George Mills Part 3

The merchant said something to them and the wild men looked at Mills as if through a single pair of eyes. Guillalume separated himself from Mills and went toward the merchant while the warriors waited for Mills to begin. "Make it good," he mouthed before riding off.

"I have come," Mills said, "I have come--" The merchant translated and the warriors watched Mills closely. Mills cleared his throat. "I have come," he began again. They watched him impatiently and one drew a pike from where it rested in its sheath. "I've come, I say," said Mills and looked helplessly at the merchant. The merchant translated. One of the warriors clutched his whip. The man drew his arm back slowly. "No, wait," Mills shouted, clambering down from his horse. The merchant translated. "I've come to tell you," Mills said nervously, "that--that--" The Cossack with the whip gently rolled the hard, thin, braided leather within inches of Mills's feet. Mills looked down gloomily at the dangerous plaited rawhide. "Not," he exclaimed forcefully, "to hit. Not to hit. I have come to tell you not to hit!"

"He's come to tell you not to hit," the merchant translated. The wild Cossacks looked at Mills questioningly.

"Right," Mills said. "Hitting's bad," he said hopelessly as the merchant translated. "G.o.d hates. .h.i.tters," he said. "He thinks they stink." Tentatively the Cossack withdrew his whip. "Oh yes," the encouraged Mills went on, warming to his subject, "hitting isn't good. Yes, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. He told me to tell you you mustn't hit. If you have to hit you mustn't hit hard. And killing. Killing isn't nice. Neither shouldst thou maim. Maiming's a sin. It's bad to hurt. It's wicked to make bleed. G.o.d can't stand the sight of blood. It makes Him sick to His stomach. Thank you, oh thank thank you, Jesus!" Mills said. He had spoken these last few sentences with his eyes shut tight and now, cautiously, he opened first one eye, then the other. The pike was back in its sheathing, the whip wound tightly round the saddlehorn. The warriors were gazing at him transfixed, wilder somehow in their concentrate attention than they had been in their hostility just moments before. They seemed to have broken or at least relaxed their formal formation, listening now as a crowd might rather than a trained phalanx. "This lot's easy," Mills remarked offhandedly to the merchant. "I needn't tell you not to translate." He advanced toward them, wanting to work them closer up, but they pulled back on their reins and opened up additional s.p.a.ce between themselves and the speaker. you, Jesus!" Mills said. He had spoken these last few sentences with his eyes shut tight and now, cautiously, he opened first one eye, then the other. The pike was back in its sheathing, the whip wound tightly round the saddlehorn. The warriors were gazing at him transfixed, wilder somehow in their concentrate attention than they had been in their hostility just moments before. They seemed to have broken or at least relaxed their formal formation, listening now as a crowd might rather than a trained phalanx. "This lot's easy," Mills remarked offhandedly to the merchant. "I needn't tell you not to translate." He advanced toward them, wanting to work them closer up, but they pulled back on their reins and opened up additional s.p.a.ce between themselves and the speaker.

"Oh yes," Mills continued, feeling his immense power and beginning to enjoy himself. "Here's more stuff G.o.d told me. He wants you to lay down your pikestaffs." Mills stepped back out of range as first one wild man then another lobbed his weapon into the clearing. "Throw them down, throw them down," he said, and was astonished to see a rain of wood gentle as pop flies come floating down with an impotent clatter not two dozen feet from where they sat on their horses. "Now the bullwhips. Yes, Lord. Thank you, Jesus." The merchant translated and the bullwhips made a harmless leather pile next to the staffs, intricately interlocked now as collapsed fence.

"It's how they make war," the merchant whispered.

"Ain't gonna study study war no more," Mills said. war no more," Mills said.

"They need their weapons to hunt," the merchant said.

Mills shrugged. "G.o.d wants them to eat berries," he said. "Tell them." The merchant looked at Mills with interest. "Go on," Mills said, "tell them." The merchant translated. "That's right," Mills said. "He wants you to eat nuts and boil your gra.s.ses for soup. Soup is holy. Fruit and nuts are a blessing to the Lord, praise His Holy Name."

