The School on Heart's Content Road (9 page)

Mickey has allowed himself to talk a little bit with Erika about some of his jobs, leaving out the militia connection. His face and arms are
sunburned and peeling, sunburns on top of sunburns. A blond brown boy-man.

Sometimes he picks up the pain medicine himself. His bearing is proud as he steps up to the counter at the chain drug.

Today, when Mickey arrives home with another little white bag, Erika, who is putting Donnie's oldest girl's hair into beaded braids, which is the fashion these days (originating from TV), looks not just at Mickey but at his proud bearing and she smiles in a funny way, in the way of women for men, while the girl, Elizabeth, looks at him like she always does, as if there never was and never will be anything different about Mickey or this kitchen or this life, and Mickey's mother's eyes trickle over him, over the fresh white
FAMILY FESTIVAL
T-shirt he's wearing and then to the bag, and she makes a little cooing sound and he, Mickey, stands straight-backed, spear-straight, the moment supreme. His mother, Britta. He sees in her eyes and the set of her toothless mouth that again he, Mickey, has won something here. Won it over his brother. He is ashamed to think it, but he thinks it.

In the United States of America, “Land of the Free.”

A new prison is being built every week.

Concerning the aforementioned information, the screen is blank.

Of course.

The usual rambling, boring academics estimated.

In less than twenty years (even if there are no new prohibitions), more than half of the population of the United States will be in the prison system; if not in an actual cell, in government computers, face shots, eye scans, and compromised rights. And chips. (That's not as in potato chips.)

And what does the screen have to say concerning the aforementioned
urgent
information?

Nothing.

Well, isn't that the darnedest thing! Who does this guy think he is?

Little dipshit country full of suffering people with absolutely no DEMOCRACY! Mr. Smarty Pants Dictator who is yelling stuff . . . hear the stuff he's yelling? Well, we'll translate it for you.

Okay, we've had enough of his foolish babble. No DEMOCRACY? No PEACE talks? Here come the bombs. That's us. The good guys. Bomb the bastard. Bomb him again.

KABOOM!

Bomb him again. Wipe out dipshit country like wiping a rear end. See his face?
Boo, hiss!
We hate him, don't we? He is the enemy of DEMOCRACY!

Bomb him again.

See his face?
Boo, hiss!
We hate him, don't we? We hate him. We hate him. We hate him.

He has tanks and other ugly stuff. He has guns and armies. Maybe even a bomb! Ignore all the people who say the USA gave him all that stuff! Ignore all of them who say USA
put him there!
He got there
all by himself !
Listen to
meeeee.
Bomb him again.
Boo, hiss!
We will bring the gift of democracy to all the people. We, America, the peacemakers. We, America, rich and godly. God bless us. See his face? Bombs away.

Next day, Donnie at home.

Donnie Locke sits at the table in his chain-store clothes. There's a heated (screaming and yelling) soap opera scene on the kitchen TV, but his eyes are on his brother, who has just come in from somewhere, a large paper bag under his arm. And Mickey is happy to feel the heat of his brother's eyes on him, like the kind of heat you have in a house when you come in from the cold: a comfort, even if a little on the scorching side.

Upstairs, the kids are loud.

Donnie says, “What's in the bag?”

Mickey says, in a low-as-possible voice, “Beans and greens.”

Donnie says, “Oh,” with a haunting smile, just a flicker of his heavy white-blond mustache. He asks, “So how's everything coming along? With your life?”

Mickey likes the way Donnie has said this. The question goes into the muscles at the back of his neck, and the hairs on the back of his neck move,
not
like a chill. It is a man-to-man question, a new thing these days, not the voice Donnie used to have for Mickey.

And so, in a tone unconsciously mimicking Donnie's, Mickey replies, “Good. Considering.”

And Donnie says, “Good.”

Donnie Locke, like Mickey, is not much of a talker. Now his silence thickens and his eyes drift over to the soap opera, where a woman with earrings that look like chandeliers shrieks, “HE STOLE EVERYTHING! EVEN MY MIND!”

Mickey lowers the bag of beans and greens to the table. Then he moves light-footed to and through the bright little entry hall with the window and two jade plants. The living room is empty. He passes through it, his back straight, everything about him new and wiry and hard.

Upstairs, he passes a closed door, beyond which are the screeches of kids, kids who spend a lot of time in midair jumping off stuff. He hears the tinny wail of the TV, there, somebody messing with the remote, probably stomping it. Maybe it was simply thrown. Celia and Elizabeth, Audrey and Tegan. And probably Jola, one of their friends from down the road. And of course Isabel. They seldom seem part of this household. Always in another room or outdoors. Or down the road at the Hartfords'. A massive girl gang that makes Mickey nervous but which everyone else thinks is cute. Cute? It's nothing but
I win I win I win.
This versus that. Me versus you. No collaboration. No compromise. No sweetness.

Rex's militia seems sweeter.

Mickey takes a second set of stairs, the narrower and steeper stairs that lead up to the small third-floor attic space that is all his. But hot. He likes how Erika has started, these last couple of weeks, to toss a few freshly washed shirts (and his other pair of jeans) in a wrinkled pile on his unmade bed. And she even straightens the top blanket of his bed and changes the pillow
case. It used to be he was expected to do his own laundry. But now this, her homage to the new Mickey. Something about his position in this house has changed, something that speaks the word
able
. And Mickey, who resists housework and grooming, is eager to enter in this little secret thing with Erika, to change several times a day into one of the clean wrinkled shirts, more shirts than he had before: yard-sale T-shirts with messages and ads, hand-me-downs, one cowboy shirt, one baseball shirt, and one camo—a nice coincidence. All clean and sweet from the clothesline. This is the thing a woman does for you when you've made her feel protected. This gift of home, which is also a kind of protection. Protection, yeah, it goes around and around. And thicker and thicker. Like a tornado of love. Mickey smiles.

What is “the Settlement”? Why is six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve prisoner there? Where is her mother, who is as sweet as sugar?

It is soon told.

The Border Mountain Militia