The School on Heart's Content Road (50 page)

And
that
example cannot exist in America.

And so, yeah, it is our humble job, our employment, see, to neutralize you.
Neutralizing leadership
of problem organizations and situations doesn't mean pretty please. It's more like an Irish setter gets neutralized at the vet's:
snip-snip
. Maybe even
that's
not enough. You know what they do with rabid dogs? The head is cut off and sent to the state lab in a plastic bag.

Okay, so you, Guillaume St. Onge, alias Gordon, ain't nothin' yet. Just a photo opportunity for the papers and talk-show subject matter. But it's your intentions we don't like. We've kicked down a hell of a lot of doors because of intentions we don't like. At the same time, you could be very very useful to us.

The agent now cocks his head. So much carpeting these days, even
in these rat-trap old mausoleum-type buildings. Carpeting and cork ceilings and windows with glass as thick as two-by-fours. With only himself here now in this suite so late at night, it is absolutely and eerily soundless.

The voice of Mammon (today).

Food is money. Money is food. Food is a weapon. No bang, just a whimper. It crosses the sea. It zigzags. Food from here goes there. Food from there goes thataway. Special seeds. Special soils. Special stuff to squirt on everything. And poke it into cows. Do as we say and you can be part of the deal. Look at the pretty food in sky-high piles. It is in the sky, headed somewhere to win this bloodless war.

And—

With rich and artificial hopes, the population grows richly, but in the absence of frontiers.

And—

Corporate power grows.

Meanwhile.

Latest studies show that Americans now have 15 percent more anxiety than two years ago. Twenty percent more mistrust. Experts explain that these trends should level off, as Wall Street and their economists expect the
dazzling economy
to continue and the spectacular profits to continue. Experts explain that Americans were just edgy in that last study, due to the imminence of the new millennium, that the anxiety was just a normal response to that.

The screen croons.

Everything will be all right if you just listen to
meeeee
!

From frozen Pluto's tiny microscopic Plutonian observatory, observers speak.

juto pssssdrip pt truk bxox wjp litopt jlswdn mnrd prtd ncln!
*

Out in the world,
all over
the big round world.

The militias grow. And the resisters, the raised fists, the pamphlets, the huddles, the blocking of streets. Cries for liberty,
libertad,
free will. The hydra coalesces. It is beautiful to its mother.

God speaketh.

The create-lings are ever busy, following design,
never
unnatural.
Never
“bad.” The dynamo of the universe is rosy and warm in the chambers of my “heart.” No complaints on my part. (Yes, it's true. Nobody ever understands God.)

The tromping of feet and the warning caws of a nearby guard-duty crow wake Mickey.

Not that he was truly asleep. Nowadays, as everyone says, mosquitoes stay around until snow flies. He has had three or more on each ear all night. The creaking grass and tree bugs, which he likes, have all gone silent, due to the moose-herd-type tromping on the path. And also a jingling. Takes him only about fourteen seconds to flip himself over the door hole in the floor and drop, landing Superman-style on the scruffed rooty spot below: visitors. He stares them down.

It's the Prophet with a buncha women and kids. A dog in the lead, a golden retriever's head, body of a beagle.

Uh-oh. Mickey has not gone very far to use “the toilet” since he has resided here. A dog is the last thing he needs snooping around. He shuts his eyes very tight for two seconds, a hurried prayer.

The Prophet says, “Good morning!” The jingling Mickey heard was the keys on the man's belt.

Mickey nods, rubs one eye. The other eye is on the bushes, where the yellowy-brown tail of the dog is all that shows.

“We brought breakfast!” an Indian-looking girl about seven shouts, running up with a darkly varnished basket.

Behind her, more baskets, more Indians, and a boy as blond as an old man. Three women, not exactly hot babes, as Mickey had liked to imagine, but somehow he knows these are St. Onge wives.

A crow veers in and settles in the tree's tip-top above the rummaging dog. The crow is silent, its feathers rippling and adjusting as easy as pond water.

Kid hands are reaching into the softer baskets; lids of the hard baskets are flipped wide.

The small Indian girl hands Mickey something wrapped in cloth. Feels cold and dead.

Gordon says deeply, “No American home is complete without
stuff
” and hands Mickey a can of paper flowers, spotty with on-purpose-looking raspberry-juice-looking dye. Gordon's eyes widen. “Say you love them.” He winks, rolling his eyes sideways toward the kids. A mosquito finds the Prophet's big neck. Big hand mashes it.

Mickey takes the flowers.

“They look real, don't they?” says one of the taller Indian girls, tall enough to be a teenager, but Mickey figures she's not. She has Gordon's doggy smile, one of Gordon's many types of smiles and grimaces.