The School on Heart's Content Road (18 page)

Now, back out in traffic, the late afternoon light gleams off hoods and fenders, Donnie's head hurting.

At a red light, he feels the shape of his head through his cropped hair. He watches the changing set of lights too hard, head cocked, sunglasses giving up thousands of turquoise flambeaus. He sees shoulders and temples of other drivers ooze past on left and right. Bumper stickers and vanity plates and big white campers pushing and pulling away. Metal and tar, world of the cheap. World of progress. World where mistakes are not tolerated, while intentional malevolence is blessed.

He wears a face like a man just fired from his job. But Donald Locke has not been fired. The emotion is the same, hired or fired. The living death, the long thin membrane of a life already lived, his schedule, his soul in the lines between company policy and growth in the next quarter, no day different from the day before in the life that is worth less than the cheapest plastic comb. How can fired be worse?

He wants to die. He wants very badly to die. Though he doesn't envy his dying son. He wants a death that is
fast,
like a hammer striking a nail.

Coming into the dooryard of his home, he feels the dear cloying heaviness of the house, the pull of that back door like centrifugal force when you ride the blue and red buggies of the Tilt-a-Whirl.

But inside the door is Mickey. To Donnie Locke, the boy's narrow face and wolfy eyes look cunning, the arms, the shirtless chest and neck rather skinny a few months ago, more tanned today than yesterday, and more muscular . . . filling this house with threat.

Donnie is breaking. Donnie is dying. There is no shouting this time. Just the
gloink-gloink
of Mickey pouring Kool-Aid or whatever that red stuff is from the pitcher into a cup, and Donnie stepping very close. He takes Mickey one-handed by one bare shoulder. Because of the bag of groceries, he can't use both hands, and he can't think of what to do with the bag. There's no time. There's only seconds to deflect the threat, and it is all so graceful, not like a brawl, because the boy puts up no resistance, is easily shoved along, out through that back screen door, the spring making its thin wiry music, out into the yard with the million crickets in chilling song, sun gone, silver dusk turning to a sweet cold August night.

“Go away,” Donnie whispers. “You can't live here anymore. Get out of here. Go!” All in a whisper.

Mickey, no shirt, no shoes, just jeans and his leather wristband, streaky blond hair, untied, hanging all about his narrow face like a little girl in early morning, looks up at one window of the big house fleetingly, then backs away.

Another night.

Jesse Locke's breathing is ragged, the air stale, these second-story rooms holding the heat of many days.

Donnie Locke sits up, reaches for the bedside light. He looks down at Jesse, who lies flat between himself and Erika. The face of his son, dopey with medicine. The enormous bulging veiny head with its ever-soft yellowy hair. He runs a finger along the spiny back. Holds his hand there. The child's breathing has great pauses now.

“Erika,” Donnie whispers.

“My God,” Erika whispers.

Donnie takes his hand away, pushes both hands between his thighs, hangs his head.

Jesse breathes harder and harder, then a great pause, longer than six breaths, then breathing again
hard,
a wizardy larger-than-life concentration inside every one of his elderly limbs. A beautiful thing to see. A
capable
thing.

Moments later.

When Jesse stops breathing forever, Mickey is somewhere
out there
. No one knows where. Has anyone on this earth seen him since Donnie made him go? It's as if Mickey and Jesse have both masterfully risen out of their insignificant anatomies to start brand-new lives.

And the screen?

Concerning the aforementioned complexities, the screen remains blank and dumbstruck.

Maybe you, crow, are in the sky. Flapping along (
whump!
pause,
whump! whump!whump!
pause). Below you is the rounded flexing land of Gordon St. Onge, fields and ledge, juniper and dark clotted forest. What is that there below? Something sort of dangling but sort of fixed, quite tiny. You almost missed it. But there it is!

Yes, it's Mickey Gammon's tree house.

Mickey's secret tree house.

How could this have happened to him? How could he be so cut off? Like a space guy whose capsule gets screwed up.

Nights cold. Days hot. Even the humidity is back. Down through the little gap in the trees that the path makes, he can see how the nearest mountain rises like a steamy green shower-room wall. Hot desolation.

He fears being found, though no one is looking. No search-and-rescue dogs. No Coast Guard helicopters. No bullhorns booming out “MICHAEL GAMMON! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!!! WAIT WHERE YOU ARE!!” Donnie would just say he had left pissed off. Maybe Donnie believes that.

But maybe those who built this thing might return. Probably not. It looks as old as the Alamo.

The bugs aren't as bad as even a week ago, there's no feverish swirl of millions through the rubbery air, marching up under his T-shirt sleeves, biting through his “new” T-shirt, even his heavy jeans, sweat running in rivers down his legs. But now there is still something hanging on a string in front of his face, something scuttling up the shadowy wall there . . . the wall of his tree house. And a spider bite on his ankle. And a million ants. A hornet flies in the windowless window and out again.

The woods here this morning look prehistoric, a certain edge to the light, boring down between popples, glossy greenish-gray bark, huge-girthed, sour-smelling. And pines. Like ships' masts. Their carpets are rust-colored and soundless and soft. And all the rest. Miles of waist-deep fern and other bushy stuff. Mostly green, but some edged in yellow. Thousands and thousands of spotted trunks and shaggy trunks and
trunks rivuleted with great age, and gold and gray and white birch. All of it pushing and bullying and striving up into the heavy swells of foliage and live needles. This, the violence of trees! Like humans. It is war, yuh, war. Endless, endless war.

Is there nothing in this world that will cradle you?

He feels for his pack of cigarettes. Ah, yes. It takes five matches to light up. Everything damp. Everything stubborn. He almost sobs with impatience. He finally inhales the burning friend. He closes his eyes, exhales slowly.

In a future time, Claire St. Onge remembers that summer well.

The outside world's children were coming to us on a painful current of need. I
believed
we were up to this mighty challenge, that we were special people.

Secret Agent Jane visits the county jail again. Jane speaks.

It's Sunday. Gordie and I get in his truck and go the long way off to see Mum. I walk straight past the copguards with my secret agent glasses, knowing everything about them, knowing
everything
.

Gordie tells me to hold his hand, but I say “no thank you.” I feel the power. Cops will die, the giant building will explode, my Mum will be rescued, anything could happen if they make me mad. I stare into Mum's eyes and she is staring into the heart shapes of my eyes and she knows I have the power. She says, “So what do you have to report to Headquarters?” Her voice is secretish and important.