George Mills Part 7

Sam shrugged. "Bill's been super. He stayed with me in Judy's room during the exploratory. Adrian was there, too." He looked down at his fingernails. "When the surgeon told me what they'd found, Adrian held my hand. How do you like that? He just took my hand and held it. When we got to the restaurant the chancellor was already there, waiting for us. Bill must have phoned him, or Adrian. Anyway, there he was, waiting for us. He still had jet lag. He and Bunny had just flown in from London that day."

"Who picked up the check," Messenger asked deliberately, "dean, provost, or chancellor?"

Sam laughed. "Life goes on," he said.

"What's going on?" Judith said, her phone call ended. "Why am I missing all the fun?"

" 'Cause you've got cancer," Messenger said, stripped of diplomatic status and settling for bad taste in this house of bad taste where Consumer Reports Consumer Reports lay on the surfaces of the furniture like coffeetable books. Sam's meanness was famous. Even Judith, who came from money, an heiress who would never now collect her birthright, whose great expectations had been shut down by the doctors and who, though her wealthy, highborn, Episcopal parent be struck dead that afternoon or catch the lightning in his hair, would never live through probate, joined in this joke on Sam. Who brooked no criticism of him, whose trigger-happy anger was always at his disposal, always in his defense, as much a species of big brother to him as wife, permitting no slight to her slight Jew and going along not so much dutifully as obediently with all Sam's bargains and schemes, all his duty-free, marked-down, consumer-reported lay on the surfaces of the furniture like coffeetable books. Sam's meanness was famous. Even Judith, who came from money, an heiress who would never now collect her birthright, whose great expectations had been shut down by the doctors and who, though her wealthy, highborn, Episcopal parent be struck dead that afternoon or catch the lightning in his hair, would never live through probate, joined in this joke on Sam. Who brooked no criticism of him, whose trigger-happy anger was always at his disposal, always in his defense, as much a species of big brother to him as wife, permitting no slight to her slight Jew and going along not so much dutifully as obediently with all Sam's bargains and schemes, all his duty-free, marked-down, consumer-reported tchotchkes tchotchkes and appliances, his Sam Goody records and bulk film, his examination copies and suits by Seconds-and Sam a clotheshorse-and international flights by mysterious charter clubs and groceries from a co-op some a.s.sistant professors and grad students had founded, his order actually smuggled into their kitchen by some eligible TA. Why she even and appliances, his Sam Goody records and bulk film, his examination copies and suits by Seconds-and Sam a clotheshorse-and international flights by mysterious charter clubs and groceries from a co-op some a.s.sistant professors and grad students had founded, his order actually smuggled into their kitchen by some eligible TA. Why she even enjoyed enjoyed his fabled economies, the fabled part anyway, encouraging them, Messenger supposed, as a harmless outlet for an anti-Semitism she had been unwilling entirely to surrender, writing them off as a cute trait of her clever Yid, much, he hoped- his fabled economies, the fabled part anyway, encouraging them, Messenger supposed, as a harmless outlet for an anti-Semitism she had been unwilling entirely to surrender, writing them off as a cute trait of her clever Yid, much, he hoped-oh, how he hoped, his sense of propriety in the balance now-as she accepted the hold b.u.t.tons on her telephone and the command performance dinners and her jaundiced skin the color of Valium, and her cancer. how he hoped, his sense of propriety in the balance now-as she accepted the hold b.u.t.tons on her telephone and the command performance dinners and her jaundiced skin the color of Valium, and her cancer.

"I never," she said, "objected to your bad taste, Cornell. It only matters that you love me." And she waited for his declaration.

"Of course I love you," Messenger said, the heat on.

"All right," Judith said, swallowing malted, refilling her gla.s.s from the cylinder, extending the gla.s.s. "Drink," she said, "it's delicious. There's no medicine in it. It's only a strawberry malt. I take it to fatten me up for when I start my chemotherapy on Thursday. Will you drink from my gla.s.s?"

