The School on Heart's Content Road (73 page)

I look close at the word, which begins with
R
. “Well . . .”

“You think it's
Revelation
?”

“Yuh, probably. It looks like probably it is
Relations
.”

“
Rev-el-a-tion
. It's got a
V
, see?”

He smells funny, like a million cigarettes. And butter or something. He has a scary smell. My heart is going to kill me with fast beats. After the
R
word, I read a few easy words. But most of these words are very strange, too long or too short. I skip over those. I do just the easy ones. I sneak a look at him and he's holding his head again but with just one hand, and he is kind of rocking just a little, and I can see his face, his eyes staring at the floor 'cause he's listening really good or else thinking about something and he looks sorta sad. I pick the book up and hold it in my lap so I can see better. The words get harder. One begins with a
Z
and there's another
R
one and weirdness.

I shut the book nice and soft and polite-ish. And I say, “I'll just
tell
some Bible stuff, okay? Once a lady had a donkey and a baby and Joseph.
And other animals. Baby was named Jesus. He was the same one who got big later and did all those things, the tree branches and stuff. Anyways, the donkey—I don't know the donkey's name . . . probably Skip—he was always carrying somebody who was too huge. Jesus was a very nice baby. Never cried. Never messed hisself. Everybody in those days wore funny head things. Jesus was very nice to everybody and never did anything stupid and he was completely gorgeous, probably Jewish—but somehow it happened that the bad people who were like cops an' stuff did this thing with nails.”

I hate this story so I switch it and Mickey hardly notices. “The only reason Alix wanted summer camp was to ride Kukkaberra, but she falls off. She always loves horses, but they are so big and—
whoosh
—throw some people off them on the road and step on them. And Alix—” I hear a scratchish sound and then smoke all around. Mickey is still staring down but
how did his cigarette get lit?
Somehow he had a match. Smoke shoots out of his teeth and his nose.

I tell him all about how a nice man helps Alix get interested in horses again and she wins a horse show and wears a little hat.

When his cigarette is short, he asks, “Want some chips?”

Of course.

So we eat chips. TOGETHER. Like we are married. And he takes the Coke bottle and gives the cover a twist and it poofs and he says, “You first.” And we take turns. Yes, my lips then his lips then my lips then his lips.

“I'm cold,” I tell him. I really am. All bumps.

He pulls a shirt from the bag, the maroon one. Takes the gun out first, puts it in something else. “You can borrow this, but I need it back.”

I really wear HIS shirt. It's right on my skin. It is so soft and cozy. And has the scary smell.

He says, “I'll walk you back if you want.”

I scrinch up my face. “Why don't I stay here with you until you move.”

“I don't think so,” he says. “They want you back down there.” He picks at his socks and looks at me a couple times.

I say, “I've been to Bev and Barbara's house. Have you?”

“No.”

“I went in their bedroom. They have got just
one
bed.”

“So?”

I say, “Some people like
one
bed.”

“Bev and Barbara are lesbians.”

“That's the sex thing, isn't it?”

He makes a face like a little smile is about to happen, then looks away. He gets out another cigarette.

“You don't have a real bed here,” I point out.

He laughs. He thinks this is so funny. I can actually see his teeth, even though his laugh isn't very loudish.

I say, “You're poor, aren't you?”

He looks at me,
right at me
. “You are too.”

“I am not.”

He laughs again, teeth and everything. He lights his cigarette. Big smoke pours out of his face.

I ask, “What else is there to do here?”

He says, “I told them if I found you, I'd bring you back.”

I laugh. “I'm not going back.”

He smokes a minute. Very quiet.

I say, “I brought you a letter from somebody. It's in my pocket, ha-ha.”

“Who?”

“A very nice girl. But it's a stupid letter. Maybe I'll get you a better letter next time.”

He snorts funny. “The very nice girl is you, right?”

“Maybe.”

He smokes and smokes, slow and sexy. The smoke is as pretty as snow-ish air but you gotta love the stink. Phew! He smokes a lot of this smoke around and then I think he looks very nervous. “Come
on
.” He says this pleadishly. “I promised them. They are pretty upset down there. You've got to go back. Play runaway some other time. When things are better.”

I laugh.

He gets up on his knees.

I cross my arms to show who's boss. But I'm smiling. “I'm staying here.”

He starts walking toward me funnyish on his knees.

