The School on Heart's Content Road (51 page)

“Do you think somebody made them?” asks the very blond, very small boy.

Mickey says, “They look real.” He looks into the faces of this boy and the little girl, much easier than looking into the gaze of an older person.

Another of the taller girls, as tall as Mickey, hands him a jar sloshing with tan stuff. Looks like maple milk. She says, “We're learning to make paper. You have to press it.” Her eyes—light brown and deep as molasses—are on the flowers. Her black hair looks like it has been pulled out in chunks. A fight? A mean older brother?

His eyes sneak to the three women, their profiles, two of them noticing the dog circling in the ferns. Mickey's chest is tight. He feels his private world stabbed through the middle.

One of the wives looks like a witch, her hair gray straw, too stiff to be just human. And her face too young to have gray hair, not full white, but turning. She is stepping toward him with a jar. She is braless. Her dress is the same color as the flowers: raspberry juice or something. Their idea of making stuff pretty? The dress material is thin, and her nipples are as clear as noses. She has a necklace of hardware, big chain links, and one around her ankle. Like a slave. There is something troublingly sexy and disgusting about her, Mickey thinks. She is on the bony side, but she has a way about her, her long arms, the wagging breasts, her voice now, too tiny: “Yarrow is for healing.” He jams the flowers under one arm, the cold wrapped thing too. Takes the jar of salve. “It is especially good as an anti-inflammatory for muscles that ache,” she goes on. “Notice it's green.” She makes him look. Yep, green. She says dreamily, “It's my favorite. You think yarrow, you think white, like little sister to Queen Anne's lace. But no, the salve is green.” She reaches for him; her long arms kind of hypnotize him. Or is it her voice? Her hand melts upon his wrist. “I tend to use it even when not needed, just for its meadowy smell.” She prods his wrist doctorishly. No, motherishly—if mothers were that touchy-feely. Her voice is almost grating and yet kind of like singing. “I keep little-little jars to last through winter. If you want more, stop by. My place is one of the solar ones. My roof is brown.” She kneads his wrist a little farther up now, nowhere near his nervous pulse. “I have a whole shelf in my medicine room teetering with salves, yarrow and others. Some just for you!”

Other hands push things on Mickey. Other voices explain. Corn bread. Tomato juice. Bowl of warm pork. Mickey thinks the Prophet probably picked out some of this—ahem—breakfast.

The witch continues, telling him her name is Lee Lynn. She shows him a large wire-style canning jar of dried-up leaves. “You can smoke this,” she says. “It's mullein.”

A big greasy meaty sandwich balances in front of his face.

A whole loaf of bread “for snacking,” the girl with patchy hair tells him, and produces a towel-wrapped thing shaped like a giant egg.

There is a goat smell in the air. The meat? Mickey realizes he's squishing the cold towel-wrapped thing under his elbow. Seems the smell rises from there.

Big green area is Gordon's work shirt as he hangs out to the far left of the mob, turning to look at the dog, who is now headed into the center
of the group, Mickey's eyes are huge, waiting for the smell to turn up too. The dog is grinning
big
.

A woman in a plaid flannel shirt, large-frame glasses with tiny eyes, tiny smiling eyes, standing real close, now says, “Bonny Loo, where's the you-know-what?”

Bonny Loo looks pregnant or something. Maybe not. Maybe just a gut. Glasses. Very dark hair with orange bleachy streaks pulled into a high ponytail. Eyes sexy with makeup but also sexy anyway. And fox color: that is, orangey-brown. Her breasts are melons. Her earrings look store-bought. She barges in up close to Mickey, smelling more kitcheny than the breakfast items themselves. Digs in her pocket.

But another object is straining for his attention, small hands from below. A smoodgy crayon drawing of big fish or whales and dots that might be stars but are green. This is framed in wood but no glass. “For your walls!” the smallest Indian girl announces in a voice that is booming for such a small person.

Lee Lynn, the witch, says, “Do you have any wishes, Mickey?”

Bonny Loo snorts. “She means, do you need anything besides decor?”

Lee Lynn scowls. “I meant more to do with his well-being.”

Bonny Loo's big hand with short nails isn't as noticeable as the block of cash in it. “Some of this is Rex's,” she says. “He was around last night, and we all gossiped about you.”

The dog is sniffing his ankles. There is no smell of shit. Mickey likes this dog, who has managed so far not to totally fuck up Mickey's day. He would pat him, but his hands are full.

Bonny Loo says, “So, according to Rex, your jobs have—were the summer kind.”

“It was nice gossip,” Lee Lynn says. “Everybody loves you, Mickey.”

Bonny Loo makes a face like swooning. Something between her and Lee Lynn. Is it play or war?

Glennice, with the big glasses and small eyes,
very
small mouth, like an eye with eyelids, and flannel shirt over loose jeans, says, “We're making a town run today, a bunch of us. There's a spot for you.”

“Tell him about—you know. Remember?” It's the older of the girls, hair sorrowfully mangy, T-shirt orange-sherbet color, her eyes quite green.

Bonny Loo says, “
You
tell him.”

“If you go to the sewing shop—it's four doors from the West Parlor; we can show you—they have gloves and blankets, clothes. Piles of stuff all made, or we can make you something special.”

Bonny Loo makes another face, which causes her long nose to get longer, her mouth to suck in. “As long as you don't mind wearing things made by beginners. You could wind up with five sleeves.”

“Mean! Mean!” sniggers the older girl and falls against Bonny Loo for a wrassly hug.

Glennice smiles at Mickey, eyes into eyes. “You see, Mickey, it might have looked scary for a while, but God provides.”

