The School on Heart's Content Road (40 page)

I just wanted to scare Mum. It was because she wouldn't buy it for me, even though my heart was melting into ruins: the leather skirt. It was the best thing I have ever wanted. But she said, “Later, Jane.”

I said, “Now.”

She said, “We have to wait till I get the credit cards paid next week.”

This credit-card thing she always said. Just an excuse. If it was something
she
wanted, she didn't have excuses. I figured I could scare Mum just a little, just a little scary thing. Not real bad.

At school, the
DARE
man, a police guy, said to us all,
You ever see one of these things in your house?
I said,
Oh, yes
. He was so friendly. He talked to me special, and we went in the place where teachers sit. I knew he wouldn't hurt Mum, just scare her, and I could say to Mum,
There! Now where's my leather skirt?

So he asked me if I knew what
it
was called.

I said, in a very smart way,
A joint
.

The
DARE
man said,
That's very good, Jane
.

So I told the
DARE
man about the other part he wanted to know.
She knows some people. She was on the phone. She thinks it's big. She thinks it might be really big. Mum calls the other one Dr. Eric because when you get a bag to smoke, it makes you feel better. That's funny, isn't it? But Mum met this other man, I think. It is something with boats. I think Mum is a little scared
.

The
DARE
man was very interested and very nice and kept asking me more stuff like where Mum worked—which is for Dr. Grossman, a real dentist, not a man who sells stuff—and I told him about the leather skirt and he said,
I'll see you get that leather skirt, Jane
. He was so nice. He said not to tell Mum about our talk.

Then it was days and days . . . no police yet . . . but I said to Mum,
You are about to be real sorry you didn't get me the leather skirt
. Meanwhile, I was afraid. What if somebody else bought it and it was the LAST ONE, no more in stock? It looked like the last one.

More days and days, and the nice
DARE
man never showed up. I kept looking out the window for his police car and his real pretty dog that sniffs your marijuana.

More days. Then I guess he forgot.

But somehow a bad thing happened when I was in school. Very mean cops made Mum prisoner, a
real
prisoner. Killed Cherish, my beautiful Scottie dog. Left her hot in the car. It wasn't anything to do with the nice
DARE
man, you can be sure of that. He didn't even remember my leather skirt. He has a bad memory problem. He promised to get me that skirt. He's, like,
really
spacey. The cops who arrested Mum are a special government kind: narcs, rhymes with
sharks
. The kind that make people cry. If I told Mum about the nice
DARE
man, she would agree that he probably forgot about Dr. Eric and all that. Who knows, he might show up right here with my leather skirt. It will take him awhile to find out where I am. And when he does, I'll talk to him to see if he can get Mum out. He had a gun and police outfit. They might listen to him. He was so nice.

However, Jane escapes.

Without the smallest detour, no zigzag, no slouch, she hurries up, up, up the paved road, up, up, up that long hill to Headquarters, her new friends who give out cookies and Wacky Lemon Wonder, both schoolteachers, a mother and son, virtuous, yes, not afraid to shop, not afraid to be what everybody is
supposed
to be.

She knocks crisply on their door, curtain of green dots to cover the door window, little wooden girl in bonnet and watering can and the word
WELCOME
, all so pretty. But nobody is home.

Jane
fumes
.

Moments later, she is stepping across the bristly dried-out grass and sees a familiar person stepping from the door of the Lancasters' scary-looking mobile home across the road, walking on the path between the giant trunks of the giant trees. He walks like a cop. Yes, it's him, Rex, Gordie's milishish friend. Jane calls out “Hi!” and waves.

Rex nods grimly.

Jane steps out onto the crumbly tar just as he too reaches the tar, and she hurries over to him as he is putting a hand on the handle of the cab door of his shiny new red truck, and she speaks in her velvety, Africa-husky voice. “Can I have a ride to Gordie's?”

Nothing of a welcome on the parts of his face that show, but not much of his face shows. Dark coplike glasses. Big mustache crawling to the jaws.

Jane adds charmingly, “I really love your shirt.”

Short-sleeved camo shirt with the Border Mountain Militia's embroidered patch on the left shoulder.

He goes around to the passenger door and opens it, Jane right behind him, stepping along long-leggedly, her new handmade knee-length smock of a patchwork of harvest colors swirling around her. Big orange patchwork cloth flower in her upswept, floofy, curly topknot. She scrambles up into the seat. Rex closes the door for her.

Now they are riding along, slowly, down the steep and winding old mountain road, heaped with stone walls on either side, stone walls and ferns and tawny late-afternoon sun and chipmunks and red squirrels who mostly watch and wait.

Rex doesn't talk at all. Just, “Fasten your belt.” Meaning seatbelt.

Jane has nothing to say either.

After a few moments of the ride, Rex glances at the kid and it jumps him to notice that though her face was bare when she first boarded the truck, there are now two white plastic heart shapes aimed squarely at him . . . staring. These, her dark tinted glasses for spying and special powers of vision.