He stared at his auditors but they looked away from him, fearfully avoiding his gaze. So this is what it was like to be Guillalume, Mills thought, or no, Guillalume's eldest brother, even Guillalume's father himself. He sized them up, their rough, thick clothing, their sharp teeth and solid bodies, their tough skin the color of hide, the sinister vision which slanted from their peculiar eyes. A rough bunch. He could do some real good here. "G.o.d wants you," he told them earnestly, "to take the stableboys who shovel your horses.h.i.+t for you and make them princes. Just after not hitting that's what He wants most."

"Oh, Mills," the merchant said.

"Tell them," Mills commanded. He folded his arms across his chest.

And that's when he saw it.

"Jesus!" he said.

"Jesus!" the merchant translated.

"No," Greatest Grandfather said fearfully. "Have them dismount. Tell them good-by." Not taking his eyes off them-they wouldn't have seen anyway, they weren't looking, they were watching Mills's horse-he backed slowly away. "Stand still, Mills's horse"-because he knew nothing about horses, not even enough to say "Whoa"-"stop while I mount you." But the horse continued to go round him, turning circles which were identical in circ.u.mference to the circles he had turned in the mine. Mills ceased talking and Mills's horse stopped in its...o...b..t and Mills got on. "Let's go," he said. "Straight lines only, Mills's horse. Follow the merchant, fellow. Follow Guillalume's horse." And guided him with the reins, pulling the bit roughly whenever the animal started into one of its turns. To keep him moving Mills chatted amiably, mindlessly. "Well, that's it, folks," he said, "bye-bye. G.o.d's instrument tells you 'so long.' G.o.d's instrument's instrument-tell them, merchant-asks you to abide here and pray a while. Pray and fast four days. Amen and thank you, Jesus."

"You mean you didn't know? know?" Guillalume asked him later.

"I didn't," Mills said, "I didn't truly. b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.dd.a.m.n horse wors.h.i.+ppers. And that one says there's no infidels."

So he gave them the Word. (And, indirectly, ultimately, invented dressage too who knew nothing about horses, inventing haute ecole haute ecole for them and the principle of the pony ride.) The Word changing as they worked their way backward across not only geography but culture as well. Telling them not only and not even always out of self-defense, but for hospitality, three squares and a kip for himself and his companions, spouting Jesus for their entertainment as he might, if he'd had a good voice, sung them songs. In Russia he told them, in Romania, in Bulgaria. In Greece and in Turkey. And doing them miracles out of their small store of salt. Changing fresh water to sea water in jugs which he permitted them to dip into their own sweet lakes and running rivers, elsewhere pressing the salt onto their very tongues, a mumbo-jumbo of condimental transubstantiation. for them and the principle of the pony ride.) The Word changing as they worked their way backward across not only geography but culture as well. Telling them not only and not even always out of self-defense, but for hospitality, three squares and a kip for himself and his companions, spouting Jesus for their entertainment as he might, if he'd had a good voice, sung them songs. In Russia he told them, in Romania, in Bulgaria. In Greece and in Turkey. And doing them miracles out of their small store of salt. Changing fresh water to sea water in jugs which he permitted them to dip into their own sweet lakes and running rivers, elsewhere pressing the salt onto their very tongues, a mumbo-jumbo of condimental transubstantiation.

Saying "I shall make you the salt of the earth." Or demonstrating its emetic properties, swallowing any poison they wished to give him and coming back to life before their eyes. Telling sailors along the Aegean and on the Ionian and Adriatic and Mediterranean and ports of call up and down the Atlantic.

And that that was the First Crusade. was the First Crusade.

And then they were in England again, and then in Northumbria, and the other crusade was over too now, ended, the one Guillalume's brothers, who had gone to Palestine after all, had gone on, to be killed by the infidels the merchant did not believe in, and now Guillalume was the eldest brother and, in another year, would be the lord of the manor himself, and Mills was back in the stables because it would not do for one so high placed to have as a retainer a man who knew nothing of horses.