"I'm already fattened up," Messenger said.

"Maybe the Messengers would like to hear our news," Sam said, suggested.

"They may hear our news when they have broken malted with us. They may hear our news when they have sipped from the gla.s.s touched by my pancreatically cancered lips."

"Sure, Judith. Gimme," Messenger said.

"Here," she said.

He downed all the malted. "Gee, Judy," he said, "there's nothing left for you."

"The news, of course, is that I'm dying. Well, that's my my news. People are so embarra.s.sed by other people's deaths that I've drawn up a sort of list-- 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Judith Glazer's Death But Were Afraid to Ask.' news. People are so embarra.s.sed by other people's deaths that I've drawn up a sort of list-- 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Judith Glazer's Death But Were Afraid to Ask.'

"First. The girls know. I told them as soon as I learned the results of the operation. Milly doesn't accept it yet, I think. I mean she doesn't believe it will happen. That's unusual, because of the two she's the more mature, though she's younger than Mary. We told the two of them together. Mary's the one who cried. Now she wets the bed and goes around stinking of urine. Well, I understand rage. It's always been one of my subjects. But she's twelve years old and almost six feet tall and she won't change her underwear and goes about soiled and--"

"Look," Messenger said.

"Oh, you're just like Milly, aren't you? Isn't he just like Milly, Sam? He doesn't want to know. He doesn't accept things."

"I accept things."

"No," Judith Glazer said, "if you don't want to know you can't accept things. Oh. You're embarra.s.sed. For all your tough talk, you're embarra.s.sed, gun-shy. There's hope for you. Shyness is a kind of love, too. Like chugalugging from the cancer cup."

"Come on, Judith," Messenger said, "cut it out."

"Standing up to me is. It's all right. If I bring you these messages from the deathbed it's not because I want to rub your nose in things you aren't up to, but because I love you, too, Cornell. I never loved Paula. Paula, I'm sorry but it's true. Perhaps I will now, I can't be sure. I shall certainly have to try. You, for your part, Paula, you shall have to try, too."

"I'll try," Paula said.

"Do. Please do," the woman said, and went on. "Have I told you about the girls? My medication's wearing off, my pain confuses me. Where was I? Oh, yes, the girls."

"If you're tired, sweetheart," Sam said.

"I have cancer, not fatigue. Try not, please, to be humiliated by me. You never were before. All those years I was crazy. Stand by me now. These are the facts, pet, this is the way I wet my my bed. Humor your horrible wife." She had been lying on the sofa. Now she sat up, her housecoat parted and her nightgown hiked. Messenger saw her bald, prepped groin and looked away. "I shall make a family man of him yet. I've barely more than five months, but we're well begun. Oh, yes, we make furious love." bed. Humor your horrible wife." She had been lying on the sofa. Now she sat up, her housecoat parted and her nightgown hiked. Messenger saw her bald, prepped groin and looked away. "I shall make a family man of him yet. I've barely more than five months, but we're well begun. Oh, yes, we make furious love."

"Sweetheart, I don't think the Messengers..."

"Of course they are," she said, "but even if they aren't...As long as I have strength to speak and warn I shall use that strength to speak and warn. There's grime in even the purest death, things the clearest-headed among us wouldn't expect. Well, the children are an example, aren't they? Oafish Mary and tender Milly. Their grandfather and uncle try to turn their heads, to bribe their attentions away from truth. The fact is they're quite successful. They are. My girls will remember their mother's pa.s.sing as a shower of gold. Tennis and swimming and private lessons. Golf and horseback riding and dinners at the club--all lovely summer's fine rare prizes. They're going to the academy this year. Daddy's paying their tuition. I don't mind. It's hard for kids. Milly doesn't believe me and Mary pees her bed.

"But I haven't told you yet how we do it. The st.i.tches and pain and my cancer s.h.i.+ning through my skin like sunlight. How does he get it up, do you think?"

