The School on Heart's Content Road (38 page)

And this also was for certain: Gordon and Rex taking turns ramming their mouths and teeth and wriggling tongues up inside the stripper, who offered herself to each of them at the rail. Rex gripping her by the thighs above her bent knees, Gordon by her hips, each standing back to allow the other to take his turn in a perfect one-two rhythm, and the loudspeaker trickling out stripper music (an old record, it sounded like) so tinny, so weak, seemed it was coming from another attraction farther up the midway, and the face of the young girl looked at neither man, she having her head back, her eyes almost closed, probably forgetting at moments which man was which, though she was clear about when she wanted one to stop and the other to take his turn, while the tent full of three dozen or so quiet men standing around Gordon and Rex got quieter and quieter, and the stripper music crackled thinner and weaker, and the only thing the stripper was wearing, a tiny gold cross on a delicate chain, slipped slower and slower from side to side between her sweaty breasts, while the midway so merrily tweedling beyond the canvas also seemed fainter, nothing mattered more than this: the rather ridiculous babyish-sounding slurping sucking sounds of the two Egypt men, and the swish of the stripper's long hair as she swung her head from side to side in what appeared to be ecstasy, face to the ceiling, back bent like a gymnast, her soft inner thighs gripping the head of first Gordon, then Rex, whichever of the two was leaned up inside the rail there, her feet thumping, first one foot, then the other, not to the music from the speaker but some rhythm
she
orchestrated here, like a slowed-down heart,
thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . thump. . . .

Why is it that, over the years, Gordon associates this with the graveyard incident?

And then, another time, a summer, no telling which summer, Rex and Gordon and Big Lucien Letourneau (who is small, not big at all)
hit Old Orchard Beach. A late hot roaring night. Something had caught on fire, and there were fights, fire trucks, and police cars, and people yelling from car windows, topless bars, and regular take-it-all-off shows, all guarded by cops, unlike the fair, which had no cops. These cops looked like hairless gorillas, and then there were bikers who looked like regular gorillas, and somehow Rex and Gordon and Big Lucien made it alive to the dark beach, whiskey and beer and fried onion rings oozing from every pore. Ah, the beach! The vast dark starless sky and the vast white beach, sand of silk and crisp crunchy seaweed, and these
big shapes
walking toward them: bikers . . . bikers on foot . . . bikers from somewhere else, big twelve-foot-tall bikers from a grim planet . . . bikers all with something in hand—rocks, clubs, brass knuckles, drive shafts, cement blocks—too dark to tell.

They beat the shit out of Gordon and Rex and chased Big Lucien, who somehow stayed on his feet, all the way back to East Grande Avenue (it was later known).

And Gordon lay there in the warmth of his own bleeding, left to die in a big squashy smarting heap and the cold wet feel of the thing that was kissing Gordon's boots and ankles. What
is
that thing kissing, kissing, kissing, kissing, then sliding away, kissing again, each cold kiss getting bigger and more passionate?

The incoming tide, of course.

Where is Rex?

Gordon thinks he remembers dragging Rex to safety. Something like that. Memory is especially funny when framed by whiskey, bulging crusty eyes, and four broken fingers.

He does remember that Rex bled a lot. He was all blood and jelly and white sand. And his clothes were mostly ripped off. Hamburglike elbows, knees, and knuckles. Blood black as used motor oil leaking from the top of his head and teeth. One nipple looked missing. An eye fat and cute and as closed up as a pig's pink twat. Rex's whole self, at least in spirit, seemed flattened out, like you see a cat after he has gone under the tires of a dozen cars. By the time Gordon got Rex back to the truck parked at the top of Old Orchard's steepest hill, Gordon had more of Rex's blood on him than his own, and he realized how savagely Rex had fought for his own life, and how trust between some men—between Rex and himself, for instance—is a state of free fall. A state of perfect grace.

My brother.

Those years were all a hard mix of work and play and new frontiers crammed into a time so bright and small, for Rex an epilogue to war, for Gordon something religious, like God's big hand opening before Gordon's eyes, offering gifts. Or was it a test? One of those God tests, where you are asked to recognize the difference, if not the ironies, of bounty versus tribulation.

And now this. The militia.

My brother.

Secret Agent Jane speaks.

This Sunday, Gordie takes me to see Mum. She is very weird and tired-looking. She says, “Gordon, I'm homesick.”

I never take my secret glasses off here. Sometimes I stare at the cop-guards. They do not stare back. They look away. Sometimes I stare almost the whole time at one of them and fold my arms to show I mean business.

Willie Lancaster's gift.

The cab of Rex's truck always smells new. And it smells of Rex's various T-shirts' megadoses of fabric softener. And when Mickey is riding around with Rex certain evenings, or a Saturday perhaps, there is the smell of Mickey. Unwashed. And sort of mildewy, like his tree house.

As they ride along the back roads of Egypt, casually swerving around potholes or a dead porcupine, braking gently here and there for a darting chipmunk, there is no radio and not much conversation. If you were a fly on the windshield, you would see just two pairs of pale eyes staring ahead, Rex's steely (behind sunglasses), Mickey's wolfy.

They are going to pick up “a setta points” for the tractor that Rex and his schoolteacher brother share. Mickey had figured this meant auto parts store. But Rex is flipping the directional, which means Heart's Content Road. Oh, shit. Willie Lancaster. Mickey feels a sudden difficulty breathing.

