by Paul Theroux
Millroy opened his hand and produced for Floyd Fewox a glass of whisky, and as Floyd dropped his can of beer and reached, the glass burst open making a watery explosion that became a bunch of flames. Millroy licked the fire from his fingers and a hissing sound came from his head, like spit on a griddle, and that sound was weirder than the sudden fire.
Floyd Fewox stood up crookedly in surprise, or maybe fear, his arms down and his thumbs rigid.
‘Now that I have your attention perhaps we can continue,’ Millroy said.
‘You think you’re better than the rest of us – you and your Airstream trailer. But you’re the same. That’s what I want your little friend to know.’ His lips were wet with drink spittle and his face was twisted. ‘You’re the same as us.’
‘No, I am not,’ Millroy said and seemed to smile. ‘Are you righteous? Do you have one of these?’
Saying that, Millroy reached into his own ear and pulled a fluttering bird from his earhole and released it – a whitish canary which flew to the window sill over Floyd’s head and began to sing a cheeping song, starting the same three-note tune over and over.
The small frail bird seemed to taunt Floyd, like someone laughing at his gloom and making him aggressive. With Floyd snatching at it, the bird flew to the sink faucet, tootled again, and took off, Floyd still after him. That was when Millroy put his hand on Floyd’s ear and took hold and twisted out a shiny black rat.
Crouched on the back of Millroy’s hand, the rat sniffed Millroy’s knuckles and whipped its raw tail around his wrist. Its wet browny-black hair – more horrible than its teeth – was pasted flat against its plumpness, and it stank like a sewer.
‘This is your own rat,’ Millroy said, ‘still slimy from being inside your body.’
‘Get that thing away from me,’ Floyd Fewox said.
Millroy glanced at me. ‘No one likes their own rat. See how disgusted the man is? Whereas the rat is kind of cheery.’
Lowering its head the rat twitched its whiskers on its pink nose.
‘This rat came from deep in the bowels of Floyd Fewox,’ Millroy said, and faced Floyd again. ‘You’ve spent your whole life feeding this rat.’
‘I told you to get it away.’ Backing up, Floyd hit the wall and lost his balance, sitting straight down with a grunt on the floor.
‘Feed the rat,’ Millroy said.
And he spilled the rat onto Floyd’s lap. The man cried out but the rat did not move. It hung on to the filthy cloth and its wet body softened like tar, then sank and grew small, liquefying to several patches of gleaming oil on the thighs of Floyd’s jeans.
‘That rat is fluidified,’ Millroy said.
Floyd Fewox stood up, slapping his legs and whinnying like a dog too spooked to bark. But when Millroy stared at him Floyd seemed to grow dizzy and he sat down again with his back to the wall.
‘You couldn’t hurt me with your hands – not these hands,’ Millroy said, and pinched off one of Floyd Fewox’s fingers.
He held it up and showed the man the soft white flesh as he snapped it into two pieces – impossible to tell whether it was a human finger or an uncooked sausage link until I saw the dirty fingernail on the end.
‘You have made yourself into bad meat,’ Millroy said, and smiled for the first time. The smile had an immediate effect on Floyd Fewox – or was it the cold fire blazing in Millroy’s eyes?
Something in Floyd Fewox worked loose, became unstrung, as though allowing an important organ to come unstitched and begin to slip. He stumbled to his feet and went lopsided, then got clumsy – he was moaning No, No, No, No – and he was trying to keep Millroy away, holding up his hand with the finger stump.
‘This Harvard man is crawling with vermin,’ Millroy said, pushing Floyd’s damaged hand aside and removing a smaller rat from his ear, which he held in the palm of his hand and then compressed into a black pellet.
‘And what’s this?’
He found a tiny egg the size of a finch’s egg in Floyd’s mouth, making the man gag as he retrieved it.
‘No ordinary chicken’s egg, that’s for sure,’ Millroy said. He cracked it open in Floyd’s face, releasing from the broken shell a wiggly snake, like a green worm. It was active and fat, with a white film of slime over its eyes.
‘I hate snakes,’ Floyd Fewox said in a pleading way. ‘I hate rats.’
