The School on Heart's Content Road (76 page)

He sighs miserably.

He has almost no memory of that party on the lake after the True Maine Militia event, or of the True Maine Militia event itself, or the next day, and certainly not the next. But those who remember the party on the lake have told him what they thought he needed to know. No one mentioned a camera. No one mentioned the name Andy.

Rex alone.

Militia on hold, he watches TV a lot after work and does little favors for his brother Bob, next door. Now he sits at the table and listens to his mother talk in her soft coaxing way about the Legion. And he eats a cookie, the first in years. Also new is face rubbing. Rubs till his eyelids are pink and his eyebrow hairs turn backward like small quills.

He does not like the way his mother wears so many silver and turquoise rings today, which accentuate her aging hands. He doesn't like anything about anything.

He has even started to sleep too late.

Again from the future, the Unitarian Universalist minister who was at the big Settlement event speaks.

This following of Gordon St. Onge that accelerated over those coming months after his near death was a sign of how bad things had become for those Americans who had normally thought in terms of trust and promotions, rewards for doing one's job better than the other guy, positive thinking, Merry Christmases (shop, shop, shop), faith in progress (that technological wizardry of the high order of humans).

Industrial-era woman. Petroleum man. The age of growth. The age of image overload. The belief that evolution means a species can transcend God.

So now the frightening descent from the thunderous promises of modern education, glossy mags, the six o'clock news team, and screechy sponsors. Now that TV smile was making the La-Z-Boy viewers uneasy.

So yes, from the people who flocked to him, Gordon St. Onge's image was born. I say
image
because who knows what he really was like, other than his close ones?

Was he really so wonderful, truly God's milk? Could his fingertips change you? Surely not! It would not be natural (let alone divine) that it should follow.

Who
was Gordon St. Onge? He could have been anything.

The thousands of persons who would adore him would never be embraced by him anymore than I. And I danced with him!

Hear me now. I confess that our dance was nothing like a blessing. It was (this makes me smile) just a jitterbug.

Mickey alone.

It seems that when he is most hollowed out (chocolate rabbit Mickey) is when he is jammed in with all the St. Onge people on a toasty morning, eating eggs, all their food-smelling mouths breathing at him. “Oh, Mickey, pass the sauce stuff” or “Oh, Mickey, there's no one on the list for Helen's firewood for Thursday. You interested?”

Not depressed. Not like his old school days.
Ha-ha. Mr. Carney, go suck on a pony. Ha-ha. I'm definitely outta there!

But here in St. Ongeland, he just isn't the real Mickey Gammon. He is ghost Mickey. Mickey Casper-Unfriendly-Ghost Gammon. The rest of them here just seem
too alive
. Too St. Onge-ish. And too many.

Presently, he is sitting on a boulder up in the wide-open sort-of-snowy field; anyone can see him. And the wind is cold and bone-damp and skull-damp today, but here he is, collar open, letting it be cruel. All the big boulder needs is graffiti. A bunch of initials in black paint, maybe pink. Or some obsession maybe. Like Ski-Doo. Or Madonna.

Okay, so he is here on the mighty rock. He is, like, on a hard cloud, only this baby ain't gonna float.

Wishes.

Very quiet for a few moments. The child Jane's eyelids are closed loosely and flutteringly, upon her face the golden stutter of firelight. Eight chubby, thumb-sized Settlement-made candles. One for good luck,
seven for the years of her time so far on this mortal coil. Then her midnight-dark eyes go wide and she blows the flames out and the only other person at this party, Gordon St. Onge, claps and whistles.

She sighs and smiles guiltily. “I forgot to wish for the
other
thing. I was all nervous and got mixed up.”

Now there is only the sickly and sickening glow of the fluorescent light over Gordon's big desks across the old kitchen.

“You don't need birthday candles to make a wish, dear,” he informs her. “It's a free . . . uh . . .”—he closes his eyes, searching—“free
country
.”

She laughs and slaps the air between herself and the dim, bluish, gloomily not-very-well-lighted image of his face across the little table, his terribly scarred face, one eye rather St. Bernardish. “You are so funny.”

She had specified
only him
and
her
for this party. None of them
up there,
even the Soucier family, with whom she now lives and kind of loves.

