The School on Heart's Content Road (47 page)

Christian Crocker, whom everyone calls CC, who looks like a born-again Huck Finn, freckles and all, heads through to the attic stairway to find the bathroom.

The little group at first seems to be all Settlement kids, all but Joel, all facing Gordon with that not-used-to-the-light squint (although the light here is dim). But now Gordon sees there is a stranger who keeps drifting over behind Joel, now just a bit of elbow sticking out.

Gordon folds his arms over his chest and scratches his back on the red painted chimney. “You all come all the way down here just to talk about the weather? That
it
?”

Joel says, “We brought you a present.” He beams Soule-ishly. He looks around. “Now where'd that ol' present go?” He steps to one side, revealing the boy behind him, a fine-boned androgynous-looking kid, little streaky-blond tuft of a ponytail, a wishful sort of beard on the chin. Shoulders girlishly narrow inside the well-fitted camo BDU shirt. Yeah, a small slim person. But the hands, hands that know the wrench, the pliers, the clamps. Hands with the raised arteries of young manhood and fingernails smashed by fearlessness. And, yes, he has
seen
this kid somewhere.

“Who're you?” Gordon asks, stepping away from the chimney. “You look familiar.”

The boy's eyes, a wolfy gray, shift away. No answer, just a nervous smile.

“It's Mickey Gammon,” explains Joel. “We just found him in a tree.”

Gordon sort of smiles. Eyes looking off to the left, trying especially hard to imagine the kid in a tree and what for? He looks back at the kid's face.

“A tree
house,
actually,” says the pimply purply-faced Evan Martin, “up behind the hog pens.”

Gordon asks, “How old are you, Mickey?”

The room is cool tonight. Old curled linoleum. Walls and old plaster damp and old-smelling. To Mickey, it smells like home. Home of the Lockes, what's left of them. Mickey stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets with a really thin little smile. He mumbles an answer.

Gordon looks quickly at the thick-studded rebellious-looking leather wristband on the boy's skinny wrist. He is almost remembering where he has seen this Mickey. Quiet Mickey. Wallflower Mickey. Lost even in the tiniest crowd.

Jaime Crosman says, “You're about thirteen, ain'tcha Mickey?”

Mickey frowns. Thirteen is not the right guess. He looks straight into Gordon's eyes. “I said
sixteen
.”

Phone rings.

Gordon looks irritably at the phone. “You got any family?” he asks Mickey, turning to lift the receiver and to cup his hand around the mouthpiece, still looking at Mickey, waiting for the answer.

Mickey drops his eyes to the box on the desk with a spotty cat in it. Makes a face to dismiss the family idea.

Gordon speaks into the phone with a high squeaky falsetto. “Hold, please. This is Gordie St. Onge's secretary. Gordie will be with you
momentarily.” Mashes the phone receiver against his work shirt. Speaks now in his own real voice. “What do you do with your time, Mickey? When you aren't in a tree?”

Mickey raises his chin and says, as clearly and deeply as his crackly teenage voice can go, “I'm with the Border Mountain Militia.”

“Ah, yes,” says Gordon, and now, with a wild grin, takes a lunging step forward to the end of the phone cord, puts out a hand. Mickey reluctantly pulls a hand from a pocket. Gordon's handshake is crushing. “Good to see you again. Good to have the patriots represented here in my humble kitchen!”

Mickey squints. This guy reminds him of Willie Lancaster, sort of.

Gordon winks at Mickey as he turns, phone to ear, saying deeply, “Gordie here.” He listens and talks with the caller a few moments. Once or twice he turns back and, through the frugal low-wattage light, studies Mickey, the boy's surly expression, the big hole in his jeans showing a white skinny knee, the significant green-and-black embroidered mountain lion militia emblem on his sleeve.

When Gordon is done with the phone, he lays the receiver on the desk and sinks into his wheeled desk chair, rubbing his face till his eyes are reddened. Eyes on Mickey. “So the tree-house thing is probably part of the woodsy survival maneuvers you guys are required to do . . . or is it along the lines of the short-on-finances concept?”

Mickey says, “I've got money. I'm workin'.”

“Doing what?”

“Different stuff.”

Gordon nods over and over slowly, as if Mickey were still talking, long after Mickey isn't talking. Now he stops nodding, and his eyes fall back to Mickey's hands. “You know cars?”

“Yep.”

Gordon raises a palm to blow Mickey a kiss, just as the phone receiver bursts out with ear-crippling shrieking advice:
Hang up and dial again!

Mickey flushes.

The other boys, including CC, who has returned, laugh heartily. Joel Barrington pokes Mickey's shoulder. “See, I told you Gordo would love you.”

Gordon is stroking one side of his long mustache and scruffy beard thoughtfully. “Would you be free tomorrow morning?”

“Yep.”

“Six-thirty?”

“Don't matter.”

“Okay, six-thirty. I have an errand to do, gotta pick up some kids who are staying down to East Egypt tonight. You come along, we get to be alone for a minute, we can shoot the shit, then come back and I'll give you the whole fucking tour, including the European-style windmill, which is fifty feet and which Rex, your worthy captain, helped us design and construct. And you'll see Our Purple Hope. She is sweet. And still”—he lowers his voice—“still a virgin.” He licks a finger and wiggles it, then winks. “Sound like a plan?”

“Yep.”

“Aren't we killing that hog tomorrow,
early
?” Evan asks with a squint, Evan who has already started out the door onto the piazza but now leans against the frame, drumming his fingers there.

“I don't know,” replies Gordon. “I haven't seen Aurel. I was in Portland all day.”

Evan groans. “I gotta find out. Man, I hate this being-in-three-places-at-one-time shit.”

