D E E R I N T H E W O R K SSTORY I CHOOSED.docx

D E E R I N T H E W O R K S
STORY I CHOOSED E E R IN
T H E W O R K S
TH E B IG B L A C K' S T A C K S of the Ilium_ Works of the
Federal Apparatus Corporation spewed. acid fumes and soot
over the hundreds of men and women who were lined up before
the redbrick employment office. It was sun1mer. The Iliu1n
Works, already tl1e second-largest industrial plant in A1nerica,
was in- creasing its staff by one third in order to intet
armani_ent · con- tracts. Every ten minutes or so, a co1npany
policen1an opened the employment-office door, letting out a
chilly gust from the air-conditioned interior and adrnitting
three more applicants.
"Next three," said the policen1an.
A n1idcile-sized rnan ·in his late twenties, his young face
cam.oufiaged vrith a mustache and spectacles, was adrnitted
after a four-hour wait. His spirits and the new suit he'd bought
for the occasion were wilted by the furr1es and the August sun,
and he'd given up lu nch in order to keep his place in line. But

his bearing re11:1ained jaunty. He vas the last, in his group of
three, to face the receptionist.
"Screw-n1achine operator, ma'a1n," said the first man. "See Mr.
Cormody in booth seven," said the receptionist. "IJlastic
extrusiOn, miss," said the nex.t rnan.
"Sec Mr. Hoyt in booth two," she said. "Skill?" she asked the
urbane young man in the wilted suit. "Milling machine? Jig
borer?"
"Writing," he said. "Any kind of writing." "You mean
advertising and sales pro1notion?"
222
"Yesthat's what I 1nean.'J
She looked doubtful. "Well, I don't know. We didn't put out a
call for that sort of people. You can't run a n1.achine, can you?"
"Typewriter," he said jokingly.
The receptionist was a sober young won1an. "The con1- pany
does not use rr1ale stenOgraphers," she said. "See Mr. Dilling
in booth twenty-six. He just might know of some advertising-
and-sales-promotion-type job."
He straightened his tie and coat, forced a srnile that iin- plied
he was looking into jobs at the Works as sort of a lark. He
walked into booth twenty-six and extended his hand to Mr.
l)illing, a rr1an of his own age. "Mr. l)illing, ni.y na1nc is
David Potter. I was curious to know what openings you might
have in
advertising and sales pron1otion, and thought I'd drop in for a
talk."
Mr. Dilling, an old hand at facing young men who tried to hide
their eagerness for a job, was polite but outvardly
unin1pressed. "Well, you can1e at a bad tirne, I'1n afraid, Mr.
Potter. The competition for that kind of job is pretty stiff, as
you perhaps know, and there isn't much of anything open just
now.''
David nodded. "! see." He had had no experience in asking for a
job with a big organization, and Mr. l)illing was making

hin1avvare of what a fine art it Vas·-if you couldn't run a
rnachine. A duel was under way.
"But have a seat anyway, Mr. Potter."
"Thank you." He looked at his watch. "I really ought to be
getting back to 1ny P.aper soon."
"You work on a paper around here?"
"Yes. Iown a weekly paper in })orset, abou t ten n1iles fro1n
Iliun1."
"Oh-·-you don't say. Lovely little village. Thinking of giving up
the paper, are you'"
"Well, no- ·not exactly. It's a possibility. I bought the paper
soon after the war, so I've beerf vvith it for eight years,
223
W E L C O M E T O T H E M O N K E Y H O U S E
D E E R I N T H E W 0 R K S·
and I don't want to go stale. I might be wise to move on. It all
depends .on what opens up."
"You have a family?" said Mr. Dilling pleasantly. "Yes. My
wifo, and two boys and two girls."
"A nice, big, well-balanced family," said Mr. Dilling. "_And
you're so young, too."
"Twenty-nine," said David. He stniled. "We didn't plan it to be
quite that big. It's run to twin.s. The boys are twins, and then,
several days ago, the girls ca1ne."
"You don't say!" said Mr. Dilling. He winked. "That would
certainly start a young rrtan thinking about getting a little

security, eh, with a family like that?"
Both of then!treated the remark casually, as though it were no
n1ore than a pleasantry between two family rr1en. "It's what we
Vanted, actually, tVO boys, two girls," said David. "We didn't
expect to get them this quickly, bu t we're glad now. As far as
security goes-well, maybe I flatter myself, but I think the
adrninistrative and writing experience I've had running the
paper would be worth a good bit to the right people, if
something bappened to the paper."
"One of the big shortages in this country," said Dilling
philosophically, concentrating on lighting a cigarette, "is men
who know how to do things, and know hov to take responsi-
bility and get things done. I only wish there were better open-
ings in advertising and sales promotion than the ones we've got.
They're important, interesting jobs, understand, but I don't know
how you'd feel abou t the starting salary."
"Well, I'm just trying to get the lay of the land, now-to see how
things are. I have no idea vvhat salary industry might pay a rnan
like me, with n1y experience."
"The question experienced men like yourself usually ask is:
how high can I go and how fast? And the answer to that is that
the sky is . the litl}it for a ni_an with drive and creative
ambition. And he can go up fast or slow, depending on what
he's willing to do and capable of putting into the job. We might
start out a n1an like you at, oh, say, a hundred dollars a -..veek,
224
but that isn't to say you'd be stuck at that level for two years or
even two inonths.'' ·
"! suppose a man could keep a family on that until he got
rolling," said David.
''You'd find the work in the publicity end just about the sarne as
what you're doing now. Our publicity people have high
standards for writing and editing and reporting, and our
publicity re.leases don't Vind up in newspaper editors'
wastebas- kets. Our people do a professional job, and are weU-

respected as journalists." He stood. "I've got a little matter to
attend to-- take ine about ten mi1i_utes. Could you possibly
stick around? I'm enjoying our talk."
I?avid looked at his watch. "Oh-guess I could spare an other ten
or· fifteen rninutes."
Dilling was back in his booth in three tninutes, chuckling over
some private joke. "Just talking on the phone with Lou
Flammer, the publicity supervisor. Needs a new stenographer.
Lou's a card. Everybody here is crazy about Lou. Old weekly
ni_an hi1nse1f, and I guess that's where he learned to be so easy
to get along with.Just to feel him out for the hell of it, I told
him about you. I didn't conu1it you to anything-----just said
what you told me, that you were keeping your eyes open. And
guess what Lou said?'·'
"Guess what, Nan," said David Potter to his wife on the
telephone. He was wearing only his shorts, and was phoning
from the company hospital. "When you come home from the
hospital ton1orro:w, you'll be con1ing hon1e to a solid
citizen who polls down a hundred and ten dollars a week, every
week. I just got my badge and passed my physical!"
"Oh?" said Nan, startled. "It happened awfully fast, didn't it? I
didn't think you were going to plunge right in."
"What's there to wait for?"
"Well-I don't know. I mean, .how do you know what you're
getting into? You've never workeif for anybody but
225

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t W E L C O M E T O T H E M O N K E Y H O U S E
(
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a
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)huge organization. Iknevv you were going to talk to the Iliu1n
I the
D E E R IN T H E W O R K S
the Vay you have been-driving around the countryside, get-
ting news and talking and selling ads; coining ho1ne and
writing what you want to write, what you believe in. You
in the
Works!"
r'I!
ffi I I
''
people about a job, but I thought you planned to stick with
paper another year, anyvvay."
"In another year I'll be thirty, Nan." "Well?"
"That's pretty old to be starting a career in industry.
There are guys my age here who've been working their way up
for ten years. That's pretty stiff competition, and it'll be that
much stiffer a year from now. And how do Ve know Jason will
still want to buy the paper a year from now?" Ed Jason was
David's assistant, a recent college graduate whose father
vvanted to buy the paper for him. "And this job that opened up
today in publicity won't be open a year from now, Nan. Now
was the tirne to switch-this afternoon[ ''
Nan sighed. "I suppose. But it doesn't seem like you. The Works
are fine for some people; they seem to thrive on that life. But
you've always heen so free. And you. love the paper-·-you know
you do."
"I do," said David, "and it'll break my heart to let it go. I t

