The School on Heart's Content Road (49 page)

Gordon says, “I haven't been up here in a while. It's grown up a lot. Used to be a stone cattle pound here somewhere.” He stops and stares at a humpy area around a jungle of sumac. “Every one of those pieces of granite are gone. People steal rocks nowadays, you know.” He looks at Mickey, his pale eyes blazing with disgust. “Yuppies take 'em.”

Mickey pictures hundreds of yuppies lugging off the big rocks.

Crows are cawing in the near distance. A great dither.

Gordon starts walking again. “I want to show you a neat old graveyard. It's up here.” The crying little kid rushes Gordon and throws itself
at Gordon's legs, and he hoists the child up, makes a loud smooching noise into its crying mouth. Little kid laughs tearfully. Its short hair is all dark curls, and though it wears little jeans and little leather boots and a sweater, its shirt is really just a pajama top left from the night. Mickey now hears Gordon call this kid Anna. Gordon carries Anna against his shoulder, her legs clamped around his rib cage. He says, “I just wanna check this little yard and see if it's still there. Antiquers steal graveyard gates. Everything is a commodity these days, even our history.”

Mickey notes that Gordon's face is different now. Voice instructive rather than frantic. How many guys
is
Gordon St. Onge? Mickey isn't creeped out by this, but he is braced.

They find it. It is still all there.

There are ten graves in all, five with fine old slate stones, tall and elegant with weatherworn old script. But there are also five graves with just plain small rocks for markers. The yard itself is built up on three sides with high walls of impressive granite stonework. The granite pieces are long, like coffins. Wrought-iron gate still intact. Young trees have taken over the graves, forcing some stones to lean, while shifting earth tips the others. Gordon explains. “Barringtons don't do this one. Only military veterans get care, orders from the selectmen. And as you see, there's no veterans here. Let the good doctors, mothers, farmers, and little dead babies and pocked children sink into the earth's core, devoured by trees! Forget 'em! They were nothing but plain boring gloryless trashy peace types. Ack!”

Mickey looks down at the plain gray rocks that mark the graves of babies. All those babies nobody could save. Somehow, in his heart, there is momentarily the confused image of yuppies lugging rocks, veterans lugging rocks, everybody stealing the rocks and handsome iron gates of babies' graveyards, helpless, suffering, shrunken, cancer-killed babies, all babies with his nephew Jesse Locke's face. He feels a hand. Little kid with all the questions pats him on his shirtfront. “Are you sad?” he or she asks.

Mickey's answer is a shrug.

Gordon talks and talks. Mickey likes the way Gordon knows so much about these old graves, the old families of Egypt, farmers mostly, and all the ways they are tied into the families here in Egypt today. Through some exhaustingly tangled mess of
then Elizabeth such 'n' such married Abigail such 'n' such's cousin, James such 'n' such,
Mickey and Gordon realize that
they are both related to people in this yard, and therefore related to each other, through about fifteen such 'n' such's and many marriages. Mickey likes this. So what if it's
distant
? Related is related. If the tribe includes you, you are in it. You are embraced. You will survive.

Gordon starts pitching some dead limbs out of the cemetery. “Honor our past,” he says, and everyone thrashes limbs out over the granite edges of the little yard.

Mickey smiles to himself, imagining Mr. Carney and the rest doing shit like this.

“Check this out.” Gordon holds his hand out for everyone to look. On his palm, an inchworm is raised up, poking its blind face around, looking a little frantic. Gordon says, “He has wonderful skin. Don't pity him. He knows what none of us know.”

Mickey strikes a match for a cigarette, still smiling his ghosty smile.

When they turn back, the once-crying Anna is in better spirits, her baseball jacket flapping as she runs ahead, all the kids gone on ahead, shrieking happily.

Three or four song bugs have begun to creak as the sun warms.

Young noisy crows lead each other from tree to tree in an open bright space off to the right. As Mickey walks, he squints one eye manfully and blows smoke. Gordon is behind now, paused in his tracks, staring backward down the path toward the crows and the golden brightness. Gordon says, “Come here a sec. I'm just curious.” Mickey follows him now toward the crows and the alluring golden light.

It is a clearing, S-shaped. Mushy. Wet. Filling it, a sea of late September yellow, the greener parts, splotches of a color that is otherworldly and whisperish, the leaves pointed and alert in a way that makes them seem centuries old, older than rock and water: plants that observe you. And there are clumpy buds the size of children's fists. And a smell.
The
smell. And mixed in between, all the regular Maine-type wet-loving weeds and other green, lesser smells.

