The School on Heart's Content Road (3 page)

He is walking the long back road some call the Boundary. He is a light and fast walker, staying to the road's high crown. Light and fast, yes, but also cautious and manly, a gait that is articulated at the knees. Such a fine-boned creature, this Mickey Gammon. Narrow shoulders. Little tufty streaky-blond ponytail. Dirty jeans, and hipless. Fairly androgynous at first glance. At
first
glance.

He can hear shots up ahead in the Dunham gravel pit. And then, beyond that, a deeper and darker aggression, a thunderstorm rumbling in from the southwest. When he gets closer to the opening of the pit, the silvery “popple” leaves are already starting to flutter, and upon his hot face the restless air is like a big God hand of airy benediction.

He sees four pickups, a newish little car, a pocked Blazer, and at least eight men, none he recognizes, yet he is under the good and nearly true belief that his brother Donnie knows everyone in Egypt who is near his, Donnie's, own age and, yes, almost anyone might also be a distant relative.

Mickey walks his arrow-straight and light-step walk to where the group is standing with their firearms and thermos cups of coffee, and he sees one man squatted down with a .45 service pistol aimed at a black-and-white police target, a target with the silhouette of a man, only about fifty yards away on a wooden frame. Mickey slows his pace just before reaching this group. Guns? Mickey has no problem with guns. It is having to
talk
that brings him terror.

The man is rock steady in his aim, taking a lot of time. Silence before the pounding crack of a gun is always a momentous thing.

The other men turn and see Mickey. Some nod. Some don't. None speak. One man is sitting on a tailgate, wearing earmuff-style ear protectors, his fingers nudging the double action of a revolver with soft sensuous clicks. The men who have acknowledged Mickey have turned away now to watch the framed target. One guy watches through a spotting scope on a tripod on his truck hood. The breeze rises up and gives everyone's sleeves and hair a flutter. The sand moves a bit. And then there's another rumble coming closer fast from the southwest.

Mickey moves lightly, stepping inside the edgy-feeling perimeter of the group, and sees, there across the tailgate of one truck, a Ruger 10/22, a Springfield M1-A, and several SKSes: three Russian with the star and red-yellow finish, a couple with fold-up vinyl stocks, black, light to carry, easy to hide. And a whole selection of full auto military-issue Colts. Two AR-15s. A Bushmaster. And two AK47s. Some of these are, yuh, the real thing. The thing made for war.

At last the shooter squeezes the trigger, and the deafening crack almost feels good to Mickey's ears.

The guy with his eye to the spotting scope looks grim. “Seven!” he calls.

The shooter, dressed in dark-blue work clothes, no cap, bald but for horsey gray hair on the sides and thorns of gray hair on his tanned and lined neck, dips the .45, then raises it quickly, squeezes off four rapid shots in a row. Echoes among the hills multiply the four shots to a lively staccato. And then the supreme BOOOOMMM!; this the thunder of the storm marching closer.

Mickey spins his studded leather wristband, which is what he always does when he doesn't know what else to do, watching the guy with the spotting scope, who now calls out, “Ten X! Ten! Two sevens!” And the shooter slips the .45 into its holster, which is against his ribs outside his shirt but is the kind you wear under a shirt if you plan to conceal it.

Mickey says croakily, “Anyone got a smoke I could borrow?”

There is a guy standing very close to Mickey who is of medium height, small-waisted, fit, wears a red T-shirt, jeans. Very square-shouldered. Black military boots and a soft olive-drab army cap, a very fancy black-faced watch, looks more like a compass. Maybe it
is
a compass. And sunglasses. Metal frames. Cop glasses. Like the Nazis wear to school when they bring in their drug dogs. But this guy has a mustache, the kind that crawls down along the jaws, a Mexican mustache. Arms are not thickly haired. Nothing hides the impatient pulsing musculature. He says, “What's that you say?”

Mickey can't exactly see this man's eyes because of the sunglasses, but he can tell the guy is looking him up and down.