was a swell thing to do when we had no kids, but it's a
shaky living now-with the kids to educate an_d alL"
"1:3ut, hon," said Nan, "the paper is n1aking n-ioney."
"It could fold like that," said David, snapping his fingers. "A
d'aily could come in with a one-page insert of Dorset news, or-''
"Dorset likes its little paper too much to let that happen.
They like you and the job you're doing too much." David
nodded. "'What about ten years fro1n now?"
"What about ten years fl-om now in the Works? What about ten
years from now anywhere?"
"It's a better bet that the Works will still be here. I haven't
got the right to take long chances any tnore, Nan, not with
a big fan.Lily counting on 1ne."
"It's what I've got to do./'
"All right, if you say so. I've had my. say."
"It's still journalisn1 , high-grade journalisn 1," said David.
''.Just don't sell the paper to Jason right away. Put him in
charge, but let's vvait a month or so, please?"
"No sense in waiting, but if you really want to, all right." David
held up a brochure he'd been handed after his physical
examination was con1pleted. "Listen to this, Nan: under the
company Security Package, I get ten dolla rs a day for hospital
expenses in case of illness, full pay for twenty-six weeks, a
hundred dollars fr special hospital expenses. Iget life
insurai1ce for about half what it would cost on the outside. For
whatever I put into government bonds under the payroll-savings
plan, the company will give 1ne a five per cent bonus in
company stock-twelve years from now. Iget two weeks' vacation
-with pay each year, and, after fifteen years, I get three weeks.
Get free m_embership in the co1npany country club. After
twenty- five years, I'll be eligible for a pension of at least a
hundred and twenty-five dollars a 1nonth, and - In.uch 1T1ore
if Irise in the organization and _stick with it for more than
twenty-five years!"
"(;ood heavens!" said Nan.

''I'd be a damn fool .to pass that up, Nan."
"I still wish you'd waited until the little girls and I were horne
and settled, and you got used to them. I feel you were panicked
into this."
"No, nothis is it, Nan. Give the little girls a kiss apiece for n1c.
I've got to go now, and report to 1ny neV supervisor."
"Your what?"
.I
"Supervisor."
"It won't be a very happy big.family, darling, if you're not
"Oh. I thought
that's what you said, but I couldn't be
doing what you want to do. I want you to go on being happy
226'
sure." j
227
D E E R IN T H E W O R K S

"Good-by, Nan."
"Good-by, David."
David clipped his badge to his lapel, and stepped out of the
hospital and onto the hot asphalt floor of the world within the
fences of the Works. J)ull thunder can1e frorn th'e buildings
around him, a truck honke at hin1, and a cinder blew in his eye.
He dabbed at the cinder with a corner of his handkerchief and
finally got it out. When his vision was restored, he looked about
hin1self for Building 31, where his new office and supervisor
were. Four busy streets fanned out fro1n where he stood, and
each stretched seemingly to infinity.
He stopped a passerby who was in less of a desperate hurry than
the rest. "Could you tell me, please, how to find Building 31,
Mr. Flammer's office?"
The man he asked was old and bright-eyed, apparently getting
as nuch pleasure fro111 the clangor and sn1ells and nervous
activity of the Works as David vvou1d have gotten from April
in Paris. He squinted at David's badge and then at his face. "Just
starting out, are you?"
"Yes sir. My first day."
"What do you know about that?" The old man shook his head
wonderingly, and winked. 'Just starting out. Building 31? Well,
sir, when I first came to work here in 1899, you could see
Building 31 fion1 here, with nothing between us and it but
n1ud. Nov it's all built up. See that vater tank up .there, 3;bout
a quarter of a mile? Well, Avenue 17 branches off there, and
you follow that aln1ost to the end, then cut across the tracks,
and··· Just starting out, eh? Well, I'd better walk you up there.
Came here for just a minute to talk to the pension folks, but that
can wait. I'd erjoy the walk."
"Thank you."
"Fifty-year man, I was," he said proudly, and he led f)avid up
avenues and alleys, across tracks, over ran1ps and through

tunnels, through buildings filled with spitting, whin-
228
ing, grumbling machinery, and down corridors with green
walls and numbered black doors.
"Can't be a fifty-year man no n1ore," said the old man pityingly.
"Can't come to work until you're eighteen nowa- 'days, and you
got to _retire, when you're sixty-five." I-le poked his thumb
under his lapel to make a small gold button protrude. On it was
the nurnber "50" superirnposed on the con1pany traden1ark.
"Something none of you youngsters can look for-
ward to wearing some day, no rnatter how much you Vant
one."
HVery nice button," said David.
The old man pointed out a door. "Here's Flammer's office.
Keep your mouth shut till you find out who's who and what
they think. Good luck."
Lou Flammer's secretary was not at her desk, so David walked
to .the door of the inner office and knocked.
"Yes?" said a µian's voice sweetly. "Please co1ne in." David
opened the door. "Mr. Flanuner?"
I.-0u Flammer was a short, fat 111an in his early thirties. He
beamed at David, "What can I do to help you?"
"I'rn David Potter, Mr. Flanuner."
Flammer's Santa-Claus-like demeanor decayed. He leaned back,
propped his feet on his desk top, and stuffed a cigar, which
he'd concealed in his cupped hand, into his large mouth. "Hell-
thought you were a scoutlnaster." He looked at his desk clock,
which was mounted in a n1iniature of the com_- pany's nevvest
autornatic dishwasher. "Boy scouts touring the Works.
Supposed to stop in here fifteen rninutes ago for me to give 'em
a talk on scouting and industry. Fifty-six per cent of Federal
Apparatus' _executives were eagle scouts."
David started to laugh, but found himself doing it all alone, and
he stopped. "Amazing figure," he said.
"It is,n said Flan1rr1er judiciously. "Says so1nething for

scouting and son1ething for industry. N ov..7, before I tell you
where your desk is, I'm supposed to explain the rating-sheet
229
'
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system. That's what the Manual says. Dilling tell you about
tl1at?"
"Not that I recall. There was an awful lot of information all at
once."
"Well, there's nothing n1uch to it," said Flan1n1er. "Every six
m.onths a rating sheet is 1nade out on you, to let you and to let
us know just where you stand, and what sort of progress you've
been n1aking. 1""hree people who've been close to your work
make out independent ratings of you, and then all the
information 'is. brought together on a 111aster copy-with car-
bons for you, rr1e, and Persom1el, and the original for the head
of the Advertising and Sales Promotion Division. It's very help-
ful for everybody, you most of all, if you take it the right way."
He waved a rating sheet before David. "See? Blanks for appear-
ance, loyalty, pron1ptness, initiative, cooperativenessthings
like that. You'll 1nake out rating sheets on other people, too,
and vvhoever does the rating is anony1nous."
"I see." David felt hin1self reddening with resentment. J--Ie
fought the e1notion, telling hirnself his reaction was a srnall-
tovn inan's-·-and that it would do hin1 good to learn to think as
a rr1eniber of a great, efficient team.

"Now about pay, Potter,"·said Flani1ner, "there'll never
be any point in coming ju to ask nic for a raise. T'hat's all done
on ·the basis of the rdting sheets and the salary curve." He
run11naged. through his drawers and found a graph, vvhich he
spread out on his desk. "f--Iere-now you see this curve? Well,
it's the average salary curve for rr1en witl1 college educations
in the company. See--you can follow it on up. At thirty, the
average man 111akes this much; at forty, this much-and so on.
Now, this curve above it shows what men with real growth
potential can make. See? It's a little higher and curves upward a
li ttle £tster. You're how old?"
"Twenty-nine," said David, trying to seo what the salary figures
were that ran along one side of the graph. Flanur1er saw him
doing it, and pointedly kept them hidden with his forearm. "Uh-
huh." Flarnmer wet the tip of a pencil with his
230
tongue, and drew a small "x" on the graph, squarely astride the
average rnan's curve. "rf here you are!"
(
•
)David looked at the mark, and then followed the curve with
his eyes .across the paper, over little bumps, up gentle slopes,
along desolate plateaus, until it died abruptly at the mar- gin
which represented age sixtycfive. The graph left no questions
to be asked and was deaf to argument. David looked frorn it to
the human being he would also be dealing with. "You had
a weekly once, did you, Mr. Flarnmer?" i
Flarnrner laughed. "In rny nalve, idealistic youth, Potter, I
sold ads to fee.cl stores, gathered gossip, set type, and
wrote p
(
r

