands in the Bronx churchyards and two children in a White Plains cemetery before she came to Ossining; one child she had lost to scarlet fever had been born different, like Herbie; and she cherished Herbie especially for her memory: she teased him adoringly, "You can whisper to me, darling," and bent her ear to Herbie's chin, which made Herbie giggle softly and try to hide behind Hal.  Mrs. Chatfield teased them more, "What's that?  You say you've found a garage in White Plains?  Or you're sailing to the South Pole?  Speak up.  An autobus driver at last, Herbie?"

      Herbie coughed on his bite of cake.  "No, no, National Guard."

      This came out indistinct as usual, more like "nash an gourd"; however, these three mothers, accustomed to Herbie's speech, understood too well and with instant solemnity.

      "Ah, dear," said Mrs. Gee with a sharp, grave note.

      "Hal?" said Mrs. Hecht.

      "It's a business opportunity we've come upon, Mother."

      "When?"

      Hal lowered his eyes.  "I was going to speak to you."

      "No, when did you come upon the plan?"

      "Yesterday," answered Hal.

      "And that's why you came out today?" asked Mrs. Hecht: she laid her left palm on her left chin in a gesture of extreme worry.

      Mrs. Gee commented, "The National Guard is a business, I'm not sure?"

      "I see Mr. Day has brought himself at last," said the acerbic Mrs. Chatfield as the Baillie family's Chalmers Laudelet rolled to a stop down the road.

      Mrs. Gee closed in on Mrs. Hecht and took her bare, pink arm.  "As long as he's not signed . . ." was all Hal could hear as he caught up.  The automobile was a year-old, seven-seat Packard limousine, tended by the Baillie estate chauffeur, the tall, rope-slender, unflappable Ed Day, who routinely drove these three senior house matrons to their Sunday services.  The Roman Catholic servants had their own horse-drawn coach to fetch them to Chapel up the road; the German-speaking Lutherans traveled to Tarrytown, as did the few Dutch Reformed; but these three Yankees had their own limousine, which delivered them to the Baillie estate for a Sunday meal arranged to celebrate Hal and Herbie's extravagant surprise visit--now exposed as suspicious, even deceitful.

      Hal, understanding he was on the wrong side of the three most potent women in the neighborhood, each of them commanding an estate's house staff with the revered, feared omnipotence of a sea captain, behaved sedately in and around the cozy, damp servant's quarters while he awaited his fate.  To mask his concern, he made professional observations to Ed Day about the new Goodrich-made tires: ". . . the safety treads are dear, but they give you value.  What'd you pay?  Thirty dollars is a good price . . ." and later he stood at the walkway and conversed with the weathered, fraternal groundskeepers Jock Quarles and his assistant Pat Tyrone as they cleaned their hands on rough soap before coming inside for the meal.

      "Goddamned rose bushes," cursed Mr. Quarles.  Hal hero-worshipped Jock Quarles, thought him a living example of Cooper's Natty Bumppo, a compact, sinewy, nut-brown Yankee forester who could survive on guile and a knife, and he replied,  "Correct."  Herbie and the more serene gnome Pat Tyrone giggled.  "Goddamned rose blights--spittlebugs, rose weevils, slugs and snails and powdery mildew, botrytis blight and the cursed, satanic aphid," said Jock Quarles.

      The dinner bell sounded and Hal, unready for his mother, ushered Herbie, Jock Quarles, Pat Tyrone, and Ed Day before him into the servant's quarters. The Baillie Manse was an older Hudson summer cottage, fifteen rooms, stone-faced, porch-wrapped, on eighty-three rocky, heavily forested acres, with a shut-up three-storey guesthouse, two barns, an unused stable, a new three-bay garage, a two-part spring house, a two-storey gatehouse, all on a substantial, heavily wooded rounded hillside--that was actually a ceaseless, steep-sided collection of ridges cut by streams--above the prosperous river town of Ossining.  The elder Baillies were too senior to leave Manhattan and never visited; their children were too busy to summer here anymore; the grandchildren didn't care for the backwater of Westchester when the White Mountains of New Hampshire or the Downeast of Maine were more fashionable for retreat in the hot wet months, if you couldn't be in Europe because of the ruinous nature of the war; and so, these last several wet years, the summer tenant of the main rooms was the senior Mrs. Baillie's younger sister, the widow Mrs. Hibbard Casselberry, and sometimes Mrs. Casselberry's equally ancient, quarrelsome, widowed acquaintances from her decades married to a New York State senator who had improbably drowned in Connecticut.  The manse was so unoccupied, so purposeless, that the servant staff in their cozy two-storey wing connecting to the garage, were like a marooned family that had been abandoned by the ghosts of the profligate, pointless, now disregarded Nineteenth Century, a marooned family that had no means of escape into the industrious Twentieth Century.

