The School on Heart's Content Road (22 page)

Rex stands now with his hands crossed loosely in front of him, his dark blue work pants without a wrinkle, his dark T-shirt perfectly fit, the military boots buffed, hair cut razor-straight across the back of his neck: clean, combed with care, eyes like a machine. Eyes on Willie. On the whole of Willie. He says, “We're going to need to talk. You have any time this week?”

Willie says, “It's all the same. Out straight. Jobs all over the place. But if four-fifteen in the morning sounds good to you, I'm handy.” He leans back, comfortable now, on one elbow against the corner of the counter, sets his soda can there daintily.

Two women pull open the cheap metal door, step in quietly. Eyes on Willie. Both have loosely curled hair, like perfect hoods of curled-under ocean waves. One has a T-shirt with a picture of a Ferris wheel on it; the other wears a satiny hot-looking gold blouse, too tight across her chest and round back. And a skirt. And dressy shoes with little bows. No time to change clothes between church and the Lancaster cookout, no doubt. Both women have cameras. One of these things is the old
cheapie plastic flash-cube type. (Say, where does she find flash cubes these days? Maybe just left over, no picture worth taking all these years . . . until
this one
?) Both women wear very sly expressions. The roundish woman with the gold blouse has an unlit cigarette in her teeth. She bares her teeth into a really devious grin. Good-looking teeth. Cigarette wiggles. She pushes between Rex and Mickey and snaps a picture . . . too close . . . of the naked Willie Lancaster.

Willie jumps away from the counter, eyes wide. He smiles hugely, his protruding teeth seeming to bite at the air. “Me? You want
me
?”

Both cameras begin to blaze. Flash cubes and battery flash are giving the walls and everyone's eyeballs a hectic storm of light.

Even the serene Dick O'Brien, who through the years has seen it all and who is now sitting on the raised step to the living room, patting one of the white dogs, snorts and shakes his head.

Six-foot-four Artie Bean of the de-sleeved Harley T-shirt speaks in his baritone. “Doin' a brown-paper-covered magazine?”

“No,” replies the shimmery gold-blouse gal. “This is just for the record.”

“Maybe the
Guinness Book of World Records.
” The other woman snickers as she jams another cube into her camera.

Willie's gray eyes get even more delighted and huge. He says, “Shucks! My tape measure's out in the shop.” Then turns sideways and, with two fingers, takes the loose uncircumcised end of his penis and holds it straight out. Pushes out his pelvis to add to the effect. The flash cubes churn. Big Artie Bean and thick-in-the-middle Danny and tall soft-eyed Louis are almost gagging to death with laughter. The old logger shakes his head. Rex and Mickey remain visibly unaffected.

The women hurry off, their laughs high-pitched, sounding like sirens that fade as they get farther outside in the yard.

Willie looks Rex in the eye, salutes. Says, “Be right back.” Then, light as a cat, exits by way of the tinny whooshing door.

Suddenly, behind the trailer, are real emergency-ish screams.

The TV flutters and squiggles, straining to please, but no one looks.

The logger gets up from the carpeted step, ambles over to the refrigerator, and gets himself an orange soda. Tosses a slice of American cheese to the smiling dog who has followed him.

Willie returns, ambles over between Artie and Danny, and spits into the sink. He turns around and leans back against the sink, wiping his
mouth on a forearm and eyeing Rex. He says, a little bit breathlessly, “The newspapers got it all screwed up. It didn't happen the way they said. I didn't threaten
anybody
.”

“That's what I want to talk about when we talk.”

“No need to be all shh shh shh-shhh!” Willie cups his hand beside his mouth to illustrate secret whispers. “Let's talk about it
now
. Nobody here is the enemy.”

The teen daughter returns to pull a bowl of potato salad from the refrigerator. Willie's wife, Judy, storms in, flushed and damp, her hair more frizzled than ten minutes ago. “If you had started the briquettes this morning, William, there'd be time for Jim, Donnie, and Joycie to eat. But they have to go in twenty minutes and the chicken is raw.”

Willie growls to himself. “I'm gettin' a
gas
grill. Briquettes were used by cave dwellers.”

The wife, Judy, places a hand on her hip. “Regardless of that, why didn't you get these briquettes started?”

“You coulda lit 'em as good as I could, m'dear. I'm not the friggin' butler.”

The daughter looks inside the plastic lid of the bowl, squeals “Oh, no!” and runs out, leaving the bowl on the round maplelike table.

Wife says in a low voice, “No, but Willie, you was a damn good butler up at Cressey's this morning, and I could hurt you with that.” She looks hard and pissed.

He says softly, hoarsely, “You walk the line. Tonight you pay, bitch.”

She walks straight at him, grips him by the dog tag, and hisses, “The green machine.”

He and she explode with laughter, both shrieking and teary. She gives him a hard poke in the arm. He pokes hers. She kinda squashes his bare toes with her sneaker. He screams, bloodcurdlingly. She walks away straight-faced, her eyes once again sleepy.

“Bitch!” he calls after her. “Tonight you get the crowbar! The whole thing!”

Dee Dee, their pregnant daughter, young wife of Louis, appears, her lavender sleeveless maternity sundress straining across her middle. She pushes a pair of jeans into Willie's hands. “
Dad,
” she says, smiling quirkily, rolling her eyes, then walks away. She carries with her a cool cloud of contentment.

Willie smiles bucktoothishly. “Boss has spoken.” He stuffs a foot into each leg of the jeans, zips up. Looks around dazed, as if he had forgotten this unimportant intimate landscape.

The room. Now ten degrees hotter? The air definitely thicker. Odors—of the sink and damp linoleum, dogs, refrigerated crushed ice, mayonnaise and cold potatoes, hot people and pine—are expanding.

