The School on Heart's Content Road (55 page)

And Josée and I smiled at each other; I, for one, feeling that cold-hot up-down sensation I always had, seeing those dark solemn eyes, proud chin, and small shoulders.

And everyone stood around some more while Jane settled into the passenger seat, with Mickey Gammon at the wheel. Buttoning up his
militia shirt, he spoke to her, something like two words, some ordinary thing, and Jane (no secret agent glasses tonight) patted her hair.

And Butch Martin threw up a fist and hollered, “To the Revolution!”

And Rex glanced over at Butch with his steeliest look.

Rachel Soucier waved the clipboard, passed it to Mickey, and now Whitney was hollering from nearby, “To the Revolution!”

And the motor kicked on like the innocuous hum of a Frigidaire.

When the car lurched forward, people were screaming, “Hey, Mickey, Mr. Astronaut!” and “Hi, Jane!” and some were toasting the car with beers, and there were whistles, and off into the night the little car whooshed.

Penny.

Some youngsters ran after the car, out there in the night all this laughter and yahoo! and one kazoo buzzing and Michelle St. Onge and Samantha Butler were passing out True Maine Militia flyers. And Aurel was explaining in a series of shouts, “Mister Gammon will take diss purple photovoltaic sweetie up t'at tar road to Lancasters' dere'bouts and help Jane mark t'el'vations wit red on bote charts for now. Juss coming right back. No real travel. No sun, juss stars. And meanwhile, iff t'Lemonade Committee back in force, t'worl'will sing!”

Meanwhile (present time).

The little car hums along in the night.

Meanwhile.

A stranger steps up to Gordon, who is standing with Rex and a Vander-mast guy. Stranger wears a summery dress shirt, white with narrow pinstripes, jeans, military boots, and introduces himself as “Gary Larch, a patriot.”

Rex looks him up and down.

Gordon puts out a hand. “Yessir,” says Gordon. “You've come to the right place.”

Rex stares at the guy, not so quick to put out his hand, but he eventually does.

Meanwhile, in the Settlement lot.

Rex's daughter, Glory York, steps from her car. She walks oddly. She walks toward the lights and noise. She is accompanied by a friend. Both girls wear short low-cut dresses. Glory's shoes are wooden-heeled clogs. But it is not the clogs or the old ankle injury that gives her that little stumbly sashay.

All that dense flashing dark auburn hair swishes around her. Her earrings are long and silvery. In her hand, a stalky late-season clover. She sees her father, who is quietly talking with a stranger, hand on the fender of a Settlement flatbed truck. She avoids her father. No Daddy; no, not Daddy; Daddy just thinks of one thing, one little little little thing and nothing else:
militia
. Old pooperdooper.

What she is kind of swimmingly aiming for is that loud voice, not hard to locate really: Gordon, preaching away to a bunch of visitors, in one of the blindingly bright bay doors, commanding attention as always.

“Electric cars,” Glory tells her friend, “are the big thing here . . . besides everything else.”

There are a lot of little kids. Fussy. Crying. Fighting. Mothers and fathers and other kids are dragging them off to their beds,
long
overdue.

And there are young guys, some Glory knows from her school days, some older. Some Settlement guys: Butchie Martin. Mmmmm, Butchie Martin. Fit and slim-hipped, cocky in the walk, teasy in the eyes, quiet, dark-haired, one of those really capable ones here. French on both sides. Mmmmmmmmmmm. He is, yes, giving her the eye now, she thinks. He is looking at her,
definitely
.

Behind her, someone says, “Glory's smashed.”

She laughs, whirls around. “Yessss! Jealous?”

And one guy says, “Glory, let me take your car a minute. I'll be right back. I'm going to catch up with those guys and give them a hard time.” (Meaning Mickey and Jane).

Glory waves a hand dismissively. “My car is resting.”

Gordon doesn't see or hear her coming, so involved in his speechifying about the world being on the brink of total economic collapse, starvation,
thirst, chaos, his Atlas-like body almost filling up the open bay. She is just suddenly there, stuffing the long stalky clover into a pocket of his work shirt and hugging his arm. He doesn't notice her breath because of his own beer breath, but he knows she is really
drunk,
which he is not.