) (
.
)editorials that vvere going to save the world, by God." David
smiled adn1iringly. "What a circus, eh?"
"Circus?" said Flan1n1er. ' Freak show, niaybe. It's a good f l
(
0
)way to grov.r up fast. '.fook rne about six rnonths to find out I
I
(
.
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)Vas killing myself for peanuts, that a little guy couldn't
even
save a village three blocks long, and that the world wasn't worth
. I
saving anyway. So I started looking out for N umber One. Sold
out to a chain,- came down here, and here I a1n."
The telephone rang. "Yes?" said Flamtner sweetly. "Puh- bliss-
itee." f-Iis -benign snllle fJ.ded. "No. You 're kidding, aren't
you? Where? Really--this is no gag' All right, all right. Lord!
What a time for this to happen. I haven't got anybody here, and
I can't get away on account of the godda1n boy scouts." f-Ie
hung up. "l::>otter-you've got your first assignment. There's a
deer loose in the Works!"
"l)eer?"
"Don't knov hovv he got in, but he's .In. P.lun1ber went to fix a
drinking fountain out at the softball diamond across from
Building 217, and flushed a deer ou t from under the bleachers.
Now they got him cornered up around the metallurgy lab." He
stood and harrunered on his desk. "Murder! The story will go
(
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)all over the country, Potter. Talk about hurr1an interest.
Front page! Of all the times for Al Tappin to be out at the

Ashtabula
Works, taking pictures of a new viscorncter they cooked up
out ,
tht;re! All right-I'll call up a hack photogra her downtown,
2 31
Potter, and get him to meet yon out by tbe metallurgy lab. Yon
get the story and see that he gets· the right shots. Okay?"
He led David into the hallway. ''.Just go back the way you
came, turn left instead of right at fractional horsepower motors,
cut through hydraulic engineering, catch bus eleven on Avenue
9, and it'll take you right there. After you get the story and
pictures, we'll get them cleared by the law division, the plant
security officer, our departnient head and buildings and
grounds, and shoot them right ou t. Now get going. That deer
isn't on the payroll-he isn't going to wait for you. Come to work
today-tomorrow your work will be on every fron t page i11 the .
country, if we can get it approved. The na1ne of tl1e

photographer you're going to meet is McGarvey. Got it? You're
in the big time now, Potter. We'll all be watching." He shu t the
door behind David.
David found himself trotting down the hall, down a stair
way, and into an alley, brushing roughly past persons in a race
. against ti1r1e. Many turned to -watch the purposeful young
man with admiration.
On and on he strode, his min_d seething with information:
Flammer, Building 31; deer, metallurgy lab; photagrapher, Al
Tappin. No. Al 1appin in Ashtabula. Flenny the hack
photagrapher. No. McCa1r1mer. 1Vo. McCarn111er is new
supervisor. Fifty-six per cent eagle scouts. Deer by viscometer
laboratory. No. Viscon1eter in Ashta- bU la. Call Danner, new
supervisor, and get instructions right. Three UJeeks' vacation
efter fifteen years. Danner not neu1 supervisor. Any- way, new
supervisor in Building 319. No. Fanner in Building
39981983319.
David stopped, blocked by a grimy window at the end of a blind
alley. All he knew was that he'd never been there before, that
his 1ncmory had blown a gasket, and that the deer WdS not on
the payroll. The air in the alley was thick with tango n1usic and
the stench of scorched insulation. David scrubbed away some of
the crust on the window with his handkerchief,. praying for a
glimpse of something that n1ade sense.
232
Inside were ranks of women at benches, rocking their he;ids in
time to the music, anc::l dipping soldering irons into great
n.ests of colored wires that crept past the1n on endless belts.
One of them looked up and saw David, and winked in tango
rhythm. David fled.
At the mouth of the alley, he stopped a man and asked hin1if
he'd heard anything about a deer in the Works. The rnan shook
his head and looked at David oddly, making David aware of
how frantic he must look. "[ heard it was. out by the lab," David
said rr1ore caln1ly.

"Which lab?" said the man.
"That's what I'1n not sure of," said David. "There's rnore than
one?"
"Chemical lab?" said the r.nan. "Materials testing lab?
Paint lab? Insulation lab?"
"No-I don't think it's any of those," said David.
"Well, I could st;;nd here all afternoon naming labs, and
probably not hit the right one. Sorry, I've go.t to go. You don't
know what building they've got the differential analyzer in, do
you?"
"Sorry," said David. He stopped several other people, none
of whom knew anything about the deer, and he tried to
retrace his steps to the office of his supervisor, vvhatever
his name was. fie was svept this Way· and that by the
curents o( the Works, stranded in backwaters, sucked back
into the main stream, and his mind was n1ore and 1nore
numbed, and the mere reflexes of self-preservation were
rnore and n1ore · in charge.
He chose a building at ran.dorn, and walked inside for a
momentary respite fron1the sun11ner heat, and was deafened by
the clangor of steel sheets being cut and punched, being
smashed into strange shapes by great hammers that dropped out
of the sn1oke and dust overhead. A hairy, heavily muscled n1an
was seated near the door on a wooden stool, watching a giant
lathe turn a bar of steel the size of a silo.j
233

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Vlf E L C O M E T O T H E M O N K E Y H O U S E
David now had the idea of going through a company phone
directory until he recognized his supervisor's name. He called to
the n1achinist fro1n a few feet away, but his voice -was lost in
the din. He tapped the man's shoulder. "Telephone around
here?"
The man nodded. He cupped his hands around David's
ear, and shouted. "Up that, and through the-" Down crashed a
hannner. "Turn left and keep going until you-".An overhead
crane dropped a stack of steel plates. "Four doors down from
there is it. Can't miss it."
])avid, his ears ringing and his head aching, walked into the
street again and chose another door. f-Iere was peace and_ air
conditioning. I--:le was in the lobby of an auditoriurn, vhere a
group of men were examining a box studded with dials and

sVitches that Vras spotlighted and rnounted on a revolving
plat- forrn.
"Please, miss," he said to a receptionist by the door,
"could you tell me where I could find a telephone?"
"It's right around the corner, sir," she said. "13ut I'm afraid .no
one is permitted here (oday but the crystallographers. Are you
with then1?"
"Yes," said David.
"Oh-well, come right in. Name?"
He told her, and a man sitting next to lier lettered it on a badge.
The badge was hung on his chest, and David headed for the
telephone. A grinning, bald, big-toothed man, wearing a badge
that said, "Stan Dunkel, Sales," caught him and steered him to
the display.
"Dr. Potter," said Dunkel, "I ask you: is that the way to
build an X-ray spectrogonio1neter, or is that the vvay to build
an X-ray spectrogonio1neter?''
"Yes," said David. ''That's the way, all right."
"Martini, Dr. Potter?" said a n1aid, offering a tray.
David en1ptied a Martini in one gloriously hot, tinging
gulp.
234
"What features do you want in an 'X-ray spectrogoniome- ter,
Doctor?" said Dunkel.
"It should be sturdy, Mr. Dunkel," said David, and he left
Dunkel there, , pledging his reputation that there wasn't a
sturdier one on earth.
lri the phone booth, David had barely got through the telephone

directory's A's before the na1ne of his supervisor nll- raculously
returned to his consciousness: Flarruner! He found the
number and dialed.
"Mr. Flamn1er's office," said a wornan.
"Could I speak to him, please? This is David Potter." "Oh-Mr.
Potter. Well, Mr. Flamrner is sornewhere out
in the Works now, but he left a n1essage for you. He said
there's an added twist on the deer story. When they catch the
deer, the venison is going to be used at the Quarter-Century
Club pic- nic."
"Quarter-Century Club?" said David.
"Oh, that's really something, Mr. Potter. It's for people who'Ve
been with the company twenty-five years or 1nore. Free drinks
and cigars, an_d just the best of everything. They have a
wonderful time."
"Anything else about the deer?"
"Nothing he hasn't already told you," she said, and she hung up.
Davld ])otter, with a third Martini in his otherwise ernpty
stomach, stood in front of the auditorium and looked both ways
for a deer.
"But our X-ray spectrogoniom"eter is sturdy, Dr. Potter,"
Stan Dunkel called to him from the auditorium steps.
Across the street was a patch of green, bordered by hedges,
David pushed thro1.1gh the hedges into the outfield of a
softball diamond. He crossed it and went behind the bleachers,
where there was cool shade, and h e sat down with his back to a
wire-1nesh fence which separated one end of the Works fro1n a
deep pine woods·. There were tv..ro gates in th.e fence, but both
were wired shut.
f
235