Mickey looks at Gordon. Gordon closes his eyes. “My God.” A breathy whisper. He opens his eyes and says, “Shit.” And then, in another breathy whisper, “Lady Ganja.”

Mickey says, “Yep.”

Gordon grabs Mickey's thin left arm and pulls him into an emergency-ish trot through the crackling ferns till they are out of the light, back
into the dappled world of oaks and birches. “Get on your knees, man,” says Gordon.

Mickey's eyes widen. His cheeks flush maroon. He doesn't question this scary guy, who is not the principal at school or any one of those types, not
that
kind of power, but a twisting, turning, pounding force, both sticky and awful but mostly sticky. Mickey gets down on his knees.

Gordon gets down on his knees beside Mickey. Aloud he prays, “Dear God, give us the strength to never ever
ever
speak of this what we have just seen. Is this not the greatest Commandment of them all?
Thou shalt not tell on your neighbor. Thou shalt not bring calamity on your neighbor, nor the evil of
SWAT
teams and guns and force and smashed children and imprisoned mothers and fathers
. Give me more strength than for anything I have ever needed strength for before, to keep the knowledge of my neighbor's crop to myself and never return here. Amen.” He springs up and starts running, keys jangling.

Mickey, his ashless cigarette bent against his palm, runs too. He burps up a goaty cheese-maple taste. He gets an acorn cap wedged in the tread of his boot but just keeps on running.

Back in the truck.

Mickey has the kid with the baseball jacket on his lap now, one hand holding her steady, but he fixes his gaze on the rearview mirror's toy Godzilla, twirling slowly and heavily from the
poofs
of the slammed doors. His eyes slide to Gordon's profile, which now wears a goofy grin, like a kid when he's being what Erika used to call
devious
. One of the Prophet's many selves that Mickey is beginning to memorize.

Gordon sighs and his face goes into deep-thought mode. He suggests that Mickey may want to live at the Settlement, there's plenty of room. And Mickey says, with great dignity, that he'll think about it.

A jubilation of crows.

You all take notice as the truck sputters to life and putt-putts up the road of many forks and twists, with its name of heart's content, up, up, and away. You love the way things are turning out for the tree boy. So far.

Media magic.

The papers (mostly in-state), with their letters to the editors and one-column updates, radio call-in programs, and the occasional television moment keep the Egypt matter covered daily, like a granule of sand in the eye or a pebble in a shoe. Some are still fascinated with the sign at the Settlement gate that promises to shoot trespassers. Others speak or write glowingly of how outgoing the St. Onge people are. And Gordon St. Onge seems like such a “loving man.” Some rave about the need for solar and wind and vegetable or hemp fuels, in order to save the planet, and speak of the Settlement people as shining examples we should all follow. Others warn that we should fear these separatists, or at least fear
for
the St. Onge followers, “especially the children, especially the girls.” “He speaks truth!” one caller exclaims. “He's totally insane,” snarls another. Others stutteringly repeat the word
militia
. And
paranoia
and
fringe
and
wacko
. “Dangerous right-wing types,” say some. “Refreshingly leftist,” applauds another. With a sigh, one caller tells listeners, “It's an embarrassment to our state. People will believe all of us in Maine are like this, losers with a grudge! Even their kids. I don't know what exactly their problem is, but if people stop making so much of them, maybe it'll all die down. It's disgusting!”

Out in the world, in a federal building somewhere, in America, S.A. (Special Agent) Kashmar is browsing through reports.

He looks up as someone passes in the hall, headed out. It's late. He draws his coffee to him and presses it against his shirt, as though giving it shelter from a storm. He flips through more printouts, clippings, pictures, faxes.

Lotta bad eggs out there. Lotta bad boys with guns. Lotta crackpots with intentions, bad intentions. Putting into a lotta other people's heads intentions those people never thought of. Stirring up discontent. Scaring everyone. Meanwhile, all kissy-kissy and talk of brotherhood, talk of God. How's that go? “
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
.” Yeah, but those guns used to be pointed at Germans and Russians and Japs and Vietcong. Commies and Jap crap.
These
guns are pointed at the United States of America.

Okay, Mr. St. Onge, Guillaume—however you pronounce it. Okay, pretty boy, keep it up. You don't get it? We do
not
allow groups,
tight
groups, groups intended to steer away from America. There's only one thing worse than attacking America with guns or voices, and that is
steering away
. You see, buddy? If you become a nation, a new overzealous nation, you take a lot with you that is
ours
. And—well, you are not America. So you are dog shit. And—well, you are an
example
. Either you are an example of us putting down
danger,
or you are an inspiration to others to do what you do.