A hefty white-haired guy with a white sea-captain's beard says, “Right here,” in a voice that is high and quavery for such a big guy. He steps toward Mickey with the pack, shakes two into Mickey's hand, and says cheerily, “I'm not starting you on a bad habit, am I?”

Mickey replies without a smile. “I've been smokin' for five years.”

“Breakin' the law.” This voice is shaly and made for hard reckoning. Mickey doesn't look to see which face owns it. It's
beyond
the sunglasses guy so it is
not
the sunglasses guy.

Another voice, letting go with a small shriek of laughter. But no words. Also
not
the sunglasses guy.

“What? Artie break laws?” This, another voice, as tight as a stricture, and yet it means to be teasy. This voice beyond the first truck.

Many small chortles overlapping and flexing. Earthworms in a can overlap and flex too. Faceless laughter. Mickey keeps his eyes lowered.

Hot breeze blows some more sand around. Then the BOOOMMM! and matching flutter of light in the darkening southwest. Mickey now watches two really young guys, maybe not yet twenty, murmuring to a small, dark-haired, dark-eyed older guy with a mean-looking hunched bearing who is reassembling a black-vinyl-stock SKS. Even his ears have an inflexible, shiny, mean look to them.

A guy with a camouflage-print T-shirt, very thin, bony, urgent-looking guy, clean shave, freckles, almost no eyebrows, reddish hair, and a big smile, asks Mickey, “On foot today, huh?” He selects an SKS from the tailgate, pulling it away quite theatrically with both hands, raises his foot to rest on a plastic ammo case, then places the rifle across his thigh with stiff, animal, almost bewitching-to-see grace. Mickey eyes the flash suppressor on the end of the short carbine barrel, the long, dark, curved, extended magazine, says, “I have a 'sixty-six Mustang in Mass . . . everything but the body is real nice . . . sixty thou' original . . . but needs some stuff . . . tires mostly. Couldn't move it. Not roadworthy.”

“Lotta road between here and Mass,” declares the hefty sea-captain-beard guy with a cackle. This is the guy called Artie.

Mickey nods. Pokes a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. Snaps a match alive, cupping his hand and hunkering down to give the flame shelter from the wind; takes the first drag hungrily; drops the match into the sand.

“You
walk
from Mass?” another guy softly wonders, great, tall, rugged, clean-shaved guy in full camouflage, heavy-looking BDUs. Long sleeves. Looks hot.

Mickey replies, “No.”

The guy with the sunglasses and red T-shirt, thick dark mustache, has turned away, sort of dismissively, but he still hangs back, an ear on what's being said.

The full-camo guy picks up a stapler and fresh target and trudges off toward the open pit area.

The sea-captain beard, hefty, high-voiced Artie, asks Mickey, “Do you shoot?”

Mickey says, “Yuh, some.”

The bony, urgent-looking, red-haired guy, not smiling now, advises, “If you keep your aim up, you'll be glad some day.”

Mickey says, “I like shootin' all right.”

The red T-shirt guy with the sprawling mustache, sunglasses, army cap, and awesome black-faced watch stares after the baldish guy, who is ripping his target from the fifty-yard frame.

Big guy with full camo trudges the long open pit to a frame against the bank at a hundred yards, the wind wrestling earnestly with his target as he staples it to the wood.

The red T-shirt guy now seems to be staring at Mickey, though with the sunglasses one can't be absolutely positively sure.

Mickey smokes his cigarette down. He has pocketed the other. He now leans against a fender, feeling the thunder in the ground, watching the purple-black part of the sky flutter with big jabs of light, splitting open right over Horne Hill, the sweet breeze touching him all over, the tobacco smoke's big satisfying work done inside him, the men trudging around him, and their voices, both grave and playful. Alas now, they speak of the storm and discuss whether to wait it out in their vehicles or leave.

The red T-shirt guy asks Mickey his name. Mickey tells him. He asks Mickey his age. Mickey says sixteen, which he is, almost. He asks him what kind of gun he has. Mickey says a Marlin .22 Magnum.

“Just one?”

Mickey says, “Yep.”

The guy asks, “Where do you live?”

