The School on Heart's Content Road (58 page)

I'm not really into this, just trying to keep an eye on things and help them feel like a real militia. The next so-called militia thing they're scheming up is—heh-heh! I try to picture Cap'n Rex's militia doing this and I almost crack up out loud. Here it is. A birthday party for a hundred-year-old lady combined with a rally where they say two thousand people will show up—heh-heh, no shit, two thousand—and sing songs with drawings on the song sheets of this big mole thing, which is supposed to be Bigfoot, called the Abominable Hairy Patriot.

They even think they can get a band, some relatives of the Prophet, buncha Frenchmen playing accordions. And everybody will dance—all two thousand—and listen to speeches by the officers about the New World Order and
FEMA
and centralized banking—which is stuff Rex would definitely be interested in—but also corporate charters and food shortages worldwide, clean-water shortages, CIA drug dealing, and CIA terror on the world, and petroleum price manipulations, and they say petroleum “is everything, even fertilizers for agribiz.” And they want to talk about global warming to the two thousand people, and why it is our duty to speak out and
do something
. And when they say
do something,
the older girls sort of hop. Like cheerleaders.

“Because,” whimpers Michelle, one of the Prophet's oldest daughters, “the financiers who own our government are taking over the world.”

“It's called corporatism,” says one very pink chubby little squirt who has to take his thumb out of his mouth to say this word.

Bree, with the hair like red snakes and eyes far apart who is the artist of the mole things, hugs the little guy and that squeezes more out of him. “Mussolini said it. Fascism and corporatism are perfect and the same.”

Bree laughs, silentlike, with her head turned toward the others. Everyone thinks the kid is cute. But I am thinking how they all talk just like the Prophet. Probably those over a day old don't suck on bottles. They just talk.

Samantha, who is wearing a desert camo BDU shirt, earrings, olive-drab army pants—the bushy World War One kind for maybe riding a mule—and skinhead boots and her usual hot-babe expression, hollers out, “Op-ed time again!” and raises a fist. With her, everything is a fist.

The small Indian kid they call Dragan squeaks, “Can I do a speech there too? I know Moose-leeny.”

The girls are hiding more laughs.

When I reach for my cigs, I realize I've already got one in my mouth.

Late
P.M
. Marty Lees slouched on the couch of his rented trailer, thinking, Pepsi in hand.

Paid a social call on York this evening at his home. Lives with his mommy.
Tsk
.

Talked “patriot.” Talked New World Order. Talked martial law. Talked weapons. Talked the talk.
I
talked. The son of a bitch mostly just stared at me like he was a paid therapist and I was emotionally out of whack. So okay, no Border Mountain Militia invite yet.

I'd like to do something to the son of a bitch's eyes, like make them cry. But not yet. First I want to
help
him. Help him and his buddies get real. Help him with his goals. I just gotta keep being everything he ever wanted in a friend. And showing my incredible capabilities. My possibilities. His possibilities. To show him the difference between a mommy militia and an honorable one.

Down at the old farm place, where the only phone for everyone is, Jane holds the pre-1990s-style receiver to her ear.

She isn't speaking presently, just listening, her brown floofy curly hair in a Settlement-made hair clip of painted beads, beans, and acorns glued onto cardboard. She and Lisa have had countless phone calls such as this,
the phone voices miniature, due to wires and plastic, due to the miles. She keeps her face away from the room where others stand. She listens to the voice, miniaturized but also, yes, faltering and worn down. Her mother.

In this moment, Jane is not losing control. No screams and wails. What is it you call it when the blur and belled-out tears won't break free of the little pools, one pool to each eye?

Finally, Jane speaks. “Mum. What about me? Tell them.” She has said this feebly, due to her new A-plus understanding of how it is that nothing spoken matters to
the law.

She listens to the reply. She listens, listens, listens. Finally, the tears swish free. They explore in a zigzaggy way down her impossibly soft cheeks. “Mum. That doesn't matter. I
need
you.”

Penny St. Onge remembers well when the announcement was made.

Flyers were flying into the mail and onto telephone poles around town and out past the bridge, and even on the way to Portland or Lewiston, those routes to schoolesque field trips.