Still, he says nothing, just steers one-handed, the hand and wrist with the black-faced compass watch, the sleeve with the militia patch fluttering on the arm that rests on the open window, the black combat boots working the pedals. And fear. Yes, Rex York is just a little bit afraid of Secret Agent Jane.

Time chugs on. Late afternoon of a mid-September day.

In the cold parlor of the St. Onge farmhouse, deep in the old collapsing couch, sort of wrapped in the couch, in its waves of whimpering springs and hills of upholstery of frazzled blue nap, are fifteen-year-old Brianna and Gordon. His thick legs are stretched out, feet on the rug. She has her legs curled under her as she leans toward him and he is looking at her, face-to-face. His face normal, hers stretched by birth defect.

He smells of the hot fields and hot work, perhaps even some chaff in the seams of his faded blue T-shirt. She places her hands on his shoulders; her hands and her body and work shirt and jeans smell of the woods and of hot work too—of a logging operation, specifically, woods-spiced with skidder grease and a smoodge of pink bar-and-chain oil—and she looks steadily into his face and she does not giggle. She is his wife now. She takes herself for granted. She sees his eyes on her face and on her bright ripply hair, which falls over her back and over her shirtfront. These eyes of his are filled with her sweaty, woodsy, cigarette sweet opulence . . . his eyes and his being are drawn to her, pulled to her,
stuck
. As in a web, yes.

She says huskily, “We are mind into mind. We are getting mixed up.”

He smiles, in a twinkly, restrained way.

She sees his forty-year-old eyes crinkle at the sides, eyes the palest she's ever known, like some great big cat. She almost giggles. They are on the edge of so many sort ofs and almosts as she leans closer, now forehead to forehead. This is painful to him as he is becoming farsighted, but he doesn't draw back. He accommodates.

She says, “There is only one big soul, but nature stuffs pieces of the soul into all these separate skulls. My dear beautiful male thing, if we mix souls we are breaking the law of nature and it could be hard on us.”

He says, “Baby, we are breaking all the laws.”

She reaches with her fingers behind his ears and along his neck and sets all the nerves there alive; her stiff logger fingers have the lightest touch. She draws her head back and, still staring into his eyes, she says, “We have our windows open, dear husband.” She flutters her strange far-apart eyes. “Our souls are getting out of our skulls!”

He snorts happily over this thought. Ah, Bree!

“They are getting alloyed!” she says urgently.

He folds his hands around her head like holding a squash or some enormous fruit, her hair alive and too red underneath and through his fingers. And her brain, too busy there, under his palms. Her entire universe in his hands.

His breath is coffee, hers cigarettes.

Her eyes focus closer together. “I love your nice big Frenchie nose,” she says.

“I'm glad,” he says.

From the editorial section of the
Record Sun
's fat Sunday paper.

A lengthy article that arrived only four days ago on the editor's desk in stunning calligraphy, signed by several persons, many with the last name of St. Onge. The article starts off with:

Some of you may have the idea you are in danger. Let us be more specific. Some of you can clearly imagine that, in the not-too-far-off future, “they” will come and put you and your family out of your home. All you have grown up and worked for is threatened by some large conspiring force.

The article goes on with many skin-chilling details; then, in bold print:

YES, OH, YES. SOMEBODY IS GETTING READY TO TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY FROM YOU. EVERYTHING
!

We are members of the True Maine Militia, not to be confused with the plain Maine Militia, or the Border Mountain Militia, or the Southern Maine Militia, or the White Mountain Militia. But with those militias, we do have a bit in common.

Like them, we are not ostriches.

We are angry.

And we know the government sucks.

It is not a government of We, the People, but one of Organized Money, of Big Faceless Financiers ruling through their shrewd tool, the
corporation. And money laundering and fraud and other creepy stuff. And the Fed! It is instrumental in making the dollar worthless. It is a centralized debt-based banking system.

Welcome! We welcome
EVERYBODY
! We are not a right-wing militia. We are not left-wing either. We are
NO WING
. We are everybody's militia!

Now there is a cartoon of The Abominable Hairy Patriot, lovable but stern-looking Bigfoot with hands on hips standing on a mountaintop. He wears a tricorne hat, camo spot vest, and army boots. (Usually he is barefoot, to show his big hairy feet. And usually he does not wear clothes.) Behind him waves the American flag. (Remember, this is
BEFORE
September 11, 2001, so the flag isn't tacky yet.)

The article finishes with:

The True Maine Militia already has a lot of members, but not enough. Our goal is a million for starters. Because we are planning the Million-Man-Woman-Kid-Dog March on Augusta, for starters, and we will all be armed. With brooms. We will arrive at the doors, all the State House doors, and begin to very very gently sweep the great floors of this, which is our house . . . yes, the People's House. We will sweep out every corporate lobbyist. Corporations out! We, the People, in!