And of course, Lisa Meserve, Jane's mum, is not here. It's a bit stomach-trembly to think of, isn't it? The word
mother
. The words
faraway cage
.

Okay, and for tonight she had specified a
pink
cake. And
real
(store-bought) ice cream: Chunky Monkey.

So now a huge (size of a small mattress) piece of cake teeters on the spatula as she guides it to his plate. “Oops!” It flips off the spatula, turns upside down. She laughs, gasping. “I'm”—
gasp gasp
—“very very”—shrill giggles and more gasps—“sorry!” With teary eyes, she laughs on and on as she now guides another huge piece to her dish, which also falls, this time missing the plate and breaking into pieces. “Omigod, this is so bad!” She laughs and wipes her eyes with the top of one hand, plows the wayward cake toward her plate with the other, and wipes both hands on her napkin, her eyes on his scarred, forever-changed face. “This is so bad.” She sighs, resigned to the fates that make cake accidents happen.

Now the ice cream. She long-leggedly and gracefully fetches two pint cartons (the round kind) out of the freezer (otherwise empty) and plunks them down, one beside his plate, one beside hers. And two huge spoons. “The rest of the cake,” she explains, settling primly back in her seat. “You get half and I get half. Exactly.” This is justice.

“Good deal,” he says, scooping out all his ice cream in one carton-shaped frozen-hard-as-cast-iron sculpturesque shape on top of his cake.

She proceeds to jab at her pint of ice cream with her big spoon so it gets to be all these little slivers arranged in a pretty way around her cake.

Everything is now ready to go. “Well,” Jane says, staring at his face across the two loaded supper-sized plates with their glazed pink and tan piles of wonderful sugary stuff.

He nods.

She nods.

He says, “Happy seven years old, Lady Jane.”

“Thank you, old guy,” she says, most tenderly.

They both dig in, eyes bearing down on the job at hand.

Mickey speaks.

At breakfast, I signed up for the use of a vehicle, which you can drive even without a license, as long as you stay on Settlement land. Wound up with a biodiesel farm truck, the one with clutch-ball trouble. One of the dogs jumped up in the seat, one of the black ones. Dogs like rides. I said, “Okay.” Me and the dog was instant friends after that. He rode along with his big red open mouth and kept flashing his eyes on me. He watched the road ahead like he was helping me drive. Or maybe he thought we'd get to see a giant walking steak up ahead. Ha-ha.

Well, I take the truck out. Off the land. I just go, okay? It was weird. Something came over me. I didn't give a shit about anybody being pissed. Not them at the Settlement. Not cops. Before I even get to Rex's, I'm passing his brother's place that has the long tar driveway and the cattle pasture fenced up to it and all the brown frizzled weeds not chewed by cows and patches of snow, and there's Rex and the brother up there, both squatted down by the garage with somethin'. Well, I just kept going and got down the road to a turnaround by a field, and the dog looked at me, and as I was backing the truck out to turn, the dog was swinging his tail like he was sayin',
Yes, do it.

I don't want to meet Rex's brother. I really don't even have anything to say to Rex.

I figured I'd just take this piece'a junk back by Letourneau's and see what they got for this year's Fords for parts and then back to the
Settlement to work on this clutch-ball situation. Tear it all down. Stay out of everybody's way. Maybe Cory will help, if I can find him. He's one'a them that circulates.

But as I was going back by the tar driveway, my hands turned the wheel and up we went, and there I was, braking the truck nice 'n' easy in the dooryard, and Rex and the brother look up at me through the windshield from what they were doing, which was a pump . . . a pond pump . . . a bilge pump.

And Rex stood up and came over to the window, which meant I didn't have to get out and deal with the brother, and the dog was all happy to see Rex, like Rex was what he was looking for, not a big steak. Rex's old jacket was unbuttoned. He was chin up: total soldier. The brother was wicked zipped. You know, zipped to his chin. Neatnik. Well, Rex isn't some slob like me. But he doesn't look like a little boy. The brother, the teacher, he was like some old ladies decided on making him shine. He was shining. His jacket was a funny green and his sweater under that was a pinkish yellow. Even on his fucking day off. A gold sticky star in the middle of his forehead or on the end of his nose would have gone with the rest. He didn't look as Nazi as Mr. Carney but somewhere behind that face was Mr. Carney . . . at least the Mr. Carney gene.