The School on Heart's Content Road (41 page)

And if this doesn't work, we'll be back next time with plungers.

If you are interested in joining up, it is totally free. No dues. Just promise you will be angry and you will be nice. Get in touch with us today at militia headquarters, RR2, Heart's Content Road, Egypt, Maine 04047, or call 625-8693, or find us the old-fashioned way. Sundays are best. We'll open the gate for you! We love you! We are your neighbors. Keep your powder dry and your ear to the ground. Let's save the Republic together!

The article is signed.

Militia Secretary: Bree St. Onge
Recruiting Officers: Samantha Butler and Margo St. Onge
Other Officers: Whitney St. Onge, Michelle St. Onge, Dee Dee
St. Onge, Carmel St. Onge, Kirk Martin, Tabitha St. Onge, Liddy Soucier,
Desiree Haskell, Scotty St. Onge, Heather Monroe, Erin Pinette, Rusty Soucier, Chris Butler, Lorrie Pytko, Jaime Crosman, Shanna St. Onge, Alyson Lessard, Rachel Soucier, Christian Crocker, Buzzy Shaw, Theoden Tarr, Josh Fogg.

And just in case readers need help making the connections, the
Record Sun
editors have helpfully added a sidebar with a summarized rehash of the publicized Homeschool–Settlement–Border Mountain Militia relationship, as well as a mention of the “thirty-six” terrorized-looking governors' wives to whom Gordon St. Onge once gave a talk. And there are two photos. One the rememberable merry-go-round shot, the scary weirdly-lighted face and upper body of Gordon St. Onge that sensationalized all the earlier St. Onge-as-madman articles, and one of the gate and KEEP OUT signs. This boxed piece reads:
GATES OF ST. ONGE SETTLEMENT WILL COME DOWN
.

Claire St. Onge in a future time tells us of the days following the article.

You could almost feel the ground tremble after that op-ed. The phone rang. It was answered. It rang again as soon as it was back on the hook. Working people wanted to do something. They weren't apt to use the word
revolution
or call themselves radicals, but they were “coming out.” No, these were not just college lefties. These were also regular Main-ers. The silent presence, until now. It was sweet. Surprising to me, actually. I never realized how many people were ready, once you put it to them in a way that touched them personally—which our fifteen-year-old Bree and the other young people, mostly Bree, had done.
So
young! Our darling insurgents.

So it was people of all kinds calling, writing, leaving messages down by the gate. My gosh, some of us even joked that messages might come in bottles, down the Little Boundary Stream or out of the sky under wee parachutes. People, people, people. It was a chillingly beautiful thing.

That very first day or two, the call-in talk shows were about nothing else, just the True Maine Militia. Radio listeners wanted in. Though some didn't want
in
as much as a chance to talk on the radio about their fears, and there were plenty who wanted to show off
what they thought they knew about
democracy
and
government
and
corporatism
.

Meanwhile, yeah, there were calls to the shows by those warning of
the mad prophet
and references to his
blatant polygamy
and
child abuse
. And some called the True Maine Militia “crazies running through the woods with hand grenades.”

But here it was. People were stirring. Democracy was in the air. Corporatism and globalism were in their sights.

But Gordon, when he found out, hit the roof. He hunted Bree down with the newspaper. When he found her, he was thin-lipped and too quiet. She told us later he was shaking. We all agreed we like it better when he's noisy.

As recalled by many.

But he got over it. Sort of. After all, whose fault was it that our kids knew the world honestly enough to want to “save” it?

The Bible.

Time, 4
P.M.
He has nowhere else to be but right here. And nobody knows he is here. His tree house. Home sweet home: 1 Wilderness Highway, ha-ha-ha. It's sort of a log house, maybe more of a stick house, one a wolf could blow away, ha-ha-ha, though the wolf would have to climb up this tree first.

There's one little window with a flap. And a big hatch in the floor. Two ways out. Like a rat.

