The School on Heart's Content Road (70 page)

The three-evil-chimps T-shirt fiddler stands at one mike and calls out, “Party's over!” and walks away through the flickering lights.

And so.

Like several hundred snails, the mob slowly and sluggishly moves off into the night.

The Unitarian Universalist minister remembers that day.

I listened to so many that night, overheard a lot of little huddles, and some I plied with questions. And after that night too, I asked people, “What do you think? Do you believe Gordon St. Onge's prognosis for humankind if we don't learn to do things for ourselves?” And “Maybe even secede from the Union?” And “He says stop shopping. Stop depending. Grow up. What of
that
?”

I found that his fullest warnings rarely reached an ear.

He was just a big rumbling television set to them, loud and colorful. They had watched him, true. Inside each American in those days was fear, fear dense enough to fill a bucket, a
generalized
fright. A terror that was real.
Reality
poured through our skins but not through
our brains, so it was fear without explanation. Nothing he said could wake our snoozy, hiding brains. That's not what people wanted. They desired a savior, his great long arms, his sky-filled eyes, his empathy, his growls.

Back in the present time: afterthoughts.

Nothing really bad has happened. No big fights. No heart attacks. No serious vandalism. But after the last of the crowd is gone, and after most of the kitchen crew has finished up and gone home to their respective cottages, the dark Quad and parking lots hold a spooky silence that feels more dangerous than all the day's confusion.

Alone, Gordon has settled into a big, intricately carved and stenciled pine rocker. The porch floor creaks underneath, but the chair is too new to creak. He drinks from a bottle of beer. Little glass candleholders encircle him, some gone out, some still dancing.

Out on the Quad, bunched around the ankles of the grinning wooden dinosaur (whose grin nobody can see up there in the dark treetops), several of Rex's militia are still on hand, visible only by the capricious little on-and-off winks and glows of their cigarettes and digital watches. Rex tells them they can leave now if they want. Job done. Security duty complete. But they linger, talking in low secret voices. Among them, only Willie Lancaster's laugh is loud enough to be heard outside their circle. Among them, only Willie has had
real
fun today.

When Gordon hears the screen door slam two porches down and Rex's measured boot steps, he is just finishing the beer.

By the time Rex reaches Gordon's chair, ringed by those nearly exhausted candles, he finds Gordon opening another beer.

Now a big disgusting burp.

Rex can't bear looking into Gordon's droopy bleary eyes. He gazes at the shingled wall instead and says, “Okay. So it's done. What other kind of lunatic things have you got planned?”

Gordon lowers the beer to the floor with his long-armed reach, burps again, and runs a finger under his tight pistol belt. He says in a slurred way, “I told you. This was the conniving of my little girls.” He lowers his voice to a whisper more secret than the militia's huddle a few minutes ago under the Tyrannosaurus. “You know this, brother. Women are more dangerous today. They used to be dangerous in little ways.
Now they . . . they're”—big burp—“awful.” Shakes his head. “Awful, my brother.” He leans forward and holds his face.

Rex stares at the mountain lion on Gordon's sleeve as he says coldly, “The FBI is watching you. They like to know what your vices are so they can twist you up in them and push you over. That wasn't smart, getting them to know you think pot is okay. Even the beer. It's sloppy.”

Gordon raises his face. Big drunken squinty-eyed smile. “Right. The FBI.” He snickers.

Then he sees something he has never seen before, a look crossing Rex's face. Not the cold eyes, but the mouth. A tightening of the jaw, like maybe Rex wants to hit him.

Gordon says, “I guess you're right, brother.”

Rex says evenly, “Self-control is what you have to have if you want to represent the Border Mountain Militia.”

Gordon looks up. Nods. He sees another porch candle has bit the dust. Yet another going down.

Rex keeps on. “And when somebody, whether it's an operative or just some bubble brain, is out there yelling
Kill 'em!
you make it clear that that's not in the program, okay? And it's
not
in the program. Not yet. You hearing me?”

“I suppose you're pissed about what I said about the Constitution,” Gordon says, with a snort. “And the Republic of Maine. Personally,
that
idea makes me practically horny.”

Rex takes in breath. Then silence.

Gordon digs hard into the graying chin of his beard. Closes his eyes. “I can only say what comes to me. I can't preplan. It's the way I am, okay? I am not a machine like you.”

Rex stares straight up at the watery unraveling patterns of light on the open beams of the piazza ceiling.

After a lot of silence and a few more bristly words, down to the last working-hard candle, Rex says he's going home to bed.

Somehow this recipe for Popeye Pie in Bonnie Lucretia St. Onge's handwriting winds up as evidence in the FBI files.

Get out big old enamel rect. roaster. Line with crust. For extra crowds Sundays use 9 trays. Enuf considering some won't eat it. Use other stuff on tables
for choice. Kitchen crew: chop spinach, break eggs while in the huge colander (that enameled one), steam the spinach. Kettle: add hot spinach, some butter, baking powder, scrunched bread crusts, and the beaten eggs. Mix this stuff while crew grates cheeses: Cow, goat, whatever cheeses you have plenty of. You want a lot of cheese. This is the winner ingredient.

Into the ovens.

Very, very, very popular, even for some who despise a plain green spinach naked.

Watch your muscles grow!

Back to the present. The clock ticks and the stars move around some.

Lotta band people spending the night here, not ready for bed: kinda wound.

“It's only two
A.M
.!” they say, laughing.

They drag out a cooler of classy-looking long-necked beers. And whoa! Four very pretty bottles of golden black-and-white-label Jack.

Sunday morning.

Mickey is in the Winter Kitchen, that big eating room in the horseshoe building. He eats. Keeps his head down, though not as shy as his mother, Britta, who lives here now but never eats in these public buildings. Erika is here, a few seats away, with the Locke household's girl gang. The girl gang has been absorbed into the shrieking, laughing, kazooing confusion of Settlement kids like fresh eggs into cake batter.

The young guys who are at Mickey's left and across the table are quiet, just buttering bread, looking into each other's eyes. Something is in the air. What?

Gordon is not here at breakfast, but his name is. Mickey hears one of the wives whisper it, a gossipy whisper. Mickey pushes stringy pork through egg yolk. He looks quick to see that the whispering voice is Lee Lynn, a wife of Gordon's who is sort of young but has gray witchy hair. She is telling a group of other wives beyond where Erika sits that Gordon was “very bad” last night. He was “looped” and he “had sex.” With
Glory York
. Over on the lake. “Some party a bunch of them went to
after the meeting.” And “Glory was dancing naked” and “Gordon was dressed, but pissing on himself . . . wore his militia jacket even” and then . . .

From here on, the details are so pornographic, Mickey is not digesting the food, let alone chewing it. He never realized grown women talked this way. Movie women, sure, but not Maine women. He always thought they just talked about fashions and relationships. Or that at least they would use code.

The witchy Lee Lynn further explains. “Gordon's hand was up to the wrist in Glory's vagina. But then he was too drunk to” blah blah blah, “so Glory helped him.”

Mickey's stomach is a small cannonball inside. He doesn't look up into the Martin boys' faces, just at the insides of his eyelids, because his eyes are shut. It is not envy this time, it is fear. Because clearly inside his brain he sees Rex's face, and none of Rex's controlled expressions are on it.