·,:,! :,
])avid was going to sit there for just a nloment, long enough to
get his nerve back, to take bearings. Maybe he could leave a
message for Fla1nn1er, saying he'd suddenly fallen ill, which
was essentially true, or-
"There he goesl " cried somebody from the other side of the
diamond. There were gleeful cries, shouted ordCrs, the sounds
of rnen running.
A . deer with broken antlers dashed under the bleachers, saw
David, and ran fran tically into the open again along the fence.
I-le ran with a 1in1p, and his reddish-brown coat was streaked
with soot an grease.
"Easy now! Don't rush !Lim! Just keep him there. Shoot into the
woods, not the Works."
David came out from under the bleachers to see a great
sernicircle of n1en, several ranks deep, closing in slowly on the
corer of fence in which the deer "..Vas at bay. In the front rank
were a dozen conipany policen1en with drawn pistols. Other
rr1embers of the posse carried sticks and rocks and lariats

hastily fashioned fro1n wire.
The deer pawed the grass, and bu cked, and jerked its broken
antlers in the direction ·of the crowd.
"Hold it!" shouted a fa1niliar voice. A company limousine
rumbled across the diamond to the back of the crowd. Leaning
out of a vrindovv Was I.,ou Flan1rner, David's supervisor.
"Don't shoot until we get a picture of him alive," _con1rr1anded
Flan1- mer. He pulled a photographer out of the limousine, and
pushed him into the front rank.
Flammer saw David standing alone by the fence, his back to a
gate. "Good boy, l)otter," called Flarnmer. "Right on the ball!
Photographer got lost, and I had to bring him here myself "
The photographer fired his flash bulhs. The deer bucked and
sprinted along the fenCe toward David. )avid unwired the gate,
opened it wide. A second later the deer's white tail was flashing
through the woods and gone.
2 36
The profound silence was broken first by the whistling of a
switch engine an.cl then by the click of a latch as David
stepped into the woods and closed the gate behind him. He
didn't look back.
(1955)

''- "),

)-
Appendix D
HCA/240 Version 4

1
Associate Level Material
Appendix D
Read each scenario and write a 25- to 50-word answer for each
question following the scenarios. Use at least one reference per
scenario and format your sources consistent with APA
guidelines.
Scenario A
Acute renal failure: Ms. Jones, a 68-year-old female, underwent
open-heart surgery to replace several blocked vessels in her
heart. On her first day postoperatively, it was noted that she had
very little urine output.
1. What is happening to Ms. Jones’s kidneys, and why is it
causing the observed symptom?
2. What other symptoms and signs might occur?
3. What is causing Ms. Jones’s kidney disease?
4. What are possible treatment options, and what is the
prognosis?
Scenario B
Chronic renal failure:Mr. Hodges, a 73-year-old man, has had
congestive heart failure for the past 5 years. His doctor has told
him that his heart is not functioning well, needing more and
more medicine to maintain circulatory function. He has noticed
that he is not urinating more than once a day.
5. Why is the condition of Mr. Hodges’s kidneys affecting the
rest of his body?
6. As his chronic renal failure worsens, what other symptoms
and signs might occur in his respiratory, digestive, nervous, and
urinary systems?
7. What is causing Mr. Hodges’s kidney disease?
8. What are possible treatment options, and what is the
prognosis?
HCA/240
SAMPLE

Title: TOO EMBARRASSED NOT TO KILL
Author(s): Robert R. Harris
Source: The New York Times Book Review.
.
(Mar. 11, 1990): Arts and Entertainment:
Document Type: Article
Full Text:
LEAD:
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
By Tim O'Brien.
273 pp. Boston:
Seymour Lawrence/Houghton Mifflin Company. $19.95.
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
By Tim O'Brien.
273 pp. Boston:
Seymour Lawrence/Houghton Mifflin Company. $19.95.
Only a handful of novels and short stories have managed to
clarify, in any lasting way, the meaning of the war in Vietnam
for America and for the soldiers who served there. With ''The
Things They Carried,'' Tim O'Brien adds his second title to the
short list of essential fiction about Vietnam. As he did in his
novel ''Going After Cacciato'' (1978), which won a National
Book Award, he captures the war's pulsating rhythms and nerve-
racking dangers. But he goes much further. By moving beyond
the horror of the fighting to examine with sensitivity and insight
the nature of courage and fear, by questioning the role that
imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own
versions of truth, he places ''The Things They Carried'' high up
on the list of best fiction about any war.
''The Things They Carried'' is a collection of interrelated
stories. A few are unremittingly brutal; a couple are flawed two-
page sketches. The publisher calls the book ''a work of fiction,''
but in no real sense can it be considered a novel. No matter. The
stories cohere. All deal with a single platoon, one of whose
members is a character named Tim O'Brien. Some stories are
about the wartime experiences of this small group of grunts.

Others are about a 43-year-old writer - again, the fictional
character Tim O'Brien - remembering his platoon's experiences
and writing war stories (and remembering writing stories) about
them. This is the kind of writing about writing that makes Tom
Wolfe grumble. It should not stop you from savoring a stunning
performance. The overall effect of these original tales is
devastating.
As might be expected, there is a lot of gore in ''The Things They
Carried'' - like the account of the soldier who ties a friend's
puppy to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezes the firing
device. And much of the powerful language cannot be quoted in
a family newspaper. But let Mr. O'Brien explain why he could
not spare squeamish sensibilities: ''If you don't care for
obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the
truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home
talking dirty.''
In the title story, Mr. O'Brien juxtaposes the mundane and the
deadly items that soldiers carry into battle. Can openers,
pocketknives, wristwatches, mosquito repellent, chewing gum,
candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, matches,
sewing kits, C rations are ''humped'' by the G.I.'s along with M-
16 assault rifles, M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers.
But the story is really about the other things the soldiers
''carry'': ''grief, terror, love, longing . . . shameful memories''
and, what unifies all the stories, ''the common secret of
cowardice.'' These young men, Mr. O'Brien tells us, ''carried the
soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men
killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.''
Embarrassment, the author reveals in ''On the Rainy River,'' is
why he, or rather the fictional version of himself, went to
Vietnam. He almost went to Canada instead. What stopped him,
ironically, was fear. ''All those eyes on me,'' he writes, ''and I
couldn't risk the embarrassment. . . . I couldn't endure the
mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. . . . I was a
coward. I went to the war.''
So just what is courage? What is cowardice? Mr. O'Brien spends

much of the book carefully dissecting every nuance of the two
qualities. In several stories, he writes movingly of the death of
Kiowa, the best-loved member of the platoon. In ''Speaking of
Courage,'' Mr. O'Brien tells us about Norman Bowker, the
platoon member who blames his own failure of nerve for
Kiowa's death. Bowker ''had been braver than he ever thought
possible, but . . . he had not been so brave as he wanted to be.''
In the following story, ''Notes'' (literally notes on the writing of
''Speaking of Courage''), Mr. O'Brien's fictional alter ego
informs the reader that Bowker committed suicide after coming
home from the war. This author also admits that he made up the
part about the failure of nerve that haunted Bowker. But it's all
made up, of course. And in ''The Man I Killed,'' Mr. O'Brien
imagines the life of an enemy soldier at whom the character Tim
O'Brien tossed a grenade, only to confess later that it wasn't
''Tim O'Brien'' who killed the Vietnamese.
Are these simply tricks in the service of making good stories?
Hardly. Mr. O'Brien strives to get beyond literal descriptions of
what these men went through and what they felt. He makes
sense of the unreality of the war - makes sense of why he has
distorted that unreality even further in his fiction - by turning
back to explore the workings of the imagination, by probing his
memory of the terror and fearlessly confronting the way he has
dealt with it as both soldier and fiction writer. In doing all this,
he not only crystallizes the Vietnam experience for us, he
exposes the nature of all war stories.
The character Tim O'Brien's daughter asks him why he
continues to be obsessed by the Vietnam War and with writing
about it. ''By telling stories,'' he says, ''you objectify your own
experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain
truths.'' In ''Good Form,'' he writes: ''I can look at things I never
looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God.
I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.'' You come away
from this book understanding why there have been so many
novels about the Vietnam War, why so many of Mr. O'Brien's
fellow soldiers have turned to narrative - real and imagined - to

