George Mills (36 page)

He dials. They wait silently as the phone rings at the other end.

“Hello? Hello, Judy? Cornell Messenger. Listen. That nice Mr. Mead died.”

3

“W
here’s the deputy?” Laglichio asked in the inner city, in the ghetto, by the projects, in line of sight but out of earshot of twenty or so dangerous-looking blacks. “Did you call him?”

“Maybe he already went in to serve the papers.”

“You see a patrol car, George?”

“Hand them over. I’ll serve them myself.”

“Make a citizen’s arrest, will you, George? Going to serve Xeroxes on these people? Going to show them carbon copies, flat, smooth seals like a sketch of the sunrise? They don’t read, George, just rub the paper to feel if it’s embossed. They live by a Braille law in this neighborhood.

“I like my work,” Laglichio said. They were leaning against the truck’s front fender. Laglichio seemed a changed man this morning. Not, George thought, because of his high spirits or even his rusty patience. He seemed, Mills thought, interested, expansive. “Not all of us can be bombardiers,” Laglichio said, “or sit by the machine gun on the penitentiary watchtower. We can’t all be turnkeys, and the state ain’t juiced no one in donkey’s years. I like my work. I do. It’s only evicting folks, but it makes a difference. They remember you. Long after they’ve forgotten the landlord’s name, they still remember the guy who put them out on the fucking street. Where’s that deputy?”

“Let’s go in without the papers,” George Mills said. “Let’s kick the door down and throw everybody out.”

“Oh ho,” Laglichio said. “Without the papers. That’d be something. That’d be smooth sailing, wouldn’t it? Where’s that mother? They’re watching us. There must be a couple dozen dark-skinned people just watching our truck.”

A man in a dashiki came over. He wore a dull brass necklace and a tiger skin beret.

“How you doing, Chief?” Mills asked serenely from his state of grace.

“What’s this truck?” the man asked.

“This truck?” Mills said. “Supplies. You know——bandages, serums, shots for the kids, Bibles, some pamphlets on family planning for the women in your village. Just about what you’d expect.”

“I’m Bob,” the man said cheerfully. “I guess you ain’t feeling well. Healthy man don’t be talking to no ugly customer like this, show respect,
know
some cat in a beret jus’
got
to be arm’. Well man feel in his bones a dude like me be holdin’ a bomb in the dashiki, a razor in the boot. Man
got
to have a hunch the blood is po-
lit
-ical. You got three seconds to the revolution, fuck!”

“I can’t lose,” Mills said mildly.

“You dig this clown?” Bob said to Laglichio. “Hold on, clown. I want the brothers to meet you.”

Mills showed him the eviction orders. “This man and I are establishment,” he explained. “These are official instruments of the United States of America. You can’t touch us.” Bob scanned them, tore the papers to bits.

“Boy, are you in Dutch!” Mills said.

“He
that
Laglichio?” Bob asked. “Say on that paper I rip Laglichio. No shit, he
that
Laglichio? For real now, you fellas the Laglichio boys?” Quietly the other observers had come up from their positions against the playground fence. “ ’Cause it don’t say nothin’ on the truck here. ’Cause the truck don’t say a word about what it do to the furnitures of my peoples.” He opened its rear doors. “Oh oh,” Bob moaned, “I look in here and I like to cry for the furnitures of my peoples. These drop cloths is filthy,” he said, and tore them to shreds. “And look these scrawny, itty bitty pads. Fuckin’
Kleenex.
What kind of candy ass protection these give the furnitures of my peoples? Look all the sharp edges in here, man. It look like a open soup can.”

“Hey,” Laglichio said, “get down out of my truck.”

Bob was jumping up and down heavily in the empty truck. “They try to tell me, but I didn’ believe them. They say Mr. Laglichio’s shocks is shot. They say all he do he drive over the white line in the road and
smash,
there go the dishes of my peoples! He take a outright pothole an’ boom, my peoples’s paper plates be bust.”

“What’s going on, guys?” Laglichio asked amiably, and Bob sat down on the tailgate to tell him.

“We putting you to pasture, nipple drippings,” he said kindly. “The refugees got them a hot line now. Got them a Twenty-Four-Hour Self-Help Removal Service. Got a lovely Action Volunteer Cartage Platoon. Got a free, no rip-off, We-Hump-for-the-Brothers-and-Sisters Emergency Hauling Service. I’m official dispatcher for the revolution, and I’m tellin’ you, dick sweat, no authorization papers you be holdin’ now nor in future neither ain’t never gonna be serve.”

