Mickey speaks an almost inaudible “Hi.” Mickey is sopping wet and the rifle is shining.
The man’s deep La-Z-Boy is facing the TV, but the TV is blank-faced and silent. The TV remote control is still in his hand.
Mickey says, “Sorry to bother you, but I have something. . . .”
Rex York snorts and leans forward, his booted feet come down with a single thump, and he says, “What really bothers me was what was going on before you came in.” He aims the remote flicker, makes the TV burst to life, then kills it quick. He narrows his steely eyes. “Six o’clock news.” He sneers. “Next they’ll be telling us there’s a Santa Claus.” He tosses the remote onto a pile of newspapers on the floor beside him. “Whatcha got there?”
Mickey says, “This is mine, Marlin Twenty-two Magnum. I wanted to see if you’d be interested in buying it.”
“Not interested,” says Rex, as he pulls on his nose, eyes on Mickey’s face. “I’m not in need of one.”
Mickey is frozen in place, standing with legs apart, the rifle loose in his hands, muzzle down, his little wet worm of a ponytail especially pitiful-looking, his small frame especially small. He says, low and soft, “I need to sell it for medicine. It’s for a sick baby.”
Rex York’s eyes are direct, eyes that make you feel as though a permanent picture of you is being taken, the whole picture; your face, body, blood count, shoe size. He moves these eyes over Mickey as if to gauge the truth of this sick baby story. He says, “Whose gun is that?”
Mickey replies, “Mine.”
Rex says, “I don’t know you.”
Mickey turns slightly, looks to the heavily draped picture window, beyond which he knows rain is smashing down onto yard and field and winding paved road. “I just thought I’d check.”
The man stands, steps over to Mickey, grasps the rifle around the forearm, turns it sideways, jerks back the bolt, checks the breech, then deftly, with one hand, uncocks it, working the trigger and bolt. He feels over all the rain-darkened wood, studies the serial numbers. “You took all-right care of it. But”—his eyes fix again on Mickey’s unreadable face—“I got no more use for this thing than a zucchini, ’cept to trade it. But you can leave it with me as collateral, and I’ll loan you what you need.”
“That would be good, yuh.”
And so there’s an exchange.
And then a little chitchat, mostly Rex leading the conversation. Talk of the government and the United Nations and the Constitution and the way money is no longer backed by gold and the impending declaration of martial law by the president, of the New World Order and the liberals and the socialists, and then some about jury rights and separation of powers, the Federalist Papers, and on to Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Rex’s somewhat young-looking mother appears quietly, from some cool part of the house. There seems to be cool air following her. She gives Mickey cookies, big nice vanilla sugar cookies, her hand cool, the cookies piping hot. She watches Mickey eat them. She stares openly at his hands and mouth, just like his own mother does.
When Mickey stands to leave, Rex pulls keys from his pocket and commands, “Go get in the truck. I’ll take you home. You don’t love rain that much, do you?”
The prince.
Erika lies on the bed that is hers and Donnie’s. It is covered with a cheap yellow computerized crazy-quilt-print synthetic-fleece blanket that makes the skin on Erika’s bare legs and feet look a bright cheap yellow. The rain has left the air as thick and solid and tinted as green Jell-O. There under the blanket, close to Erika, is her shrinking child. On a small metal and wooden trunk at the foot of the bed is a television turned down very low. Erika’s eyes are even more fiercely deep and ringed than yesterday. These eyes are watching filmed excerpts of a trial. The TV has the sound turned nearly off. All the TVs in this house have the sound turned down these days. But no blank TVs. No pressing the OFF button. There is, to so many of us, something frightening about being totally cut off from “society,” from our “culture,” from the faceless mind that instructs and defines us.
A big bee drones at the screen of the open window, tapping over and over and over, seeming to ask, Is this it? Is this it? Is this it?
With the excerpts of the trial over and a blast of jolly commercials, there is now a TV talk show host wheedling a guest, and Erika’s eyes watch this dully and she hears footsteps in the hall and knows it’s her brother-in-law, Mickey, whose room is on the third floor above her in that uninsulated blistering-hot attic space. She hears him stop. At this door. She had left the door cracked open. He hits it with his palm so it flies wide. Erika jumps, pushes herself up off the pillows.