She says, “Shara has seen you in the newspaper and she didn't believe you are like a father to me. That I was practically raised here at the Settlement. Tell her it's true, Ghee-yome.”

The group of visitors standing near are looking sheepishly at Glory. Gordon is looking at Glory, her face only, forcing his eyes to stay up there away from what he knows is the lowest neckline he's ever seen on her . . . something like a little gold ladybug on a gold chain fine as a trickle of light squirming between her almost entirely exposed breasts.

Glory's friend is nervously laughing.

Glory places her right foot between Gordon's work boots and fools with the button of his shirt. “Shara, you believe me now?”

The friend is wide-eyed, obviously impressed.

“Shara, take a picture of me with the Prophet.”

Giggle. “I don't have a camera!” Giggle. Giggle.

Glory gasps. “Shucks! No picture. Nobody will believe it”—she gasps—“without
proof
!”

Gordon says quietly, “Your father needs to take you home.” He looks around toward where he last saw Rex.

Taking him by his short beard, she guides his head to face her. “Please, Ghee-yome. Let my friend see your pretty face.” She smiles at her friend. “I have never in my life seen such a beautiful man, have you?”

Gordon pries her hands away. He looks at the friend, her eyes with too much makeup and her mouth—something going around in her mouth there. Chewing gum. She does not look drunk. Gordon puts Glory's hands in hers. “Don't let her drive,” he says gravely.

But somehow Glory's hands are back, stroking him in the area of his ribs, both sides. She whispers sadly, “Ghee-yome, we love you on the mouth and everything be wifey, everybody be wifey. Ghee-yome is a mighty sheik.” And she turns to her friend, gives her friend a little shove toward him, saying happily, “Give Shara a kiss. So she will believe she's been here.” But of course, already, Shara is blushingly shrinking away.

And Gordon backs away too, goes to find Rex. But Rex is with the
stranger, the patriot, who says he once belonged to the Militia of Montana and knows Randy Trochmann and knew the Freemen well. And he has just given Rex his phone number and explains where he lives, which is right here in town, a rented trailer backside of the Wilson farm place. He explains he has some weapons he'd like to show Rex. Sometime. Whenever there's time. He says he's been working a lot of hours in Lewiston. “Mallory Foods.”

Gordon tells Rex, “Your girl is here.”

Rex turns and looks toward the lighted bay. But it is plain to see that he doesn't really know what to do about Glory. He looks at Gordon and gives him a thin miserable grimace.

Mickey explains.

So I'm backing the car into the bay. The little black girl that rode along says, “Thank you for a very nice time.” And now everybody's laughing over how the car didn't conk out up the road. Somebody goes by and pushes a jar of lemonade at me, big, like a pail of it. There's also beer everywhere. Hard cider. And sissy cider. Apple pies and pans of apple stuff and sugared-up tomato stuff on the workbenches. Dried zucchini things you'd think were potato chips.

A bunch of us are talking. One guy's suggesting we experiment with what's called a microenergy flywheel. It runs on just a pilot-sized flame of cooking gas. The flywheel has to have no friction. And Samantha comes over, and she has her Indian-style rag around her practically white hair. And a pair of little-little shorts. And a red T-shirt with sleeves ripped off. She looks sticky. Arms, face, neck, and bellybutton. Sweet and sticky. She is not one of them carrying pies. Cory's eyes take all this in. Butch Martin's eyes don't seem to get enough.

I can't believe it, her face getting close to my right eye, right ear. It jumps me. It sucks to act so jumpy in this situation. Everybody's laughing loud, almost drowning out what she's whispering in cold lemon breath, her mouth on my ear, man, I mean like
on
my ear. “Thursday. Seven-thirty
A.M
. pronto. Out front here by the bays. The True Maine Militia hits the statehouse. Be there.” She flicks my hair, the tail.

Laugh. Laugh. Laugh. All of them have forgot flywheels and pilots. It's really not that funny that I have a stupid look on my face.

Samantha is already gone into the elbows and stomachs of the crowd, and all I see is wagging dog tails and small kids' crying faces and some guy's beer gut before my brain remembers where I am. Remembers to think. I am not thinking about the statehouse or how she throws orders, man; no, I'm thinking about how to stop thinking about the little-little shorts before it
shows
.