Friendzo and I went to the mill last week, for a tour. We’ve been thinking of getting into the bread business, and we wanted to reaffirm our love for the old-fashioned mill.
The wind blew the mill’s blades only slightly, and they moved like the very second hands of the clock that would tell some true time well outside man’s erudition. And we watched it for a minute as we rode up. A minute of true time, reckoned by no Babylonian calculus. The millkeeper spoke to us from his throat and hoarse.
Come to see about the mill.
Aye-yup. We be.
The wind too stop and start to rightly be called wind. Grass choked out by viral weedgrowths. I sneezed a soundless expulsion of breath, and Friendzo scratched his elbow dumbly. The millkeeper was anxious to get the tour going. He was eager to sell.
Fellas, I’m anxious to get this tour going.
Do you think he’s eager to sell, Friendzo?
I think he be.
You there. Millkeep. Are you eager to sell?
Truth be told, my boy, I am.
A turning point, that. Friendzo drew his Colt .45 and opened it. He drank deeply, downing it all at once like some terrible medicine. I sneezed again.
We’d like to see the trapdoor.
Aye, gentleman. Wise boys, ye.
We be wise indeed.
Friendzo was sweating at this point — sweating terribly. Like a rhododendron in heat. He stripped to his undershorts and stood upon his horse, hollering mightily to the heavens an exhortation. That there might yet be some slight succor in this our most troubled era. I told him Come along now, Friendzo, and he sat back down as we rode to the trapdoor room.
A wild-eyed skeleton greeted us, dancing loose-limbed like a mortal gumby. Not the first skeleton Friendzo and I have seen. No, sir.
An array of trapdoors, untold variety and incalculable value. The makers’ names embossed on each blazed like beacons of another age, when trapdoors and mills assumed their rightful place as the height of high society status indicators. Wertzengeist. Friele. Hammerflower. I could sense the history of these trapdoors, the homes they’d known, the masters they’d served. The great men — Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Schrempf – they had all known the beauty of the finest trapdoors.
The decision was simple after that. I glanced at Friendzo and nodded. He glanced at the wall and nodded. I glanced at a mouse and nodded. The mouse glanced at some cheese and nodded. The cheese glanced at Friendzo and nodded. Friendzo glanced at the wall again and nodded, a little more vigorously this time. I glanced at Friendzo’s horse and nodded. Friendzo’s horse ate the mouse and nodded at the mouse’s widow. I glanced at the cheese and then ate it. Friendzo ate the mouse’s widow and glanced at me. I nodded.
Millkeep.
Aye?
We’ll take the mill.
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