I get ahold of one of the wood tree things that goes up the wall. “You can't make me.” I laugh very sexy-ish.

His cigarette hops around in his mouth and his eyes are sqwinched in the smoke. He pulls my fingers off the wood. He gets my arm and pulls and I laugh and grab things and things fall over and his magazines
slide around and he tries to get me out the door that's made in the floor and down the ladder and we almost fall and the big Coke bottle falls out the door hole and bounces on the ground.

He doesn't yell. He's very quiet but for grunt noises, pushing me and squeezing my arm. He is very strong. Like Gordie. I try to pull away but I can't. He has a wicked grip. I laugh, laugh, laugh. We go along the path and his cigarette has got bent and fire and ashes keep going all over his neck and arm. I fall against him and make my hair push in his face against the cigarette. “Ow, ow! Help!” I squeal, in a
very
sexy way.

He says, “You've got to go back. It ain't me, it's them. They want you.”

“Tough!” I giggle and make myself heavy like I'm asleep. But he is so strong, he just drags me. I can't believe this.

He says, with little gasps, “They are trying to figure out what to do about Gordon. Everyone is scared and bawling. Help them out a little. Don't be a brat. Gordon might be already dead.”

I laugh.

“It's not funny,” he says.

“It izzzzzz. Yooooo are funny.”

“It's not funny.”

“It izzzzz.”

“It's not.”

“You are funny. And cute.” I laugh like a crazy witch.

He squeezes my arm a little harder and I walk all wobblish. And I fall against him some more and he is like the strongest person I ever felt and it is the best day of my life.

On the doorstep of Marian St. Onge's home in Wiscasset.

They look like two soldiers with chins high, machine-like eyes. Even Aurel Soucier's eyes, that dark fierce gutsy gleam all gone.

The cedar shrubberies on either side of the brick steps seem unusually green. The late-day sun gives their old pickup truck parked in the driveway a white-hot look, although the truck is tan. Leaves spiral down from the tall maples. Marian's voice takes on a soft edge of fear. Something is wrong. She looks into the dark Passamaquoddy eyes of the other, the tall boy, her grandson. “Cory?”

Neither visitor looks too ready to speak. They both just swallow. Aurel takes off his olive-drab bush hat.

Gordon St. Onge's long dream.

He dreams that he sees a head, hovering in the stuffy air. No body. No neck, even. It is just a floating, bulging, burning head. The mouth suddenly opens, a hole in the fire. There is a stink from the mouth. And inside the mouth is black and endless.

Evening. Bonny Loo St. Onge.

There are no chairs in intensive care. When you are visiting your loved one, you just stand there. And there is no privacy. There is a nurses' station across the room. The beds of the broken people are positioned in a crescent with their accompanying dripping bottles and monitor screens. The little hopping zigzagging spot of light on the screen that is Gordon's great big heart looks so cheerful, it could almost make you smile. His heart. Nothing is wrong with that heart, they say. It's the brain they are watching, the swollen brain inside that mostly shaved head, the brain behind the face, the face a
thing
that looks like a ripe, purply-black, tight, eyeless, mouthless rubber bag. Yeh, that's his face.

On the sheet, one to each side, his hands. One bandaged, one good. The one that is good is closer to where I stand. His thick fingers and short nails are as familiar as his voice would be if it spoke, but there is no voice.

Standing on the other side of the bed across from me is Bree, in her usual old jeans and work shirt, tall, tightly laced work boots. She was working with her brothers at noontime today when Rick Crosman went to tell her the news. I was with my mother at her house.

We get five minutes for each visit. That's what they give you. Then you have to leave after your five minutes are up. So many in the family to take up the next available five minutes. I need to make my five minutes count. But . . . I don't touch him. I don't take his hand. And Bree doesn't touch him either. It's like we've come to check out some museum exhibit, some science thing, maybe a fossil, something once preserved in ice. Mostly she and I just look at each other, in stolen glimpses. I always thought her face was terrible. But now the most deformed and
terrible thing imaginable is lying on that pillow, breathing through broken teeth and tough-looking green tubes, both eyes bandaged, both ears bandaged, no beard, just purple and swollen “skin.” Gordon's face, no longer good-looking—though he was never really movie-star material. It had more to do with his personality, the light behind the eyes and at least twenty types of smiles. But now . . . that face . . . it's just garbage.

Bree St. Onge.