The School on Heart's Content Road (75 page)

Jane's hands drop to her lap on top of the crinkly bag. She frowns. “In Boston, you get fed'ral
trials
. It's in California, the prison, maybe.” Jane's eyes flutter, the frown deepening, throat swallowing. “The judge needs a bashed brain. Like under a truck, I hope.” Then she gives him a narrow squinty look. “You are very curious about jail.”

“Yeah, people I know are there.” He does not say
Rex
. Nobody here at the Settlement speaks the name since what happened happened.

Still frowning and yet another hard swallow. “She's probably wearing the awful orange thing.”

“He.”

“Oh. Maybe he
likes
orange.”

“I doubt it.”

Rex in jail.

They come to his cell in a matter-of-fact way and take him to the visiting room. His lawyer is there, smelling like a car interior and fresh air, both alien smells now. The lawyer tells Rex things Rex cannot believe, and boy, this lawyer is unusually wound. Talking fast. Almost a squeak to his voice. Almost a giggle.

Maybe he is as stunned as Rex is by this turn of events. How forgiving, this Guillaume St. Onge. Broken, mutilated, forgiving.

Ruth York.

He is telling her to please come get him. Everything is dropped. His mother can hear him over the telephone, swallowing, grave as ever.

Rex free.

In the rain, he waits. He lets the rain wash through his hair and over his face and heavy mustache, down his collar. His mother will arrive driving his truck, so he watches the street down there for the color red. Where the parking lot, court, and jail are it is high, like a battle position. Town of South Paris, Maine. The county seat. Cars passing. People like ants, shortsighted in their routines, breathless with their burdens, blinded by rain. Big sky. Big rainy
white
sky.

Before he sees his truck, his mother's face behind the glass, the rain has turned to a mix of snow that smells like nothing else in this world, each tiny flake designed with care and dainty laborious concentration by the huge hand of God, purely perfect.

Lee Lynn remembers the first day Gordon was home.

He was odd, sweet and odd. The dark universe was uneasy, and the power of this planet to heal was stuttery. We had a lot of rain that week, funny
rain, rain mixed with snow, or sleet or freezing rain, then switching back to warm and windy. And there was thunder and flashes of light, which is not what you'd expect in November.

Everyone wanted to be near him. In some ways it was like a celebration, but a most gentle and reverent kind.

We spent a lot of time in the Winter Kitchen and the Cooks' Kitchen, where he sat in that old oak rocker near the stove, surrounded by all the older folks, some half-witted, others clear, and I saw to it that he had many little bitty cups of honeyed sweet-fern tea. And he interrogated the old people as he never had before, wanting to know how this or that thing was done
back then:
farming, logging, sawyering, machinery, sickness remedies, wool carding, and all the stories of record-breaking snows. He seemed to no longer be a species of the
now
. And some words he had lost, so he defined them. Like “the thing you ride in looks to be stuck in the stuff.”

We were expecting Réal—you pronounce this Ray-
ahl
—Gordon's third cousin from Aroostook, but Réal's wife, Terry, and teen daughter, Ray-Lynn, showed up too, so there was very special music: parlor music, healing music, fiddle and guitar, and the concertina, which our Ricardo played as if he'd done it all his life. “Cine Cetta,” “Waltz of the Wallflowers,” “Ashokan Farewell,” “She Beg She Mour.”

Gordon rocked slowly to and fro with such a look of distance in his eyes, those pale dark-lashed eyes, normally so full of play and green-white fire. And his hair now! Part crewcut, part red scarring from the surgery and wounds, the beard hurrying back, long bristle by long bristle.

Eddie Martin said, “He looks like roadkill.”

A child was always near, hugging Gordon's head, a child standing at his chair like a sentry or attendant, eager to please him, whispering and leaning; some small kids sat between his knees and feet. The image of crows standing around carnage crossed my mind. But why? Gordon
always
attracted children.