purge their memories, to appease the ghosts.
Is it fair to readers for Mr. O'Brien to have blurred his own
identity as storyteller-soldier in these stories? ''A true war story
is never moral,'' he writes in ''How to Tell a True War Story.''
''It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models
of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the
things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not
believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if
you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from
the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very
old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is
no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true
war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to
obscenity and evil.'' Mr. O'Brien cuts to the heart of writing
about war. And by subjecting his memory and imagination to
such harsh scrutiny, he seems to have reached a reconciliation,
to have made his peace - or to have made up his peace.
FLASHES FROM THE FOLIAGE
Almost all the dramatic furnishings of ''The Things They
Carried'' - characters, scenery, incidents - are embedded in the
Vietnam War. But the book is not about Vietnam and not about
war, Tim O'Brien said in a telephone interview from his home
in Boxford, Mass. There are almost no Vietnamese in the book,
none with names anyway, a reflection of ignorance among the
soldiers, the 43-year-old writer said. Mr. O'Brien draws on his
year in Vietnam, but the character named Tim O'Brien is ''just a
21-year-old kid at war. I did not know the culture or the
language. I was afraid of dealing with stereotypes. I did try
once, with the Tim character, to imagine the life of the man I
killed, and that was the nearest I could come.''
Nor is there much war in ''The Things They Carried,'' and that
too was typical. ''It was like trying to pin the tail on the Asian
donkey,'' Mr. O'Brien said, ''but there was no tail and no
donkey. In a year I only saw the living enemy once. All I saw
were flashes from the foliage and the results, the bodies. In
books or films it is desirable to have a climactic battle scene,

but the world does not operate in those gross dramatic terms. In
Vietnam there was a general aimlessness, not just in the
physical sense, but beyond that in the moral and ethical sense.''
So what's the book about? ''It is a writer's book on the effects of
time on the imagination. It is definitely an antiwar book; I hated
the war from the beginning. [The book] is meant to be about
man's yearning for peace. At least I hope it is taken that way.''
BARTH HEALEY
CAPTION(S):
Drawing
By ROBERT R. HARRIS; Robert R. Harris is an editor of The
Book Review.
Source Citation
Harris, Robert R. "TOO EMBARRASSED NOT TO KILL." The
New York Times Book Review 11 Mar. 1990. Academic
OneFile. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA175448232&v
=2.1&u=lewi36276&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A175448232
38 I TIM O' B R I E N
Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a life- time ago,
and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometin1es
remembering will lead to a story, vvhich n1akes it forever.
That's what stories are for. Stories are forjoining the past to the
future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you
can't remember how you got from where you were to where you
are. Stories are for eternity, vvhen
Sample

On th
(
I
).. ·- 1
_I
memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember ex-
cept the story.
Rainy River
(
T
)his is one story I've never told before. Not
to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not
even to my wife. To go into it, I've always thought, would
only cause embarrassment for all of us, a sudden need to be
elsewhere, which is the natural re-
(
1
)sponse to a confession. Even now
I'll admit, the story
·makes me squirm. For more than twenty years I've had to with

it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away, and
so by this act of remembrance, by putting tbe facts down on
paper, I'm hoping to reheve at least some of the pres· sure on
my dreams. Still, it's a hard story to tell. All of us, I suppose,
like to believe that in a moral emergency we will
.behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forth-
.rightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Cer·
'tainly that was my conviction back in the summer of I 968. Tim
O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger. Ifthe stakes ver
became high enough-if the evil were evil enough, if
e good were good enough-I would simply tap a secret
40 I TIM O 'BRIEN
reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over
the year's. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite
quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing
it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our
moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must
be drawn down. It was a comforting the- ory. It dispensed with
all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope
and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while
amortizing the future.
In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Ma- calester
College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one
years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the
American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood
was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose,
no consensus on matters of phi- losophy or history or law. The
very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A
war of national liberation
or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What
really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the
Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a Commu- nist stooge, or a

nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva
Accords? What about SEATO and
the Cold War? What about dominoes? America was di- vided on
these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out
across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets!
and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most
fundamental matters of public pol- icy. The only certainty that
summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is,
that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of
course, is always im- perfect, but it seemed to me that when a
nation goes to war
Th e Thi ng s T li ey C a rrie d I 41
it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and im-
perative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people
are dead, you can't make them undead.
In any case those were my convictions, and back in college I
had taken a modest stand against the war. Nothing radical, no
hothead stuff, just ringing a few doorbells for Gene McCarthy,
composing a few tedious, uninspired editorials for the campus
newspaper. Oddly, though, it was almost entirely an
intellectual activity. I brought some energy to it1 of course,
but it was the energy that accompanies almost any abstract
endeavor; I felt no personal danger; I felt no sense of an
impending crisis in my life. Stupidly, with a kind of smug
removal that I can't begin to fathom, I assumed that the
problems of killing and dying did not fall within my special
province.
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a hu- mid
afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quiet, and I'd just come
in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having
lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening up the letter,
scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick bi;hind
my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. Itwasn't thinking, just
a silent howl. A million things all at
once-I Vas too good for this war. Too smart, too compas-

sionate, too everything. It couldn't happen. I was above it. I had
the world dicked-Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude and
president of the student body and a full-ride
scholarship for grad studies at Harvard. A mistake, t
w:
maybe-a foul-up in the paperwork. I was no soldier. I
hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping out. I hated dirt and tents
and mosquitoes. The sight of blood made me queasy, and I
couldn't tolerate authority, and I didn't know a rifle
42 I TIM O ' B R I E N
from a slingshot. I was a liberal, for Christ sake: If they needed
fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the- stone-age hawk?
Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat and Bomb Hanoi button, or
one of LBJ's pretty daughters, or Westmoreland's whole
handsome family-nephews and nieces and baby grandson. There
should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's
worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own
precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and
hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you
have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A
law, I thought.
I remember the rage in my stomach. Later it burned down to a
smoldering self-pity, then to numbness. At dinner that night
my father asked what my plans were. "Noth- ing," Isaid. "Wait."
I spent the summer of 1968 working in an Armour meatpacking
plant in my hometown of Worthington, Min- nesota. The plant
specialized in pork products, and for eight hours a day I stood
on a quarter-mile assembly line- more properly, a disassembly
line-removing blood clots from the necks of dead pigs. My job
title, I believe, was Declotter. After slaughter, the hogs were
decapitated, split down the length of the helly, pried open,
eviscerated, and strung up by the hind hocks on a high conveyer

belt. Then gravity took over. By the time a carcass reached my
spot on the line, the fluids had mostly drained out, everything
except for thick clots of blood in the neck and upper chest
cavity. To remove the stuff, I used a kind of water gun. The
T h e Thi n g s T h ey Ca rr i e d I 43
(
1
)machine was heavy, maybe eighty pounds, and was sus- pended
from the ceiling by a heavy rubber cord. There was some
bounce to it, an elastic up-and-down give and the trick was to
maneuver the gun with your whole body, not lifting with the
arms, just letting the rubber cord do the work for you. At one
end was a trigger; at the muzzle end was a small nozzle and a
steel roller brush. As a carcass passed by, you'd lean forward
and swing the gun up against the clots and squeeze the trigger,
all in one motion, and the brush would whirl and water would
come shooting out and you'd hear a quick splattering sound as
the clots dissolved into a fine red mist. Itwas not pleasant work.
Goggles were a necessity, and a rubber apron, but even so it
was like standing for eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood-
shower. At night I'd go home smelling of pig. It wouldn't go
away. Even after a hot bath, scrubbing hard, the stink was
always there-like old bacon, or sausage, a dense
greasy pig-stink that soaked deep into my skin and hair.
,or
Among other things, I remember, it was tough getting dates that
summer. I felt isolated; I spent a lot of time alone. And there
was also that draft notice tucked away in my wallet.
ln the evenings I'd sometimes borrow my father's car and drive
aimlessly around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about
the war and the pig factory and how my life seemed to be
collapsing toward slaughter. I felt paralyzed. All around me the
options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a
huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tight. There
was no happy way out. The government had ended most

graduate school deferments; the waiting lists for the National
Guard and Reserves were
44 I TI M O ' B R I E N
impossibly long; my health was solid; I didn't qualify for CO
status-no religious grounds, no history as a pacifist. Moreover, I
could nOt claim to be opposed to war as a matter of general
principle. There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was
justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a
Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such
circumstances I would've willingly marched off to the battle.
The problem, though, was that a draft board did not let you
choose your war.
Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror.
I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there,
not in a wrong war. Driving up Main Street, past the courthouse
and the Ben Franklin store, I sometimes felt the fear spreading
inside me like weeds. I imagined myself dead. I imagined
myself doing things I could not do-charging an enemy position,
taking aim at another human being.
At some point in mid-July I began thinking seriously
about Canada. The border lay a few hundred miles north, an
eight-hour drive. Both my conscience and my instincts were
telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell
and never stop. In the beginning the idea seemed purely
abstract, the word Canada printing itself out in my head; but
after a time I could see particular shapes and im- ages, the sorry
details of my own future-a hotel room in Winnipeg, a battered
old suitcase, my father's eyes as I tried to explain myself over
the telephone. I could almost hear his voice, and my mother's,
Run, I'd think. Then I'd think, Impossible. Then a second later
I'd think, Run.
It was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split. I couldn't