      Significantly, the future for young men from servant's families was not in service but rather in a trade in Manhattan and the growing towns around it, or so Hal had concluded years before, leaving school at sixteen, with his mother's agreement, to go off to New York City, after two successful summers working delivery jobs, to establish himself in the fast-growing skill of automobile mechanics; Herbie had joined him three years later.

      "We'll say a prayer of thanks, Hal," his mother declared at the table.

      Now Hal had reached another decision about his future, or wanted to reach it.  To his mind, what he was asking his mother's permission for--admittedly with the surprising twist of the military--was a logical, useful step on the path that had taken him from the Baillie House and, he hoped, would some day bring him back to Westchester as a successful commercial man, a pride to his mother.

      There were twelve for midday supper, the five men folk; the three matrons; the two housemaids, Bridey and Patty; and one laundress, Tina, returned from the Catholic chapel; and the scullery maid Lois, since the cook, Mrs. Hawgood, did not like to sit at her own cooking as it deprived her of control of the dishes.  They sat four to a side, with Mrs. Hecht, Mrs. Gee and Mrs. Chatfield at the head, Mr. Quarles and Mr. Tyrone at the bottom of the table, and Ed Day Herbie and Hal to their mother's left hand.  The maidservants, round, flighty, wordless young women in the grip of Mrs. Hecht's governance, sat as a team together and ate without comment other than "Thankee kind," or "Very good, ma'am," though they did like to listen to conversation.

      Hal encouraged Herbie to lead the prayer as they joined hands.  Herbie's words were sincere and well understood by the assembly.  The settings began with potato soup a rich cream of cheese soup, with chicken broth for Lois who might have had the sniffles, with a tomato and hickory nut salad alongside a dish of lettuce leaves to delight and impress Mrs. Gee and Mrs. Chatfield, and quickly moved to the main course of stuffed ham, made the way Hal and Herbie most liked it, with well-smoked ham cut up and mixed with cabbage sprouts, parsley, stale bread, black pepper and pushed into cuts in the huge baked ham.  Mrs. Hawgood also served choices for Jock Quarles's approval; such as she'd used the two hares he'd bagged to make rabbit en casserole with an unmentioned five tablespoons of sherry.  Mrs. Hawgood stood arms folded at the archway and watched Herbie eat the rice and chicken croquettes she'd made for him and the maids, and watched Mr. Quarles and Tyrone battle over the rabbit.   The meal was going so raucously and fraternally, with the youngsters' receiving a favorite beverage of ginger pop, or orange bouillon, black currant cup, and the women drinking tea, and, for the men, iced coffee--this was a temperance household--with serving dishes flying up and down the table, scoops and "another smidgen" of boiled onions, scalloped potatoes, baked cabbage and bacon, buttered cauliflower, mashed turnips, browned, deviled tomatoes and cole slaw--and everyone was so obviously satisfied--that Hal was hoping, as they moved to deserts, that his mother would delay the conversation about the militia until much later. 

      As the baked apple dumplings, cherry roly poly, marmalade pudding and peach manioca pudding, and lemon with raisin pie and apple custard pie arrived, served on trays by Lois to the applause of Ed Day and Mr. Tyrone--who would eat everything sweet till it was gone in the next few days--Mrs. Hecht presented the first remark directed exclusively at Hal since the meal had begun a half hour before.

      "Hal, will you cut Herbie a piece of lemon raisin pie before Mr. Tyrone gets a hold of it, and while you do that, will you explain to us, how the National Guard is a 'business opportunity'?"

      "Hey?"  Jock Quarles looked around at Hal with a half-smile, half-frown; he waved his big hands in the direction of the city, "What have you done?"

      "You will not interfere," contributed Mrs. Chatfield.

      "He's told us that he and Herbie have joined the National Guard," said Mrs. Gee.

      Hal knew this was already going badly.  Hal considered the marmalade pudding on his plate.  He sipped coffee.  "We haven't joined yet.  We have been invited to join, and the invitation has a big pay increase to it."

      Pat Tyrone, who was a pinchpenny himself and approved of it in Hal, remarked, "The National Guard is going to pay you better than the National Biscuit Company?  That's unlikely."

      "Impossible," said Mrs. Gee.

      "The National Guard's to fight Mexico," declared Ed Day, who was the close newspaper reader at the table, though messers Quarles and Tyrone followed the news about the Irish rising and were not indifferent to the European war, especially if the reviled English crown was battered about by bad news.  "Mexico started it, and now we're going to finish it . . ."

