The School on Heart's Content Road (48 page)

Mickey looks amused. He has finished eating; he just holds his big jar of maple milk between his thighs and studies the passing hillside of busy-looking Settlement gardens with their army of scarecrows, a tipped-over wheelbarrow, one standing shovel, and one fat woodchuck sitting up on a rock watching the truck pass.

“Sh!” warns Gordon with slitted eyes, looking all about suspiciously. “Whatever you do, Mickey, don't tell anyone about
sun tax
. Or sun meters. Sun as a commodity. T'would give 'em ideas. They'll do it, by God. There's nothing they won't steal and sell back to us.” He rests one hand on the shift knob but doesn't shift, even though the truck lugs down, shivering a little as the Settlement road levels out. He looks at Mickey. “What's with your family?”

Mickey picks at his leather wristband. “My brother gassed himself in his car.”

“Locke?”

“Yeah.”

“So you lived there until—”

“He went nuts on me. I had ta get out.”

Gordon says softly, “Livin's tough.”

Mickey says nothing. Just sips his maple milk.

Gordon says, “Now it's the tree condo.”

Mickey says quickly, “I
was
in Mass. We were there awhile. Me and
my sister and my mother.” He leaves out his mother's boyfriend Ross, whom he misses.

Gate ahead. Heavy maples closing in, almost dark as night again.

Gordon says, “How's the baby? I heard there's a sick baby over there.”

Mickey shakes his head, looks away. “Died.”

Gordon snorts. “God's been a busy son of a bitch, ain't he?”

Mickey looks at Gordon's closer knee, then quickly away, nods.

“Sorry, I did it again. It pops out.”

“S'okay.”

Gordon says solemnly, “I thank God when he's good. I cuss him when he's bad.” He grins at Mickey. “I'm not afraid to be honest with God.”

Mickey blinks.

Gordon downshifts. Brakes easy. Mickey gets out and lifts the pole, admiring the ANYONE TRESPASSES WILL BE SHOT. TRY IT. sign while Gordon takes the truck ahead. Mickey lowers the pole and hurries back to the truck.

Once out on the tar road, Gordon asks softly, “What was the baby's name?”

“Jesse.”

“Jesse,” Gordon repeats the name and the name in his mouth has a warm loving familiarity.

Not much talk now as they head down the creepily steep Heart's Content Road, then they turn onto the highway that winds down to the lake and beach area: Kool Kone, the Cold Spot (called Hot Spot in winter), and, after that, one bed-and-breakfast with striped awnings called Your Host. Gordon tells Mickey, “We're goin' hot 'n' heavy on a couple photovoltaic cars right now. It's a real bitch. We thought we'd have one of them rolling by now, but there's been one delay after another. . . .”

You, crow, have studied the old truck as it left the Settlement and chugs along down Heart's Content Road.

You had sent out four warning
caw!
s, so now eddies of the tribe's
caw!
s far and near, as well as the multiplying echoes, are disturbing the peace all around purply September-cold Promise Lake. Through the cloven
backs and shoulders of cruelly logged mountains, over neighboring fields, dwellings and barns, utility poles, road signs, stone walls, snowmobiles, artesian well covers, bird feeders, and blue-tarp-covered mysteries, black wings thrust onward, this gossip going even farther, following the worn and many roads of tar.

Crows, all of you know well the old pickup truck painted by kids.

Brush marks and dribbles. Starbursts of extra gloss. The truck body, the black-green of living hemlocks. The cab done thickly in the white of a sleet storm. Cab mounts sag. Inspection sticker unthinkably old. Besides the driver, the vessel includes the tree boy (hurrah! hurrah! you say) as it lurches forward on its crooked journey around the lake. But the journey will be short. Of this you are certain, because your many generations know perfectly well the ways and habits of Gordon St. Onge.

They make their way.

Mickey has never seen anyone drive so slow and talk so fast. He has never witnessed such excitement coming out of a person's mouth. Especially about stuff like gas-free cars, solar and wind power, microenergy-using flywheels. And “zero-point” energy. And plots by international financiers to keep these lifestyles down and “maintain petroleum as king!” Lots of plots. Lots of “thick closed doors.”