Sam got it up and left the room. He went through the small dining room into the kitchen.

"Poor Sam," his wife said. "I won't talk behind his back, only out of his line of sight. He hears me now. You hear me now, don't you, Sam? You're listening to all this, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sam said, his voice fainted by the intervening rooms.

She lowered her own voice. "How does he get a hard-on? He wills wills it. It's his decision. Why, it's no more trouble to him than acquiring a tan or arranging his hair. It's biofeedback, Sammy's s.e.x. Decisive grooming, like the way his pants hold a crease or the fact that his hands don't get dirty. And there's no weight. Our skins barely touch. Platonic f.u.c.king. o.r.g.a.s.ms like something shuttled back and forth in a game. Because he never comes until I do." She was speaking normally again. "You don't come till I do, do you, Sam?" it. It's his decision. Why, it's no more trouble to him than acquiring a tan or arranging his hair. It's biofeedback, Sammy's s.e.x. Decisive grooming, like the way his pants hold a crease or the fact that his hands don't get dirty. And there's no weight. Our skins barely touch. Platonic f.u.c.king. o.r.g.a.s.ms like something shuttled back and forth in a game. Because he never comes until I do." She was speaking normally again. "You don't come till I do, do you, Sam?"

"I'm a gent," Sam said in the kitchen. "I'm something in armor, something in tails." He was crying.

"Baby, don't cry," Judith said. "Hush, courtly lover." And he hushed. "Bring me a pill, Sam." They heard the faucet in the kitchen. Sam appeared with a pill and a gla.s.s of water. "See?" Judith said. "Thanks, darling." She turned to the Messengers. "See? My last few months like a sort of pregnancy. See? Judith lying-in with doom and whim and old Sam hard by all hand and foot to fetch all the pickles of the grotesque, we never close.

"Sam, Sam, you Jew, you Jewish husband. Shall we tell them our news?"

"We've told them everything else."

"No," she said, "no we haven't." She turned to Paula. "Once, maybe two or three years ago, we gave a party. Cornell brought the ice, do you remember? Sam had called at the last minute to ask one of those gee-it-must-have-slipped-my-mind favors of his. Though we know better, don't we, know that nothing ever slips slips Sam's mind, that his mind goes around in galoshes and snow tires, radials, chains, and Cornell was high, stoned, and I'd been talking about TM, and your husband asked me to tell him my mantra. Do you remember that? Do you, Cornell?" Sam's mind, that his mind goes around in galoshes and snow tires, radials, chains, and Cornell was high, stoned, and I'd been talking about TM, and your husband asked me to tell him my mantra. Do you remember that? Do you, Cornell?"

"I think so," Messenger said. "Yes."

"Yes," Judith Glazer said. "And I wouldn't tell you. Well I'll tell you now. Lean toward me, I'll whisper it."

"I was kidding, Judith. I don't have to know."

"Suppose what I tell you were my last words? Not have to know what may be a poor dying woman's dying wish?"

Messenger looked helplessly at his wife. She was already packed, checked out of the motel, all gone. He looked at Sam, similarly fled, browsing inside info on cordless telephones in Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports.

Messenger got out of his chair and went toward the poor dying woman. He knelt at her side and she blew softly in his ear as if testing a microphone. Then she whispered four senseless syllables into it which he would never forget. He felt himself blush.

"An obscenity?" Paula suggested.

