Monsters and Magicians (26 page)

Mike Mills, who had had David sent out to the county to give representation to Yancey Mathews, was of about Von Fridley's age and had been in state politics for about as long, but there the similarities between the two bureaucrats ceased. Mills was tall, robust and bronzed, looking nearer to forty than his actual age of sixty. He was a hunter, fisherman, horseman, skeet shooter, and one-time army officer, and his office furnishings and decorations reflected all these interests and pursuits.

Despite his affable, somewhat folksy manner, David accurately sensed a keen intelligence as well as an unidentifiable something that made him feel strongly that he would not at all like to have to face an angry Mike Mills, most particularly were he at all the cause of that anger.

Having been asked to please step over to his office, David had found himself greeted warmly, offered whiskey and had settled for coffee. Leaving his cluttered desk, Mills had waved David to one of a pair of worn, leather wing chairs, then seated himself in the other, the dark mahogany coffee table between them holding a humidor of the tobacco he favored, big ashtray, pipe rack and their cups.

"David," he said without preamble, "are you ready to take this Mathews case into court? Is there anything else you want to do, any more tests you want run on him, any more folks you want to talk to? I don't mean to rush you, son, but it's been more'n three weeks you've been up here, now . . . ?"

David sighed; the jig was up. "No, sir. I guess I'm

as ready as I'll ever be on it. I'll be facing you, then?"

Waiting until his ancient, blackened and knobby briar was well lit, Mills shook out the wooden match and shook his head of dense, brown hair. "No, no, son, not me. At my age, I can afford to give small stuff like this to young fellows to do. No, Harry Robins—I introduced you two, you recall?—will be representing the county opposite you. It's his baby, I'm not and won't be at all involved, win, lose or draw, that's my way.

"I serve you fair warning, though, son: young Harry's good, he's out of U. Va. and I trained him here. If you can outmaneuver him, you'll be able to figure you earned your salt that day. But win, place or show, son, there's more than just the Mathews case I want to talk to you about today. More coffee?

"David, in the time you've been out here with us, you've made a real impression on some of us, a good impression, a real good impression. But I'll get back to that in a minute.

"When I went off to war, back in '42, David, the county seat, here, was called a town on the maps, and that was about all. Besides the old courthouse, there were a Baptist church, a Methodist church, a gas station, a general store, my uncle's feed store, a tourist court and restaurant where the Honeysuckle Motel is today, and no more than a handful of houses; just outside what was then the town limits there were three big estates—one raising beef cattle, one raising thoroughbreds, and the third one, where some reclusive English gentleman lived, that didn't raise any cash crops that any one ever knew of. The whole

rest of the county was wall-to-wall farms and woods and more farms, small farms, mostly. The big road, the interstate, hadn't even been thought about then and the city was half a day and more away, if you had a car, an overnight trip by wagon, or you could get over to the crossroads before dawn and wait on the Greyhound bus.

"By the time I came back, though, in '47, two of the estates had been sold and the land developed and the town limits had been expanded to take in the plant that had been built during the war and the rough housing that had been put in to give the workers a place to live. All kinds of small businesses either had started or were getting ready to start, and plans were all drawn up for the beginning of what ended up as this complex based on the courthouse.

"But we still mightve just stayed a small town, wasn't for the interstate, David, that and the way the city keeps growing. Son, within another ten or fifteen years, we here are going to be to all intents and purposes a suburb of the city; smart money from there is already feeling out things along either side of the interstate between here and there. I've even joined in buying the options of a few select parcels here and there myself, come to that.

"What I'm getting at, my boy, is this: We're not exactly the countrified backwater that we seem to be, out here. One whole hell of a lot of big-money business is going to be conducted in this county over the next few years and that could mean a good living for a good, young, sharp, friendly lawyer who could see whatall is coming and got himself set of it."

"Mr. Mills ..." asked David in consternation, "do

I understand you? You want me, on only three weeks' acquaintance, to enter into private law practice in your county? You don't really know anything about me ... do you?"

