The School on Heart's Content Road (67 page)

And see there, Gordon St. Onge and the Unitarian Universalist minister (with the graying Cleopatra haircut), doing the jitterbug.

At long last.

One of the accordion guys—cowboy boots, dress pants, cowboy shirt of a slippery satiny cotton-candy pink, and grimy dark-blue billed cap that reads
DAIGLE OIL
across the front—speaks a greeting into the mike as the last plucks and wails and drum rolls finally die out around him.

An uproarious applause replies.

“Mercy! Have mercy on us!” he calls out in French-accented English, when he hears hoots of “Encore!” and “More!” from the darkly lighted faces on the packed Quad. “Mercy on us! We arrr going to find some ciderrr, rosin up t' bows, and cool off t'sweat t'at boil us. We willl be back. T' night is still young. It iss not even nine o'clock!”

More wild applause and whistles and happy shouts as the band members exit stage right down the little shaky steps to the piazza into the anonymous near-dark there.

When the last spatters of applause fade, someone in the crowd yells, “Where is the Prophet! Talk to us, Gordon St. Onge!”

A few screams, yips, cheers, and people calling out, “Prophet! Give us the word!” and “Have the Prophet speak!” and “Where is he?”

“He's over there!” calls someone else. “I see him! It's him!”

“Where?” the pink-shirt musician asks, having come back to one of the mikes.

Another musician stands on the little temp stairs at one side of the actual porch stairs, smiling and shrugging.

Pink-shirt musician speaks low into the mike. “Gordon St. Onge. Where are you? Get on up here, you!” He growls the rest: “And talk politics!”

The crowd shrieks and whistles and claps, and various chants begin in different quarters—
Yes! Yes! Yes!
and
Speak truth! Speak truth! Speak truth!
and
Revolution! Revolution! Revolution!
—mixed in with spatterings of applause and happy howls.

Seems Gordon is not out in the crowd. Seems no one has seen him in a while. Where is he?

A long wait. Now oddly quiet. A lot of rustlings and murmurs. A shout. Some laughter. More rustly, mumbly quietness. Thumps and scratches from the tall speakers as the accordion player fondles the mike patiently. “Gordie. Your mother is waiting for you at the concession stand.”

Big rocking laughter, cheers, applause, and whistles, and then, when Gordon is seen walking up the stage steps to the mike, the crowd moans happily, with chants of
Truth! Truth! Truth!
and applause, whistles, and cheers like never before.

Gordon stands with his arms across his chest, the Viking-at-ease look, one eyebrow raised, far enough away from them all that most can't see his alcohol-reddened eyes. His dark beard streaked with gray looks green on one side from a nearby glass candle globe. The opposite side of his green plaid shirt looks yellow and pink. Everything is a far-fetched dream this evening.

The accordion player ambles away.

Talk! Talk! Talk!
the crowd calls.
Truth!
others scream.

Gordon bows his head over the mike, adjusted for a much shorter man. His voice is soft, soft and sore-hoarse, worn out from the day's thousand and one conversations, and yet the words tumble fast, run on, almost choking. “Are you all trying to say you are tired of losing everything your homes your families your dignity your jobs your independence your life-sustaining skills your hoped-for power to govern as the American people!?”

The crowd now moans in a deep ugly way. And there are hisses and yeses.

“What's the matter?!!” Gordon calls to them. “You don't believe politicians and respectable economists and other experts and so forth when they say everything is going to get better? Maybe you've even heard some of these people saying everything is good
now
! That you are crazy or something because you just think things seem kinda queer. Even the funky weather. It's all just in your silly head, right? Media-approved economists say the economy is glowing! Okay, pal, to hell with the word
economy
. I don't wanna hear how the economy is, I wanna hear how LIFE is, 'cause, pal, I ain't in the ECONOMY, I'm in the Land of Life! That's what you are thinking, right?!!!”

The mob howls. And while Gordon waits it out, there are more spatterings of
Truth! Truth! Truth!
sweet and coaxing. Now, at a motion on his left, Gordon turns and sees Whitney standing beside him. She steps close and pushes something into his hands. She shouts something, but he can't hear it. He assumes she is saying
Put it on!
because it's his camo BDU shirt for Rex's militia, and there is the wide woven green pistol belt with rows of metal-trimmed holes. He hesitates three beats, longer than he hesitated before taking hold of a stranger's handless stump this morning. He looks back around down to the piazza where Rex's face is, shadowy and unreadable. He knows Rex had nothing to do with Whitney bringing this shirt. Mr. Secret Hide-in-the-Shadows York.