"My mantra," Judith Glazer said. "There. I feel better. Only Cornell and my guru know. I can give it away because I don't need it anymore. You, Sam. I just gave away my three-thousand-dollar mantra to Cornell." She smiled and Cornell felt something like affection for the nutty lady. "I'm dying," she said jovially, "and going to Heaven where I can look down on Sam. Only I may look down on Sam, you know. I earned the privilege by living with him, earned it at discount, the odor of his odd-lot, uncut, 35mm film on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s when he came to me from the darkroom where he cut and rolled it onto used cartridges, the cutting and winding done at midnight in closets so that we didn't have the expense of even that single low-watt dim red bulb. I'm going to Heaven where I can look down on Sam, on his thick soft bundles of hair, Sam's plateaus of head like actual geography, and let him know if he's f.u.c.king up as dean. That's our our news. Sam's to be appointed dean when Adrian steps down at the end of the semester." news. Sam's to be appointed dean when Adrian steps down at the end of the semester."

"Under the circ.u.mstances," Paula said, "I'm not certain congratulations are entirely in order."

"Oh yes," Judith said, "of course they are. I'm going to Heaven and Sam's going to the Administration Building."

She seemed actually gay, her jaundice a kind of radiance. She was was gay, even her crazy close-order drill less irritating than it could have been. There was a sort of warmth and comrades.h.i.+p in their edgy intimacy. There was a kind of truth in truth, Cornell thought. "How do you know you're going to Heaven?" he asked. gay, even her crazy close-order drill less irritating than it could have been. There was a sort of warmth and comrades.h.i.+p in their edgy intimacy. There was a kind of truth in truth, Cornell thought. "How do you know you're going to Heaven?" he asked.

"My rector thinks so, all the church ladies do. Besides," she said, "the Bible tells me so." She grinned. "Well," she said, "if you can't put your friends through it, what good are they anyway? I've put you people through it this afternoon. You're good sports. Once in a while you weren't even humoring me. You deserve a reward."

"I couldn't touch another malted," Messenger said.

"No," she said, "no more malteds. You know," she said, "these are still the good times. No one's ever paid this much attention to me. Not even when I was mad. But now, in the springtime of my death, when the pain is still manageable and discomfort's only the mildest death duty, easily paid, easily confused with convalescence even; now, when my weight is down and I look as I used to as a girl, better really, for I was crazed then and had on me the stretch marks of my terror, now it's all easy and there are hold b.u.t.tons on my telephones and people bring us their covered chafing dishes and best recipes all made up and ready to go like take-out or room service and there's nothing to do but visit with my girls when they come in all tan from the club, scrubbed as princesses, and I've time and inclination to answer all their questions, posing others that they dare not ask, stuffing them like French geese with hope and love, it's not so bad.

"I've no recriminations, none at all.

"But dying's like the marathon, I think. There's no way to go the distance till you've gone it. And sooner or later you hit the wall and whimper if you cannot scream. I seem a saint and so far think I am one.

"Listen, everyone. I make this pledge to you. There will be no trips to Mexico for Laetrile, and I'll never call out for any other of those fast-food fixes of the hopeful doomed. Neither will I be wired to any of those medical busy-boxes to extend for one d.a.m.ned minute what only a fool would call my life. If Jesus wants me He can have me. To tell you the truth, He can probably use me.

"Now, Cornell, I want a favor."

"Of course, Judith," Messenger said, "if there's anything I can do."

"I want you to take over my Meals-on-Wheels route."

4.