Gordon stands up wearily. “Only the dead know rest.”

History (1900s: the past).

The intelligence it took to bring us to modern society may not be enough to get us out of it.

—Albert Einstein

Six-thirty
A.M
. thereabouts. Dark. Not pitch dark but an iron gray, growing silvery by increments. Growing fast.

Mickey shows up. Dressed the same as last night. Big flappy hole in one knee. He doesn't knock on any of the farmhouse doors. He just stands out under the ash tree smoking, his shoulders hunched. Waiting.

Gordon steps down off the piazza. Screen door bangs behind him. With one hand he pulls the ring of keys from his belt. He doesn't look
prepared for this appointment. Under one arm, a green-and-black-plaid wool outer shirt, too much of a hurry to put it on.

Mickey drops the short dry butt of his cigarette, crushes it under his heel. He follows Gordon up a long broad path, little bridge, more path, through the dark woods to the Settlement, the big sandy parking lot where Gordon has left his truck. A bit of a trek, going back the same meandering way Mickey just came.

Once they are there, Mickey climbs up into the passenger's side and waits while Gordon jogs across the quadrangle to the horseshoe of Settlement shops and up inside through one of the porches to fetch something. He returns, flumps a satchel and the wool shirt on the seat between them, and starts the engine. Snaps on the parking lights so that the gauges glow. Gordon listens hard to the engine for a minute or two. He looks at Mickey and smiles.

Mickey flushes. In some ways, Gordon St. Onge
is
like Willie Lancaster. Mickey doesn't feel truly safe from nerve-racking surprises.

Gordon pats the satchel. “Breakfast.” He drapes both hands over the wheel and squeezes his eyes shut. Yawns. “Don't ever go anywhere without your gun, your Bible, and your breakfast.” He chortles happily to himself, eyes watery. He switches on the heater, which sounds awful, sounds like something flapping inside it. Mickey's eyes lightly caress the satchel, while Gordon quickly studies for the hundredth time the olive-and-black mountain lion in the crescent of letters on Mickey's sleeve.

Now he stares off to the shadowy fenced-in acreage of young oaks, where a few spotted tractor-sized hogs stand on a high spot in the growing light, all watching the truck. Then he yawns again. Through watery eyes, he looks at Mickey, big grin. Mickey winces. Not in a way that shows, just his blood and guts and insides; everything goes on temporary hold.

Gordon reaches into the satchel and pulls out muffins and rolls. A lot of bready things. A big glass jar of peeled boiled eggs. Ham sandwiches made with big hunks of smoked pork, mustard, and funny farm cheese. Jars of milk. “Maple milk,” he tells Mickey. “Try it.”

Mickey asks, “You always eat this much for breakfast?”

Gordon looks serious and intense, hefts one of the weighty pork sandwiches. “Eating,” he says quietly. “It's kinda basic.”

Mickey unwraps his own sandwich and chomps into it. There's something goaty about the cheese. Like the air smells around a buck goat in the fall. The smoked pork is salty. The bread chewy and fresh.

With a full mouth, Gordon says, “I thought it would be great to eat these down by the beach. Like a picnic. But I'm hungry
now
. I won't make it to the beach.” He had growled the word
now
.

The idea of a picnic seems a little fruity to Mickey. He keeps his eyes on his sandwich.

The dawn increases fast. A buttery light has already filled in around the trees of the larger mountain to the southeast.

They eat and talk, the engine running. Something not quite right about the engine. Gordon keeps cocking his head at certain skips. Mickey suggests it's probably just the plugs. With smacks and slurps and swallows of the sandwich, Gordon tells him, “I've abused her lately. She hasn't had the fuss she needs. My obligations elsewhere have accelerated.” He stops chewing. He looks like he's about to cry. Instead, he looks out at the yellow haloed mountain and burps.

Mickey finds the maple milk both disgusting and appealing.

Gordon tells a little about Settlement life. He talks about what it's like for teenagers here. Then Gordon explains that everyone, starting at one's sixteenth birthday, gets an equal share of a certain percent of the profits of the sawmills and furniture sales and the Community Supported Agriculture program veggie and meat sales, and the veggie sales to the IGA and farm markets, and the sale of sheep and eggs, the skinning and meat cutting in hunting season, and the wreaths and Christmas trees. “So far, it's worked out pretty good. It gives everyone spending money. Not a lot, but there's been few complaints.” He explains how food and most basic things come to a person free here. He confesses that the one thing they're wrestling with right now is health insurance payments. “Evil whoring insurance fuckers have us by the balls. If it were just me, I'd say screw 'em. But . . . it's not just me. Forgive my vocabulary, Mickey. Are you Christian?”

“'S'okay. I don't care if you swear.”

The sun is not quite free of the eastern skyline but hovers in a sticky way behind a tall hemlock. Only the tops of the trees to the northwest are painted with the orange light of this new September day.

Mickey is wondering when Gordon is going to really start talking wacko, like about the poison the Settlement people are supposed to be planning to take together or maybe something about the orgies. He doesn't really want to hear any of it. He listens to Gordon stuffing practically a whole muffin into his mouth and then shifting the old truck into gear. Truck starts down the gravelly Settlement road. Along a ridge of sand to one side, possibly pushed there by someone plowing snow last spring, there is what looks like a tiny piece of broken glass or a huge flake of mica, which explodes with light as the sun finally strikes this little valley, and then the sunlight begins to crawl over the blond Settlement fields. Gordon spreads his fingers right in front of Mickey's face, rubs his fingers together in the sunlight. “The sun,” he says in a muffled way around his cheekful of muffin. “Nobody owns it yet. Nobody charges us for sunshiny days.”