Bonny Loo laughs almost burpingly. “God isn't at those sewing machines.”

Lee Lynn's face appears at Bonny Loo's shoulder just as a jar of yellowy fruit floats by on a small upraised hand. “Mickey, we beseech you to join us at our tables at mealtimes.”

Bonny Loo reaches for the head of the older girl. “Just do not, Mickey, whatever you do, let the Beauty Crew touch your head.”

“Look at Andrea's hair as an example,” says a girl between the smallest and the tallest.

The older girl ruffles her own hair. “They do nice hair sometimes. But Jane, the
secret agent
?” She laughs a laugh of flustered admiration. “A mower.”

Gordon, standing a little nearer now, is the quietest Mickey has ever known him to be. And Gordon's eyes are on Mickey.

Mickey feels something press around his wrist. Again. It's Lee Lynn, all witchy and breathy and high-pitched. “You are as skinny as a ghost, Mickey,” she says.

Now Glennice's hand offers Mickey what looks a lot like church tracts, though he can't read the sentences blazing across the busy thunder-and-lightning sky painted there. And he has no hands for her to put them in.

“What's
that
about?” Bonny Loo demands huskily. Mickey notes a shape in Bonny Loo's shirt pocket. Cigarettes.

Glennice says, “Nothing that will hurt him.”

Bonny Loo's eyes flash to where Gordon stands, still just a green work shirt in Mickey's vision.

Lee Lynn lets go of Mickey's wrist, smiling. She doesn't seem too uncomfortable in her neck and leg chains. Her weedy hair and waggly, perfectly visible breasts are more breezy than weighty, and not even one ounce of shame.

The oldest girl, green eyes, patchy hair, says, “Everyone says you might come work on the solar cars.”

Mickey nods.

A smaller girl says, “One we call Our Purple Hope. Like a name.”

Mickey nods a few times. “I heard about it from
him
.” He doesn't look at Gordon. Of all the people here, Gordon's intense, almost vibrating eyes are the last thing Mickey wants to see.

Bonny Loo seems to grow taller and heavier, and even more pregnant, definitely closer. “Don't you want to come down to the Settlement to live? Hot water. Real beds. No bears.”

Mickey squints up at her, the sun behind her shoulder now, chewing its way through the trees. “Sometime.”

Glennice, the flannel-shirt church one, says, “Dinner is always around noon. And we have skits, poems, announcements, music, and sing-alongs.”

Bonny Loo says, “There's a seat. It's all yours.” She grips his arm. His bicep. Cuts the blood flow off, sort of.

The older girl says, “Our Purple Hope is important. You should do that.”

Lee Lynn says, “Our Purple Hope cries out for you!”

Bonny Loo shakes her head to dismiss these invitations. “First things first. Mickey, you need a ride to town. And maybe to Ames. Car leaves at eleven. Be there.”

“Dinner is at noon,” says a smaller girl.

Bowl of meat carried in the small blond boy's raised hand glides past between Mickey and the women, dog nose following in the meat's wake.

Glennice says, “Let me pray with you, Mickey, for thanks. This is quite a surprise I'm sure, and—”

Bonny Loo says, “Pu-leeeeez, Glennice!”

The women bully each other awhile. They bully Mickey. The nearness of their bodies makes almost a real squeeze around him.

He sneaks a flash glance at Gordon's face, the big dark mustache, the short beard. One eyebrow raised, on the verge of squint-blinking, a sort of seizure of the face. His hands hang down at his sides, huge, like bear
paws. Strong, but weak. Bullied and bossed. Mickey was wrong. Gordon St. Onge isn't really a man with a harem. He's a man with a problem.

Evening, up in the woods.

What looks from a distance like a little bird stuffing a great swatch of batting through the hole of a birdhouse is really Mickey Gammon, stuffing through the hatch doorway of his tree home his brand-new 10 degrees below zero sleeping bag, a necessary item for any serious militiaman of these northern climes, in preparation for the Emergency, which, as we know, comes sooner for some than others. No way, no how, is Mickey ready for a Settlement bed and Settlement women.

Mickey's tree house, next morning.

Another basket. Just one basket. The picnic kind. With a crow on it, trying to pick it open, but who lifts off, hearing the unzipping sound and wooden thumping sound of Mickey waking up.

So somebody had just sneaked quietly up the trail and left breakfast. Mickey, rummaging through, finds two notes. One is a folded note from Bonny Loo reminding him that dinner is at noon. A bit of a command there. But only if Mickey could read it. All he can make out is DEAR MICKEY. Though if
dear
were mixed in with the rest of the writing, he'd probably not know it. It's all guesswork.

In a sealed envelope is a blue membership card to the True Maine Militia, and again he can make out MICKEY and GAMMON, but other words are just alphabets out of order, about as readable as rows of corn. Then a note:

DEAR MICKEY,

Please join our militia. We need you! We need your expertise! Let's meet here at your place tonight at 4:30 for quick meeting, updates, and that sort of thing. We have something in the works not to be written in a note. Over and out.

If Mickey could read, he might be interested in the signatures on his membership card, including
Samantha Butler,
the one with the blonde
Apache-like hair whose image arouses him many nights. But Mickey's eyes are not held long by print and scribbles. He quickly unwraps the goat-smelling cheese sandwich, the small bowl of crispy but cold bacon, tall canning jar of peaches in juice, two canning jars of maple milk, big spoon, folded cloth with print of teacups. No words needed. In this selection of goodies, he once again senses the hand of Gordon St. Onge.