The School on Heart's Content Road (77 page)

I said, “Sit!” wicked sharp and the dog sat down and Rex said, “Howzit going?” to me. And I shrugged.

And I said, “You busy?” And he said, “It's okay. We need a break.” And his eyes were on me funny-like, like he was real glad to see me.

My old friend Jacquie Giasson Fuller made it possible for Maine Acadian French (“Acadian patois” or as some would say, “North American patois”) to be spoken on these pages. She is translator of some, while of some she is their author, their grace. She told me to be sure to say she couldn't have done it without her mother and sister-in-law, Lucienne Merservier Giasson and Lorraine Bissonette Giasson. They all got together and went over the nuts and bolts of this beautiful, mostly oral, language of love, work, and home, no better experts anywhere than they, and I am grateful.

In this book, the fictional True Maine Militia shouts out a formal declaration concerning “The People's House” at the closed office door of the governor of Maine. These words are an excerpt from real advice given during the actual Second Maine Militia State House siege in 1996, words of working-class hero Pete Kellman. Yeah, Pete is as real as it gets.

Official and Complete and Final
List of Acknowledgments

The School on Heart's Content Road
owes its existence to so many helpful, supportive, and inspiring people that the author feared trying to list them all in this book. Thus, she put all the names in a hat and drew out the following. Those still in the hat will appear in future books. One that didn't get drawn from the hat, who will appear later, is a person who has caused incredible terror in the hearts of most Americans, but has helped Carolyn out so much it brings a lump to her throat. But he's still in the hat. Stay tuned to find out who this frightening person is. Meanwhile, here is a list of the names that were drawn blindly. Huge gratitude goes to:

Bendella Sironen, David White, Bob and Millie and Melinda Monks, Jim Perkins, Bill Kauffman, Robyn Rosser, Rebekka Yonan, David Diamond, Cynthia Riley, Jonah Fertig, Sarah Wilkinson, Ceiba Crow, Dan C., Hillary Lister, Victor Lister, Sara DeRoche, all Jeders of Greene, Maine; Dr. Adele, Dr. Mark, Dr. Maggie, and Dr. Andy (our four family doctors); Yelena and Todd and Stasik, Missy Pinney, Beth
Pinette, Mack Page, Howard Greene, Dennis Twomey, Laura Childs, Pal Tripp, Cecily Diamond, Carol Dove, Michael Vernon, Julian Holmes, Audrey Marra, Peter Holmes (in heaven), Elliott Favier, DDS (in heaven), Cullen, Sarah and Kats, Frank Collins (in heaven), Jerry Webber, Carole Taylor, David Haag, Christina, Mark Hanley, all my family on all sides (Maine, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and heaven), Nick Kingsbury, Morgan MacDuff, Eunice Buck Sargent, Hal and Mark Miller, W. D. Kubiak, Rita Kubiak, Kathy Kubiak, Michael Ruppert, John Sieswerda, Jo Eldridge Morrissey, Brie, Maureen DeKaser, Jenny Pap Hughs Yoxen, Rob Waite, the MacDowell Colony, Elisabeth Schmitz (world's best editor on planet Earth), Sheila Smith, Gwen North Reiss, Patrick Quinlan, Joy Scott, Jonathan Beever (wise man), Tom Whitney, Alison Whitney, Robert Kolker, Sub Steve Kelley, Thomas Naylor, Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, Richard Grossman, Janet Baker, Miss Cathy, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Katie, Nick and Willa, Barbara West, Bruce Buchanan, Michele Cheung, Angelo Roy, Ray Luc Levasseur, Jamila Levi, Ellen LaVallee, Wayne Burns and the Dragon of the West, Evelyn Butler, “cousins” Kelley and Michael, Don Kerr, Colleen Rowley (FBI), Cyndy and Roland, Sandi Hamlin, Cynthia McKinney, Roger Leisner, Edie Clark, Debbie Dearth, Tom Dearth, Abigail Dearth, Balenda Ganem, Guy Gosselin, Wendy Kindred, Isabelle, Ed Gorham, John Muldoon, Daniel Rameau, Ellen Wilbur, Ruth Stone, Molly's gang, all Nelpers, Don Hall, Jane Kenyon (in heaven), Charlene Barton, George Garrett (in heaven), Ken Rosen, Ellen Weeks (postmistress), Rose Metcalf (assistant postmistress), the Causeys, Steve Diamond, Bill Pagum, Barbara and Jerry Korn, Mary Howell Perkins, Dick Perkins, Christine Kukka, past clerk of the House of Reps Joe Mayo (in heaven), Steven and Marie, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, as ever, my forever husband Michael “Beek” Chute of Beektown Road.

The rest remain in the bulging hat till next time. Including the mystery man of terror. Guess who?

Guillaume (Ghee-yome), Gordon or Gordo or Gordie St. Onge, aka the Prophet
. Age thirty-nine until September. He is six-foot-four or -five, depending. In the winter, gets a thick waist and an extra neck, but in summer looks like a marble Greek-god type, only tanned. Work, work, work, work, though not without talk, talk, talk, talk, and preach, preach, preach, preach. Darkish hair. Darkish beard with a parenthesis of gray beginning on the chin. Dark brows and lashes with weird pale greenish eyes like some creepy killer bird. Significant French-Italian nose. Add to that a Tourette's sort of flinch to one side of the face, especially the eye. Drink is a problem for him at times, during spells of getting worked up over life's cruelties and injustices. He's often bothered and stirred, moody and broody, loved and hated. He has been accused of loving everyone in the world equally; that his love is too easy, too diluted.