There are
two
guys in the militia that Mickey wishes would move to another state or something. One is Doc, who goes on and on and on and
on and on about Jews and fags in a way that makes Mickey feel edgy, even though he is neither Jewish nor gay. Somehow Mickey feels it is his very soul that is in the sights of Doc's scorn. And somehow Mickey feels blurred in with Doc's generalizations, Doc's suggestions for lynching, skinnings alive, and that sickening low laugh. There is a pink sticky dizzying cloud around Doc. Poison for one is poison for all.

Then there's Willie. Willie doesn't go on and on and on about these things. He's too busy acting like something that flies in your face out of the night woods . . . or out of a dark attic.

Rex's pickup climbs the mountain in third gear, downshifting even more as they pass the gray and white St. Onge farmhouse, a thing Mickey is confused about. It's the house where Gordon St. Onge
lives
. But some say he lives at the Settlement.

So then Rex is steering the truck on past the dirt road of the Settlement, the road entrance that is almost hidden, framed by low-hanging hemlock boughs and oak and beech and ferns and moosewood, and also gated off. The newest hand-lettered sign says KEEP OUT. TRY IT AND YOU'LL BE SHOT. Mickey glances toward Rex here, wishing the man's expression would change and give Mickey a clue on this subject of the place some people are starting to call Waco, Maine.

But of course Rex's face doesn't change. The dark crawling-along-the-jaws Civil War–style mustache doesn't flicker.

A half mile more thereabouts and it's the Lancasters', and there is Mr. Willie Lancaster right now, out among his big pine trees looking satisfied with himself.

Mickey's unwashed sweatiness warms up a notch.

Some guys have a pumped-up sort of muscularity. Some have a thick wrestler muscularity. But Willie, standing there in his black T-shirt and jeans, looks built to fly. Powerfully light.

In there among his big-trunked pine trees, he freezes melodramatically, gray eyes squinting at Rex's truck. To get the full picture, this is Willie as usual: No watch. (Time is built into Willie Lancaster.) No compass needed. No speedometers needed. No radar. No yardsticks. Willie needn't memorize much. He is a skewed creature, a twisted chapter of science.

The Lancaster yard is full of vehicles. Everyone must be home, including the older girls, including Dee Dee, who is married to Louis St. Onge
and lives in the pink rocket house with Cannonball, a black dog with short legs, huge head, eyebrows, and teeth quite blindingly white.

Before Rex's truck is stopped, several white pug-faced, curl-tailed, homely-beyond-description but nice-guy-type small dogs surround it. They are constantly changing places so you can't count them.

Mickey's door is on the Lancaster side, Rex's door opens onto the pavement. Rex is out. Mickey isn't. Rex doesn't look back so he doesn't see how Mickey is finally out but lighting a cigarette and sort of oozing around to the driver's side of the truck. But Willie Lancaster watches this with interest.

Mickey listens to Rex talking and Willie's hooting and giggling and gagging and hoarse whispers.

Now silence.

Mickey takes another drag, staring, without seeing, at the modern house with hot-top driveway across the road from the Lancasters. Short grass. Hollyhocks. Picture window. No trees. Nobody he knows.

The small white pushed-in-faced dogs sniff Mickey or sit by him as if to guard him from something. One is doing Rex's tires, a few squirts to each.

The sun is a little overwhelming. Having cleared Willie's trees, it stands in the middle of the vast empty sky over the neighbor's ranch house. Mickey smokes, squints, breathes, sweats.

Now there's running feet. And now a
thwump
sound and a scraping
swoosh
—it's Willie, somehow spiderishly landing on the hood of Rex's truck, then leaping off like an evil Superman, landing on both feet in front of Mickey. “HEY, GEORGE!! WHAT'RE YOU DOIN', HIDIN' FROM OL' WILLIE?!!!!!” He is reaching for Mickey. Mickey is ready this time, unlike those other times. He does not shrink away. He does not flinch. He does not even sort of flinch. He is holding his breath and locking his muscles against any sort of cowardly behavior. Yes, Willie is a series of tests. Mickey has now passed the Willie-grabbing-your-shoulder-or-arm-or-shirtfront test.

Willie flicks at Mickey's small, thin, streaky blond ponytail of hair with a forefinger. The test goes on. “You a hippie? A girl? Or a rat?”

Mickey doesn't blink.

Willie snickers, feels his own beard, which has a slight point. His slightly buck teeth add to the effect. Now his eyes widen with
meaning
on Mickey's chest and waist. Mickey's T-shirt depicts four Weimaraners wearing hats.

Rex is coming around the truck now, the white Lancaster dogs sort of smiling up at him, panting, and Mickey sees a little box in his hand. The points. Rex's face has the same expression he wore when passing the gray farmhouse of the infamous Prophet and then passing the blocked-off entrance to Waco and the same expression he had when he left his own dooryard where Mickey had met him an hour ago.

“HEY!” Willie shouts. “Cap'n Rex does not go anywhere without packin'. What kind of little girlie has the great Cap'n been carting around here? This George just runs around naked. Georgie
girl
. Georgie
girl
!”

Willie always has other people's names for Mickey, never “Mickey.” George is the one he uses the most.

Willie says cracklingly, “Hold it, boys, I've got to do something to repair this scandalous situation.” Then he's gone.

Rex has situated the small box in the cab somewhere. Through the yellow haze of fight-or-flight and too much sun, Mickey can't see Rex's face now, even though Rex is standing in front of him. Mickey leans over the side of the truck bed,
trying
to look casual, sees clearly the red lettering on the doors of the truck parked up there among the trees, close to Willie's workshop:
WILLIAM D. LANCASTER, LANDSCAPING & TREE WORK
.