The School on Heart's Content Road (4 page)

Outside, after the storm, the air is as heavy as a rubber tire. But it smells wonderful. Rex invites Mickey to shoot his own service pistol, which he pulls from behind the truck seat. “Never go anywhere without your Bible and your gun,” Rex says, at least three times. The tall soft-voiced second-in-command, John Stratham, gives Mickey some good pointers. For the first time, Mickey notices that John has an embroidered patch on the sleeve of his long-sleeved BDU shirt, the mountain lion and crescent of lettering, black on olive green:
BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA
. Striking to look at.

The target, like most of the others, is of a human shape and is placed at fifty yards for this particular gun. Mickey mostly misses the chest and head. In fact, he mostly misses the black targeted shape. From where they all stand, the spots of his hits show plainly and painfully against the white. He feels this is goofus, but these guys seem impressed. The hefty white-haired sea-captain guy, Artie, says “Good goin'!” and thunks
Mickey's shoulder. The hunched guy with the mean ears growls, “Got 'im runnin'.” The big quiet John nods. And Rex, with his sunglasses back on, says nothing, but his chin is up and he is feeling his dark, full, sprawling mustache carefully.

In a small American city in the Midwest.

A station wagon waits to make a left turn in snarling, fumy, carbon-poofing traffic. It exhibits a bumper sticker that reads MY CHILD IS A PLONTOOKI HIGH SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT.

From frozen Pluto, tiny microscopic Plutonian observatory observers observe the brown daytime spotting and pink nighttime hazing of what we have come to think of as life here on Earth. Tiny microscopic Plutonian officials speak.

wjox blup sssssooop £G jrigip bot wjp st wjpt xt!
^*

Six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve speaks from a room at the St. Onge Settlement.

It is bad for my Mum. Someone help her! Someone with power. Help her! Help me! And my dog Cherish. Gone. Nobody tells me what happened.

Donnie Locke at home.

This old and loyal house! Belongs to Donnie Locke. No mortgage. Donnie Locke, Mickey Gammon's half brother. It is home for Mickey and Britta too. Britta is the mother the two brothers have in common. Different fathers, same mother. Yes, Britta lives here too since she returned from Massachusetts, because Massachusetts
didn't work out
.

Donnie Locke watches Mickey hard from his chair at the table. There's a TV here in the kitchen. TV in the living room. Other TVs
in other parts of the house. Not great TVs, but something to make do with. Both the kitchen TV and the one in the living room as seen through the two open doors of the little entry hall show a one-half-minute musical spectacle of the generic modern woman in the shower with water beading up on the skin of her shoulder, the ecstasy of huge teeth and violent water, America's message, BE CLEAN, BUY DETERGENT BARS, and BODY SHAMPOOS, HAIR SHAMPOOS, DEODORANT POWDERS, and ANTIPERSPIRANTS that smell like SEA BREEZES. Cleanliness makes for
opportunities
.

Well, yes, Donnie Locke is clean. Fresh and perma-pressed, nothing to offend. Like obedience to God. Shouldn't this guarantee you something? If not opportunities, at least forgiveness?

Donnie Locke isn't looking at the TV. He watches his unwashed, cigarette-stinking, raggedly-dressed half brother Mickey, the fine yellow-streaked hair tied back into an inessential ponytail, the pale cold eyes that never meet Donnie's eyes. It is easy to watch the boy, to stare ruthlessly at him. He doesn't seem to mind.

Upstairs in this large old house, the younger kids make a racket. Donnie's kids by his first marriage to Julie Nickerson, and then Britta's youngest child, Celia, fathered by what didn't work out in Massachusetts. And then there's some neighbor kids. A regular shrieking, thumping, crashing mob.

Donnie Locke smiles a flicker of a smile, wrenched by a thousand emotions.

