Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
Author:Kurt Vonnegut
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780307423443
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00
• • •
Under a great spread net that was laced with rags, an artillery piece
squatted in the woods, black and oily, its muzzle thrust at the night sky.
Trucks and the rest of the battery were hidden higher on the slope.
Joe watched and listened tremblingly through a thin screen of shrubs
as the soldiers, indistinct in the darkness, dug in around their gun. The
words he overheard made no sense to him.
"Sergeant, why we gotta dig in, when we're movin' out in the mornin',
and it's just maneuvers anyhow? Seems like we could kind of conserve our
strength, and just scratch around a little to show where we'd of dug if there
was any sense to it."
"For all you know, boy, there may be sense to it before mornin'," said
the sergeant. "You got ten minutes to get to China and bring me back a
pigtail. Hear?"
The sergeant stepped into a patch of moonlight, his hands on his hips,
his big shoulders back, the image of an emperor. Joe saw that it was the
same man he'd marveled at in the afternoon. The sergeant listened with
satisfaction to the sounds of digging, and then, to Joe's alarm, strode toward
Joe's hiding place.
Joe didn't move a muscle until the big boot struck his side. "Ach!"
"Who's that?" The sergeant snatched Joe from the ground, and set him
on his feet hard, "My golly, boy, what you doin' here? Scoot! Go on home!
This ain't no place for kids to be playin'." He shined a flashlight in Joe's
face. "Doggone," he muttered. "Where you come from?" He held Joe at
arm's length, and shook him gently, like a rag doll. "Boy, how you get here
—swim?"
Joe stammered in German that he was looking for his father.
"Come on—how you get here? What you doin'? Where's your
mammy?"
"What you got there, sergeant?" said a voice in the dark.
"Don't rightly know what to call it," said the sergeant. "Talks like a
Kraut and dresses like a Kraut, but just look at it a minute."
Soon a dozen men stood in a circle around Joe, talking loudly, then
softly, to him, as though they thought getting through to him were a
question of tone.
Every time Joe tried to explain his mission, they laughed in
amazement.
"How he learn German? Tell me that."
"Where your daddy, boy?"
"Where your mammy, boy?"
"Sprecken zee Dutch, boy? Looky there. See him nod. He talks it, all
right."
"Oh, you're fluent, man, mighty fluent. Ask him some more."
"Go get the lieutenant," said the sergeant. "He can talk to this boy, and
understand what he's tryin' to say. Look at him shake. Scared to death.
Come here, boy; don't be afraid, now." He enclosed Joe in his great arms.
"Just take it easy, now— everything's gonna be all-l-l-l right. See what I
got? By golly, I don't believe the boy's ever seen chocolate before. Go on—
taste it. Won't hurt you."
Joe, safe in a fort of bone and sinew, ringed by luminous eyes, bit into
the chocolate bar. The pink lining of his mouth, and then his whole soul,
was flooded with warm, rich pleasure, and he beamed.
"He smiled!"
"Look at him light up!"
"Doggone if he didn't stumble right
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