Mickey sees the recent memory of Willie’s face in his mind’s eye. Willie with his gray eyes, not steely and gray like Rex’s, but sly and gray. And there is Willie’s brown Jack the Ripper beard and his teeth, which are sort of bucked.
Right in front of Mickey now is the vague shape of a portable chipper and a flatbed truck, which Mickey knows has these words on the doors: WILLIAM D. LANCASTER & SON/LANDSCAPING AND TREE WORK. Another determined slash of pinkish light from the neighbors causes part of one fender to glow.
Something touches Mickey’s pants leg. He gasps . . . audibly. He can sort of make out a white dog down there. Now he hears it panting. And sniffing.
Rex is there on the low step of the dimly lighted trailer. Rex is saying a soft, “Hey, boy” to another dog.
Now he is knocking on the trailer door. Two authoritative, hard-but-brisk thwomps.
Mickey pulls relief from his cigarette, his lungs translating the smoky message of tobacco to his soul.
Rex knocks again.
Yes, sometimes Willie answers the door buck naked. Especially if it’s hot and there is a bunch of guests he can torment with his naked antics. There is often a crowd of guests at the Lancasters’. Though the Lancasters themselves are a crowd. Sundays especially are chaos.
This is not Sunday.
“There’s someone here,” Rex says in a low, patient way.
Mickey smokes and waits.
Rex knocks harder. Mickey can hear Rex’s jaws working the gum in a calm businesslike rhythm.
FLUMP! There it is perfectly in front of Mickey, that is, between Rex and Mickey. A face that floats. A grinning head hanging by a string from the sky.
Mickey has grabbed for his cigarette in his own mouth, for some reason . . . but “Urmph!” the hot red cigarette eye burns the top of his hand.
He can tell Rex has turned. But he can’t see Rex’s face. Burned hand hurts, but now Mickey’s heartbeats hurt, too.
Mickey puts the fuzzy features of the floating head together. It’s Willie, of course. Willie who had plummeted from one of the majestic pines, Willie in a dark work shirt that had been mated with the dark yard. Even now the face seems extra-dimensional, the big frozen somewhat bucktoothed grin, the Jack the Ripper beard, the eyes that love fun.
Mickey’s T-shirt is sunshine yellow with Q-City Engineering Conference 1992 on the loose flapping chest. Always his T-shirts are oversized.
No one says anything. Rex reacts to this FUN with accelerating grimness.
Willie moves in closer to Mickey.
Willie’s hand is pushing an object into Mickey’s hand. Mickey starts to recoil, just as he had that first time he met Willie and later when, as a gift, Willie had held out the service pistol which is now Mickey’s treasure.
Oh, yes, Willie must know he terrifies Mickey. You can just tell, Willie LOVES Mickey’s fear.
Now Rex speaks matter-of-factly, “You hear anything from Davis?”
Mickey rolls the object in his hand. It’s a big plastic bottle. He realizes what it is now. Last meeting at Rex’s place, Willie had said he was ordering something for Mickey from a vitamin company. He is always rattling on about the deals he gets on health stuff, especially colloidal silver which he says is good for everything except killing crabs. Then he always laughs diabolically. He called the stuff he was ordering for Mickey “Saint something . . . something wart.” He claimed it was “good for depression.” He said, “Losing your little brother would make you weird . . . which probably explains why you’re weird.” Then he was cackling again, his buck teeth jutting out.
Mickey had corrected him. “It’s my nephew.”
“Whatever,” Willie had snorted. “It’s war, George.” (Willie always calls Mickey names like George.) “You know? A war is on us. And you got shell shock.” He squinted at Mickey as if to size him up. “The medic will deliver!”
And he had said if it worked for Mickey, made Mickey sleep better, he’d order him more. How did Willie know Mickey couldn’t sleep? Mostly no sleep since his brother Donnie kicked him out. It wasn’t Jesse’s death that cut into his nights so bad. Once Jesse was dead, there was no anguish for Jesse. Dying, done, all gone. It was before Jesse died and Mickey still lived with the family and would wake in the night to the little guy’s shrieks or Donnie and Erika fighting over Jesse’s dying . . . or those silent nights when Jesse was drugged up and quiet.
Donnie, Mickey’s brother. Donnie, shithead. The echo of saying, “Go away” over and over and over, a hundred million times all night, no sleep in the tree house, squeaking tree, silent spiders, a feeling of heaviness, of rottenness, of the brother-voice saying, “Go away.”
Mickey gone but alive.
So Willie Lancaster does this nice thing, orders the stuff and here it is in Mickey’s hand. But why can’t Willie do this nice thing like everybody else? Why does he have to scare the shit out of you first?
See the stocks! Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise. Rise.
You hear it everywhere now. They say the CEO of a corporation needs to be socially responsible. How?
Dear people, put your ear against the wide sky and listen. Hear THE G-WORD.‡‡ Feel the hard G of that word. Talk to it. Ask its conscience.
My compensation package is just one small (relatively speaking) fragrant flower of the corporate universe.
Who am I? Just one CEO. Just a cocky-looking but shy strategist with styled hair who obeys the laws of this sky-sized entity. He who does not obey this tidal wave dear soulless master will be placed outside the wall. And waiting in line to replace him, a thousand thousand more. And behind them, a thousand thousand thousand more, spiffy and speedy and harder in the bones. And behind them an endless river of more, evolved into a butter-blur of no hesitation.
And now on his face, a smile like residue.
My dear Gordon,
Come. I need your help. Might you indulge this old woman in a little coup de main? Remember that essay you tongue-in-cheek sent me a couple of years ago about Maine: Terra Onde de Mala Gent!? We need to talk, dear friend. Call me tonight if you can.
Love, Janet
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