The School on Heart's Content Road (2 page)

Once, a great American novelist, Maya Angelou, wrote these words:

“All we really have to do is die.
What matters at the end of the day is
were you sweet, were you kind,
did the work get done.”

Year

2000.

Big things

happened in America.

But you never

heard about some of

them. They were erased.

The screen shouts.

Beeeee afraid! Low types of people are everywhere; in cities, in towns, in your backyard! In other countries. Drugged, crazed, mindless evil is at large!

Out in the world, Mickey Gammon remembers his last day of school a few weeks ago. Mickey speaks.

Last March, my mother wanted to come back to Maine. My brother Donnie came and got us and he had gotten fat, but I recognized him. (Ha-Ha!) Okay, just a little fat. A gut.

We rode back in the night. To Maine.

The school here in Maine is a joke. Like the other school was a joke. In Mass. You were supposed to keep your locker locked to keep people out, but there was a rule
they
could search your locker on demand. There's two types of teachers wherever you go. The kind with slitted eyes that try to get you to fight. And the ones, mostly women, who talk to you like if they say the right thing, they can change your life, that there is something wrong with your life. I say fuckem, there's nothing wrong with my life. That was the same thing back in Mass. It's like they either want to kick your ass or sniff it.

My brother's wife is sweet
^*
. She has everything: looks, brains, composure. And I especially like her T-shirt with the Persian cat printed on it . . . something about the idea of that cat's face goes with
her
face . . . the big eyes. Meanwhile, she has arms like Wonder Woman, like she could wrastle you down if it got to that. But she's not one of them man-women you see around. Erika is soft like a pillow. My brother Donnie ever lays a finger on her, I'll break his face.

Meanwhile, I was just taking the bus to school, to finish out the year at this school here. I don't mess with their books—you know, frig with them, write shit in them, or vandalize things. That's stupid. But I figured before the last day in June I was going to draw a picture of Mr. Carney sucking a pony's cock on a separate piece of paper. And, you know,
tape
it into the book.

Okay, so my life isn't perfect. You wanna hear this? I got a little nephew . . . Erika and Donnie's kid, name's Jesse. He's got a weird cancer. At first it was slow, but now it's fast. Imagine! A little kid like that. He don't even talk anymore.

So while I was in class one morning drawing some doodles on my paper, listening to them all whine about South American exports and the Incas or some such shit, the door opens and—yes, it's the cops. They have a marijuana-sniffing dog and the teacher who is in on this like some fucking spy says that the dog is here to sniff our lockers, all the student cars, and, yes, us. She says the officer is just going to walk with the dog down between the rows, and unless the dog indicates illegal substances on us, none of us will be searched. “It's just a routine thing,” she says. “We're sure that no one here has any illegal substances on them.”

Wellllll, I was sweating in a cold way all over. I hadn't had any weed on me for weeks, but I had this horror, suddenly, that that sucker was going to take an interest in me because of my
thoughts
.

So the Nazi-Pig comes along and his dog is going along . . . you know, like an ordinary dog . . . and he's cleared two rows without finding what he likes, and as he is coming nearer to me I'm feeling freaked, and this kid Jared behind me, he says, “That dog sniffs my crotch, I'll kick his face in.” He said this wicked soft, but Mrs. Linnett, with fucking amplified-radar-electronic ears that could probably hear your faucet dripping in another state, says, “What's that, Jared?”

And so the dog has gone past me and Mrs. Linnett tells Jared to “Go to Mr. Carney's office.” And she apologizes to the Nazi and makes a real scene over Jared.

At lunch, we heard that three kids were caught, one with a toothpicksized joint and two with a smell that meant they'd had the stuff on them recently. Everyone, the teachers and all the obedient Honor pansies and killer sheep were pale in the face, wondering how
our school
has got this terrible
drug problem
. Some were saying they just
know
there must be LSD too, and coke and heroin, crack and crank, OxyContin, and whatever, but dogs can't sniff that yet. The whole cafeteria was in a kind of high squeally furor . . .
loud
. . . like panicked mice. I wasn't hungry. I stabbed my fork into my apple. I said, “Fuck this Alcatraz!!” and I stood up without my tray and walked outta there. And in the hall, Mr. Runnells, one of them that guards the cafeteria doors, says, “And where do you think you're going, Gammon?” And he reaches out like he's going to put his hand on my arm. And for some reason beyond reason, I started to cry—the trembling mouth, the shaky voice, tears in the eyes. It's like they got an electric paddle touching every part of you, making you do things against your will. The place has an ugly power over people.

I stepped away from him and said “Bye now” in a kind of nice way and went past Mr. Carney's office and out the glass doors and out into the sun, and then I started running like hell.

Screen brays.

These flavorful burgers, these potato-flavored salt strips, these fizzy syrupy brown-flavored drinks in tall cups are waiting just for YOU. Go to it! NOW!

Out in the world.

Thousands of little red, gray, white, or blue cars and billowy plastic-bumpered sport trucks and SUVs snap on their directionals and whip into the asphalt passages of the drive-in order windows of any one of thousands of the identical burger stations.

Now, in summer, we see Mickey Gammon at home.

The walls of this old house have a weary cream and green wallpaper. Horses and carriages, men and women. Tall arched elms.

The shades here are drawn, shades yellowed with age. The light of this room is therefore dark but golden.

There's a car chase scene on the TV. Vigorous and bouncy. But Mickey Gammon's mother, Britta,
*
keeps the sound down because of the child, Jesse.

Jesse, almost age two, is shrinking. A thick-legged, noisy, gray-eyed boy whose favorite word was not
no
but
why
? Now shrinking. Stretched out on the couch. His skeletal legs seem awfully long.

Toys all around. Blue plastic car. Yellow plastic car. And a plastic-haired doll. Plastic: convenient, affordable, but terrible to the touch.

Mickey has just come in. Fifteen and free as a bird. He smells like somewhere different from here. Other homes. Other considerations. He kneels against the couch. His gray, always watchful, almost wolf-like eyes press like a hand over Jesse's baseball print pajamas and the nearest small hand. Mickey speaks something low that his mother, Britta, over in her chair, cannot hear, but Jesse does. Jesse stares steadily through the magnificent pageant of his pain into the soft spoken word.

In this household, there is no money today. No money. No money. No money.

Out there in the world are whole bins of pain pills unreachable as clouds. The key to painlessness is money. Money is everything.

Mickey finds honor.