The old part-golden retriever, Boy, raises his head from his paws where he lies on the floor, and his tail thumps to see Mickey. Mickey steps over him. Mickey comes right over to the bed and stands there looking at Erika, stretched out there in her shorts and bare feet and Persian cat T-shirt, which he likes a lot, and she is scooting herself up to sit, then folds one knee up to brace herself for this unexpected moment and she sees that Mickey has a fistful of twenty-dollar bills that he is raising over her. She grabs his wrist. Much strength in her fingers. He laughs.
She works to pry this money out of his fist. His cigarettish and carelessly unwashed smell is enormous. Her eyes are now bright on the money, on the fist, on Mickey’s face, on all of him, his thin little, ratlike self, ragged and untended and suddenly now quite princelike.
Out in the world.
Providence, Rhode Island, a rain-drenched evening, the setting sun, a perfect yellow, glitters on chemically velvet lawns and on pavements, glass, and stone, everything green made greener and more urgent. The shopping center parking lot is packed. Most of the empty spaces are on the farthest outer edges. A muted copper-colored two-door car slips into a tight space close to the buildings. Tinted glass hides the occupants, but the bumper speaks loudly: MY CHILD IS A NATHAN BISHOP MIDDLE SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT. (Yes, another one.)
Claire St. Onge speaks.
Gordon has never wanted anything to do with the media. When the call came last night, I was there in his kitchen with a few others. As he held the phone, he listened very hard, with his shoulders, with his neck, with his face. When he hung up and said it was a reporter with the Record Sun, I knew all our lives were crossing a line. What was he doing!!, agreeing to this “little” interview?!
You, crow, so bright-eyed there on top of the silvery limbless die-back beech, are the only witness when Ivy Morelli, Record Sun reporter, shows up for her first interview.
The St. Onge Settlement is hidden in the cleft of the mountain behind the 1800s farmhouse where Gordon St. Onge grew up. He still resides here in the old place, his name on the mailbox and in the phone book, so at first glance things seem ordinary. Your eyes, crow, follow him trudging up the hot flowery sloped field toward a homemade merry-go-round. You fluff your feathers, make yourself momentarily bigger. You turn your head back to the old house. So typical. A Cape Cod. Light gray with white trim. Ell. Long porch. Anyone can see it was once an open porch because of the lathed columns behind the fog of screen and the scrollwork along the top.
Three connected shed ways off the ell once protected farmers from icy winds, rain, big snow, as the family made their way to and from the barn, which is now just a stone foundation, lopsided under where the tie-ups would have been. Birch trees are spoking out around one corner.
Bank of solar collectors across the house roof. Big and boxy. Made by kids.
The front “lawn” has nothing to draw year 2000 criticism. No leaning towers of tires or hubcaps. No bundles of used boards. No piles of rusty iron. No farm equipment. No tacky whirligigs. Though some nowadays might frown at the grass itself: sandy, seedy, weedy.
The driveway is rutty and rocky and bunched with plantain. It circles an ash tree the diameter of a small building. The leaves are thin, like the hair of an old man. Its shade is ghosty. A sign nailed to it reads OFFICE. It points at the house.
Fresh paint i
s in the air.
An old pickup truck is in the driveway. Chains and a gas can are in the bed and wiggly heat lines cover the hood because Gordon St. Onge has just arrived here from somewhere else. The field begins close to the house, immediately rising. A red smog of devil’s paintbrushes and the faded purple of vetch, a universe of daisies. Soft greens, tough greens, witch grass, clovers, nettle. And then the woods. And then the mountain, not a Kilimanjaro but it is so near and therefore big in the way a face gets big and hot when it comes to whisper in your ear. To the left and to the right are other mountains, technically foothills, blue in the humidity but intimate enough so you can see the character of the highest treetops.
This is the St. Onge property, nine hundred acres in the wooded hills of Egypt.
You, crow, know every secret of this rocky mean old land. You turn your head for another glimpse of the reporter’s red sports car, parked between the ash tree and the truck.