Mickey has just come in from being out somewhere doing something, probably messing with cars or snowmobiles with some of his loser buddies he met at school this spring. Tinkering. Something to climb into and under. Donnie was never much for that stuff. He made good grades in school, working hard at it, the family's pride and joy. And his BA from Andover Business School. Yeah, he worked very hard at it, and he hated every minute. But what else was there? You
have
to get ahead. Or sink. This is what the guidance counselor said, and . . . well, everybody says it. And what else on this planet besides his “success” could make his mother Britta's heart sing?

The boy Mickey picks open the refrigerator door and gets out the plastic pitcher of red punch and pours a glassful and drinks it. Neither brother has a single remark. No
Hi.
No
Hey
. No
Hot 'nuff for ya?
Donnie
is afraid to speak because he knows it will come out resentful. He wants a happy home, like when he was very young. His quiet mother and aunts. His earnest father and Gramp. Hopes and dreams measured by seasons. That's all he wants now. Happy home. Simple life. Hopes and dreams. Yes, that would make
his
heart sing.

This man, Donnie Locke. Mid-thirties. Somewhat bald. But a great big blond, walrus mustache. Short sleeve beige-pinstripes-on-white shirt. Trim trousers. The generic man. The job requires this, his job at the Chain.

Donnie Locke's father, not Mickey's father, “drove truck,” made okay money. Was one of the many Lockes and Mayberrys who have owned this house, its various farm buildings, and its land—field, woods, and stream—for a half-dozen hard-headed hard-hearted generations, all those Lockes and Mayberrys gone now, and their crumbling tools and outmoded thinking and outmoded dignity and laughable hopes and dreams, gone now to the Land of Death. More Lockes and Mayberrys there in the Land of Death than here in the Land of Life.

Here in this life in the brand-new century is Donnie Locke, with the pink unused-looking hands and chain-store name tag and after-work pink TV light in his eyes. Still living in the old Locke-Mayberry place, the thing that makes him Donald Locke. Because nothing else in this world makes him be Donald Locke. Yeah, “one of the Lockes.” Yes, here he is.

Nearby, at the St. Onge Settlement, six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve speaks to us.

I am hijack. And kidnapped maybe. I don't even know how to get here. It might be Alaska even. Nothing to eat because they don't let me have food. So I am dying. I miss Mumma and she is very afraid. Mumma my sweet sugar. Help! Help! Hel . . . p!

Erika Locke, awake in the night.

Donnie Locke's wife, Erika, mother of the dying baby Jesse, lies on her side under the thin summer sheet, afraid. Anguished for her baby's pain. Anguished with knowing that a year from now he will no longer exist. But afraid also of
everything
now.

She remembers being told something,
before
Jesse was sick, but it impressed her big-time. Terry, her old friend. Terry, like Erika, young, but
old friend
all the same. Terry with blonde wild-woman hair. Sort of curly, but more like foam and sparks. Terry, who screams. That's her regular voice; just telling you the weather, she screams. On the phone
the voice
cut into Erika's ear, so Erika remembers it was Terry for sure who said this (screamed this): “Hospitals today can grab your house if you can't pay a big bill! And the state eventually grabs your house if you use MaineCare and the hospital forces you to apply for MaineCare if you are eligible. Otherwise the hospital does the grabbing.”

Erika told Donnie.

He said that was dumb. “Hospitals can't even charge interest and late fees.”

But then another friend, Kelly (Kelly Smelly, Donnie calls her because it rhymes), said, “It was the collection guys at the hospital. They called Matt”—her brother—“and said to pay
bigger
payments on his hernia operation or they'd put a lien on his property—and you ought to see his so-called property, it's just his dinky shit trailer on a wedge of swamp—and they said they would assess his furniture too, and his pickup, because he only needed one vehicle, his beat-ta-shit car. His furniture!!! Television and a beanbag chair! They had him all taken apart for value. Kev”—her husband—“says fuckem, tell 'em to come take the hernia back 'n' stuff it up their asses.”