Another daughter appears, this the youngest, thirteen or so. Darker-haired than the others, darker-skinned. Naturally golden. And shapely. And she wiggles it. Her bikini is purple with pink lightning bolts. Her breasts are tea-cup-sized but, you know, fatty and full and firm. She smells powerfully of suntan lotion. She and her friends have spent much of this summer stretched out on towels and blankets a few yards behind the two joined mobile homes and between Willie's old junk (but neatly parked) cars, trucks, tractors, skidder, and towers of tires.

She has Willie's gray eyes and narrow face, which Mickey Gammon studies as much as he can in flash-glances, though mostly flash-glances at her body.

She has brought in a dishpan, which she now fills with ice; then, on her way out, she presses one of the small hollow cylinders of ice to the huge Artie Bean's neck. He roars, “Jesus!”

Willie leaps upon the girl, bellering, “You need a spank for that!” Then confers with Artie. “She needs a spank, doesn't she?”

“Yes.”

The dog tag on his chain swings out from Willie's chest as he lifts the girl from the floor. Effortlessly.

She cries, “Stop it!” This girl's hair, a tight dark braided blob right on top of her head, is now releasing sweet loose curls over the back of her neck.

Willie carries her bride-fashion to the sink, then lowers her with a flourish. This does not make him out of breath. He says, gravely and deeply, “Ramone, you have gone too far as usual.” His face is no longer playful but dark and angry.

“Drown her in the sink,” says Artie, then laughs.

Willie ignores Artie. He says with gritted teeth, while looking deeply into his daughter's eyes, “This goes with the school problem, of course . . . which we haven't caught up on yet, dear. I've put it off wa-a-ay too long. Twenty whacks for the school problem. Ten for the ice.” His grip
on her slim upper arm is not a pretty thing to look at. Her young face seems on the edge of some not unfamiliar grief and shame. Willie reaches into the dish strainer and hauls out a large white spatula. “Turn around,” he commands, but he's already forcing her arm, turning her.

She makes an embarrassed profound little sound.

Mickey seems no paler than usual, but his skin indeed feels cadaver cold.

Rex goes to the door and looks out through the silvery screen, paces once, then stands with his hand on the door latch.

“Hands on the sink,” Willie orders the girl. She places both hands on the edge of the sink, knuckles whitening, sticks out her bottom with the little straining strip of purple and glossy pink bikini, which covers almost nothing, there the plump browned deep curves of her buttocks show and the smooth hips, not a single scar or blemish. She says something weakly, miserable, which no one but Willie can hear.

Willie turns the spatula around and around, hefting it, delaying the inevitable, such a kind heart, this Willie Lancaster.

Seems nobody in the kitchen is breathing, let alone speaking. Just sweating noiselessly.

The girl, Ramone, hangs her head, and her short fat dark braid flops loose and drops over one shoulder. “Mumma!” she cries out through the little opened window over the sink, but not loud enough. Seems she is choking on a sob. Seems she is resigned to this.

Willie says in a terrible whisper, “Pull the bathing suit down, dear. This has really got to smack the skin to teach a lesson.”

Mickey thinks he is going to faint from a nerve-racking clash of fear and horniness. He considers the heavy Ruger against his ribs, the ten shots . . . semiauto . . .
bang bang bang
. He imagines the side of Willie's head missing. Or the girl's head. To put her out of her suffering. Or his own, his own suffering mighty. He also pictures other things. He closes his eyes.

A horrible scream, two screams wavering . . . and, yes, the smack of plastic against bare skin; the screams, one high, one low. It's Willie and the girl laughing. Somehow the big white spatula is in
her
hand and she's whaling Willie over the shoulder with it, his bare shoulder. Now she leaps agilely on his bare sweat-slick back, gripping his rib cage with her thighs and knees, thwonking his head with the spatula. Now she seizes his head, forearms around his eyes. He falls to the floor. “Mumma!” screams Willie.

“
Bad!
” the girl scolds, standing over him. She gives him one hard final stinging swat on his back, then tosses the spatula into Artie Bean's hands. “Make sure he behaves, Beano!” she commands, picks up the tub of ice, and prances past the expressionless icy-eyed Rex York, who steps away from the door to let her out.

Rex says to Willie, “Okay, I'm going. Give me a call tonight.” And he pushes out through the door. Mickey slips the shoulder holster and gun off, lays it all on the table with both hands,
with care,
and plows on out after Rex, although Willie has already hopped to his feet and, with raised fist, is yelling after them both—“To the Republic! God save the Republic!”—and the door whooshes shut.

Nighttime in Mickey Gammon's tree house.

He lies on his back, knees up, feet placed flat. He hears night sounds. It is breezy, and so the trees are just as anxious as hunted mice and hungry owls.

He smokes. The taste of the smoke is tired. But its work feels good to his blood. His head is busy, planning his life.

What next?

He is thinking about the people who own this land, the ones with the big leader who everyone talks about since he was in the paper: St. Onge. Gordon, Gordo, the Prophet. Rumor has it that the people worship him, and they are all
very
crazy.

With time on his hands, Mickey strolls.

Going down, down. Down the woodsy mountain. A zigzag path through the trees. Very steep. The sun is straight above. The hot steam is surrounding. The deerflies ride a tornado of their own making. The path is spongy in some places, mossy and mushroomy. But in other places, rooty and rocky. A broad weathered ledge is crossed in one area, wide open. Crusty rock but kinda looks fuzzy in the heat. Mickey's eyeballs are as sticky as jam. The smoke of his cig is hot, too, but dry.