make up my mind. I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile.
I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my
Th e Th i n g s Th ey Ca rried I 45
friends and my family, my whole history, everything that
mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I
feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure. My hometown
was a conservative little spot on the prairie, a place where
tradition counted, and it was easy to imagine people sitting
around a table down at the old Gobbler Cafe on Main Street,
coffee cups poised, the conversation slowly zeroing in on the
young O'Brien kid, how the damned sissy had taken off for
Canada. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I'd sometimes carry on
fierce arguments with those people. I'd be screaming at them,
telling them how much I de- tested their blind1 thoughtless 1
automatic acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism,
their prideful ignorance, their love-it-or-leave-it platitudes,
how they were sending me off to fight a war they didn't
understand and didn't want to understand. I held them
responsible. By God, yes, I did. All of them-I held them
personally and individually responsible-the polyestered Kiwanis
boys,
th merchants and farmers, the pious churchgoers, the
chatty housewives, the PTA and the Lions club and the Veterans
of Foreign Wars and the fine upstanding gentry out at the
country club. They didn't know Bao Dai from tbe man in the
moon. They didn't know history. They didn't know the first
thing about Diem's tyranny, or the nature of Vietnamese
nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French-this was all
too damned complicated, it re- quired some reading-but no
matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple,
which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous
pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for
plain and simple reasons.
I was bitter, sure. But it was so much more than that.

46 I TIM O 'BRIEN
The emotions went from outrage to terror to bewilder- ment to
guilt to sorrow and then back again to outrage. I felt a sickness
inside me. Real disease.
Most of tbis I've told before, or at least hinted at, but
what I have never told is the full truth. How I cracked. How at
work one morning, standing on the pig line, I felt something
break open in my chest. I don't know what it was. I'll never
know. But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical
rupture--a cracking-leaking-popping feeling. I remember
dropping my water gun. Quickly, almost without thought, I took
off my apron and walked out of the plant and drove home. It
was midmorning,Iremember, and the house was empty. Down
in my chest there was still
that leaking sensation, something very vvarm and precious
spilling out, and I was covered with blood and hog-stink, and
for a long while I just concentrated on holding myself together.
I remember taking a hot shower. I remember packing a suitcase
and carrying it out to the kitcben, standing very still for a few
minutes, looking carefully at the fa- miliar objects all around
me. The old chrome toaster, the telephone, the pink and white
Formica on the kitchen counters. The room was full of bright
sunshine. Everything sparkled. My house, I thought. My life.
I'm not sure how long I stood there, but later I scribbled out a
short note to
my parents.
What it said, exactly, I don't recall now. Something vague.
Taking off will call, love Tim.
I drove north.
It's a blur now, as it was then, and all I remember is a

The Thing s They Ca rrie d I 47
sense of high velocity and the feel of the steering wheel in my
hands. I was riding on adrenaline. A giddy feeling, in a way,
except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to it-like
running a dead-end maze-no way out-it couldn't come to a
hppy conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was
all I could think of to do. Itwas pure flight, fast and mindless. I
had no plan. Just hit the harder at high speed and crash through
and keep on running. Near dusk I passed through Bemidji,
then turned northeast toward International Falls. I spent the
night in the car behind a closed-down gas station a half mile
from the border. In the morning, after gassing up, I headed
straight west along the Rainy River, which separates
Minnesota from Canada,'and which for me separated one life
from another. The land was mostly wilderness. Here and there I
passed a motel or bait shop, but otherwise the country unfolded
in great sweeps of pine and birch and sumac. Though it was still
_f,.ugust, the air already had the smell of October, foot- ball
season, piles of yellow-red leaves, everything crisp and clean. I
remember a huge blue sky. Off to my right was the Rainy River,
wide as a lake in places, and beyond the Rainy River was
Canada.
For a while I just drove, not aiming at anything, then in the late
morning I began looking for a place to lie low for a day or two.
I was exhausted, and scared sick, and around noon I pulled into
an old fishing resort called the Tip Top Lodge. Actually it was
not a lodge at all, just eight or nine tiny yellow cabins clustered
on a peninsula that jutted northward into the Rainy River. The
place was in sorry shape. There was a dangerous wooden dock,
an old min- now tank, a flimsy tar paper boathouse along the
shore.
48 I TI M O ' B R I E N

The main building, which stood in a cluster of pines on high
ground, seemed to lean heavily to one side, like a crip- ple, the
roof sagging toward Canada. Briefly, I thought about turning
around, just giving up, but then I got out of the car and walked
up to the front porch.
The man who opened the door that day is the hero of my life.
How do I say this without sounding sappy? Blurt it out-the man
saved me. He offered exactly what I needed, without questions,
without any words at all. He took me in. He was there at the
critical time-a silent, watchful presence. Six days later, when it
ended, I was unable to find a proper way to thank him, and I
never have, and so, if nothing else, this story represents a small
gesture of grati- tude twenty years overdue.
Even after two decades I can close my eyes and return to that
porch at the Tip Top Lodge. I can see the old guy staring at me.
Elroy Berdahl: eighty-one years old, skinny and shrunken and
mostly bald. He wore a flannel shirt and brown work pants. In
one hand, I remember, he carried a green apple, a small paring
knife in the other. His eyes had the bluish gray color of a razor
blade, the same polished shine, and as he peered up at me I felt
a strange sharpness,
The Thi ng s They C a rrie d I 49
"Dinner at five-thirty," he said. "You eat fish?" "Anything," I
said.
Elroy grunted and said, ''I'll bet."
We spent six days together at the Tip Top Lodge. Just the two
of us. Tourist season was over, and there Were no boats on the
river, and the wilderness seemed to withdraw into a great
permanent stillness. Over those six days Elroy Berdahl and I
took most of our meals together. In the mornings we

sometimes went out on long hikes into the woods, and at night
we played Scrabble or listened to tecords or sat reading in
front of his big stone fireplace. At times I felt the awkwardness
of an intruder, but Elroy ac- cepted me into his quiet routine
without fuss or ceremony. He took my presence for granted,
the same way he might've sheltered a stray cat-no wasted
sighs or pity- and there was never any talk about it. Just the
opposite. What I remember more than anything is the man's
willful, almost ferocious silence. In all that time together, all
those hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I
there? Why alone? Why so preoccupied? If Elroy was curi-
(
1
)almost painful
a cutting sensation, as if his gaze were
ous about any of this1
he was careful never to put it into
somehow slicing me open. In part, no doubt, it was my own
sense of guilt, but even so I'm absolutely certain that the old
man took one look and went right to the heart of things-a kid in
trouble. When I asked for a room, Elroy made a little clicking
sound with his tongue. He nodded, led me out to one of the
cabins, and. dropped a key in my hand. I remember smiling at
him. I also remember wishing I hadn't. The old man shook his
head as if to tell me it wasn't worth the bother.
words.
My hunch, though, is that he already knew. At least the basics.
After all, it was 1968, and guys were burning draft cards, and
Canada was just a boat ride away. Elroy Berdahl was no hick.
His bedroom, l remember, was clut- tered with books and
newspapers. He killed me at the Scrabble board, barely
concentrating, and on those occasions when speech was
necessary he had a way of com- pressing large thoughts into

small, cryptic packets of
so I TlM o·B R I E N
language. One evening, just at sunset, he pointed up at an owl
circling over the violet-lighted forest to the west.
"Hey, O'Brien," he said. "There's Jesus."
The man was sharp-he didn't miss much. Those razor eyes. Now
and then he'd catch me staring out at the river, at the far shore,
and I could almost hear the tumblers clicking in his head.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
One thing for certain, he knew I was in desperate trouble. And
he knew I couldn't talk about it. The wrong word-·-or even the
right word-;md I would've disap- peared. I was wired and
jittery. My skin felt too tight. After supper one evening
Ivomited and went back to my cabin and lay down for a few
moments and then vomited again; another time, in the middle of
the afternoon, I began sweating and couldn't shut it off. I went
through whole days feeling dizzy with sorrow. I couldn't sleep;
I couldn't lie still. At night I'd toss around in bed, half awake,
half dreaming, imagining how I'd sneak down to the beach and
quietly push one of the old man's boats out into the river and
start paddling my way toward Canada. There were times when I
thought I'd gone off the psychic edge. I couldn't tell up from
down, I was just falling, and late in the night I'd lie there
watching weird pictures spin through my head. Getting chased
by the Border Patrol-helicopters and searchlights and barking
dogs-I'd be crashing through the woods, I'd be down on my
hands and knees-people shouting out my name-the law closing
in on all sides-my hometown draft board and the FBI and the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police.. It all seemed crazy and
impossible. Twenty-one years old, an ordinary kid with all the
ordinary dreams and ambitions, and all I wanted was to live the