There was talk about the major repairs necessary on the greenhouses, and pouring the foundation for the new machining Quonset hut, the ground not fully frozen yet, the fierce freeze normal to November nowhere in sight.

The Christmas wreath orders were good that year, neither hurt nor helped by the newsworthiness of the Settlement.
CHRISTMAS TREES FOR SALE, CUT YOUR OWN
signs posted down by the guardhouse. Meat cutting
as usual. This meant you'd have to have people in and out, probably strangers. Gordon seemed disinterested in all this. Quiet. He watched us talk. Decisions were made in his presence, but without much input from him, just a little joke, a nod, and his new quiet smile.

More music. Lots of music. The Aroostook cousins rosined up the bow, prodded the guitar, went at it with leaps and lunges, effervescent (like soda pop) eyes. “Give Me Your Hand” (that one sounded like a little poky donkey and rider in a lighter moment of a
lite
TV Western). Then “Avant de s'en aller,” “Westphalia Waltz,” “Lovers' Waltz,” “Orange Rouge.” And “Road to Lisdoonvarna,” that one a bit lovely and haunting at first, then a kind of wide-eyedness to it, very nice. But I remember when they finished playing “Metsa Kukkia,” swoopy and busy and Old World, he said quietly, “Make that again.” He had no expression. His face was like a picture of his face caught between expressions. It was the kind of music that would make you want to stand up and dance, dive about, flinging your partner around, not fast, not like rock and roll but a graceful violence. But he didn't move from his chair. Didn't rock his chair. Just stared into the music. I don't know what he saw.

When the cousins were finished, he said, “Sound that again,” in the same dead voice, same stony face.

I said, “Can't you say
please
?”

The cousins laughed.

He said, “Yeah, please.”

And again it was played.

The next day, there was snow, the kind of snow that changes to rain at noon, then to ice, then back to snow, making a cold mush, and so the messages were pretty sparse in the box by the gatehouse. Only four. Among them, this handwritten letter from Ruth York.

Dear Gordon,

Thank you for what you did. No one can talk against you, as far as I am concerned.

I always knew you had a specialness, but now I know it best. You know Ricky would never do anything like that on his own,
especially to you, but that blond young guy Andy who brought the pictures and got him all worked up, like when he has the Vietnam dreams. If I were you, I wouldn't hold on to Andy much longer as a friend. I think you should know that he done that. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Glory has moved out and broke my heart. We got along so well. We none of us ever fought, not her and her Dad either. But there was something edgy when she left. She was probably in a shock about what Ricky did to you. Like me. I am still in a state. Even when Marsha was living here, Marsha and Ricky never had fights like some do. It was just that other man she had to have. And what did Ricky do about the other man? Nothing. He just let it go. He just kept it all to himself, a silent sufferer.

He has always been like that. He was an easy child. Easier than his brother. And then Glory was always just like him, even when she was a baby. As you know, seeing her so much when she was growing up. I just hope she don't drink no more. She can't handle it. I don't know what's going on now, if she's drinking or not. I don't know. But I wish on a star for us all to be happy.

I am sorry this all happened. You was always family to us, you and Ricky like brothers. It is so spooky to me how he changed that day. Ricky has lost customers. But since you dropped charges, he can keep his guns, which as you know have always meant everything to him. I think he is trying very hard now to figure himself out, how he changed like he did, and maybe someday make it up to you. Someday it'll all work out, I guess. I heard you're going to need doctors to work on your face and your teeth. I will pray for you. You were always such a handsome boy. Your parents were handsome people. You had looks, but you have always had personality to boot. Just remember, nobody can take that from you: your personality.

Love, Ruth

Gordon stares at this letter, folded too many times, the creases softened and damp from the damp day. The paper is lavender, cool to touch.

He never knew anything about any Vietnam dreams. Rex never even talked about the
actual
Vietnam.

But he knows Rex hates this Ricky business. But that's mothers for you. And
who
in hell is Andy? Blond? He can't think of any blond Andy guy he'd call a friend. And pictures? Pictures of him and Glory? Oh, boy.