Now back to the action, the reporter and Gordon St. Onge, both having arrived in the shade of the merry-go-round’s roof, are not shaking hands. No nice hellos. The reporter wears a stripy dress, bracelets, shoulder bag, camera with strap, the weight of that other world outside this place. That which makes Gordon St. Onge’s undigested heavy noon meal freeze.
The merry-go-round is of monsters; wide-mouthed, horned, pop-eyed, some with human heads and spear-ended tails like Satan’s. No pretty polka-dot high-stepping horsies. The reporter, Ivy Morelli, is scribbling away on her lined pad after pushing her sunglasses to her head. Her hair is black—no, it’s purple, a tint, no doubt, created for urban interiors.
The man is Titan-sized, unlike the reporter, who is small, even for a woman.
In the lacing of one leather work boot, the man, this Gordon St. Onge, has gotten a daisy snagged. His brown hair is not long, not short, not touched up with a comb for this special occasion. Green work shirt. Sleeves rolled up. No visible tattoos. No wristwatch. Which might explain why he was twenty minutes late.
Does the reporter note the belt buckle? You, crow, have noticed that coppery blushy sun. Probably made by kids. It has the face you would expect for the sun, grandfatherly, toothless, eyes closed, too bright even for itself. And the dungarees. New. Oddly fitted. Also made by kids?
Reporter swipes at a deerfly.
Reporter writes across her pad: VIKING.
Then she adds: COULD EAT A WHOLE REINDEER.
Reporter whacks another fly. Bracelets bonk and clank. Her bowl-cut hair slides from side to side in an attractive way.
The man whom you, crow, know very well through many generations of crows—this man is uneasy today.
The woman, who is young, is also nervous. But stalwart. Even wise-ass, almost crowlike.
The two humans are now talking fast, overlapping, arguing.
You tip your head, enjoying.
Now the man steps around the woman, the wild grasses hissing and snapping around his pant legs. Keys on his belt loop jangle once. Squatting in the hot blue shade, he checks the oil and gas of the carousel generator. He yanks the cord hard, then harder. Again, harder. The engine sputters to a ragged hum. Another adjustment. The engine purrs. Now the lever. The circle of monsters creaks into motion. One of the heads is gold, like the domes of some state capitals.
Reflections of monsterific colors brighten and darken upon the reporter’s face, her small mouth even more clover-colored now than its formerly honest pink, the eyes in their dark lashes a cold no-feeling blue. Trying to look objective? She cocks her head. Her silky bowl of black but purple hair slides to one side, then back. She has stopped taking notes. Just staring.
She watches Gordon St. Onge’s work-smoodged hand on the lever, so familiar in its humanness but in another way new, and now she raises her eyes into and through the traffic of beasts. There is only one that actually rises up and down. It is yellow and black and gleaming as a hornet. It has wings. But not a hornet. It gives off an agonized lowing sound. And it farts. In its eye sockets are red Christmas twinkle lights. One begins to work now, after a long warming. Twink! Twink! Twink!
Beyond the slow, hot, miserable trudge of creatures, Gordon St. Onge’s face is clear. He has a mad-scientist aspect, one eye squinting, fluttering, blinking, almost in sync with the yellow and black creature’s Christmassy eyes. This man is suffocating in burning indecision. His beard is short, darker than his untidy hair. Chin of the beard graying, kingly. Brown-black mustache heavy. His crowded teeth are revealed as he wags his head and gives Ivy Morelli a goofy grin, not goofy and full of sport but goofy as in apology. Doglike.
You, crow, watch all this. You hear the man say, “You have to imagine your own calliope music.”
From this perch you, crow, can see over the treetops to the Settlement, its metal-roofed Quonset huts shaped like loaves of bread. Meanwhile, the main building, a massive horseshoe bending around a quadrangle of tall oaks and maples and wooden creatures, one taller than the buildings and painted Popsicle green, and there a silver spaceship, and there a purple cow. Dozens of cottages in both sun and shade, also in stirring colors. Pastures. Shingle mill and sawmills. Gardens, some childly, with too many scarecrows that don’t look scary. Some gardens are in effortless rows, the soil dark and loamy, sacred. Mountaintop ledge with windmills paralyzed by the dead heat.