      "Let Hal explain, and keep the politics out of this room while we're discussing important family matters," Mrs. Gee insisted, patrolling the table with her bright, dark eyes; she turned to Mrs. Hecht,  "Roz?"

      Mrs. Hecht took the conversation back to Hal.  "Have you already signed a paper?  For yourself and Herbie?"

      "No, no, Mother."

      "Thank you, Jesus," muttered Mrs. Gee, grasping her hands together.

      ". . . but," Hal continued, "we're invited by an officer to visit the recruiting clerk tonight."

      "Hal, tell us, what regiment?" asked Mr. Quarles.

      Hal could see that the three men were on his side and the three matrons were not.  He decided to appeal to his supporters.  "The Seventh.  The Armory is at Park at Sixty-seventh Street and the recruiting clerk is Sergeant Bigelow."

      "Silk-stocking regiment," contributed Ed Day.  "Astors and Schermerhorns and Rhinelanders and such . . ."

      "Our Hal and Herbie in the Seventh," Mr. Quarles spoke to Mr. Tyrone.

      "Sharp to get them," said Pat Tyrone.

       "They had to march the regiment down Fifth Avenue Friday for recruits," Hal explained, "because, I'm told, they are in short supply."

      Mrs. Hecht was coolly patient.  "You want to volunteer yourself to go with the Seventh Regiment to fight the Mexicans?  And you just discovered this yesterday?  You just discovered that you're not an automobile mechanic, which you're trained to be, but rather a soldier-- something you've never talked about, never once in twenty-one years of talking, never a soldier, never-- And you want to go off with your brother with my permission?"

      Fresh coffee and a bowl of peach bombe arrived, along with three flavors of new ice cream.  The strawberry went to Herbie and Pat Tyrone.  With quick orders, Mrs. Hecht supervised the clearing of the table by the maids.

      In the necessary pause--Hal noted that the sky outside the porch window was dimmer, just like his case--Ed Day commented again from the range of his reading while he'd waited for the church service to finish, that General Wood wanted the Seventh and Seventy-first to go straight on to the border, that they were only waiting for special trains, that he'd stood at the Ossining station with the crowd last week to wave the special through as the Fourteenth and the Sixty-ninth passed en route to Peekskill, and they were certain to go to the border as soon as they found the cars.

      Mrs. Gee spoke to Mrs. Hecht, "There's suddenly a bloodthirsty chorus at the table, and I don't know who invited it."

      Jock Quarles defended his friend Ed Day,  "The news is why Hal's been invited to join."

      Mrs. Chatfield did not relent: "And I don't know why we need your news."  Mrs. Gee hissed with a sincere voice, something of a sob,  "These are her sons trying to run off to war."

      "No, no, it's not that way," said Hal.  "We aren't running off.  No, Mother.  We're offered a deal of money to join up as mechanics."

      "How much money as mechanics?" asked Pat Tyrone quickly as he swallowed his lemon with raisin pie.

      Hal used his strongest argument, "Eighty dollars a month each, from Silver Motors, and fifteen more from the Army.  Ninety-five in total.  Each."

      "Joseph and Mary, now," said Pat Tyrone.  "Who's paying you eighty?" 

      "Silver Motors, of Broadway.  Both of us."  Hal touched his plate, then Herbie's.  Here was a chance to carry the case.  "I wouldn't be willing if it wasn't such a sum.  Many, many of the big firms are paying their boys who go off, and Mr. Silver's son told us that he would too.  Pay us both.

      "The American Can is paying its boys, I heard it from Mr. Begley in Tarrytown," contributed Ed Day.  "And the United States Rubber Company, with re-employment guaranteed, and the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, and . . ." he continued to recite until Mrs. Gee cut him off, "Hush."

      Hal continued to his mother and her friends with his sharpest, most convincing, least defensive case: "We can save very quickly, perhaps four or five hundred dollars by Christmas.  And these are jobs that we applied for but didn't get the first time.  This is a second chance."

      Mrs. Hecht said, "How do you know it won't be years, like in France."

      "I'm just estimating, I don't know how long," said Hal.

      "I'm certain you're mother's told you what bad luck it is to count what isn't yours," said Mrs. Chatfield.

      "What can we say to you, Hal?" Hal's mother asked glumly.

      "Ah, Clara," said Mrs. Gee in low, rasping despair.

      Mrs. Chatfield drank her tea and remarked in a deceptively clever way, "You have to collect the money to save it and use it, don't you Hal?   And Herbie, too.  You have to be well to collect it.  And you don't want to tell us that you are going to take yourself and Herbie to fight Mexico because you can save money quickly by Christmas?"