Because he knew Coule's type. Recognized retrospectively the solid, bulldog centers of gravity of his kind, his big-bodied, full-bellied, hard-handed, heavy-hammed, iron-armed, thick-throated, barrel-chested lineman likenesses and congeners. Not overgrown, like giants, say, such men did not, or so it seemed to Mills, even possess possess glands, lacking not a pituitary so much as the s.p.a.ce for one, ma.s.s not a function of secretions, of body-buried wells of the cellular juices splashed and splattered indiscriminately throughout the skeletal sluices of their frames, nothing endocrinic, hormonal, for there could have been no more room for these, or for organs either, than there was for glands, their insides pure prime meat, human steak all the way through, gristled perhaps and marbled possibly and certainly scaffolded with bone, but nothing liquid to account for size, and even their blood only for coloring, flesh tones, flush; their pee and excrement, too, merely variants of their blood's limited palette, affected by the air perhaps, the light, like exposed film. So nothing leviathan in their genes-he'd seen their parents, their brothers and sisters like the law of averages-their physical displacement a kind of decision, the ukase of their boom town wills, their realtor reality. And many glands, lacking not a pituitary so much as the s.p.a.ce for one, ma.s.s not a function of secretions, of body-buried wells of the cellular juices splashed and splattered indiscriminately throughout the skeletal sluices of their frames, nothing endocrinic, hormonal, for there could have been no more room for these, or for organs either, than there was for glands, their insides pure prime meat, human steak all the way through, gristled perhaps and marbled possibly and certainly scaffolded with bone, but nothing liquid to account for size, and even their blood only for coloring, flesh tones, flush; their pee and excrement, too, merely variants of their blood's limited palette, affected by the air perhaps, the light, like exposed film. So nothing leviathan in their genes-he'd seen their parents, their brothers and sisters like the law of averages-their physical displacement a kind of decision, the ukase of their boom town wills, their realtor reality. And many were were realtors, or at least landlords. It would have been difficult not to be in the Florida of the thirties, even though this wasn't Miami or even Tampa or Jacksonville, even though it wasn't anywhere oceaned, beached, or even, particularly, mild. realtors, or at least landlords. It would have been difficult not to be in the Florida of the thirties, even though this wasn't Miami or even Tampa or Jacksonville, even though it wasn't anywhere oceaned, beached, or even, particularly, mild.

It was Ca.s.sadaga, and except for the fact that George knew they had come south, that he and his mother and father had changed their lives and been translated to a state called Florida-he had no memory of how they'd gotten there, probably some of the way by bus, some by hitchhiking-where his father meant to pick oranges, become a migrant worker, it could have been not Milwaukee, since Milwaukee was a city of some size and Ca.s.sadaga was barely a town, but some residential neighborhood in Milwaukee. Stucco might never have been invented or Florida so new it had not yet become indigenous there, its properties undiscovered, it no more occurring to the other Easterners and Midwesterners to mix cement and sand and hydrated lime to make their homes than to build them out of thatch. So the houses were wooden as the trees, the ordinary oaks and elms and maples of any Iowa or Wisconsin yard or street. And perhaps that's why he had no memory of how they'd gotten there (he'd seen no sea, no gulls or beach), because the landscape was the same he'd lived in all his nontropical, Tropic of Cancer life, along the bland, unrainy seasoned peel of earth with its gray and temperate gifts of the to-scale regular.

He did not even know where the oranges would be, could be. There were no groves near Ca.s.sadaga, nothing citrus in the odor of the wind. He'd seen more fruit in Milwaukee. And no palm trees except for the one by the bench in the town's small square, its tall stem and leaves like an immense shredded umbrella.

"That's a tree?" he'd asked.

"h.e.l.l," his father said, "I don't know if it's even wood."

He pointed to its sky-high sh.e.l.ls, s.h.a.ggy, brown as bowel, cl.u.s.tered as cannonball or the cabbages in produce bins. "Are the oranges inside those things?"

"If they are you don't pick oranges, you climb them."

Because this is where they'd been dropped, the young men who'd given them the ride-it was their journey he couldn't recall, not their arrival-driving on toward Daytona Beach. "Looks nice and homey," one of them said. "You should be able to get a room here. Tomorrow you can walk the few yards to where the groves begin."

They had no luggage to speak of, only the single suitcase between them which contained not all their clothes but all the clothes which they still had, which they had not sold along with their furniture and dishes and odds and ends in order to get a nest egg together, a stake, to make the trip. Anyway, they had all the clothes which they believed they would need in the hot new climate to which they believed they had come--socks, the three changes of boys' and men's and women's underwear, the two sets of overalls and denim works.h.i.+rts, the two cotton dresses. They had not even brought handkerchiefs because they thought they had come to a place where no one caught cold. They had not brought anything dressy for Sundays. They were not religious and so wouldn't need anything for church. For Sundays and holidays there were the three brand new bathing suits in the brand new valise. The only other things in the grip were a change of sheets and pillowslips and a large box of laundry powder. They were ready to make their new life, traveling light as any three people could who had excised not only fall and winter from their lives but the very idea of temperature.