No one touched them. They dismantled Laglichio’s truck like soldiers breaking down a rifle, roustabouts pulling down a tent. It was at least as deliberate and controlled as Laglichio’s and Mills’s own scorched-earth procedures.

“What’d we do?” Mills mused aloud. “All we ever tried to do was help. Supplies. Vaccines and bandages, birth control, Bibles. See where it gets you? Our work here is finished,” he told Laglichio.

So it was that George Mills, in grace, out of harm’s way, beyond life’s reach, became unemployed.

He tried to reassure Louise.

“It’s not even October,” Mills said. “In a month or so we’ll have our first big snowfall. The caterpillars are fat and fuzzy. Trappers want their fur. Accu-Weather says it’s going to be the winter of the world. I can go on the plows. They can always use a guy like me on the salt trucks. When spring comes I can patch potholes. Don’t be downcast, Louise. Don’t be downcast, sweetheart. There’s a fortune to be made from other people’s bad weather.”

Louise demanded that he not speak so, that he be like other men. “You’re out of work,” she said. “We’ve got bills. The gas. The phone. The electric. I don’t have a nice dress. My coat’s too thin. I don’t think it will last the winter. What if one of us has to go into the hospital? What if we have to see dentists? What if there’s car trouble, if we need a new battery or a tire gives out? How will we pay for prescriptions? Suppose we decide to take the paper? What do we do if the TV breaks, the hot water heater? What would happen if something came up?”

“Nothing will,” Mills said.

“I can’t hide my head in the sand,” she said. “Things happen.”

“Nothing happens,” George said.

“It’s no joke. You’re over fifty.”

“I am,” Mills said.

“George, it’s scary.”

“Don’t take on, Louise. Please don’t.”

“Don’t take on? Don’t take
on?
”

“Your disasters give me the creeps, doll.”

“My disasters——”

“They wear me out, Louise. They get me down, babe.”

“They wear you out? They get you down?”

“Sure,” Mills said, “if my banks don’t fail, if no one’s after my companies. If the young Turks and wise guys can’t force me off the board of directors, or my country doesn’t give a damn if I defect, sure. Sure they do. You’re saying I’m a failure, Louise, that the worst thing that can happen is we can’t take the paper, that something could break, that we’ll wash in cold water and ride on the bus.”

The telephone rang and Louise went to answer it.

It was a Judith Glazer, Louise said. She had known Louise’s father and regretted she’d been unable to attend the funeral. She had called to offer her condolences. Mr. Mead had told her about them. She wanted George to come see her. She had a proposition for him.

4

F
rom the address he’d expected a mansion, something grander than the ordinary brick home set back less than forty feet from the street where he’d parked his car, and at first—the houses beside it were larger—he thought Louise had gotten the directions wrong. It was the only house on the block without a garage. The only other car on the street, an old, pale green Chevrolet with modest tail fins and a partially deflated rear tire, was parked by the curb, obscuring the black street numbers that would have been painted there. The windows were up but George could see two people sitting inside. The woman in the back appeared to be napping. He could imagine precisely how it would feel and smell inside, almost tasting the car’s close quarters, its stuffy, hundred-thousand-mile, yellowing newspaper’d, overflowing ashtray and worn seat-cover’d essence. And feel the oxidation of apples in the stale stilled air, the sky-high temperatures where cantaloupes combust. He rapped on the driver’s window with his mood ring. The man looked at him but wouldn’t roll the window down. George checked the address with him through the glass.

A big girl in yellow lounging pajamas opened the door for him.

“Do you work for my daddy?” she asked.

“No,” George said.

She seemed disappointed but brightened at once. “Oh,” she said, “you’re the man from the boat club. Or are you here to see Mom?”

“Is that Mrs. Glazer?”

“I’ll see if she’s awake. Oh,” she said, recalling instructions, “you’re not a tradesman, are you? There’s tragedy in our house and we’re turning tradesmen away. I’m sorry.” She genuinely seemed so, and started to close the door when Mills told her his name and said that Mrs. Glazer had asked to see him. “Oh, then it’s all right,” she said. “I’m sorry Milly didn’t get the door. Milly’s my sister. I’m older but she’s more mature.”

“Who is it, Mary? Who’s out there with you? What does he want?” a woman asked from the living room.

“I forgot your name,” Mary said.

“Mills.”

“Mills,” Mary said. “I don’t know what he wants.”

