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“It’s just something you aren’t in a position to understand.”

She turned her back without another word, and left.

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

“You wait until Monday,” said Earl, “and we’re going out and have us a time, Sweetheart.”

“Fine,” said Ella spiritlessly. “Good. Glad.”

“You and Mom going to eat upstairs?”

“Mom’s gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“I don’t know. She called a cab and went.”

“She’s always been like that,” said Earl. “Gets something in her head, and the next thing you know, bing, she’s gone ahead and done it. Any crazy darn thing. No holding her. Independent as hell.”

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

“For you, Harry,” she called down. “It’s your wife.”

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

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

“That’s sweet,” said Earl, “but it’s nine months off.”

“Oh? Huh. That’s funny.”

“What’s going on?”

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

“What’d she buy?” said Earl.

“Guess I better not tell you, Hotbox. Supposed to be a surprise. I’ve said too much already.”

“Scaled to HO?” wheedled Earl.

“Yeah—she made sure about that. But that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

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

“She’s your mother, Hotbox,” said Harry soberly.

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

“Mum knows best, Hotbox.”

“Mother,” said Ella at the top of the stairs, “what on earth have you got? For heaven’s sakes, what are you going to do? Mother—”

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

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

The air was rent with a bloodcurdling cry.

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

She loosed the cry again. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeoooowwwwrrrr!”

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

“Mother! What are you doing?”

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

“Have you lost your mind?”

She circled the oil burner noisily, putting the ship through loops and barrel rolls. “Roger. Wilco. Owrrrr. Rattattattatt! Got ’em!”

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

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

“Mother! Get off!”

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

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

“No, no, no!” begged Earl. “Mother, please—I surrender, I give up!”

“Not the A-bomb,” said Harry, aghast.

“A-bomb ready,” she said grimly. The bomber’s nose dropped until it pointed at the roundhouse. “Mmmmmmeeeeeeeeeewwwwtttrr!