The School on Heart's Content Road (64 page)

With a brown, almost empty beer bottle as a pointer, he addresses a huddle of L. L. Bean–dressed fellows (pastel knitted shirts, khaki or olive shorts, sandals, long-visored caps), who to Gordon are, yes, brothers. “You were probably going to say that too, right? Everybody does. Especially wind. Oh my!, too labor intensive. You were going to say that, weren't you?”

One guy confesses, “Maybe.” Then laughs brotherishly. The feeling has become solid, rising, pulling.

Gordon smiles, twisted bottom teeth almost grating against his straighter top ones.

“Okay, let's suppose we're dumb enough to—you know—give up our valuable TV-watching time, and let's count in the fact that a lotta guys have been laid off and can't find new jobs half as good as the old ones, and our clocks seem, you know, to be going backward or something. So tell me what's wrong with spending
time
?”

His audience nods or chuckles. Pleasantly, one mentions invertors and lead batteries.

“Man, yes!” Gordon hoots. “I want to figure out this mystery. I mean, we folks here in Egypt are”—he lowers his voice, as if there were hostile listeners in the fields, in the trees, in the sky—“human too. We aren't chimpanzees. We aren't less intelligent than the experts. We just aren't experts.” He winks. “Yet.”

One guy nods briskly. The others are open-mouthed, caught in
trying
to get in a word.

Gordon cackles. “We aren't lacking humanness. We are only lacking education. All those years we spend in their fucking six-million-dollar-a-year schools, and not one peep about this
emergency
skill!”

Hope.

In and out of clusters of people, moving into the denser shade of the quadrangle trees, there are stories. Now in listening mode, Gordon has left his beer bottle on the edge of the parking lot. He hears these, his brothers, in their distress. Boss betrayals, which lead to government betrayals. Union betrayals. Neighbors calling on hotlines. Neighbors watching to catch you at a crime. “You are our only hope,” a red-faced balding man tells Gordon, this man in the company of several other fiftyish guys, caps with ads, solemn slouched shoulders on some. One man is miserably pockmarked, probably since his teen years. These guys are almost certainly not militia. They look too sad. Militia guys aren't sad. Militia guys look paranoid. Yeah, paranoid, the opposite of trusting. The opposite of what a lamb looks like waiting near you, while you scrape that knife across the whet stone.

And militia guys look armed. Usually nothing of a firearm shows, it's just in the eyes. And in the way they walk.

Gordon says, “I'm not your only hope. We do this together.”

“But you are the only one who is speaking for us! No one else is doing it. Politicians are assholes.”

Gordon frowns. “You say I am speaking for you. Who is it I am speaking
to
about you? Nobody. I speak only
to you
. I say, I am in this sinking boat
with
you.”

All the guys in this group look at Gordon's mouth in doubt.

A tall gray-haired man, clean-shaven, with dark-frame glasses, appears from another direction and puts out his hand to Gordon. “Walt Glenn.”

“Good to meetcha,” Gordon says. “Come to join the militia?”

The man smiles. He fingers around inside his wallet a moment and produces a small blue card for Gordon's inspection. Little flag on the card and the words:
The True Maine Militia
. Card signed by
Bree St. Onge,
Secretary,
and
Samantha Butler, Recruiting Officer
. Gordon hands the card back. Smiles funnyish.

The guy puts a book and a thickness of copied materials into Gordon's hands. “Some good reading there. Good exercise . . . for the adrenal glands.” He winks, then speaks in a low, summoning, near-whisper, partly inaudible. “I am honored to meet someone who pays attention.” He winks again. Laughs. Turns away.

Now as this tall man moves off into the crowd, Gordon's wife Gail, dressed in a pale blue peasant blouse that shows the full effect of her necklace-of-roses tattoo, shouts into Gordon's ear, “That's the retired physicist Claire was just talking with! Worked for the Navy, once, and
NASA
. He knows tons of stuff! About the Project for the New American Century. And Russia. And how the dollar is backed by oil. He's great! He's hot shit! There's some others here, kinda like that. A doctor—a gastro-something doctor—a minister, a law professor, all chomping at the bit to be militia!” Her hard, lined face beams. “I thought I was too old for surprises!” She pats his arm, steps away.

Turning, Gordon studies the guy's back, the physicist, who is now having a chat with some liberal-looking women.

Walking straight at Gordon is Rex. He wears his dark glasses now, cold eyes just sparkles of wetness behind the shadowy lenses. And now a dark loose work shirt, although the day has become almost hot. Gordon surmises that this means Rex is now armed.

Rex says disgustedly, “Some party.”

Gordon says, “A lotta good people.” He presses the book and papers from the physicist under an arm against his own ribs, kind of like Rex's service pistol is right now against
his
ribs, only different. Gordon sighs. “People need to meet like this.”

Rex just stares around.

Gordon says, “I appreciate what you're doing, Richard. You didn't have to come here, giving time to something you think is off-the-wall. I'm beholden.”

Rex turns and watches more people weaving through the jammed opening between the east side of the shops and porches and the first Quonset hut. “I made some calls. I have some men”—looks at his watch—“who will be here any minute. To keep an eye on things. You
can't just go unprotected here. You are a high-profile problem with a militia identity.”

Gordon nods.

Rex says, “Anything could happen.”