Mickey figures this is probably true but can't think of what to say back. The Prophet keeps turning toward him with his large nose and wincing scrinching wild eyes, leaving only little-little spaces for Mickey to talk back. Mickey's once-in-awhile
yep
seems good enough, 'cause the guy then launches into a speech on the collapse of this civilization, how it's time has come “anthropology-wise.”

Mickey has no doubt this is also true, but shit—there's so much. Where does it all come from? They don't even have TVs at the Settlement, Joel Barrington had told him last night, when he and the others walked down to Gordon's place. Big rule: no TV. It doesn't at first occur to Mickey that Gordon is a big reader, a hungry reader and big-questions redneck philosopher. And that the Settlement from time to time has
fascinating worldly guests for Parlor Night Salons. Instead, Mickey suspects that the big noisy guy is probably psychic. The Prophet, right?

So Mickey continues to reply “
yep
” and “
yep
” and “
yep
.”

There are too many vibrations coming off this guy. Like Willie Lancaster. Like Willie, the Prophet likes to muckle on to you, mostly the shoulder. But Mickey has gotten to be an expert at staying cool during that sort of thing. Willie musta been rehearsal for this more huge test.

Balancing his maple milk jar on his knee, he tips it back and forth, back and forth.

When they hit bumps, there's swinging and jouncing of a green plastic Godzilla on its string from the rearview. It has mean little hands and rows of teeth for tearing. But it's a toy. How come not a cross? Or a shrunken head? Or something voodoo-ish (whatever that would be)? A toy Godzilla seems kind of silly to Mickey.

Meanwhile, the truck cab smells of the big breakfast but also like tools, transmission fluid, a banana (no banana is in sight), and a trace of cow shit. And damp wool. And dog. Kind of homey.

You, crow, of the East Egypt branch of the tribe, watch the green-and-white truck stop at a yellow house next to a green-door church.

The tree boy doesn't go in the house with the towering one. No, he stands at the back of the truck making baggy puffs of smoke through teeth and nose, being manly. His dirty tiny tail of hair, in an elastic above his collar, is curved up like a sprout.

Back in the cab, the new passengers cram in with twitters and squeals and the smell of butter. Someone in the doorway of the yellow house waves good-bye. The driver of the truck beeps the horn and, finally getting his leg and foot in, slams his door. The truck windows are all aflutter with waving hands, the house person waves again, and the waves go on and on as the old truck rolls back toward the road.

You, crow, flap your way to the top of the utility pole directly over the action.

Even with Gordon St. Onge's foot's light well-meaning touch on the truck pedals, exhaust from the tailpipe blooms far and wide. You sneeze. Yeah, petroleum is king.

The prayer.

Too many people squashed together in the cab of this truck. Gordon, Mickey, a preteen girl named Stacia, and two little kids that look like they might be girls, though they are boy-haired and tough-looking. One has a commercially made baseball jacket but has its arms around a Settlement-made rag doll almost as large as Gordon. The doll has black button eyes and a smile made of white fake pearl buttons, embroidered ears, yellow yarn hair, and a patchwork dress with embroidered pockets. The other small kid has a paper bag on its lap with the top neatly folded over, and this kid sits on the lap of the preteen girl.

Gordon turns up a back road a half mile before Heart's Content Road and stops the truck off on the shoulder. “I need to see a man about a horse,” he says, and galumphs off into the trees.

Mickey gets out to smoke and one little kid, the one with the bag, rolls down the window to ask Mickey questions like, “Do you like night?” and “What do you think Gram calls her cat now?” Mickey answers all these questions with a manly nod, or just a hard stream of smoke from his nose and a small smile. The preteen girl keeps glancing at him when she thinks he's not looking. But she has nothing to ask him or to tell him.

When Gordon returns, he invites everyone to go up in the woods for a quick history lesson.

This is the Settlement way. Life rolls out opportunities for lessons. Lessons pop up everywhere!

The kids inside the truck step down, chattering. Mickey crushes the last of his cigarette in the sand. One little kid runs ahead up the ferny trail. The other one starts crying. The preteen girl starts yelling at the running one. The huge yellow-haired doll waits behind, slumped against one door.