And so if Ca.s.sadaga looked homey-and it did-they looked, save for the single clue of the single suitcase, already at home.

"Look here," his father said. He was standing by an immense gla.s.s-enclosed h.o.a.rding at the entrance to the square. "It's the church directory. Just look at them all. Did you ever see so many? Maybe it ain't even Florida. Maybe we hitchhiked all the way to Rome."

"I don't see see any churches," his mother told his father. "Seems in a town as tiny and churchy as this one you'd be able to spot at least one spire. Wouldn't you think so, George?" any churches," his mother told his father. "Seems in a town as tiny and churchy as this one you'd be able to spot at least one spire. Wouldn't you think so, George?"

"Maybe there's an ordinance against them. Maybe they only run the crosses up on Sundays, like flags on the Fourth of July."

"Oh, George," his mother said.

"Well," his father said, "we didn't come all this way to sightsee. And tomorrow we got to look for work. I think our best bet is to find somewhere we can get a place to sleep. You tired, George?"

"Yes, sir," George said.

They walked through the little town. Mills remembered it yet. It was a paradigm of neighborhood, not a town but a const.i.tuency, not a place but a vicinity, h.o.m.ogeneous as graveyard or forest or a field of wheat. There were no stores or gas stations, no public buildings, neither school nor library nor jailhouse--whatever of munic.i.p.ality or commonwealth, canton, arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, deme or nome, whatever of government itself centripetalized in the bench in the small square. There were no churches.

"I think it must be one of those suburbs," his father said.

"What of?" said his mother.

"I don't know," his father said. "Maybe the highway."

They pa.s.sed several blocks of neat frame houses, not identical but all lawned, porched and porch-swing'd. Many had gardens, some narrow driveways that led to tiny garages that looked like scaled-down versions of the houses themselves.

They walked up a side street, turned south at the corner, went down that street and entered another side street. They turned at another corner. It was the same everywhere they walked. (He was carrying the suitcase now. It was that light.) They came out of the town and were in open country.

"I think those houses must be the main crop around here."

"Oh, George," his mother said.

"Look there," his father said. He pointed to the open country. "They must already have harvested that part."

"Oh, George," his mother said. "You tired, honey?" she asked Mills.

"A little I guess," he said.

"Here. Give me that." She took the suitcase from him. "We better turn back, George. The kid's falling off his feet."

"Suits me," his father said, "but I didn't see signs for lodging, no folks either, if it comes to that."

"We'll just knock and ask if they have a room. Some of these houses must be where the ministers live."

(George had seen the owners' s.h.i.+ngles nailed to their front doors like addresses or planted in their yards like For Sale signs, the saw-toothed, varnished boards suggestive of resorts, fis.h.i.+ng lodges, summer camps, things Indian, rustic, though the names on them were almost defiantly white.) "That's what I was thinking," his father said. "Give me the case. We'll just go back into town and ask if we can be put up for the night in some spare room of the parsonage. I don't expect they'd charge travelers and strangers too much if they at least looked like Christians."

"I don't remember how to say grace," his mother said.

"You can remember how to say amen," his father said. "Just fold your hands and try to look like you don't deserve what they feed you."