He is squinting in the growing woodsy dark at a Bible. Gift from the captain of his militia, Rex. It has a few glossy color pictures of Bible days. Some people have bare feet, some have sandals. A lot of sun there. Not much for trees. None of them look Jewish. He knows Jewish from school in Massachusetts. These pictures just don't look Jewish. In fact, they don't look human. The kids, that is. They are too chubby, like babies on steroids. Their eyes have expressions like . . . well, not stoned, exactly, more like people do when they are reading dull poetry or Shakespeare aloud in school and they're acting it out in an overdoing way. Bible artists absolutely can't do little kids right. Or Jewish. But
especially kids. He thinks about Jesse, not quite two years old. His nephew. Dead. He can hear the wet sticky sound of real live Jesse's mouth slurping down milk or red punch from a cup and the wet sticky sound of his words and phrases and funny ideas.

Most of the Bible kids have wings, or else they are hanging around grown-up Jesus, looking up in his face. Here's one with Jesus patting a little kid on the head. One kid is blond like Jesse was. Mickey thinks, if it were Jesse, he would be holding up a toy helicopter full of brown leaves (helicopter found under the porch) or an old toaster (not plugged in). Jesus would be stuck holding the helicopter while Jesse went off to collect some little army guys or animals to stuff inside. When Jesse got back with his animals and guys, Jesus would hold the helicopter steady while Jesse stuffed.

Before Mickey's eyes, the picture of Jesus and Jesse explodes into the greasy grinding and
ernk!
ing of the schoolbus stopping in front of the Locke place. His chest squeezes as if from an attacker's arms meaning to hurt. Yeah, today is the day.
SCHOOL IS OPEN. DRIVE SAFELY
.

He breathes with relief as the imaginary schoolbus door slams and the creepy ark drags itself off in the direction of the fenced-in
SAD
51. Yeah, perfect name, huh?

He looks back at one of the dreamy-faced Bible babies, its small feathery wings. Imagine. Wings.

Power.

Hello, crow. You see the sky brightening in eager increments. Some of the stars are losing their grip. This is
the mountain,
mostly on St. Onge land. One of two, but this one is closer to the heavens. Some humans call them
foothills
because they are so old and slouched by time, not the childly rugged Rockies.

All around you is naked ledge and blueberry and juniper and blisters of lichen, the hard faces of rock with small cupboard-sized cave openings, which from a distance are the sockets of empty eyes.

Speaking of no eyes, wasn't it just yesterday that one of the damaged elder humans (whom Gordon St. Onge has welcomed into his world) visited this summit? The old eyeless man is one whom you, crow, are especially keen about. How does he get around? A youngster always
steers the way, one of those little tractors they call
buggies,
which strain and jerk over trails and the rocky summit road. Makes no roar. It hums.

The old blinded man, blinded by some scarring violence such as working a dragger, or maybe it was war, sits behind and locks his arms around the driver, the sweet hot evening or fresh morning is forced across his cheeks and bald skull. He smiles steadily, serenely, though the rough ride abuses him. This type of love draws your eye, because endurance of the human flock is more than a spectacle.

But today, as the sky is glowing pearlesque, the only human in sight is the lonely boy, Mickey Gammon.

For this morning's observatory, you use the structure that looks and sometimes turns like a big eggbeater.

Down the mountain in the valley of the Settlement, a rooster crows, setting off four more. You cock your head.

The boy is smoking as always, but this is the first time you've seen him here at the crown of St. Onge creation, the Wind Project. The bull mastiff of the wind structures, tallest, heaviest, is designed in the way of the old countries, you have heard them say. Wooden door to the room where the windmill crews go in and out, straining with recharged batteries for their buggies and the few cottages that aren't in the open.

The rest of the working wind plants are on modern steel derricks and wooden poles: two-blade windmills and eggbeater ones and a couple made with old barrels painted a sharp yellow.

As you study the boy, he is studying the mighty force of forty-seven chest-high, nonutility, no-purpose-whatsoever, purely artistic windmills, child-made—charming pink, purple, and grasshopper-green monuments to that struggle of human children of all recorded time to learn the tricks of their elders' huge and bubbling civilizations.

Mickey Gammon, whom you think of as the Tree Boy, tosses his cigarette butt and gets to his feet from where he has been sitting on the frosty step of the Old World windmill. He circles around on the edge of the steep drop-off of ledges that overlook the east. He sees way down there the narrow end of the pond that the humans have renamed Promise Lake, the names lining up down through the ages. And there, the village of East Egypt, where obscene spots of orangey commercial electric light hither and yon pose as
security
.

You, crow, watch him very carefully as he steps to the edge.

Answers.