There were a few quick phone calls.

Nobody asked Gordon or any of us old fogies for permission. We were just advised that this would be a “spectacular event.” Quite a few of the elders and some mothers—
most
of the mothers—and some dads were asked to serve on planning committees.

This would be a public meeting of the True Maine Militia, also serving as a one-hundredth-birthday party for our beloved Annie Brody (“Annie B”).

Gordon didn't throw a fit this time, though some expected it. He and Rex and the Border Mountain guys were just getting back from visiting a militia in Mass. When Gail and Lorraine showed him the flyer, he just behaved pleasantly. Pleasant and, yes, pale.

So the plan was to have the gate open on
the day
and the unneighborly YOU'LL BE SHOT sign taken down. Instead, there'd be a welcoming crew at the new little guard house (which was actually John Lungren's fishing shack). As prospective rallyers came through, they'd be handed information flyers and song sheets.

A letter-writing committee sent off a plea to Gordon's Aroostook relatives who play in the Band from THE County. Picture an Acadian-rock mix and you've got it. Music to dance by.

The Build-a-Stage Committee was rounded up. The Giant Cake Committee. Crews for the cooks. Five Clean-up Crews. First Aid Crew. Skits and sing-alongs were planned. More True Maine Militia membership cards were manufactured.

And, of course, a big op-ed is mailed off to the
Record Sun
.

Late morning.
Record Sun
reporter Ivy Morelli hurries into the City Room.

There is a note on her desk from Brian Fitch, her editor. Also a flyer, made by an old-fashioned printer and touched up with crayons.

The flyer is the public invitation to the True Maine Militia meeting at the Settlement in Egypt on Saturday, which will be combined with a one-hundredth-birthday celebration for Annie Brody.

Everybody welcome! Bring a dish or salad or bread or dessert. If you aren't much of a cook, bring chips or just bring yourself. There will be music by the Band from THE County, from Eagle Lake and Frenchville, for you to shake a leg by
.

In one prominent corner of the flyer there is the Abominable Hairy Patriot (Bigfoot in white winter coat) standing on a mountaintop with a look of Don't-mess-with-me, hands on hips, legs apart. And there is a cartoon version of an old lady who has the same Don't-mess-with-me expression, and a polka-dot dress. And see the personal details about her life written in footnote.

Don't miss this IMPORTANT EVENT if you love old ladies and you love America
.

P.S. We will be having an official firing of the official True Maine Militia cannon. So don't miss that!

Let's get ready for the Million Man Woman Kid Dog March!

There are directions to the Settlement, time and date. No rain date. Ivy lays this on her desk and picks up Brian's note.

Ivy, yes, we are going with this. Op-ed page and one photo. Bangor's using it too. Everybody is going to be there when those gates come down: local, New England, national. Big media free-for-all. It'll eat those St. Onge people up. Those gun-toting kids are damn cute. One can only imagine the angle on this that will surface. Sheesh.

Just thought you might like the flyer for your mementos.

Then Brian has drawn the really goofy smiling face that serves as his signature.

S.A. Kashmar finds some really fascinating communications on the Internet.

“Okay, Pretty Boy, I like your style,” he declares, then drawling out the name that fills nearly every line of print on the screen. Another agent, Sears, standing behind him, twists open his little shapely bottle of cran-apple juice and says, “Kentucky, aye? Weren't they in the Berkshires last week? These were seventy-seven-year-old white supremacists in Adams. But everything else St. Onge is about is like an afternoon with Mister Rogers.” He laughs through his nose.

Kashmar reaches for a printout sheet on his other desk. “I just can't figure him. It's like watching a three-headed billygoat.”

“What's this?”

“The satellite one?” He stretches his head to check.

“Yuh.”

“That's the place. Study it. We're going to be there when they open that gate. Meanwhile, we've got to get Lees into that militia. These Maine guys need a goal. Something more specific and—uh—more manly than birthday parties for old ladies and cartoon newsletters by little kiddies. And visits to half-dead old white supremacists who just want to talk about sore feet.”