life I
The Thing s They Ca rrie d I 51
was born to-a mainstream life-I loved baseball and ham- burgers
and cherry Cokes-and now I was off on the mar- gins of exile,
leaving my country forever, and it seemed so impossible and
terrible and sad.
I'm not sure how I made it through those six days. Most of it I
can't remember. On two or three afternoons, to pass some time,
I helped Elroy get the place ready for win- ter, sweeping down
the cabins and hauling in the boats, little chores that kept my
body moving. The days were cool and bright. The nights were
very dark. One morning the old man showed me how to split
and stack firewood, and for several hours we just worked in
silence out behind his house. At one point, I remember, Elroy
put down his maul and looked at me for a long time, his lips
drawn as if fram- ing a difficult question, but then he shook his
head and went back to work. The man's self-control was
amazing. He never pried. He never put me in a position that re-
quired lies or denials. To an extent, I suppose, his reticence was
typical of that part of Minnesota, where privacy still held value,
and even if I'd been walking around with some horrible
deformity-four arms and three heads-I'm sure the old man
would've talked about everything except those extra arms and
beads. Simple politeness was part of it. But even more than that,
I think, the man understood that words were insufficient. The
problem had gone beyond discussion. During that long summer
I'd been over and over the various arguments, all the pros and
cons, and it was no longer a question that could be decided by
an act of pure reason. Intellect had come up against emotion.
My conscience told me to run, but some irrational and power-
ful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the

52 I T IM O ' BRIE N
[ The Thing s They Carrie d I 53
(
1
)war. What it came down to, stupidly
Vas a sense of shame.
ject had been settled. After a second he slapped his hands
Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.
Not my parents1 not my brother and sister1 not even the folks
down at the Gobbler Cafe. I was ashamed to be there at the Tip
Top Lodge. I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to
bdoing the right thing.
Some of this Elroy must've understood. Not the details, of
course, but the plain fact of crisis.
Although the old man never confronted me about it,
there was one occasion when he came close to forcing the whole
thing out into the open. It was early evening, and we'd just
finished supper, and over coffee and dessert I asked him about
my bill, how much I owed so far. For a long while the old man
squinted down at the tablecloth.
"Well, the basic rate," he said, "is fifty bucks a night.
Not counting meals. This makes four nights, right?"
I nodded. I had three hundred and twelve dollars in my wallet.
Elroy kept his eyes on the tablecloth. "Now that's an
on-season price. To be fair, I suppose we should knock it down

a peg or two." He leaned back in his chair. "What's a reasonable
nu1nber, you figure?"
"I don't know," I said. "Forty?"
"Forty's good. Forty a night. 1ben we tack on food- say another
hundred? Two hundred sixty total?"
"I guess."
He raised his eyebrows. "Too much?"
"No, that's fair. It's fine. Tomorrow, though . . . I think I'd
better take off tomorrow."
Elroy shrugged and began clearing the table. For a time
he fussed with the dishes, whistling to himself as if the sub-
together.
"You know what we forgot?" he said. "We forgot wages. Those
odd jobs you done. What we have to do, we have to figure out
what your time's worth. Your last job- how much did you pull in
an hour?"
"Not enough," I said.
"A bad one?"
"Yes. Pretty bad."
Slowly then, without intending any long sermon, I told him
about my days at the pig plant. It began as a straight recitation
of the facts, bnt before I could stop myself I was talking about
the blood clots and the water gun and how the smell had soaked
into my skin and how I couldn't wash it away. I went on for a
long time. I told him about wild hogs squealing in my dreams,
the sounds of butchery, slaughterhouse sounds, and how I'd
sometimes wake up with that greasy pig-stink in my throat.
Wben I was finished, Elroy nodded at me.
"Well, to be honest," he said, "when you first showed up here, I
wondered about all that. The aroma, I mean. Smelled like you
was awful damned fond of pork chops." The old man almost
smiled. He made a snuffling sound, then sat down with a pencil
and a piece of paper. "So what'd this crud job pay? Ten bucks
an hour7 Fifteen?"
"Less."

Elroy shook his head. ''Let's make it fifteen. You put in twenty-
five hours here, easy. That's three hundred sev- enty-five bucks
total wages. We subtract the two hundred sixty for food and
lodging, I still owe you a hundred and fifteen."
54 I TIM O ' B R I E N
He took four fifties out of his shirt pocket and laid them on the
table.
"Call it even," he said.
' 'No.' '
"Pick it up. Get yourself a haircut."
The money lay on the table for the rest of the evening. It was
still there when I went back to my cabin. In the morning,
though, I folJnd an envelope tacked to my door. Inside were the
four fifties and a two-word note that said
E/.1ERGENCY FUND.
The man knew.
Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the
events of that summer didn't happen in some other dimension, a
place where your life exists before you've lived it, and where it
goes afterward. None of it ever seemed real. During my time at
the Tip Top Lodge I had the feeling that I'd slipped out of my
own skin, hovering a few feet away while some poor yo-yo with
my name and face tried to make his way toward a future he
didn't understand and '-idn't want. Even now I can see myself
as I was then. It's like watching an old home movie: I'm young
and tan and fit. I've got hair-lots of it. I don't smoke or drink.
I'm wearing faded blue jeans and a white polo shirt. I can see
myself sitting on Elroy Berdahl' s dock near dusk one evening,
the sky a bright shimmering pink, and I'm finish- ing up a letter
to my parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing
it and how sorry I am that I'd never found the courage to talk to

them about it. I ask them not to be angry. I try to explain some
of my feelings, but there
T h e Thing s They Car ri ed I 55
(
I
)aren't enough words, and so I just say that it's a thing that has
to be done. At the end of the letter l talk about the va- cations
we used to take up in this north country, at a place called
Whitefish Lake, and how the scenery here reminds
i me of those good times. I tell them I'm fine. I tell them
I'll write again from Winnipeg or Montreal or wherever I end
up.
I
i On my last full day, the sixth day, the old man took me
out fishing on the Rainy River. The afternoon was sunny and
cold. A stiff breeze came in from the north, and I remember
how the little fourteen-foot boat made sharp rocking motions as
we pushed off from the dock. The cur- rent was fast. All around
us, l remember, there was a vast- ness to the world1 an
unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the water
reaching out toward nowhere. The
·air had the brittle scent of October.
For ten or fifteen minutes Elroy held a course up- stream, the
river choppy and silver-gray, then he turned straight north and
put the engine on full throttle. I felt the bow lift beneath me. l
remember the wind in my ears, the sound of the old outboard
Evinrude. For a time I didn't pay attention to anything, just
feeling the cold spray against my
face, but then it occurred to me that at some point we must've
passed into Canadian waters, across that dotted line between
two different worlds, and I remember a sudden tightness in my
chest as I looked up and watched the far shore come at me. This
wasn't a daydream. It was tangi- ble and real. As we came in
toward land, Elroy cut the engine, letting the boat fishtail
lightly about twenty yards off

56 I TIM O ' BRIEN
shore. The old man didn't look at me or speak. Bending down,
he opened up his tackle box and busied himself with a bobber
and a piece of wire leader, humming to himself, his eyes down.
It struck me then that he must've planned it. I'll never be
certain, of course, but I think he meant to bring me up against
the realities, to guide me across the river and to take me to the
edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I chose a life for myself.
I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at
Canada. The shoreline was dense with brush and timber.·1 could
see tiny red berries on the bushes. I could see a squirrel up in
one of the birch trees, a big crow looking at me from a boulder
along the river. That close-- twenty yards-and I could see the
delicate latticework of the leaves, the texture of the soil, the
browned needles beneath the pines, the configurations of
geology and human history. Twenty yards. I could've done it. I
could've jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me,
in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now1 as I
wdte this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to
The Thi ng s They C a rr i e d I 57
Now, perhaps, you can understand why I've never told this story
before. It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it,
no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will,
is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't
decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a
pretense of modest human dignity.
All I could do was cry. Quietly, not bawling, just the chest-
chokes.
(
1
)At the rear of the boat Elroy Berdahl pretended not to notice.
He held a fishing rod in his hands, his head bowed to hide his
eyes. He kept humming a soft, monotonous little tune.

