George Mills (75 page)

“ ‘Why don’t you come up in front, Harve? Why don’t you put that airplane down and sit here with Dad? Goddamn it, Harve, I’m not your chauffeur.’ But we drove on in silence, the both of us sore.

“We’d gone a hundred miles maybe, Harve back there sulking, me sulking in front. He’d make sound-effect noises. With his planes, with his cars. A mimic of engines, impressions of speed. He’d imitate crashes, do disasters, explosions, ships lost at sea.

“ ‘Knock knock,’ I said when we’d driven another hour. ‘Knock knock, Harve.’

“And stopped for lunch. Harve not glaring at me over his menu this time, Harve equable, placid, almost benign. Don’t I know that kid? Because I’d figured it out in the car, knew what he’d do, knew he’d figured it out too—don’t I know him? don’t I?—knew it wasn’t even me he was mad at anymore. No, angry at himself for not thinking of it at breakfast. So I
knew
what he’d do. When the waitress came over I was ready for him.

“ ‘Have you decided?’

“ ‘Well, no,’ I said, ‘actually I haven’t. Why don’t you ask the boy?’

“And, triumphant, looked at him, saw the smile leave his face. No, not leave it, but hanging there crooked, like make-up mismanaged, like cosmetics deranged. But I had to hand it to him. I did. I had to take off my hat. I could have kissed him.

“ ‘Two eggs,’ he said slowly, remembering, getting it perfect, ’scrambled. Orange juice. Toast. Coffee,’ he said.

“ ‘Wouldn’t you rather have milk, Harve?’

“ ‘Sure.’ He grinned. ‘Milk.’

“ ‘Sounds good,’ I told her. ‘Bring me the same.’

“We stopped off for ice cream, stopped off for Coke. When we filled up in Kentucky I gave Harve three bucks. He offered me candy when he came out with the bag. I told him, ‘No thanks, Harve.’ You know what kids eat. Crap from the space age——sugar fuels, fizz. Candy with noises, a licorice that whistles, a licorice that whips. Panes of sugar so brittle like cracked glass in your mouth. Pop drops and doodads, candy like toys. ‘Your mother would kill me, she saw what you got.’ I made him promise to save some, not to fill himself up.

“He was sitting up front now. More like it, you know? We got into Nashville just after five.

“ ‘This is Nashville,’ I told him, ‘where they make all the country-and-western records. Nashville is famous.’

“ ‘Sure,’ Harve said, ‘Motown.’

“ ‘No, Motown’s in Michigan, Motown’s Detroit.’

“ ‘Where they got all the niggers.’

“ ‘Christ, where do you get that stuff? Your mother doesn’t talk like that, I certainly don’t. Black people are just like everybody else.’

“ ‘They’re poor,’ Harve said.

“ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘many of them, many of them are.’

“ ‘Chicken George, Kunte Kinte. Slavery’s bad.’

“ ‘That’s right, Harve.’

“ ‘That’s why they kill us. That’s why they steal. That’s why they set fires and rape old white ladies and take our bicycles. That’s why they’re lazy and cheat on welfare.’

“ ‘Harve, that’s bullshit. You’re a bigot, you know that?’

“We were downtown now, stopped at a light. Some people were waiting on line for a bus.

“ ‘Your
mama!
’ Harve called from the car.

“ ‘Roll up that window!
Goddamn it, Harve!’ ”
George Mills was giggling. “We could have been
killed,
” Messenger said. “We could have been jabbed in the eyes with their hatpins, we could have been slashed in the guts with their shivs.” Enhanced, he began to laugh. “They could have pulled us out of the car and OD’d our asses with bad skag. They could’ve done us an injury with their Saturday Night Specials. Oh Jesus!” He wiped his eyes, licked his fingers. “Delicious,” he said. “Weeping delicious and laughter delicious too. All, all of it delicious.”

“Did you find the place?” Mills asked.

“The Holidome?”

George nodded.

“Oh sure,” Cornell said. “But we didn’t order from room service. Harve decided he’d rather eat in the restaurant.

“I was ready for him. I mean things had gone better. He’d been sitting up front with me, and cooled it on the sound track. Things had gone better, but I was ready for him. Before she even came over I laid down the ground rules.

“ ‘All right, Harve,’ I told him, ‘that was a cute one you pulled at lunch. I give you that one. Anything you want, anything.’

“ ‘Anything?’ he said. He had this sly, shit-eating grin on his face.

“ ‘Absolutely,’ I said, and dropped the big one. ‘
But you can’t have eggs!
You can’t have toast or juice. You can’t wait for me to order and tell her “Same here.” What I did this afternoon was a gesture. Ordering eggs, ordering juice. Do you understand me, Harve? It was a little salute from me to you because you used your head and you tricked me. That was smart, Harve, but it’s not helping you read. Sound it out. When the girl comes over and gives us the menus we’ll just tell her we need more time. Sound it out. I don’t care how long you take, Harve.’