PART TWO.

1.

Louise lay beside him, her flannel nights.h.i.+rt bunched beneath her chin. The nights.h.i.+rt was baby blue with tiny cl.u.s.ters of gray flowers and smelled of caked Vicks and cold steam from the dehumidifier. Her fingers probed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stroking, handling boluses of flesh, sifting t.i.t like a cancer miner or a broad in p.o.r.nography.

"All clear?" George asked as she lowered the nights.h.i.+rt, yanking it down under her backside and consecutively rolled hips.

"When you bite me," she asked, "do you ever feel anything hard?"

"When I bite?"

"When you take them in your mouth. Do you feel anything hard?"

"I spit it out."

"Someday I'm going to find something."

"Well," he said, "you'll be catching it early."

"I spotted again. It wasn't much. A little pink on the toilet paper."

Louise got out of bed and put on her house slippers. She smiled and raised the nights.h.i.+rt. She pulled it over her head. She drew the shades and turned on all the lights, even the one in the closet.

"I have to tell you something," George Mills said.

Television had taught him. Edward R. Murrow had shown him their living rooms and studies, the long, set-tabled dining rooms of the famous. Commercials had given him an idea of the all-electric kitchens of the median-incomed, the tile-floor-and-microwave-oven-blessed, their digital-fired radios waking them to music. He knew the lawns of the middle cla.s.s, their power mowers leaning like sporting goods against their cyclone fences, their chemical logs like delivered newspapers, their upright mailboxes like tin bread.

"I used to want," he'd told Laglichio's driver, "to live in a tract house and hear airplanes over my head. I wanted hammocks between my trees and a pool you a.s.semble like a toy."

They had four hundred dollars in savings.

"I'm poor," he'd said. "In a couple of years I'll have my silver wedding anniversary. I'm white as a president and poor as a stone."

"They give to the n.i.g.g.e.rs."

"Nah," he'd said, "the n.i.g.g.e.rs got less than I got. I'm just poor. You're a kid, you're still young, you'll be in the teamsters one day. You know what it means to be poor in this country? I take it personally. I've been poor all my life. I've always been poor and so have my people-Millses go back to the First Crusade-and I don't understand being poor. We've always been respectable and always been poor. Like some disease only Jews get, or women in mountainous country."

"You got a car. You got a house."

"A '63 Buick Special. A bungalow."

He worked for Laglichio, carrying the furniture and possessions of the evicted.

Usually they had no place to go. Laglichio had a warehouse. The furniture was taken there. Laglichio charged eight dollars a day for storage. Anything not called for in sixty days was Laglichio's to dispose of. It turned up in resale shops, was sold off for junk or in lots at "estate" sales. The newer stuff, appliances, stereos, the TV's, went into hock. Laglichio had a contract with the city. He got a hundred and fifty dollars for each move, half of which was paid by a munic.i.p.al agency, half by the evicted tenant. Laglichio demanded payment up front. It was rare that a tenant had the cash, and Laglichio refused to put anything into his truck until the owner signed a release a.s.signing his property to Laglichio should he be unable to repay all of Laglichio's claims against him-the seventy-five dollars he owed for the move, the eight-dollar-a-day storage fee-after the sixty-day grace period. He worked with sheriff's deputies. He had the protection of the police at each eviction. He paid Mills one hundred and eighty dollars a week.

"You're free to make a new start now," Mills might explain to one of these dispossessed folks. "Look at it that way." Sometimes he would be sitting outlandishly on the very sofa he had just carried down into the street when he said this.

"New start? To do which? Sleep in the street?"

"Nah," he'd say. "Without all this--this hardware." He indicated the intermingled rooms of furniture exposed on the pavement, a kitchen range beside a bed, a recliner in front of an open refrigerator, tall standing lamps next to nightstands or potted in washtubs.

"s.h.i.+t."