“Sanborn Road.”

The bony, urgent, eyebrowless guy, overhearing, calls to him, “You live in that new place over there?”

“No, in the big one. I'm Donnie Locke's brother. Been in Mass for a while. I'm livin' here with him now.”

The full-camo guy is coming back through the wind and wild sand. Wind getting some real gumption now. Mickey can see through one side of the red T-shirt guy's sunglasses, eyes that never seem to blink.

Now Mickey leans into the open door of the Blazer and casually sorts through shot-up police and circular competition targets. “You guys are good,” he says.

“Not really,” the red T-shirt guy says, rather quickly. “When your life is at stake, your first four shots are what counts. There's no chances after that. You can't have twenty shots to warm up.”

Mickey nods, picks something off the knee of his frazzled filthy jeans: a green bug with crippled wings. He scrunches it. With a murderous CRACK! and the sky dimming blue-black in all directions, light scribbles and splits into veins—and now rain. A few splats.

The red T-shirt guy seems to be looking at Mickey hard.

The tall full-camo guy just stands there looking straight up, eyes fluttering with the beginning rain, his big thick neck looking vulnerable and pale with so much of the rest of him covered. “Is this a break-up for home, Rex? Or should we wait it out in the vehicles?” His voice is soft, but he announces these words deliberately, words of consequence.

The red T-shirt black-mustache guy has pushed his cap forward, as if to hide his eyes, which, because of the sunglasses, never showed in the first place. “These storms aren't usually more than . . . what, twenty minutes?”

And so they wait it out.

Rain comes hard. Smashes down on the truck's cab, where Mickey sits with the red T-shirt guy. The guy has folded up his metal-frame glasses and placed them on the dash. He reminds Mickey of a raccoon, meticulous and wary. His eyes are pale gray-blue in dark lashes, and there's settling and softening around them, which means he's at least forty-five, maybe fifty. Not real friendly eyes. Nor is there rage in those eyes. His eyes simply take in but do not give back. And with the mustache filling in so much of his face, the eyes have significance. But no, his eyes don't show much more of his humanity than his sunglasses did.

He has given Mickey a handful of folded flyers about emergencies and natural disasters and civil defense. There is a bold black-on-white seal on the front of the flyer, showing a mountain lion's form silhouetted inside a crescent of lettering. The guy tells Mickey, “My number is there in case you are ever interested . . . also my address, Vaughan Hill. Come over sometime and bring a friend. You're always welcome.” He indicates the truck parked on their left with a dip of his head. It's only a hot grayish-green blur through the rain-streaked windows, but Mickey knows the big quiet full-camo guy is in that truck. “That's John Stratham, my second-in-command. Another officer, not here today, is Del Rogers. He does a lot for us over in Androscoggin County—a unit that's growing, maybe a little too fast. You'll see him if you decide to come to meetings. He's been
real important to us in sniffing out some . . . uh, problems we had a few months back. He's dedicated. A real patriot.” He places his right hand on the steering wheel, but he doesn't play with the wheel like most would do. He says, “Some people don't give their last names at meetings. That's up to you. This is all in confidence. I
will
need to do a check on anyone who is seeking membership.”

Mickey looks down at the flyers in his hands. Mickey is very, very, very quiet. Mickey, whose pale eyes are just as unrevealing and steely as this man's eyes are. The crescent of lettering around the mountain lion reads
BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA
.

On the back fold of the flyer:
Richard York, Captain/Vaughan Hill Road/Box 350, RR2/Egypt, Maine 04047
.

The guy explains that most people call him Rex.

The rain really pummels the hood and cab roof now, and the windshield looks like a thousand dark and silver wrinkles.

Mickey says nothing. His streaky blond ponytail is so thin and silky and without substance, it turns up a little to the right. Sweet. And now his unwashed smell is casually seeping through the humidity of the cab. This guy Rex smells like his T-shirt has had a real dousing of fabric softener. Mickey figures this is because there is a woman in Rex's life. He glances at the hand that's now kind of fisted on the left thigh of Rex's jeans. Yes, a wedding band.