“ ‘Not out loud,’ he said. ‘I’m ashamed.’

“ ‘Not out loud,’ I agreed. ‘To yourself. Whatever you want.’

“So when the waitress came over and left us the menus he knew where he stood. I have to admit. He certainly studied the thing. He touched each letter with his finger as if the menu were printed in a kind of Braille.

“She asked if we were ready.

“ ‘How about it, Harve? Are you?’

“ ‘You go first,’ he said.

“ ‘All right,’ I said, ‘sure.’ I drew it out, chose, changed my mind, talked it over with the waitress, asking in Opryland, ’is your swordfish fresh, your poached salmon?’ Not wanting it even if it was, you understand, just giving Harve time, not wanting to embarrass him in public. Just giving him time, letting him rehearse whatever it was he’d so painfully sounded out. Harve finally looked up. I smiled at the waitress.

“ ‘Shrimp cocktail to start, please. Bring lime, not a lemon. You can get a wedge from the bartender,’ I told her decisively. ‘Kansas City strip. Medium rare. Baked potato. Have the chef remove the aluminum foil in the kitchen. You have a house dressing?’ She nodded. ‘House dressing. Coffee. We’ll see about dessert later.’ I looked over at my son. ‘The ball’s in your court, Harve,’ I told him.

“ ‘Milk,’ he said. ‘I’ll have milk.’

“I was staring at him, but sure enough there it was, his finger under the beverages at ‘Milk,’ pressing his finger down on the page, holding on to the word as if, if he let go, it would take him forever to find it again.

“ ‘Anything for starters? What for a main course?’ the waitress asked. Harve looked over at me.

“ ‘The lady wants to know if you feel up to an appetizer, Harve. She’s waiting for your decision vis-à-vis the entree.’

“ ‘Milk,’ he said, ‘just milk.’

“The waitress looked at him sympathetically. ‘Too much Opryland, sweetie?’ she asked. ‘You swallow too much chlorine in the Holidome?’

“Harve shrugged.

“ ‘Where you from, darlin’?’

“ ‘St. Louis,’ Harve said.

“ ‘You drive all that distance with your daddy today?’

“Harve nodded.

“ ‘That’s a long drive,’ she said. ‘No wonder your tummy’s all sour. How about two nice soft-boiled eggs and some unbuttered toast? The chef don’t like to do that this time of night, but maybe if I tell him it’s for you he’ll make an exception. Tell you what, if he puts up a stink I’ll do it myself.’

“Now I really have to give him credit. He could have made me the hard guy, I might have had to take this fall. I mean all he had to do was look over at me for permission, for God’s sake. Because I wouldn’t have given it to him. He knew that. I
wouldn’t
have given it to him. I’d have looked like a shit in that nice waitress’s eyes with her damned Southern hospitality. There I am, George. Practically praying to God that the kid wouldn’t do it, that he’d start making his F-15 noises again instead, that he’d dive-bomb, strafe the fucking civilians, drop the big one on the niggers, anything. But I have to hand it to him. I
do.
He never took his eyes off that waitress’s face. He never even blinked them. And when he spoke, which was at once, he was as southernly hospitable as the waitress herself, as gracious and charming, giving it back to her in spades who couldn’t read a menu but who’d picked up in five minutes at the registration desk the actual idioms and inflections, perfect pitch not just for machinery but for the United States of America, maybe for the whole world.

“ ‘No, ma’am, no thank you. I don’t really crave eggs this evening. I’ll just have that milk if it’s all the same to you and that chef don’t mind pouring it.’

“ ‘Sure, sugar,’ she said, and smiled at him and scrambled his hair with her hand. ‘Why do they ever have to grow up?’ she asked when I gave back her menu.

“And me thinking the same, Mills. Why do they? Why do they have to grow up? Why do they have to learn to read? And had already relented, and wanted to thank him, say, ‘That was nice, Harve.’ But thinking, No, talk is too cheap, I won’t spoil it by saying anything. Thinking, The kid must be starving. After the food comes, after the food comes and she’s left us alone I’ll take a bite and sigh and tell him I’m not as hungry as I thought I was, and push my plate across the table at him. Thinking, Yes. That’s
just
what I’ll do.

“I couldn’t even look at him yet, Mills. I couldn’t even look at him I loved him so much. I didn’t want to see his fine hair, his slight body, his soft, perfect skin.

“She brought my shrimp cocktail. She brought Harve his milk.