"I mean it. Footloose. Fancy-free. Not tied down by possessions." He did did mean it. He hated his own things, their chintz and walnut weight. But of course he understood their tears and arguments and nodded amiably when they disagreed. "I'm Laglichio's nice guy," he'd confide. "I understand. I'm poor myself. I'm Laglichio's public relations." mean it. He hated his own things, their chintz and walnut weight. But of course he understood their tears and arguments and nodded amiably when they disagreed. "I'm Laglichio's nice guy," he'd confide. "I understand. I'm poor myself. I'm Laglichio's public relations."

"Get your a.s.s out my sofa."

"But legally, you see, it isn't your sofa. It's Laglichio's sofa till you pay him for moving it for you out into the street. But it's okay. I'll get up. Don't get sore."

"Is there some trouble here?"

"No, deputy. Don't bother yourself. The lady's a little upset's all there's to it." And he might wink, sometimes at the cop, sometimes at the woman.

"How this happen?" the woman cried. "How this come to be?"

"Poor folks," Mills said philosophically.

"What you talkin' poor folks, white folks?"

"Oh no," he'd say courteously, interested as always in the mystery, the special oddness of his life. "You must understand. It's difficult to fail in America."

"Yeah? I never had no trouble. None my my people ever found it so tough. Look at Rodney. He be young. He be my youngest. All this exciting to him. He think he gonna live and play outside here on the pavement an' I never have to call him. Why, this be sweet to Rodney. Ignorant. Ignorant and dreamful. But soon's he get his size it don't be no hards.h.i.+p to fail." people ever found it so tough. Look at Rodney. He be young. He be my youngest. All this exciting to him. He think he gonna live and play outside here on the pavement an' I never have to call him. Why, this be sweet to Rodney. Ignorant. Ignorant and dreamful. But soon's he get his size it don't be no hards.h.i.+p to fail."

"My people do awful things to your people, but even so it's hard, it's hard to fail. Simple animal patience will take you immense distances. Bag in the National, horse the carts in the parking lot. Make stock boy. In a couple of years you'll trim lettuce, in a couple more you'll be doing the produce like flower arrangements. No no, lady. Success is downhill all the way. You put in your time, you wait your turn. Not me, not any Mills ever. A thousand years of stall and standstill pa.s.sed on like a baton."

"How this cost me money?"

"No no. Nothing I say costs people money."

Laglichio appeared in the doorway and signaled Mills toward him.

"Did she sign?"

"No."

"Then what were you shooting the s.h.i.+t about? Here, give me the papers." Laglichio returned with the executed forms. "I told her the papers proved it was her furniture. That's all you got to say. How many times do I have to tell you?"

"Sure," Mills said.

"You know something, George?" Laglichio said. "You ain't strong. You don't lift high. You're what now? Fifty? Fifty something? You ain't got the muscle for this. What am I going to do with you, George? You ain't got the beef for this business. And any white man who can't get a n.i.g.g.e.r to sign a binding legal paper probably ain't got the brains for it neither. Put the s.h.i.+t in the truck and let's get out of here."

He wasn't strong. At best he was a student of leverage, knowledgeable about angles, overhangs, the sharp switchbacks in stairways. He was very efficient, scholarly as a geologist about floor plans, layouts, seeing them in his head, someone with an actual gift for antic.i.p.ating and defying tight squeezes, lubricant as a harbor pilot. Not mechanically inclined but centrifugally, centripetally, careful as a cripple. And the furniture of the poor was light, something inflated and cut corner about it that reduced weight and turned it to size. He wore the quilted protective pads of long-distance furniture removers and affected their wide leather belts and heavy work shoes and gave the impression, his body robed in its gray green upholstery, of someone dressed in mats, drop cloth. He thought he looked rather like a horse.

Laglichio would not fire him. Mills was not union. Often laid off but rarely fired, he was a worker in trades that jerked to the whims of the economy, a stumbling Dow-Jones of a man. It was this that had brought him to Laglichio in the first place. He worked in unemployment-related industries.