Gordon tries not to smile, but his face betrays him. There it is. His wild-man expression, just as he sees two more old ladies slowly walking toward him, probably working up the nerve to ask,
Are you Gordon St. Onge?
But before they arrive, Rex says, in a gravelly way, “Somebody is going to kill you.”

“Don't spook me,” Gordon says quietly. Digs into the sand with the toe of his boot. “Don't.”

Meanwhile, out in the crowd, officers of the True Maine are recruiting, circulating, passing out little cards, copies of
The Recipe,
and various flyers. Sign-up sheets are loaded. Some of these officers have a small child by the hand. Some of the little ones wear three-corner patriot hats. All small kids accounted for and a great system worked out for the older kids to report in every half hour to mothers stationed in the library.

Gordon shakes the hands of two people, both in their midforties, more or less. They say they have come down from near Greenville. The woman has long dense tight curls of that blank-looking black anyone can tell means
dyed
. Her hand is skinny and cool. Her husband is a big son of a bitch, tall and rotund, with dark glasses, big dark mustache, a little tuft of black under the bottom lip, and huge scabby forearms. Camo T-shirt. Baggy jeans. Red suspenders. He positions himself in front of Rex, dark glasses staring into dark glasses. He says, “Mr. York?”

Rex nods.

Guy says, “We're Greenville Militia.”

Rex nods again. Puts out his hand. “How're things up your way?”

“Brewing.”

Rex's mouth does something odd, like moving a chaw from one side of his mouth to the other. But really it's just his tongue and one inside wall of his mouth readjusting, the way he often does when he is smitten by irony. He says, “You people came here . . . for
this
?”

“Same reason you're here. And we saw Crowe here with his people, and that common law group from Waterville . . . what's his name? Sandy Coates. And that one from the reservation. He was just lookin' for you. See on the Internet their communications to the governor? They challenge
him to declare martial law, round up citizens. They have sworn by the Constitution to defend. No response from the Blaine House yet. The governor's too busy, I'm sure. Too busy for us commoners.”

Rex nods.

Gordon stares at Rex.

Rex doesn't give Gordon even a glance.

The Greenville guy says, “Governor is a stupid man.”

“He is an
owned
man,” says Gordon, and the Greenville couple both look into Gordon's face, eyebrows raised. But Rex keeps on ignoring Gordon.

Greenville woman now asks Rex if there are any preparedness exhibits here to check out.

Rex starts to say no, then says they might be interested in the windmills and electric cars and solar stuff. And the radio setup. Gordon notes that Rex speaks with a look in his eyes not shown in ages. Pride.

Rex and the Greenville people walk to a high spot (where Rex can point out the road to the windmills).

Joined by two more people from Greenville, Gordon turns away to go yak with some family of Bonny Loo, cousins and such, all of them chuckling about some funny thing that happened at the gate as they were trying to get in, some misunderstanding. They repeat the story three times, the same way, and laugh each time. Eventually, they are on their way toward the porches of food.

An old friend of Gordon's he hasn't seen in what seems a million moons rushes up, waving his True Maine Militia card, a few friends in tow, all gay men of the category Gordon thinks of as flaming.

“Rob,” Gordon says, grabbing his old friend's shoulder.

Rob gasps. “I never thought I'd see the day when I'd be joining up with a militia! What has got into me?”

Gordon laughs. “Somebody give you a good sales pitch?”

“I've always been a sucker for blue.” He strokes the card with one finger, then slips it into the pocket of his summer knit shirt. He introduces his friends and Gordon says “Good to meetcha” to each, and they talk a bit about water pollution and water privatization. Rob jerks a thumb at
one of his friends, a guy whose hair is in a frenzy of yellow spikes, ivory white skin and one dangling earring of eensie elfin figures, a clump of Pans with flutes and lyres.

“He's a conspiracy theorist too,” Rob says of the blond. “It was his idea to come.”

Gordon winks at the blond, whose name is Neddie. “Every time he calls you a
theorist,
hit him.”

Neddie glances at Rob.

Rob gives a shriek of feigned fright. “Don't hit!”

Gordon says, with a grin, “We're all
citizens,
Rob, not conspiracy theorists, for crying out loud. Citizens demand
oversight
. No oversight? Well, then citizens have to form theories in order to make something of the mysteries. To begin their
research
. To compile. The
evidence
. It's like science. The only third choice is brain death.” Gordon squints at Neddie. “Neddie is a smart man.”

“A True Maine Militia revolutionary,” says Neddie himself. He sneers at Rob and smiles at Gordon. The others in their group laugh along.

One says, “I can picture Neddie in a beret with a machine gun.”

“Of course!” says Neddie. “Now you've found me out.”

They all carry on a few minutes, creating a great tale of Neddie's secret life, Gordon adding some of the wilder details. Then someone leans against Gordon from behind, gathers his arm against her body and calls him “vewwy wuvy man.” He sees the deep glossy auburn ripples of Glory York's hair splayed over his arm. She smells too good. The smell that isn't hard alcohol (the alcohol part stinks). “This isn't believable, Pooh.” She sighs. “It's because you're famous, isn't it?”

“It's because of all the hard work of the young people here,” he tells her.

She frowns, shakes her head. “You know it's only partly that.”

Rob gives Gordon a hard hug from the side Glory hasn't gotten herself clamped around. Rob says, “I've got to run. Take care of yourself. Live chastely. And eat plenty of vegetables.”