“I arranged the napkin in my lap and lifted my shrimp fork. I didn’t squirt lime on the shrimp because I didn’t know if Harve would like it. Most people don’t. I still couldn’t look at him. I heard a kind of noise, Harve’s ventriloquized conversation, but low, almost under his breath, sounds no one could spell. Which even I realized was perhaps why he made them. I didn’t recognize this one. It wasn’t, well, mechanical. It didn’t have that special gift of speed and divided, juggernauted air he was so good at. It didn’t rumble like avalanche or crackle like fire. I couldn’t recognize it at all. It had none of the crisp rasp and bristle of Harve’s natural disasters, forests coming down, the earth quaking like a stutterer. They weren’t the nasal trills of siren and emergency. It wasn’t the rapid fire of war. It was a kind of long-drawn-out sliding, a soft rubbing noise like something being slipped out of a package.

“ ‘Here, Harve,’ I said, ‘these are good, but you eat the rest. I’m not nearly as hun—’

“It was the paper bag. It was the paper bag with the candy I’d made him promise not to eat all at once. It was the paper bag he was sliding out of his pocket, that he overturned on the table letting the bars and confections rain down on the cloth like bombs from a bomb bay and then covered with his napkin so the waitress wouldn’t see it when she came by with my steak.

“ ‘You put that—’

“ ‘You said I could eat anything I want. I even asked you. I said “Anything?” and you said I couldn’t have eggs.’

“Because he was waiting, setting me up. Because he knew, you see. Knew in Kentucky when he spent his three bucks. Because he was ready for me before I was ever even close to being ready for him. Because he’s hawk through and through. Because that megaton noise, those sounds that he makes, are war games, maneuvers, some worst-case scenario he has by heart in his head.

“ ‘If you’re so smart,’ I taunted, ‘if you’re so smart why can’t you read? Knock knock. Hey, knock knock, Harve.’ ”

Messenger’s hands were shaking. “Do you get this? Do you see what I mean?” he asked George. “Big deal I don’t take him hunting, big deal I never taught him to fish.

“His suits,” Messenger said suddenly, leaning toward Mills, fervent. “The power of my father dressed! His suits. Their ample lapels, their double-breasted plenitude. The fabrics like a gabardine energy, their sharkskin suppleness, the silk like a spit-and-polish swank. His trousers riding his hips like holsters and giving off not an illusion of bagginess but some natty, rakish quality of excess, bolts, cloth to burn. Full at the calves, full at the shins, and spilling over his shiny shoetops, fabric rolling over him like water. He stood in his clothing like a man swaggering in the sea. His suits, my father’s suits, the power of my father dressed. The fierce force of that middle-aged man!

“In shorts, George. In pajamas the same. His thighs spread in swim trunks, on beach chairs, in hammocks, his long old balls hanging out. An old testicle prophet my pop!”

“I don’t——”

“Did he teach me engines? Did he teach me to drive? You pass on what you can. He sold costume jewelry. He taught me a gross is a dozen dozen. A hundred forty-four rhinestone necklaces, a hundred forty-four pairs of earrings. Term insurance a better deal than straight life. That you pay cash you lose the interest on your money. His traveling salesman’s weights and measures.”

“I don’t——”

“Wait, wait. I gave Harve five dollars to play the video games. He was back in an hour with a kid half his age.

“ ‘This is my friend, Dad. This is my dad.’

“ ‘Hi.’ The kid giggled. ‘Let’s splash my sister, let’s go run around.’

“ ‘We found the secret tunnel,’ Harve said, ‘where they keep the machinery. Where they keep all the chlorine, where they keep the equipment that works the whole pool.’

“ ‘Mister, Harve turned off the lights. He shut off the games.’

“ ‘Could you step out for a minute? I want to speak to my son.’

“ ‘The janitor’s after us, that guy who makes change.’

“ ‘Please,’ I said, little boy.’

“ ‘I’ll be in the tunnel,’ the kid said to Harve. ‘Unless I’m captured.’

“ ‘Don’t get captured, Pete. Gas him. Unscrew the caps off the chlorine.’

“ ‘You know how old that kid is?’ I thundered. ‘Christ, Harve, he’s
six!
There must be half a dozen boys out there your own age. Why choose babies to play with?’

“ ‘He’s eight.’

“ ‘He’s a fucking baby. He’s crazy as you are.’

“ ‘I’m not crazy,’ Harve said. ‘Don’t call me crazy.’

“ ‘I don’t understand you. Why can’t you find someone closer to your age?’

“ ‘They’re boring.’

“ ‘
You’re
boring! All you do is run around and make trouble. All you do is run around and act wild.’ He started to leave. ‘Forget it. You’re not going out. Where’s my change from the machines? You’re not stuffing yourself with any more candy.’ He threw down some quarters. Tick those up! Pick them up!’