Mills shrugged. "I judge a man by what I see in him, mostly, David, and I like what I've seen in you. But I did do a little wee tad of investigation, too; after all, you do work for, were bought into the state by, Von the Red. But I liked what I found out, mostly. You're third generation of a whole family of attorneys, and you went to good schools. You appear to have gone a bit overboard in extracurricular activities to the detriment of your grades, but that is most likely an indication of your energy—how I wish I were your age again with the boundless energy of youth." Mills sighed, commenced to probe into the depths of his pipe bowl with the butt of a kitchen match, but spoke on while so engaged.

"As regards private practice, that's all up to you, son; you certainly can if you want to, but it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. No, I thought you could work with me, here, for a while. Judge Hanratty, he means to leave the bench within the year—but you keep that under your hat, David, it's not common knowledge yet—and he's going to set up offices here in town, and when he does, you'd go over and work with him, you see. Then, when I retire, end of the current year, we'd become Hanratty and Mills, while young Harry Robins takes over my county job. You work with us for one or two years and then, if you like what you're doing and we three seem to get along okay, we'll start calling ourselves Hanratty, Mills and Klein. How does that sound to you, son?"

David felt just then as if he'd been clubbed, felt as fuzzy-headed, as utterly divorced from reality, from the world and all in it as he had back in 70, during the Days of Rage, when that District of Columbia pig had downed him with a swipe of his baton. He couldn't speak, he just sat there, his eyes a little glazed over.

"David? David, boy?" Mills leaned forward, concerned patent in his voice and manner. "Are you okay, son? Let me get you a drink, a little bourbon never hurt anybody."

But as Mills started to rise, David at last found his voice. "No, no thank you, Mr. Mills, I . . . I'm all right, it's just . . . well, all . . . everything that's gone down in here this morning. Look, you're not putting me on, man, are you? No, forget I said that, of course you're not, you're not that kind, none of you, people down here are. I'm honored, of course . . . more than that, really. But look, Mr. Mills, you . . . you don't know all you think you do about me. I don't know as much law as I should, you know, I damned near didn't even graduate, that's why my father and uncle wouldn't take me into the family firm . . . that and some of the things I did while I was in school, my politics and ..."

"Hold it, David," said Mills. "Just hold on, boy. There is an arrogance in your generation, you know. You all think you're the very first nonconformists, the very first crop of wild-eyed radicals this country ever produced. Oh, how very wrong you all are. Why, David, when I was a freshman in college, I came within a hair of leaving school, going to Spain and enlisting in the Loyalist army to fight the

Falangists, and I was far from alone, too. All intelligent, sensitive, caring folks are, in their undergraduate years at any decent university, inclined to being ranting, left-liberal egalitarians, crusaders all searching desperately for a crusade to join in, and I would imagine that that's how it always has been and always will be, too, David; it's just the nature of young folks, it seems.

"What your politics are is your business. National politics only concern this state every four years, mostly. Rest of the time, it's state politics and, though the state is mostly ostensibly Democrat, like all the other southern states are, it's a whole heap of difference between our interpretation of that party label and the brand of such states as Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and a lot of other northern and western states.

"So what do you have to say, David? Think you'd like to live and practice out here in the sticks? You probably need time to think on it, but ..."

"Yes, I do need some time to think, Mr. Mills," agreed David. "Besides that, I'd like to talk to my father about it, get his opinion, you know."

" 'Course you would, David." Mills nodded, smiling. "Shows you've got brains, it does. The offer's been made and it'll stay open, too. So you just take your time; last thing I want you doing is jumping into anything you might have cause to regret later, son. You want to, you can go back after the judgment's in on the Mathews case and talk to Von Fridley 'bout it . . . but just don't bring up anything about Judge Hanratty, hear, that's got to be just 'tween you and me and the gatepost for a while yet."