He thrusts an arm into the sleeve.

Truth! Truth! Truth!
the coaxers coax.

With the shirt on, belt fastened with a twist, olive-green and black mountain lion on the shoulder declaring its place declaring
BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA
, the crowd goes nuts, shrieks and bellers, mixed with every possible human sound magnified by hundreds. And now, one voice somewhere near yells, “Give 'em hell!” another yells. “
Kill 'em! Kill the president! Kill the governors! Blast 'em all!
”

Gordon waits it out, one hand on the mike, one hand raised to mean
Quiet!
but it has no effect. The noise goes on and on.

But when the crowd has finally had enough of hearing itself and settles down, Gordon speaks softly and reasonably. “Good people. Good Maine people. Good neighbors. You are tired of hearing them tell you that our troubles are caused by welfare mums . . . gay people . . . poor city people . . . foreign people . . . or people who don't work slavishly enough . . . people who complain . . . people who want good pay . . . union people . . . unemployed people . . . disabled people . . . left-wing people . . .
right-wing people . . . people with funny hair and gold rings piercing their eyelids—” Snickers and laughs drown out the next few words.

On the piazza behind the temporary stage, Whitney and her sisters Michelle and Margo stand arm in arm in darkness lighted only by the weed-scented candles. Whitney is thinking.

In some ways, I always knew I'd see him like this. In my night dreams and in my daydreams there's been this flash of the way he looks to me now, from the back, facing a jillion upturned shadowy faces, and him whispering words of love. No, it is
not
politics, it is
love
. Because my father has always been just twisted up in love and yearning.

Gordon's voice hops from its whisper, breaks into a run.

“Wondering what all those Washington senators and their ilk are trying to hide? Because, man, they are
hiding a lot
. Yes, conspiring. Yes! The controlled media asks, ‘What's the matter with people?'
You
are all to blame!” He punches himself in his left bicep. Stomps one boot. “
Bad.
” And then he grabs the mike with both hands and hollers, “Don't you know it's not nice to complain? Or mistrust them! They tell us that it is
unpatriotic
to complain and mistrust; they say
America, love it or leave it;
remember that one, brother? Don't talk back now! It's the New World Order. Big-finance boys want
order
? They want us to shut up! To work! Work, brother, work! Work, sister, work! Little child in school, you gotta work: get As, get honors! Be a more honored child than your neighbor. Work, little child, work! And shut up! Jump through those flaming hoops! Work! Shop! Shop! Shop! CONSUME! And if you can't, join the government's army! Then
die! die! die!
DIIIIIE!” He stops and waits while the crowd makes a truly ugly unified deep growl.

And while this lasts and lasts, Kirky Martin and Jane Meserve appear, lighted by eerie flickering colors, one on either side of Gordon, Jane wearing a black tricorne hat and Kirky bareheaded. They unfurl flags,
one the flag of the True Maine Militia, the other the Stars and Stripes. Now the crowd is whistling, yowling, sounds of pride and approval, a whirl of applause, and a few groans.

Secret Agent Jane worries.

My hair is a mess. And my sexy outfit doesn't show because Bree and Whitney said I
had
to wear this jacket of the army kind. But hundreds of people are looking at me and I am part of this importance. You would not believe how many people. So: famous, important,
and
horridable looking.
Tsk
.

Being bad.

Gordon spies an open bottle of beer behind the drummer's seat. He dips down and snatches it up. He grips the bottle close to his chest, returns to the mike, looks straight down at the top of it, and says, “We love shopping, right? Fun, right? Lotta choices, right? But tell me—brother, sister, little child—what will shopping mean to you when a loaf of bread is ten dollars, your pay is three dollars a day, and gasoline to get to work and to the store is
eight dollars a gallon,
and your payroll tax comes to half your pay, and there's no more Social Security, just something funny and funky? You are thinking, Oh, Gordie, that won't happen;
they
won't let that happen.” He draws something up from his throat, something thick, and spits on the floor of the stage. And while the crowd screams and hoots and applauds, Gordon tips up the beer and works about half the warm contents down his throat, the crowd happily condoning,
Yesssss!
Can he do anything they would not condone?