His father was not a bitter man. Like all the George Millses before him, he had known subsistence but rarely hards.h.i.+p, treading subsistence like deep water but never really frightened, comfortable enough in his own dubious element as steeplejacks or foretopmen in theirs. So the Depression was no real setback for him. Indeed, it had presented possibilities to him, an opening of options. He had all the skills of the unskilled, chopping, digging, fetching, a hewer and drawer of a man, not strong so much as knowledgeable about weight, knowing weight's hidden handholds the way a diamond cutter might know the directions and cleavage points of a gem merely by glancing at it. So it would not have been correct to say that the Depression had changed their lives or even that they had come south to seek their fortune. It would never have occurred to Mills that fortune could actually be sought. Fortune, if it had been his birthright ever to have more than he could use, would have sought him, it, She, Fortune, in his father's view, being a sort of custom tailor of the G.o.ddesses, like talent perhaps, who did all the really hard work. "I promise you we'll never starve," his father had told him once, "we'll never even go hungry. We won't freeze for want of shelter or die for lack of medicine. We're only low. We ain't down." So if they came to Florida to find employment it was because his father understood that there were ch.o.r.es in Florida too, that the menial was pretty much evenly distributed throughout the world, that Florida had its weight as well as Milwaukee-he'd shoveled coal there, been a janitor, collected garbage-its tasks and ch.o.r.es, odd jobs, stints, and s.h.i.+fts. "Our kind," he a.s.sured his son, "could find n.i.g.g.e.r work in Paradise. What, you think it isn't dirty here just because the sun is s.h.i.+ning?"

So it was only a change of scene he'd wanted. And hadn't gotten yet. "Maybe we aren't close enough yet, maybe we're still too high up the slope of the world. Maybe we have to be where all you have to do is just nudge a stone with your shoe and it rolls all the way downhill to the equator. But whatever, I don't see no parrots in this neighborhood. I ain't spotted any alligators." (Because they'd been in Florida better than a day now, crossing from Dothan, Alabama, into Marianna, Florida, pa.s.sing Tallaha.s.see and Gainesville and Ocala and De Land, all of which could have been Northern towns except for the souvenirs in the gas stations and grocery stores-the toy 'gators and candies in the shape of oranges and grapefruits, the rubber tomahawks and Seminole jewelry, drinking gla.s.ses with scenes of St. Petersburg, Miami, Florida's keys, fis.h.i.+ng tackle with deep-sea, heavy-duty line-where they bought his father's cigarettes and his mother the makings, the dry cereals and packaged breads and luncheon meats and quarts of milk, for their meals. There were suntan lotions on the drugstore shelves, cheap sungla.s.ses on pasteboard cards. This is where his mother had bought their three new swimsuits. "It stands to reason," she'd said before they'd ever left Wisconsin, "bathing trunks have to be cheaper down there." And picked out the swimsuits in the first town they came to after they crossed the state line. "Sure," his father had said, still good-humored, "maybe we should never have got George that cloth alligator when we were still up North. I think we made a mistake there. That stands to reason too. A cloth souvenir toy doll lizard should cost a lot less money in some grocery store near the swamps where there ain't no call for pretend alligators because there's the real thing snapping at your toes no further off than the distance of your own height.") But still good mooded, the absence of physical evidence that they were there still within the acceptable limits of credulity. It was only late summer. They would have to wait months yet before they would get the benefit of the hot winter weather, before they would have any reason to wonder where the snow was, where the ice. His father's mild complaint about the whereabouts of the strange birds and animals only the teasing echo of his own kid questions and alerted suspicions. He was obviously enjoying himself, the twelve-hundred-mile journey they had already come itself a vacation. He was having a good time, his temper was sweet, he was feeling fine, even the queer, beachless, ungoverned and, for all they knew, spare-roomless town a pleasant curiosity. His father, all of them, were happy.

Then they saw the chain gang.

It was policing the small square where the bench and palm tree were.

Two guards with rifles slouched along on either side of the line of convicts as they moved across the square picking up cigarette b.u.t.ts, Coca-Cola bottles, the feeble litter of the lightly trafficked park. A third guard sat on the bench watching the prisoners as one might casually watch a ball game played by children, his arms embracing the back of the bench, his rifle balanced against his crotch.