As soon as he heard the woman’s voice something happened to George. It would not be extravagant to say that he was thrilled. It was quite inexplicable. He could not have told you anything about her from its sound, not what she looked like, not her age. Nothing. Unless it was something of his sudden anticipatory sense of his place in her life. It didn’t make sense. It was crazy. It was not love at first sight—he hadn’t seen her yet—it was not love at all. But something. Loyalty perhaps, some deep-pledged human patriotism.

“You’ll have to go in,” Mary said. “Mother’s not going to come out here.” And already, though he knew nothing about the child, he was preparing concessions, making allowances, giving dispensation to her absent, younger, more mature sister. His regard was loose, and he took impressions like a pilgrim, like a man at a reunion. He had spent much of his working life in other people’s rooms. He knew the handholds of sofas and box springs, all the secret toeholds of furniture, but knew them as increments of size and weight, without associations. Now he noticed the hallway’s umbrella stand, two tightly furled black umbrellas, and had a profound sense of the Glazers’ weather. He glimpsed their dining room out of the corner of his eye and guessed their appetite.

He walked into the living room.

The child preceded him and went to the head of her mother’s bed—Mrs. Glazer sat on the side of a rented hospital bed that took up much of the room—and fished a cookie from the rumpled sheets. She slouched against her mother with a type of sullen possessiveness. He might have been sympathetic to the girl’s fawning panic, but he’d already guessed the woman’s irritation and felt his precarious allegiance sway.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said, and turned to her daughter, stroking and chastising her. “Mary dear,” she said, “it isn’t convenient for you to hang on me. And if you’ve hidden any more cookies in my sheets I wish you’d dig them up. Why don’t you go play with your sister?”

“I’m on the door.”

“Mr. Mills can get the door while he’s here. I’ll call you when he leaves.”

“Can I make a milk shake?”

“Didn’t you already have one today?”

“So did Milly.”

“But Milly hasn’t asked for a second. And aren’t you supposed to be going out on your uncle’s boat this afternoon?”

“Has he called?
Has
he?”

“Oh,
make
the damn milk shake! Wait. I’m sorry, Mary. Of course you may have a milk shake. One scoop, remember. Perhaps Mills wants one too.”

“No ma’am. Thank you.”

When they heard the blender Mrs. Glazer finally greeted him.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend Mr. Mead’s funeral.”

“Oh that’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. He was a lovely man. We were good friends. I was about to say that I couldn’t attend your father-in-law’s funeral because I was arranging my own. My bishop, Mr. McKelvey, was here that morning with Mr. Crane, my funeral director. We were going over the music I’ve chosen. I also gave Roger the names of my pallbearers, and dictated the letters I had him send them. Most of these people are extremely busy men. There’s no guarantee any two of them will even be in town when the time comes, so I’ve put them on notice. I picked my casket out from photographs, and selected the clothes and shoes I’m to be buried in. Two costumes really, two pair of shoes. My nice tweed if it’s chilly, my linen if it’s mild. Well, I can’t be absolutely sure of the season, can I? I sent the garments with Mr. Crane to be dry-cleaned, and the shoes to the dago to be resoled.

“Well, I would have been unable to attend Mr. Mead’s funeral in any event. A woman in the position of making preparations for her own funeral may be excused certain obligations——though not, I trust, her sacred ones. You may tell Mrs. Mills that we prayed that morning for the repose of Mr. Mead’s soul. McKelvey is a splendid pray-er, even when he does not know the principal, as, I pride myself, I am. Crane didn’t know what to make of it all, but I put in sufficient allusions to Mr. Mead’s connections with water and shipping to make him think he had missed out on a handsome commission. God so loves a good joke, I think. The poor dear loves His laugh.

“Well,” she said, “you must think it strange for someone to take on so about the protocols of her own death, or arrange her funeral as if it were her debut.”

“No.”

“No? Good for you then. But you must forgive my misdoubts. People not themselves under the Lord’s protection frequently asperse the confidence of saints.”

“I’m saved too.”

“Well, maybe,” Mrs. Glazer said, “but do you really think that because you’ve had your five or six seconds down by the riverside, or that your heart keeps time with the tambourine, you know the elegant dismay of God? Or perhaps Jesus spoke to you during a hangover or warned you of a speed trap. Please, Mills, God made the sky blue but He is not flamboyant. If I choose the music for my service it isn’t because the Lord has a favorite tune but because I do. Anyway, organists play better when they know the dead are listening.