And you can see kids.
But the reporter cannot. She will have to work hard to get that far. You, crow, in whose bony chest beats alert and fretful wisdom, understand the look in Gordon St. Onge’s eyes. Fear.
From a future time, Claire St. Onge speaks.
It eventually changed everything, his giving in to this reporter. She didn’t do the big feature immediately. After she discovered where the Settlement actually was and we were friendly—we were embracing—she settled into a mode of friendship for a few weeks, and Gordon, who can be either a huge downed tree blocking your road or a big puppy wagging and wagging to please, had become honest with her about everything. Our Bonny Loo will tell you that this reporter was devious. But I think she was confused. Friend or reporter? How could she choose while flabbergasted by Settlement life and Guillaume—Gordon—St. Onge?
July
Tonight Erika is again wearing the Persian cat T-shirt when he brings her another fifty dollars.
Sometimes he presents a whole batch of twenties. Once a hundred-dollar bill. And she says the same thing every time. “Sure you’re not dealing drugs?”
And Mickey sneers at this. “You see too much TV.”
He never tells her about the militia, nor about the jobs these guys arrange for him: mowing lawns, helping vacuum a swimming pool and “shock it,” being a chimneysweep’s helper, doing roofing, haying, working in the woods, babysitting, housepainting, feeding rabbits, and then, over on Promise Lake, crawling under the big summer camp porch of two out-of-state ladies to get a dead skunk. They were nice ladies. Chatty and huggy. They gave him root beer and an earful of advice. That’s where he got the hundred-dollar bill. One had a Southern accent. The other, Boston or something. They had an old well-kept Plymouth Duster, repainted gold. They were married once to two brothers. There was a lot of mention of “the Milwaukee days.” They wore black bathing suits, the one-piece kind. One suit was white dots on black. They wanted him to come back one weekend and meet their friend Millie, another old lady. He hardly talked the whole time, but somehow he liked them. He keeps wondering if they know that Stan Berry, whom they also fuss over, the guy who brought Mickey to them, is with a citizens’ militia. Even more officially than Mickey.
Now Erika says again, “Sure you aren’t dealin’ drugs?”
Whatever money he makes goes into Erika’s hand, except for buying cigarettes. He has tried to give up cigarettes, but he can’t. Where the drive for food is felt in the stomach and the drive for sex is a hot spot between the legs, the drive for a cigarette is felt in every cell. It is a hunger shaped exactly like Mickey inside Mickey, a flaming Mickey shape screaming, I need! I need!
And
so the summer is passing in this way: Jesse dying, Mickey providing. Erika and Mickey’s mother grateful. Everything costing a little more, Mickey’s brother Donnie working the Chain for just a little less. Jesse getting smaller, dying. Donnie getting smaller, Mickey getting bigger.
Mickey at home.
And Erika is always right where he knows he’ll find her, at home in one room or another, like Britta, his mother. Or in Erika’s case, out in the field rounding up the disoriented old retriever, Boy, or hanging out the wet clothes by the dead tree, clothespins in her strong teeth. But mostly these days Erika is curled up on the big bed upstairs, poor Jesse in the cradle of one arm, her eyes on the TV. Britta and Erika, home sweet home. They argue a lot, but gently. Little snippets of despair.
Upstairs, the little girls scheme and pretend to do the things they see on TV. If they bang about too much up there, Britta will take the broom and thonk the ceiling with the handle. Or Erika will if she’s downstairs by herself. This makes them quiet down awhile. There are so many children, including the children of neighbors and the daughter of Erika’s younger brother, Isabel. These extra children they look after on certain days of the week for no pay, just niceness, just the natural thing people do for one another. And on those days, on the couch, alone but kept within earshot and heart’s embrace, is the child Jesse. You never hear his powerful shrieks anymore. The pain medicine money is always just in the nick of time from Donnie or Mickey, the refills hand over fist, the little white pharmacy bags decorate every part of this old house.
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.
The School on Heart's Content Road Page 4