Mention of Fridley's name and the phrase concerning jumping into things and later regretting the plunge triggered the thought of Amy Fisch and having to go back into that sinister circus of hers in the city. David asked, "Mr. Mills ... if... in the event I did decide to go to work for you . . . when could . . . would I be starting? I mean, when would you want me to move down here? I'd have to give Von notice, I guess, and find a place to live and . . ."

"Now don't you worry your head one bit about Von, David," said Mills in reply, "you won't be the first youngster's been stolen away from him by a county or another department of the state government; Til take care of all that. Oh, he'll yell and scream and bitch like you wouldn't believe, but as much power as he's got in some quarters, he still knows who his masters are.

"So far as a place to live goes, don't you worry Tsout that either. You can just stay at Honeysuckle until we find a place you like. That tract the Mathewses five in, out on the east end of the old Dabney estate property, some of them are kind of ratty and rundown, true, but it's a lot that aren't and I own some of those, the bank owns some others and the sheriff owns some, too. Between us, it's for damn sure we can fix you up proper.

"How much have you got to move down here? You think a truck made to haul six horses would be big enough to hold it all?"

David smiled. "Sir, I own no furniture or major appliances; back in the city I live in a furnished apartment. My effects consist of clothes, mosdy, some books, tapes and a player, a few kitchen items I've

had to buy and some sheets and towels, nothing that I can't get into my station wagon with room to spare/'

"Well, then," Mills grinned, nodding, "you just think on it, son, and talk it over with your dad, up north, and if you decide you want to be one of us country-boys, you give me a call, day or night, and let me know, and if you can't get a hold of me, call the sheriff and give him the message, then you pack up and drive on down here and you'll go on the payroll the next day, hear. And son, you haven't asked, but you should know that the county pays a tad more than Von Fridley gives his wage slaves, and it's cheaper to live out here, too . . . unless," he grinned again and more widely, "your tastes run to French cognacs and champagnes, escargot, Beluga caviar and Kobe beef, as mine do, unfortunately. But more fortunately, I've never had to try to live on my county income, either.

"You're not married, never have been, I hear, but you once were affianced. Are you still? Or planning to be?"

At David's headshake, he said, "Well, then, if you do decide to move down here, we'll have to get you initiated into the hunt club, our homey version of a country club. It's out in what used to be the Dabney mansion, though it's been gussied up some over the years since that old man went away. That done, it won't be long until you'll be fighting the girls out there off with a club, good-looking young fellow like you."

"Uhh, Mr. Mills ..." David began, hesitantly, "I'm Jewish, you know . . . ?"

Mills just stared blankly at him for a long moment,

then said, "And I'm Methodist, son. But out here, it's like I said earlier about your personal brand of politics: your religion is your own business and nobody else's. Oh, wait a minute, I get you now. I'll just bet that all your life you've been pumped chock full of all kinds of scurrilous propoganda about how terrible things are in the South. Right? Of course you have, else you wouldn't have said what you just did and when.

"Well, you just sit tight and listen to me, Mr. David Klein, I am not an unworldly man. Yes, I was born and a good deal of my rearing was in this county, but I've lived in, travelled in some other parts of this country and the world, for that matter. And I'll tell you this much: you'll find more real racial, ethnic and religious prejudice up north than you will down here. Oh, yes, there are enclaves of white trash scattered here and there, brainless wonders who march with the Klan and raise a hooraw every so often, but you've got their like up north, too; their kind occur world-wide.

"We southerners are largely caste-conscious as old hell, comes to birth and breeding and how long your folks have been in America, but David, you find that kind of thing in the north, too: Boston is infamous for it. The Lodges speak to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God.' Ever heard that quote, son?

"But since World War Two, as the South has begun to become less rural and agrarian and more urban or suburban, more industrial or business oriented, the old order has been changing and, in more recent years, those changes have been accelerating. For all that some folks in some places try desperately

to keep up the old forms, the old ways, they're as deluded as old King Canute was in ordering the tide not to flow in; the Old South is as dead as a mink stole. It may be mourned by some, but no one can ever bring it back any more than a man can unscramble an egg.