In an earlier time when Gordon was first married to Claire and only Claire, he got some cousins and friends together to start the Settlement on land his mother gave him, land and an old farmhouse where he had grown up. This wasn't just a commune, but a statewide cooperative in furniture, alternative energies, farm produce, and trade. The Settlement is thought to be a school by some who live out in the world. Citizens of the Settlement see it as home.

Michael (Mickey) Gammon
. Fifteen years old. Not a big guy, a bit scrawny and shrimpy, with a blond and brownish ponytail so thin and insignificant it twists to one side and up. He does not bathe or change routinely. He stays too busy going and coming back, walking for miles, smoking. His eyes are gray. He has a cold aspect. Not a talker. Much of the time, his jeans and T-shirts are rags.

Donald (Donnie) Locke
. In his thirties. Mickey's half brother. Also gray-eyed and not much of a yakker either. A more solid build than Mickey. Married. Father of kids. His hair is a lighter blond than Mickey's, almost white. His mustache is weak in color, pale, pale, pale but quite wonderfully walrussy. Much of the time, he is dressed for “the Chain,” his job at a chain store.

Erika Locke
. She's in her twenties. She's Donnie's second wife, Mickey's sister-in-law. She's plump. Not stout, not fat, but soft-looking. Round face. Plain hair, cut medium short, medium brown. Soft-spoken. A very ordinary young woman whom you would barely notice in a crowd. Wears T-shirts with pictures and words. Or plain T-shirts or plain tops, shorts or jeans. Mickey enjoys watching her in her T-shirt with the face of a Persian cat.

Britta
. In her fifties. Mother to Mickey, Donnie, and Celia. She has had her real teeth pulled. Her false teeth have a noticeable false look. Gray eyes; nondescript brownish hair with some gray. She is a short person, pudgy in some places. Probably her forearms and hands are slim, her ankles too. She is so shy she does not meet your eyes.

Children of the Locke/Gammon household.
Britta's youngest is Celia. Isabel is Erika's brother's child. Jola is from down the road. Travis is the baby of another Chain worker. Erika and Donnie's child is Jesse, age two. Jesse is
very
ill. Donnie's girls by another marriage are Audrey and Tegan, plus Elizabeth, his oldest—very active girls.

Richard (Rex) York
. Captain of the Border Mountain Militia. His age is about fifty. Keeps his thinning hair trimmed and tidy. Wears military boots, usually with pant legs over. His pale eyes have a way of gauging you totally. He is not shy but seems unable to verbalize information unimportant to meetings and maneuvers of the citizens' militia movement of America or the work he does as an electrician. He has a dark mustache, more Mexican than walrus. He doesn't eat desserts. He has an exceedingly fit appearance, possibly due to all the push-ups, deep-knee bends, and sit-ups he has done every day since Vietnam.

Ruth York
. Rex's mother, older than he by fifteen years. Her husband (Rex's father), John York, is dead. She now has a boyfriend. She has longish black hair, heart-shaped face, good figure. Wears turquoise “Indian” jewelry and T-shirts with wolves and eagles or western landscapes printed on them. Also oversized chamois shirts. Jeans. And moccasins. She is quiet. Bakes desserts for the American Legion, which she is involved in. And desserts for home. Rex doesn't eat them but his militia does.

Glory York
. Almost twenty. Rex's only child. Her mother lives in Massachusetts, divorced from Rex and remarried. Glory is quite freckled, has long thick wow-type hair, dark auburn. She is beautiful in every way. But she flaunts it and has a drinking problem and causes mess and havoc wherever she goes. She is not evil, just young and foolish.

William (Willie) Lancaster
. A wild unpredictable thirty-nine-year-old. In some ways he is predictable. Meanwhile, he is a member of Rex York's militia. Willie is gray-eyed and somewhat bucktoothed. Hair, brown. A brown beard, sort of pointed. And an insincere mustache. He's medium height. Has the athletic qualities of a squirrel. His work involves climbing trees with ropes and cleats. He wears the single dog tag of his brother's dead body returned from “the conflict.”

Judy Lancaster.
Willie's unflappable wife.

Danny Lancaster.
Willie and Judy's son.

Ramone Lancaster.
A teen daughter. There are three daughters, one unnamed in this novel.

Delores (Dee Dee) Lancaster St. Onge
. One of those three daughters of Willie and Judy Lancaster. She is age nineteen but looks eleven. A small, smiley person. She spends a lot of time at the St. Onge Settlement. Her cheery manner has no small effect on the atmosphere of Settlement life. Brown hair, which has natural spurts and cat licks. She is
very
pregnant.

Louis St. Onge (Dee Dee's young husband)
. Also about age nineteen; Louis (pronounced Lou-EE, as they do up in the St. John Valley of Aroostook, whence he has come) is a cousin to Guillaume (pronounced hard G, Ghee-yome) “Gordon” (nickname) St. Onge. Louis had lived at the Settlement awhile before he married Dee Dee. Now they live in the dooryard of the Lancasters' mobile home complex. The Lou-EE–Dee Dee residence is a weird five stories (each story only sixteen by sixteen feet), painted pink. Lou-EE is built like a tapeworm: no shoulders, just arms, legs, long neck, little head. On top, a big brown mountain hat made of felt. Long black beard protects his significant Adam's apple from view, though the beard is thin, just a scraggly, smoky swirl of a thing. While his father-in-law, Willie, is loud and full-throttle, Lou-EE is like a quaint stage prop but with wonderful eyes, the irises green and golden brown, ringed in black-brown.