‘You would,’ Millroy said, ‘on account of you’re crawling with them. And you’re probably not too fond of spiders either.’
The thing was hairy and purple, with black legs, and it came straight out of Floyd’s mouth, clawing and snagging his lips as it passed through.
The man howled, ‘What are you doing to me?’
‘I wanted to have a psychic duel,’ Millroy said, ‘head to head, to give you an eternal brainstorm. But you don’t have the mind for it, you don’t have the body, and you’ve got infestation. Look.’
There was a cockroach in Millroy’s hand that he plucked from Floyd’s nostril, and when he let it go it flew into Floyd’s face and clung to his eye until Floyd clawed it off.
‘I’m showing you what you’re made of,’ Millroy said. ‘Are you aware that you are filled with crawling sniffing critters?’
The trailer had gotten hot and smelly – not the usual sticky summerstink of swamp water and skunk cabbage, but something wetter and more rotten. Millroy saw me making a face and he knew what I was thinking.
‘This man is unmercifully constipated,’ Millroy said.
Floyd Fewox cowered at the side of the trailer looking sick and wearing a strained grunting look of fear.
‘Here, angel, give him your hand – that’s what he wants.’
Before I could draw away, Floyd Fewox involuntarily reached out. He did not touch me, and yet when he closed his hand he was holding a flower, with a big blossom, like a large blown-open rose. He smiled and brought it to his face, and it went limp, flopped over his fingers, and turned to a smear of thin yellow liquid.
‘Everything he touches turns foul,’ Millroy said calmly, almost sweetly.
Floyd whinnied again and tried to shake the slime from his fingers.
‘I can scorch you,’ Millroy said. ‘I can make you itch. I can blister you and drive you mad. You’d be in such pain you’d be better off dead.’
This time Floyd Fewox stood and roared – not at Millroy but all around him, as though demons had attacked him with stings and set his skin on fire.
A cup of water materialized in Millroy’s hand and he showed it to the whinnying man.
‘Drink this.’
The man guzzled it and choked, and he yelled, spitting out flames. He pushed past Millroy, holding his mouth, and opened the trailer door and clawed his hair, uprooting some of the scabby plugs that had been planted.
Millroy had hardly touched him. He held a nest of flames in the palm of his hand.
‘If you ever look at this little woman again, I’ll blind you,’ he said.
And closed his hand on the flames.
We were left in the scorched silence of the trailer. Millroy said nothing for quite a while – he was slow and exhausted, as though that magic had taken all his strength.
‘Jeekers,’ I said.
Millroy was still breathing.
‘That was awesome,’ I said.
At last he said, ‘You made it possible,’ and took another breath into his noisy lungs. ‘Don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen – not a word of it, not yet.’
Who was there to tell? Anyway, it had all frightened me, especially when I remembered that I was sharing this small trailer space with this huge magician.
Millroy went to bed and slept for nine straight hours, as though he was dead, while I lay awake among all the smells and the memory of those sights.
In the morning before the noon show Millroy hitched his Ford to the trailer.
‘I have nothing to do,’ Millroy said.<
br />
But when I looked at him he was smiling.
‘So I think I’ll do it tomorrow.’
He was still smiling his magician’s smile.
‘Nothing,’ he said, and we drove out of the fairground.
7
Heading into the Mashpee rotary behind a huge jingling Coke truck, all the bottles wobbling, Millroy said, ‘I can hardly believe what I’ve just done. I quit my job! Why are you making that face?’
‘I’m, like, why is he so pumped about it?’
He shook his head and smiled the way frustrated people smile.
‘Muffin,’ he said in an unusual voice, forcing himself to be calm, ‘I am a magician.’
Which was exactly why I was making the face. For him, hopping into his Ford and driving his Airstream down the road was a more amazing thing than pulling a full-grown rat out of a man’s ear, or eating fire, or making an elephant vanish in a collapsible box.
Millroy thumped the steering-wheel and said, ‘It’s you. Tomorrow the fair is going to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. I would be going with them, except for you. You did it!’
