The School on Heart's Content Road (35 page)

Blank.

The voice of Mammon.

Thousands upon thousands of pairs of hands trained to the keys, in thousands of sunless weatherless carpeted spaces and perfect room temp, the death stare, the screens of the service industry.
Your opportunity
, it is said. Work, America, work! You are dead but still alive. Thousands and thousands more pairs of hands being trained at this moment, and thousands of others ready for that creak in your wrist tendons or your complaint, if you should complain. But you won't complain, will you?

Across America.

The militia grows.

The screen screams.

Omigod! The militias! Terror! Terror! Terror! Terrrrooooorrr!

Each night after supper over the next three days.

Gordon's old Chevy truck and one of the Settlement's flatbed trucks is seen parked outside the home of Rex York, captain of the citizens' group called the Border Mountain Militia and Gordon's old pal. Each evening, Gordon has brought seven Settlement men—Paul Lessard, Ray Pinette, Rick Crosman, John Lungren, Chucky Bean, Eddie Martin, and Butch Martin—with him. And Tim Cash has been coming in his own car, having to leave early for this or that errand. No kids have been included, so this is not part of the school experience yet.

Neither has Rex's militia been on hand these evenings. Just Rex. And of course the hot cookies, compliments of Rex's mother, Ruth.

Tonight it is Saturday, a night with a weird cloudy green-looking sky and the first clump of autumn red leaves on the maple that stands by the Yorks' driveway. And tonight Gordon and the usual six Settlement men are accompanied by one youngster, Gordon's oldest son, Cory St. Onge, age fifteen.

And Mickey Gammon is there—wallflower Mickey—but with a difference. Straight-shouldered in his woodland camo BDU jacket and pistol belt. And the green-and-black mountain-lion patch.

All the Settlement guys have brought guns. A rather sooty-looking, old muzzle-loading LG&Y three-band rifle musket with 1863 stamped on the lock. Cap lock. Bayonet. A long gun, dark and dignified and rangy, like an old soldier. And there is a bayonetless cut-down model 1884 Trapdoor. And, yes, an AK-47. Also a Bushmaster, an AR-15 look-alike. An M1-A. And some handguns.

These are the total sum of war weapons owned by the Settlement people, give or take a musket or two. You could hardly call it stockpiling, as some of the call-in radio shows have declared. They are brought
tonight to show Rex. Just for a little gun talk, military versus sport. Auto versus semiauto versus pump action versus lever action versus bolt action. Actually, tonight the talk has gone off onto the subject of hunting for a good half of the visit. Talk of hunting Horne Hill and out behind the Towne Farm. How the old Boundary Road is all posted now. New Hampshire laws versus Maine laws, deer versus birds versus moose. And they tell some of the old stories, including the one about the Vandermasts and that Maine Guide scheme John Vandermast's wife's people were involved in some years back.

Then just a little bit about Vietnam: not a story, not a memory, but a joke, convoluted, with deep meaning for insiders.

But before the Settlement men leave—they are all grouped around the door—the talk finds its way back to preparedness, their usual subject. They are at the door and here it goes, the difference between hunting and preparedness, plain on the face, in the posture. One a voice of triumph, the other the voice of brooding anger, a sort of tough whine.

Then, when they are outside, it is this very weird dusk, light reflected off high clouds to the east, so it seems more like morning than evening, and the men stand around the trucks in the driveway, wrapping the guns. They don't have enough cloth or leather carriers, so they use some blankets. The guns all go into the bed of the pickup, except for the M1-A that Cory has pushed into the gun rack in the back of the cab of the flatbed.

And now a car pulls up behind Rex's van. Car door opens quickly. It is a man alone, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, but he moves like an urban man and has two cameras and a bright and happy-go-lucky look on his face and his eyes are on Gordon. “Mr. St. Onge! How are you tonight?!!

Gordon backs away, flings the pickup driver's door open violently. He is inside in a quick second and both trucks load down thereafter with others, but for Mickey and Rex, who are still out there, and the stranger is saying now to Rex, “Nice night!!!” and all this time, even as he is so friendly and jolly and calling out, this stranger's cameras are clicking and flashing, first one camera, then the other. And, yes, there had been one moment there when Gordon still had his hand on the truck door, one foot in the truck, one on the ground, before Paul and Raymond and
Chucky and Cory and Rick and Butch and Eddie and John and Rex had all had a chance to stop staring wide-eyed, Butch still handling that yellowy SKS with the thirty-shot extended magazine (which is cheap-made and always sticks, but is, nevertheless, a little bit illegal in many states when it is attached to this particular make of rifle) when both cameras seem to be clicking and flashing at once, one camera in each of the jolly stranger's hands.

Mickey speaks.

So me and Rex are all that's left. He says to come in the house. He takes me upstairs to where his computer is. He says it is asleep. I figured he was going to e-mail the rest of the militia, special bulletin about the weirdness in the yard. But we just sat there in two fat chairs and Rex breathed through his bottom teeth.

We both stared at the door and around. He was thunking his fingers on the bookcase next to his chair. The room smelled like the heat register and also like new blankets.

We sat there some more and then I say, “Where'd that guy come from?”

Rex's eyes move from the sleeping computer screen to my face and he says, “Watching our house.”

“Is he the FBI?”

He squints down at the legs of the computer table. “More like Hollywood. That sort of thing. Between Gordo and this militia, there are”—he smiles sickly—“fans.”

I don't want to seem dumb so I laugh.

Then he stretches his right arm out along the bookcase, wiggles his fingers, looks at his watch, nods his head like to music. This with the nodding is not his usual thing either.

“So,” I say, “it's probably not the FBI.”

His head keeps nodding. “Newspapers are read by the FBI.”

“And computers too,” I add.

And he says, “Without a doubt.”

I look at the computer keyboard, so clean you'd think fingers never touched it.

Within hours, the newspapers fill up with independent photographer Cal Alonsky's creep-out-the-public militia photos.

Gordon St. Onge, thirty-nine-year-old leader of the Maine separatist group known as the Settlement,
is identified in the photos, although his face is just a profile. His body—one visible leg, dark work shirt, and pale jeans—is blurred, truck door blurred, and there's a most definite fleeing look.

Forty-nine-year-old Richard “Rex” York, captain of the locally notorious Border Mountain Militia,
is also named in the caption under the photos, while Butch Martin and Mickey Gammon and the rest are just called
unidentified men
or
unidentified others
.

The SKS in Butch Martin's hand is called an
assault weapon
.

Each newspaper offers a brief article to accompany the photos, just to let you know there is now a St. Onge armed militia connection. Though mostly what you see is a rehash of previous articles, borrowing and lifting, and what you wind up with from so much borrowing and lifting is that in some of the newly hatched articles, Rex is living in
Edgecomb, Maine,
and he's an
electronics engineer,
while Gordon appears in a Buffalo, New York, paper as a twenty-nine-year-old, which is okay because the man identified in the photo as Gordon St. Onge is Butch Martin.

But the pictures themselves don't lie, do they? See there? The expressions on all the men's faces are mighty unfriendly.

Mail pours in. The phone gives the kitchen wall a continuous shaking.