The School on Heart's Content Road (54 page)

The heat was back. Thick like summer. Some call it Indian Summer. Some call it global warming. Whatever, it wasn't October feeling! Bay doors were open wide. Under the high rounded ceiling of the largest
Quonset hut, you could look to your left or right and see the amazing bright fleet of small electric cars and buggies. Mostly these used replenished special batteries. Only one with collectors. Some of the cars were not yet equipped, only steel frames. All but two were just buggy-sized, like ATVs, with big deep-tread ATV tires. Made for pulling small loads. Made for errands. Some were those we'd been using for a few years, now in this bay area for repairs. Lightweight with lumpy homemade finishes, thick paint of your standard fairy-tale red, blue, yellow, rose, or orange.

But that night, the main attraction was the roadworthy, low-slung, sporty, full-sized, though still windowglassless, Our Purple Hope. The gate was being opened for a lot of people from around Egypt, Brown-field, even Porter, here to witness the first road test. The brightest light-bulbs in the whole Settlement were overhead, giving our purple car reflections like lumpy suns. It felt good to me to have a nice big group visiting. Events of this size had always been natural to Settlement life, and it was getting a little bit sickening to be so closed off.

In a future time, Penny remembers back.

Among the townspeople, there was one guy I didn't think looked familiar. Not that I knew everyone from town by name, but I knew their faces. This guy was a total stranger. Midforties. Square-jawed. Fit. His brown hair was short and combed with care. His face was shaved. I couldn't decide if he was a schoolteacher, an insurance salesman–type, or maybe a churchman. He looked controlled and capable. I offered him the last of the lemonade. He said, “Yes, thank you.” A gentleman. His accent wasn't local.

Some details Claire remembers.

Outside, the parking lot was packed with cars and trucks. A cheery gatekeeper crew had been formed. They had set up an ice shack as a guardhouse by the pole gate near the tar road. But the pole and the mean signs were tossed into the bushes. Like I say, it was a warm night. A lot of big male bellies, some torn greasy T-shirts. Those whose fashion statement was
work
. And they each brought along at least a single beer, like a torch of freedom. There were lots of sleeveless women, many kinds
of arms. And shirtless kids, the pudgy and the ribby. In our Lee Lynn's arms was her baby, Hazel, plump, cherubic, quite naked, scrubbed sweet. At home.

This was the great and grand solar finale. Our Purple Hope ready to set sail at last. This is the sort of thing that attracts mostly men—you know—like moths to light. But every woman of the Settlement who wasn't infirm was here that night in that echoey Quonset hut, laughing to see how many of us had turned up wearing the red sash, not at all planned. Just a synchronized red-sash mood.

May I tell you of the sash? Red wool, the sash. And, in satiny embroidery, suns. Every sash featured a powerful boiling-yellow sun. And vegetation and tiny fairy flies in blues and purples and many greens. The embroidery showed in a wide variety of levels of accomplishment, but all of the sashes were unhesitatingly
red
. We, the sisters, wives of one man. No, the creation of the sashes had not been an agreement, no result of a meeting of yesses, but a spark. One day, one of us made one. Then in a summer, there were many, their meaning remaining a secret among ourselves.

It tickled us all to see how we had each individually thought to wear the sash that night. Even vastly pregnant Vancy wore hers, but over her shoulders, like a priest. And let me remind you, these sashes were
wool
.

Penny.

I saw the stranger turn from facing the center of the room to face the nearest open bay. He watched keenly as Gordon pushed in through the crowd, coming from somewhere. At a glance, I knew Gordon had been drinking, though no bottle was in his hand. Rex York was with him, Rex not drinking, of course, just solemn and interested in the photovoltaic car.

Claire.

There was this great dither when Gordon showed up, people hollering his name, whistling, working their way around others to greet him, and Aurel gripping Gordon's arm and saying something about the
lead wire
and
battery four
and “What you t'ink, t'at iss t'same one somehow sneaked
back when my back was turn'—not by Butchie, dere, or Mickey, but somebody acting wa-wa wit'out dere
maman
!” Aurel's eyes crackled with the light of all those overhead watts. The blackness of those eyes! The Indianness of his great-grandparents more evident in him than in Gordon. Like everyone here, I always cared a lot about Aurel, a first cousin of Gordon, even though he brags and fibs, mostly fibs
while
bragging, and I saw that although he was a lively, gifted, snazzy little guy, he was not the showstopper Gordon was, and that night I think I really resented this, that Gordon had stolen Aurel's thunder.

I watched Aurel turn back to work, his khaki shirt always a little loose over his small shoulders, a wetness beaded up and trickling through the hairs of his dark, fussily trimmed pointy beard. And beside him, Mickey. Mickey, who was shirtless that night, way too ribby. His jeans were ragged and splotched black. I remember the moment I realized how those young fingers could literally divine all the perfect connections of that electric and automotive mystery.

Gordon was feeling the fender of the car.

Rex stood between Joel Barrington and Eddie Martin as they all talked quietly. Rex was toned-down militia: dark T-shirt, work pants, army cap. There was something about that relentless light. Though his big sprawling mustache was still dark, I saw that these past months he was getting craggy.

Aurel dropped down in front of the car with a flashlight, eager to show Gordon some “bad news.”

And Gordon got down on all fours too, so I couldn't see him as Evan Martin shuffled left or right and someone else moved into the open space.

Then Aurel was up again, barking to the little wide-eyed mob, “We fix our trouble as we go! She going to roll in about twenty minutes. Diss fuckup iss not going to spoil t'iss major plan off e'stacy and delight off dese people! I mean it! And afterrrr”—he really rolled those beautiful
r
's—“she hass been outside charging up all day, she iss frisky inside, her!” Without even taking a breath, he turned to one of the Vandermast guys, one of Bree's brothers, who had been around all day for this. “What do you t'ink off t'iss nice purple car now, you?”

And I remember this, those last finishing touches: Mickey hot white-gold against the mad purple glow of the car, like a shy apparition. And blond ruddy Joel Barrington leaning close to Butch Martin to confer, and
Beezer with her stocky shape, plump ass in jeans, winking at me as she passed the pliers to Mickey, and soft-looking twelve-year-old Kirky Martin, electrician and electronics man extraordinaire, hands in pockets now, but hovering. And I saw Mickey and Aurel bend over the bank of batteries, and I knew then, as I know now, how it is when chemistries of different bodies combine through rhythm and heat, that when this happens, those five or six human systems will operate in sync, like the miracle of wolves. And tell me, isn't this what we want for our children? Is it so wrong? So outmoded? I looked over at Gordon at that moment and, seeing the back of his head, his rather cowlicky “new” short hair, I knew I loved him more than at any other time. Yes, he had been our savior.

Penny.

And then I caught sight of the stranger, who was yakking with some people from town.

Claire.

Aurel put a hand on Mickey's bare shoulder and whispered. Then Mickey was grabbing his camo shirt from a pile of shirts on one bench and then easing himself into the windowless cockpit of Our Purple Hope.

Somebody from town was feeling the photovoltaic collectors on the car roof. And Rachel Soucier, who had worked endlessly with her father devising all the elevation charts, stood near with her clipboard. And then I saw big ol' fifteen-year-old Cory leading Jane through the ring of men. She was giggly and antsy and dressed cute, as always. Little plaid smock and black velvet ribbon in her upswept curls. And Aurel was assuring her, “Oh, yess, mademoiselle, t'iss iss a sports car, a Camaro . . . sort of.”