Everywhere, it seemed, in the trees and water and sky, a great
worldvride sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing
sorrow, sorrow like I had never known it before. And what was
so sad, I realized, was that Canada had be- come a pitiful
fantasy. Silly and hopeless. Itwas no longer a possibility. Right
then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do
what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown
and my country and my life. I would not be brave. That old
image of myself as a
feel it-the wind coming off the river, the waves, the si-
hero, as a man of conscience and courage
all that was just a
lence, the vvooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the
Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and
there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest.
What would you do?
Would you jump7 Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you
think about your family and your childhood and your dreams
and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt7 Would it feel like
dying? Would you cry, as I did?
I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was
crying.
threadbare pipe dream. Bobbing there on the Rainy River,
looking back at the Minnesota shore, I felt a sudden swell of
helplessness come over me, a drowning sensation, as if! had
toppled overboard and was being swept away by the silver
waves. Chunks of my own history flashed by. I saw a seven-
year-old hoy in a white cowboy hat and a Lone Ranger mask
and a pair of holstered six-shooters; I saw a twelve-year-old
Little League shortstop pivoting to turn a double play; I saw a
sixteen-year-old kid decked out for his first prom, looking
spiffy in a white tux and a black how tie,

58 I T IM O 'BRIEN
his hair cut short and flat, his shoes freshly polished. My whole
life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me,
everything I had ever been or ever wanted to be. I couldn't get
my breath; I couldn't stay afloat; I couldn't tell which way to
swim. A hallucination, I suppose, but it was as real as anything
I would ever feel. I saw my parents call- ing to me from the far
shoreline. I saw my brother and sister, all the townsfolk, the
mayor and the entire Chamber of Commerce and all my old
teachers and girlfriends and high school buddies. Like some
weird sporting event: everybody screaming from the sidelines,
rooting me on-a loud stadium roar. Hotdogs and popcorn-
stadium smells, stadium heat. A squad of cheerleaders did
cartwheels along the banks of the Rainy River; they had
megaphones and pompoms and smooth brown thighs. The
crowd swayed left and right. A marching band played fight
songs. All my aunts and uncles were there, and Abraham
Lincoln, and Saint George, and a nine-year-old girl named
Linda who had died of a brain tumor back in fifth grade, and
several members of the United States Senate, and a blind poet
scribbling notes, and LBJ, and Huck Finn, and Abbie Hoff-
man, and all the dead soldiers back from the grave, and the
1nany thousands vvho were later to die-villagers with terrible
burns, little kids witl1out arms or legs-yes, and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff were there, and a couple of popes, and a first lieutenant
named Jimmy Cross, and the last surviv- ing veteran of the
American Civil War, and Jane Fonda dressed up as Barbarella,
and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and my grandfather,
and Gary Cooper, and a kind- faced woman carrying an
umbrella and a copy of Plato's Re- public, and a million
ferocious citizens waving flags of all
The Thin g s They Carri e d I 59
shapes and colors-people in hard hats, people in head- bands-
they were all whooping and chanting and urging me toward one

shore or the other. I saw faces from my distant past and distant
future. My wife was there. My unborn daughter waved at 'me,
and my two sons hopped up and down, and a drill sergeant
named Blyton sneered and shot up a finger and shook his head.
There was a choir in bright purple robes. There was a cabbie
from the Bronx. There was a slim young man I would one day
kill with a hand grenade along a red clay trail outside the
village of My Khe.
The little aluminum boat rocked softly beneath me.
There was the wind and the sky.
I tried to will myself overboard.
I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought,
Now.
I did try. Itjust wasn't possible.
All those eyes on me-the town, the whole universe- and I
couldn't risk the embarrassment. It was as if there were an
audience to my life, that swirl of faces along the river, and in
my head I could hear people screaming at me. Traitor1 they
yelled. 1irncoat' Pussy1 I felt myself blush. I couldn't tolerate
it. I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace1 or the
patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty
yards away, I couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to
do with morality. Embarrass- ment, that's all it was.
And right then I submitted.
I would go to the war-I would kill and maybe die-
because I was embarrassed not to.
That was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and
cried.
60 I TIM O ' B RIEN
Itwas loud now. Loud, hard crying.

Elroy Berdahl remained quiet. He kept fishing. He
The Thi ng s Th ey C a rrie d I 61
The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with fa-
miliar names, through the pine forests and down to the
worked his line with the tips of his fingers, patiently,
prairie, and then to Vietnam, vhere I was a soldier
and
(
1
)squinting out at his red and white bobber on the Rainy River.
His eyes were flat and impassive. He didn't speak. He was
simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun. And yet by
his presence, his mute watchfulness, he made it reaL He was the
true audience. He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who
look on in absolute silence
then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a
coward. I went to the war.
as we live our lives, as we make our choices or
them.
"Ain't biting," he said.
to make
Then after a time the old man pulled in his line and
turned the boat back toward Minnesota.
I don't remember saying goodbye. That last night we had dinner
together, and I went to bed early, and in the morning Elroy
fixed breakfast for me. When I told him I'd be leaving, the old

man nodded as if he already knew. He looked down at the table
and smiled.
At some point later in the morning it's possible that we shook
hands-!just don't remember-but I do know that by the time I'd
finished packin g the old man had disap- peared. Around noon,
when I took my suitcase out to the car, I noticed that his old
black pickup truck was no longer parked in front of the house. I
went inside and waited for a while, but I felt a bone certainty
that he wouldn't be back. In a way, I thought, it was
appropriate. I washed up the breakfast dishes, left his two
hundred dollars on the kitchen counter, got into the car, and
drove south toward home.
Instructions Due on 4/12/14
Fiction Reviews English 101
Prewriting:
1. Jot down the abstract subject of the story you plan to review.
2. List some of the main incidents or areas of discussion that
most clearly relate to the abstract subject.
3. In a sentence, state the theme of the story. To decide the
theme, imagine the author saying, “I’m going to write this
because I believe that….”
4. List (a.) the things you liked and (b.) the things you did not
like.
ABSTRACT SUBJECT: (about 50 words)
1. Reread paragraph one of “To Embarrassed Not to Kill.”
Without discussing anything specific about characters or action,
Harris presents the abstract subject of The Things They Carried.
He says it examines “the nature of courage and fear.”
2. In a paragraph, introduce the author and title of the story you
are reviewing. Also introduce the book’s abstract subject.
OVERVIEW (about 50 words)
1. Reread paragraph two of the review. Harris presents the
general subject matter of the book. He says it’s about the

wartime experiences of a single platoon.
2. Introduce the content of the story without going into much
detail. In other words, generalize about the subject matter used
to illustrate the abstract subject.
DETAILS RELATED TO ABSTRACT SUBJECT: (about 75-100
words)
1. Reread paragraphs three, four, and five. Harris presents
characters, objects, actions, and narration in the book that relate
to the nature of courage and fear.
2. Select details from your story that are related to the abstract
subject. You might include such things as: the effect of setting
on characters, problems that characters face, how characters
overcome or are defeated by their problems, significant objects,
significant dialogue, and real life examples of the abstract
subject.
CRITIQUE: (75-100 words)
1. Reread paragraphs six, seven, and eight. Harris discusses
O’Brien’s art and craft in The Things They Carried in relation
to the nature of courage and fear.
2. Critique your story. What is good or bad about the way the
story is told or the ideas presented? Discuss such things as
language, realism of the characters, clarity of ideas or action,
the writer’s attitude toward the subject, and whether or not your
attention was held throughout. Give reasons for your attitude
toward the story. Draw at least one conclusion about the
author’s overall treatment of the abstract subject.
THEME: (50 words)
1. Reread the last paragraph, which states the theme of the
book. O’Brien is quoted: “…you can tell a true war story by its
absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”
2. Write a final paragraph in which you state the theme of your
story. You might relate the theme to its relevance to our lives.

REVISION:
Reread and revise your fiction review. Is your discussion of
what happens in the story clearly related to the abstract subject
presented in your first paragraph? Have you included a
convincing number of examples to illustrate the abstract
subject? Have you expressed the theme clearly? Also check
your sentence structure and wording.

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