That made me feel terrible – responsible for all this, the cause of the whole disruption, the reason for the psychic duel and Floyd Fewox’s ordeal. But I said nothing. Several times on the road I felt sorry for Millroy and wondered what I should say, but then I remembered that he was a magician – and not just of tricks but of real baffling magic, creating something out of nothing.
‘So where are we going?’
‘The thing of it is’ – he was smiling a real smile now – ‘I don’t know.’
That was one of the times I thought, Millroy the Magician!
‘Dada lives down that road,’ I said as he was rounding the rotary. ‘That’s where Gaga thinks I am. At Dada’s.’
‘And Dada thinks you’re at Gaga’s?’
‘Kind of.’
‘That can’t last but it’s good for now.’ He was slowing down. ‘I’d like to see this Dada of yours.’
He spun the steering-wheel and took the Mashpee short-cut, Waquoit Road, racing past the Senior Center and the low shaded houses and chicken runs. Some barefoot boys and a woman in a torn dress were sitting on a front porch, a pig was loose under some trees in a yard on Crocker Road.
‘Most people see a fat pig and think of mustard,’ Millroy said. ‘It’s so sad.’
Mashpee Baptist Church came up on the left, River Bend Motel on the right, then the fire station and Mashpee Town Hall, and Lucius Hooley’s wooden roadside stand with an arrow sign Fresh Squash.
‘High fiber, high residue, high in beta carotene,’ Millroy said. ‘Mentioned in Jonah. That man is rendering a valuable service.’
‘He’s a Wompanoag,’ I said.
Millroy looked at me.
‘An Indian,’ I said.
Millroy turned left at the Town Hall.
‘I mean, a Native American,’ I said. ‘And Dada’s down there.’
Saying it made me curious about him, because the last time I had seen Dada he was flat on his back, blacked out and gurgling on the floor of his trailer.
Millroy did not hesitate. He headed along Snake Pond Road, past the Indian Museum and the waterworks and kept going – past Ma Glockner’s chicken restaurant and the stove shop and the Cheapo-Depot.
‘Dada’s gas station is on the left, next to Mister Donut.’
Millroy said, ‘You took the bus from here to the fairground?’
‘It’s safer than bumming,’ I said. ‘Plus I didn’t have to take it back, right?’
‘You will never bum a ride, ever again,’ Millroy said, and it sounded like the noblest promise I had ever heard.
All the trees hereabouts were bluey-green and brilliant in the morning sun – the pitch pines and the dense maples crowding the narrow road.
‘So your father owns a filling-station?’
‘Dada pumps gas,’ I said, and because it made him sound like an under-achiever, which he was, I added, ‘and he’s a motor mechanic.’
‘I have great respect for anyone who can repair an automobile,’ Millroy said, again nobly, and I could see that quitting and driving away from the county fair had put him in a good mood.
He pulled off the road against a stony sandbank, beside a stand of pitch pines.
‘Better hop in the trailer, angel.’
I did so, crouching under a side window, so that Dada would not see me at the Gas and Go.
What was it that Millroy had said about Fewox? This man is unmercifully constipated. I remembered that when I saw Dada appear from the office, a greasy rag flopping at his pants pocket. He seemed small and pale next to Millroy, and he looked a wreck. He must have had a heavy night, but that was not what I noticed most. He seemed almost lifeless, half dead and cranky, self-pitying and trembly. Millroy stood straight, he smiled, he was pleasant to this grumpy man, even got out of the car and flipped open the gas flap. Dada’s name patch said Ray. All this was odd to me because I had been expecting the men, Millroy and Dada, to be more alike.
‘Fill it up?’ Dada said, already sounding disgusted. He looked ill but I knew Millroy was diagnosing bad diet.
‘All the way.’
‘Cash or charge?’ Dada said, jamming the iron nozzle into the gas tank.
‘Cash,’ Millroy said, inhaling and glancing around, taking in the gas station and the trees and Mister Donut. ‘What a lovely morning.’
Dada blew air through his nose with a sound like sandpaper.
‘Makes you feel glad to be alive,’ Millroy said.
