“Tell me,” he said, “did I save him?”
“Nobody saved him.”
Coule waited for Mills’s call, though Louise had told him not to. He looked for them on Sunday morning. They weren’t there. They weren’t there the following Sunday. He was bothered by the woman, by her face, which recalled to him the face of the husband and had about it that same sense of wounded reciprocity. Marriage is terrible, he thought.
What bothered him most was his question. “Did I save him?” he’d asked. He, Coule, famous from coast to coast for what had seemed like wrath — he’d edited his shows himself, purposely building them around his furious disclaimers — had not let her leave until he’d asked it. And imagined the look on his face, the coast-to-coast wrath crestfallen, declined to disappointment, acknowledging, if only to himself, what the husband and Mills’s wife had never acknowledged — though what did he know about hearts? — the nonreciprocity of desire, its utter pointlessness.
There was currently a campaign on to bring people into the church. It was the membership’s doing, Coule pretty much staying out of it for he had rather renounced proselytizing when he left Ohio. When the chairman of the committee reported to him he could not help himself. “Has anyone contacted the Millses?”
“The Millses?”
“They live over on Wyoming Avenue. Mr. and Mrs. George Mills?”
The man referred to his list.
“It’s all right,” Coule said, “I’ll call them.”
He called that night. George answered the phone.
“This is Reverend Coule, Mr. Mills. Virginia Avenue Baptist?”
“Yes?”
“We’re having a membership drive. I wonder, could I come over and call on you sometime?”
“You want to speak to Louise,” Mills said.
“Well, frankly, I was hoping I could speak to you.”
Mills didn’t answer at once. When he did Coule was surprised by what he said. “I’m busy,” George told him. “I do heavy work. Nights I’m tired. I watch television. I got all my programs picked out for the week. I don’t like to miss them. I know what you’re going to say.”
Then his wife had told him of their meeting. “Oh,” Coule said. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“You’re going to say I could always catch the reruns. But they don’t repeat all the shows. Only the best. What they think is the best. I have no way of knowing which show’s going to be repeated. You see my position.”
This man was saved? This was the delivered, salvationed, redeemed, and ransomed fellow for whom Christ had died?
And then he knew. Of course he was.
“I do,” Coule said. “I see your position. You know,” he said, “I used to be on television.”
“Louise told me. I never watch any of that stuff. I never watch those shows.”
“Because you’re already saved,” Coule said quickly.
“Louise tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Well I never told her it was a secret.”
“Look,” Coule said, “I really think we should talk. Perhaps I could drop by where you work.”
“I work the nigger neighborhoods. I carry their furniture down the stairs. They got black ice in their ice cube trays. Their furniture slips through my fingers from their greasy ways. There’s come stains on the drapes. Their rent money goes for Saturday night specials. Welfare buys them knives.”
“You’re saying you won’t see me,” Coule said.
“Sure,” Mills said, “I’ll see you. Don’t get in my way. If I drop a couch you could break your legs.”
“Who was that on the phone?” Louise asked.
“Coule,” Mills said. “He says you told him all about me.” Like Greatest Grandfather Mills, he was bilingual. He talked in tongues. The neutral patois of the foolish ordinary and a sort of shirty runic. He had used both on Coule but the minister had not been put off. “I could have said no,” he told his wife, “but I would have gotten you in Dutch.”
“I’m already in Dutch.”
“No,” Mills said.
“I live with one of the elect. I’ll never catch up. Will I go to hell, George?”
“Gee,” Mills said, “I don’t know, Louise.”
They met in an almost empty apartment in the projects. There were still some cartons to take down, a broken chair.
“I’m Ray Coule,” the minister said.
“Will you look at that?” Mills said. “We’re on the seventh floor here and the windows are all covered with wire mesh. They got to do that. That’s government specification. Steal? They take from the sandbox!” There was a framed picture of Martin Luther King on the living room wall. “This go, Uncle?” George asked an old man in a wooden wheelchair. Mills winked at his visitor.
The old man whimpered.
“Stop that whining,” George said, “we ain’t going to leave you. Me and my partner here”—Mills indicated Coule—“going to set you down like a pie on the kitchen table in the truck. The man’s a minister. Like the jig in the picture. Come to bless the eviction.”
Laglichio was in the doorway. “What’s holding it up? Let’s move it, Mills. Who’s this?”
“Reverend Coule,” Mills said.
“Listen, Father,” Laglichio said, “you got a beef, take it up with the city. We got sheriff’s orders to move these people. There’s a deputy downstairs with seals and documents, with notarized instruments like a file cabinet in City Hall.”
“I’m here to see Mr. Mills,” Coule said.
Laglichio shook his head. “George has work to do. It ain’t right he conducts his spiritual business on the taxpayer’s time. Let’s get with it, George. They already signed the papers.”
“I could use some help with these boxes,” Mills said.
Laglichio looked at him. “Just finish up, will you? I’ll be downstairs.”
“My boss is on my ass,” Mills said.
“I’ll help.” Coule lifted a carton of dishes.
“No,” Mills said, “you don’t have to. How’s your lap, Uncle? Think you could handle a few of these if we held them down steady?” He picked up a carton and placed it in the old man’s lap. Another box went on top of the first. A third was stacked on the second. The old man’s head had disappeared behind the cartons, muffling his whimper. “I’ll just peek in the other rooms for a minute, see if I missed anything.” Coule was left with the old man.
“Is this too heavy? Are you uncomfortable?”
“He’s feeling grand,” Mills said and stepped behind the wheelchair. “You know what a forklift is, Uncle?” The old man whimpered. “That’s it,” Mills said, “you got it. Why don’t you step out in the hall, Reverend, see if we’re going to clear that front door?”
Coule, walking backward, steadying the load as Mills pushed. They went toward the elevator as half a dozen blacks watched the strange procession. “Punch ‘Down,’ ” Mills instructed one of the blacks cheerfully. Two black men got into the elevator with them. “Sure,” Mills said, “come on, we’ll give you a ride. Whoo,” he said when the doors had closed, “stinks of piss, don’t it? You brothers got no patience. Stinks of piss, shit, barf and blood. I never been in no jungle, and likely you folks ain’t neither, but I’ll tell you something, I’d vouch you got the smell down. I reckon this is just how it stinks near some big kill. What was you wanting to talk to me about, Reverend?”
Coule glared at him. “I’m no whiskey priest,” he said, his voice at once strained and repressed, tight as a ventriloquist’s. “I’m no one defrocked. I’m clean-shaved. I don’t court the devil like some kid playing with fire. I am not tormented,” he said, his voice on the edge of rage. “My heart’s at the softball game. Someone brings potato salad. Someone brings chicken.”