      "What's not right about defending our country from the Mexicans?" asked Mr. Day.

      "Leave it be," warned Jock Quarles.

      "We're not asked to fight the Mexicans," Hal explained.  "We're asked to be mechanics on the Overland Sixes that Mr. Silver gave to the regiment's commanding officers."

       "Ninety-five a month, that is a prize," said Pat Tyrone,  "This Mr. Silver's trustworthy?"

      "Yes.  Shook hands on it." Hal was momentarily encouraged.  "Though he understood I was going to ask Mother.  He said he had a mother to speak to also.  Apparently we could be going on the cars soon."

      "The business is sound?" asked Jock Quarles.

      "Grand showroom on Automobile Row, and branches in the Bronx and Brooklyn and Long Island," Hal answered, "and opening a new, six-storey, fireproof garage."

      Hal chose to leave out the part about David Silver's being worried about being a Jew in the National Guard.

       "Please, stop this," asked Mrs. Hecht.  "Mr. Quarles, Mr. Tyrone, Mr. Day, I appeal to you.  My sons are aiming to go off to this Mexican war, if that's what it is, and I don't want you discussing it like a profit.  These are my sons."

      "Yes, ma'am" said Ed Day.  "Beg pardon," said Jock Quarles.  "Myself as well," said Pat Tyrone.  "And we were discussing it as a sound financial prospect."

      "Money for war is neither sound nor financial," Mrs. Chatfield countered.

      The table fell to the wordless sound of clinking, banging flatware.  The five men folk sat with their hot coffee cups needing refilling, except each of them was reluctant to move, assuming this might be a moment to escape to smoke--Quarles and Tyrone smoked pipes in their cabin behind the springhouse, Ed Day liked cigarettes in the garage or in Tarrytown at the hotel bar--if Mrs. Hecht declared the meal at an end.

      "I'm not going to give you permission," Mrs. Hecht declared to Hal.  "I'm not.  I'm going to let you do what's right for you."

      "Good," said Mrs. Gee, patting Mrs. Hecht's forearm.  "Well put."

      "You're the wise one," Mrs. Chatfield offered to Mrs. Hecht.

      'Well then?" Mrs. Hecht asked Hal.

      The three matrons fixed their hierarchical, irreproachable, judgmental and, to Hal's measure, unremittingly disappointed eyes at him.  Hal, regarding this as the worst possible sentence, comprehending that the long thrashing he was taking here was a pittance of what he would get for the rest of his days if this went badly, rejoined, "I can see it's the right thing to do, for now, for what I know about it now.  If it's the way it's been put to me, and I find that the Seventh Regiment is ready to accept me on these terms, the way Mr. Silver said, then, this is what I'm going to do.  For the money, quick as I can get it."

      "Very well," continued Mrs. Hecht, to the grave head movements of her peers, "You are a fully grown man, and you are capable of deciding for yourself--I won't say what you're deciding since it is not my mind here to say what Mexico is about, or why--and that you can live with what comes of it, but--and you know what I'm going to speak of--but this doesn't give you the right to decide for Herbie, to speak for Herbie."

      Hal sighed and lowered his head.  "No."

       "It's right for Herbie to say what he wants with your 'business opportunity'."

      Jock Quarles and Pat Tyrone together started muttering, "Herbie, Herbie, your mother . . ."

      "Let him speak for himself," Mrs. Hecht requested.

      "We're not thinking any other," said Mr. Quarles.

      "We should believe you won't interfere!" Mrs. Chatfield hissed.

      Mrs. Gee interjected, "You must respect the young man."

      "We do," pled Pat Tyrone.

      "Let him speak," Mrs. Gee demanded.

      Mrs. Chatfield faced down Quarles, Day and Tyrone.

      "Speak up, Herbie," said Mrs. Hecht.  "You know what we are about.  Hal wants to take himself and you to Mexico, for months and months, he says, we can't know.  For money, he says.  With people neither of you know or have reason to trust.   I won't say more.  Herbie, has Hal asked you?  You are nineteen years old this August, darling, and you can say what you want.  What do you want to do?"

      Herbie, still chewing the remains of lemon with raisin pie mixed with strawberry ice cream reduced to a soupy, lumpy pink goo, sensibly did not respond. In these instances, Herbie knew to wait and wait for Hal to signal him it was time to speak.

      Hal nodded without looking up.

      Herbie spoke with one rolling sound what each of them understood as if it was written down, "WangwiHowwl . . ." or,  "I want to go with Hal.