Dada faced him and frowned. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
Meanwhile the gas pump was ping-pinging and Dada had kept one hand behind his back. Now he showed it – he was holding a cigarette. He put it to his lips and sucked hard on it.
Millroy said, ‘Smoking is not mentioned anywhere in the scriptures.’
Dada stayed silent, believing he was being criticized. He hated God, he once told me.
‘Which is not very surprising, seeing as how they didn’t grow tobacco in the Holy Land.’
Dada gave Millroy an uncomprehending grin.
‘But I was just thinking of the fire hazard,’ Millroy said.
‘That you – still talking? Funny, for a minute there I thought I left the radio on,’ Dada said. He sighed loudly, he spat on the ground, and then he clicked the trigger of the gas nozzle rapid-fire, watching the gasoline splash down the side of the Ford. I disliked him and felt sorry for him at the same time.
I did not concentrate on how Dada and Millroy were different – different sizes, different heights, different in complexion. Dada was grubby, Millroy was clean. Dada was fattish, the sort of man who looks strong, but I knew that Millroy was stronger.
No, the longer I looked at them the more I was amazed by their similarities – Dada was shrewd and could be funny, like Millroy. They were both unpredictable. They were about the same age. They were alike in many ways. Dada was sometimes a con-man, and his magic was making money disappear. He had schemes and always talked about having great ambitions, and changing the world was one of them. In the end I decided that Dada was a failed version of Millroy.
‘Eight dollars,’ Dada said.
‘I used to smoke three packs a day,’ Millroy said, holding up a credit card.
‘You said cash.’ Dada’s jaw twitched. He seemed weak – that was it, the main difference, and his weakness made you feel unsafe.
Twisting the credit card into his fingers, Millroy manipulated it until it softened and turned green, and then he unrolled it – a twenty-dollar bill. It was a wonderful trick.
Dada just shrugged, refusing to be impressed. ‘You don’t have anything smaller?’
Millroy folded it into his fingers and turned it into a ten, which Dada took without blinking.
When he came back with Millroy’s change and counted the two bills into
Millroy’s hand, Millroy said, ‘Mind looking at the plugs? She’s misfiring.’
‘I don’t work on American cars,’ Dada said. ‘For philosophical reasons.’
Later, when we were on the road again and I was in the front seat, Millroy said, ‘He was kind of funny. You have to respect that. And he’s not stupid.’
I kept my eyes on the road.
‘But he has no leadership qualities. He’s not goal-oriented. And his health is a little worrying.’
‘He drinks,’ I said.
‘He’s got Smoker’s Face. He’s got Smoker’s Voice. His skin’s a mess – lost a lot of porosity. He’s not regular at all. I’m not a fanatic, muffin, but your Dada could use a conversion.’
Millroy was steering us through Forestdale, a place I loved for its small houses and its big trees.
‘I used to go to camp here.’
Millroy did not hear me. He was still thinking about Dada. ‘He could be pre-cancerous,’ he said, ‘but then most Americans are.’
We were soon on the Mid-Cape Highway, heading west.
‘Want to go back?’
I shook my head and Millroy laughed joyfully.
‘You saved me. This is another life – it’s wonderful.’
It was a beautiful day, the sun whitening the road, the trees thrashing in the sea breeze blowing up from Falmouth, the other cars whistling past us, our old rounded Airstream trailer jogging along behind.
Millroy said, ‘That’s why I am so grateful to you. I was hungry and you fed me. With inspiration.’
I wanted to say, Wait a minute, you’re the one who does the magic, not me.
‘And that’s why I need you, pudding.’
It worried me greatly, his saying that.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, because I had cringed and I looked miserable.
‘I don’t know what you want me to do.’
‘Don’t do a blessed thing,’ he said, and smiled, and smacked my leg, and I cheered up.
He pulled into the Outlet Mall near the Sagamore Bridge, explaining that with an Airstream house trailer you did your shopping according to which place had the best parking lot. In Wallace’s Family Clothes Factory, he fumbled through the clothes, and made a pile – blue jeans, shirts, a pair of sneakers. He asked me whether there was anything I wanted.