The School on Heart's Content Road (36 page)

And again the call-in radio shows buzz with the name
Gordon St. Onge
and
the St. Onge situation in Egypt
and now
the militia connection
.

Clippings are sent to the Settlement, one with the caption
ANGRY WHITE MEN IN MAINE
. One photo shows Rex—yes, always the soldier—facing the camera down, his olive-drab army cap covering his forehead but not his eyes. Dozens of versions of the same article, some photocopied, some the actual clippings, some sent by Gordon's friends, some sent anonymously. Perhaps these are people who
were
friends but who now no longer think of themselves that way.

Federal Building: Special Agent (S.A.) Kashmar thoughtfully reads reports.

Okay, so you Guillaume St. Onge (alias Gordon, Gordo, Gordie, the Prophet) are developing.
You
know. Like a case of spotted-ass purple fever. You'll be seeing new and absolutely improved terrorist laws someday, two or three years down the lane. As soon as the network, rogue or otherwise, can get something big and creepy to sway the public, you know, wackos such as you or wacko Arabs, wacko Cubans, or some stinky mix, the hydra swinging its heads in the wind and having an intimate relationship with the cause of brightly burning booming buildings, jihads, massacred American schoolkids, whatever it takes our network of—ahem—specialists to create a wave of public indignation. You see, it's all about the two
C
s, control and consent.
We
control the population, and we let
you
all consent to our doing it.

Gordon St. Onge takes two small boys and three older girls to a meeting of the Border Mountain Militia.

A friend of Rex's, one of his old volunteer fire department and rescue connections, a certified CPR man, comes to start the militia on CPR lessons and other first-aid skills.

Some of the Settlement kids already know this stuff, right at home.

Mickey watches from his straight-backed chair by the sewing machine and TV. His eyes function like a falcon's, on target, recording every smallest move, but his eyes appear to be disinterested, not like the eyes of something that is fainted or dead but just pale temperatureless boredom.

Most of the militiamen get a kick out of the Settlement's smart kids. A couple just seem annoyed, as old tomcats would be in a room full of hell-raising kittens.

Okay, we just said Mickey looks bored, but basically he's paralyzed. Her name is Samantha, blonde as snow, a blonde-white-gold girl with Apache kerchief around her forehead, a print of diamonds and cyclones the color of warm gore. Her breasts (tits to Mickey) are inside a black burlappy top. Her bra makes her breasts look like small warheads. Jeans,
not tight but not empty. Work boots, the kind skinheads wear. Would take five business days to lace them up. Mickey's neck feels like an ostrich's with a cantaloupe in it.

There's another girl, about the same age as Samantha, he thinks. About his own age. Her name is Bree. Most of the Settlement kids are part of things, asking questions, blabbing away, please and thank you and all that. Eager, like blue jays. But Bree doesn't talk.
Can
she talk? She is certainly wrecked in looks. An accident? A birth problem? Leprosy, like the Bible? She has red hair, orange and snaky. Kind of great hair, actually. There's a ton of it, long and alive. But her face—man, it is split in half. Or maybe stretched, mostly between the eyes. Her face scares Mickey for a while. Her eyes are brownish yellow. Her lashes yellow. Each eye is kind of sexy, if it were in a human face . . . like Samantha's. But her face is outer space.

Still, she keeps her face straight ahead, hair bunched around the sides, smiling at the little kids, while the big ones she communicates to with ESP or some other animalish vibrations. But she does
not
look at the Prophet. She sits next to the Prophet but she never looks at him. They are squeezed together side by side on Rex's deep fake leather couch. Actually, it's the kind of couch so squishy that you sit
in
it. The third person who sits there varies: sometimes a Settlement kid, sometimes one of Rex's men. Because of the CPR and rescue lessons, people are moving around a lot, nobody falling asleep as they do at most of Rex's meetings.

The Prophet, Gordon St. Onge, whatever, he is like the newspaper. Eyes as light as Rex's but not controlled. Rex has controlled eyes. The Prophet has totally insane eyes. And one cheek jumps. And—what Mickey can never get used to—he's, like, seven feet tall, or almost anyway.
He
talks; his voice is like a big drum. He wears a billed cap on sweaty hair. His neck is as wide as four necks.

The youngest Settlement kid, Max, is chosen to be the heart attack victim.

Ruth York is not home today, but she has left two pans of blond brownies on the table.

There on the couch, Bree (with the red snake hair and stretched face) and Gordon St. Onge are sitting in a way his bicep touches her shoulder
and the outside of his left boot and her right come together. Looks like it's not on purpose, but who knows?

Rex and the rescue guy talk about
profuse bleeding
.