Mills and Lewis, the driver, had started to load the truck. The child was crying while his mother painted a bleak picture of homelessness and bedlessness, table and chairlessness, an empty landscape of helpless exile.

"Where we sleep, Mama?"

"Ask that white man where we sleep."

"Where we eat?"

"You ask them white men."

"Where we go to the toilet?"

"We just have to hold it in."

Rodney clutched his teddy bear, its nap so worn it seemed hairless, a denuded embryo, and howled.

Laglichio nudged Mills. George sighed and picked up a carton of broken toys he'd packed. He hesitated for a moment and tried to hand the carton off to Lewis. Laglichio shook his head and, using only his jaw, indicated Mills's elaborate route, past the couch, by the lamps, through the randomly placed chairs.

"What's that you're carrying, George?" Laglichio called in a loud voice.

"Toys," Mills mumbled.

"Toys?" Laglichio called out. "Toys you say?"

"I'm fixing to load them on the truck," he recited.

"Toys? Boys' toys?"

"They're toys," Mills said. "That's all I know."

Laglichio came up to where Mills was standing amid a small crowd of neighbors who had begun to gather. "Are those your toys, sonny?" Laglichio asked the boy. "Show him," he commanded George. Mills put the carton down and undid the cardboard cross-hatching. "Are those them?" Laglichio asked the kid kindly. The child nodded. "You give him back his playthings," he demanded. "You give this boy back his bunnies and switchblades." The little boy looked at Mills suspiciously. "What's your name, kiddo?" Laglichio asked. "What's his name?" he asked the woman.

"It's Rodney," Mills said. Laglichio glared at the furniture mover.

"Go ahead, angelbabes," Laglichio said, "take them back."

Rodney looked away from the dead b.a.l.l.s, broken cars and ruined, incomplete board games to his mother. The woman nodded her head wearily and the boy took the box.

"All right," Laglichio said, "my men got their work to do." He glanced at the deputy, a black man who s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"Folks in trouble want their privacy," he said softly. "Don't shame her," he said, working the crowd until there wasn't a soul left to witness.

"Hotshot," Laglichio said to Mills in the truck. "Big guy hotshot. 'Rodney.' You almost blew it for the kid, you know that? I had a mind to keep that s.h.i.+t for spare parts. Donate them to Goodwill Industries and take the tax write-off. Don't you understand yet," Laglichio lectured him, though he was fifteen years Mills's junior, "what I do? It's orchestrated. It's a f.u.c.king dance what I do. On eggsh.e.l.ls. You're always b.i.t.c.hing to me and Lewis here about how poor you are. This is because you don't think. The subtleties escape you. You don't have a clue what goes on."

"I have a clue," Mills muttered.

"Yeah? Do you? Yeah? There were riots riots before I took over. before I took over. Riots. Riots. You think a lousy deputy could do diddly with that kind of s.h.i.+t coming down? They had them. Blacker than the boys I use. The city gives me seventy-five bucks. You think that's a rip-off? It's no rip-off. I save the taxpayer a dozen times that much just in the blood that ain't spilled, that don't have to be replaced by transfusions." You think a lousy deputy could do diddly with that kind of s.h.i.+t coming down? They had them. Blacker than the boys I use. The city gives me seventy-five bucks. You think that's a rip-off? It's no rip-off. I save the taxpayer a dozen times that much just in the blood that ain't spilled, that don't have to be replaced by transfusions."

He understood. He loved the shoptalk of the go-getters, loved to hear wealth's side of things. And Laglichio enjoyed giving his tips, took pleasure not only in the boasts but in sharing his secrets, outrageously touting them, daring Mills with proposition, low down, the goods, his insider's inside jobs and word in the ear.

Once, Mills's car wouldn't start, the battery dead, and Laglichio had to come with Lewis to pick him up in the truck. Mills was waiting when they drove up but he'd forgotten his lunch and had to go back into the house to get it. Laglichio couldn't have been waiting for him more than two minutes.