Willie Lancaster isn't around today, but Doc is. CPR is not his subject.
Jews
or
fags
or
socialists
or
welfare whores
are his subjects. He looks restless, jiggling his leg and reddening his ears.

Max, the heart attack victim, chirps from his prone position on the rug, “Imagine me squished by a truck!”

Mickey watches the Prophet, who is also distracted. Mickey knows there is not a word he can speak that would get the white-haired Samantha to feel for him, Mickey, what he, Mickey, feels for her:
bothered
.

And now the fire department guy is resuscitating the little kid on the rug.

Doc jiggles his leg faster.

Art, with the sea-captain beard and high voice, breasts, big belly, and mostly nothing like Doc, asks a question about lungs and trachea, which one of the teeniest kids has the correct answer to. And the reddish-haired Bob of Rex's militia, who is dying and gets a disabled vet check every month, laughs like a tree full of monkeys.

Next will be tourniquets. And then contusions. Whatever.

The blood-red chamois shirt the Prophet is wearing draws Mickey's eye. He sees the guy is staring out the window (with its stout fiberglass drapes swept open today) at the Herefords pushing their way through tall weeds across the wet gooshy part of the field.

And Gabriel, one of the Settlement kids, says, “You would look like a pizza. You wouldn't want to be resuscitated.” He says this last word slowly but perfectly, as far as Mickey can tell.

Mickey speaks.

So we all say good-bye out in the yard. One kid is so little, the Prophet carries her out on his shoulders. The blonde one, Samantha, yells “Horripilation!” and hugs herself. I guess they like big words. Whatever. The important thing is this time nobody jumps out at us with a buncha cameras.

Between militia meetings, they meet in the gravel pit on the Boundary Road.

The day is hot, but a dry hot. Kind of feels good. Clouds shaped like bunnies and little fishes slide along in the blue-green sky. The tall grasses chorus with every kind of creaking hopping insect. The goldenrod, in full glory, smells wild and weedy. And now, too, the smell of gunpowder.

Gordon St. Onge wears earphone-type hearing protection, stands with feet apart, and squeezes the trigger of the Russian-made SKS, one of Rex's many military weapons.

The impact of this shot gives the target frame a little shiver, but his shoulder doesn't budge. This is his worst hit. One cautious shot at a time, he has been trying to pull his hits back into the cluster of holes around the 10X circle of the silhouette target's chest.

He likes this SKS. He's seen them before, handled one, but never shot one. Some of the others had paratrooper stocks. This one is plain. Yes, the SKS is considered cheesy. But the tabby-cat-like grain on this Russian and its high, rather restless red flush please his eye. And this one has a thirty-shot extended magazine.
Really
cheap-made. But doesn't jam. One of the
few
that doesn't jam. Hard to come by. The Chinese SKS lying across the tailgate is not his friend. He glares at it. Jammed on the eighth or ninth shot every time, pinching a line across the cartridge. Cartridge half in, half out, on top of the gun, inches from his nose. He fingers one of the cartridges, steel of a greenish cast, slender and seductive as a church spire. He loads the magazine of the Russian with only four of these. Then he's ready, raises the rifle, fires.

Rex sits on the tailgate of the truck, one foot on the ground, one foot swinging ever so slightly, watching the target through a spotting scope, eyes glinting behind his dark glasses.

Rex and Gordon have just had a rugged argument about common law. And then about Russia. And although Gordon has done most of the ranting, this time Rex stood up for himself.

Gordon steps away, losing interest in his target, which he knows is bad without asking. Shooting is like art, not carpentry or chemistry.
There are good days, bad days, blocks and rushes. He doesn't watch as Rex walks the hundred yards to the bank, his boots out of hearing now, just the stirring
careeeeek . . . careeeeek
and
innnnnk . . . innnnnnk
of the bugs in the nearby weeds.

When Rex returns and plants his feet apart to take aim at the fresh target, Gordon's eyes jump to his friend's back. By some fluke, they have both worn pale blue chambray work shirts. Cute, Gordon thinks to himself disgustedly. He sees the way Rex unhesitatingly settles the M-16's stock against his shoulder. Like you'd grab a broom and poke its straw ends into a dusty corner. He doesn't dawdle. No squinting or painful concentration and indecision and deep breaths. No shuffling and cocking his head from side to side. None of that. He just does it.
Bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!bang!
This is his favorite rifle. You could call it a sniper's gun. Springfield, thirty-ought-six. Now with a serious scope, mounted just in the last few months. And, yeah, a big hole. Many big holes now in the X of the target man's heart. Hits that are so tight, they make one single shredded two-inch gobbed mess in the paper. Gordon would be able to see better through the spotting scope on the truck, but he doesn't look.