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
Mickey knows the way to this house by heart now. He even knows the shortcut through the rest area off the highway, through a narrow stand of planted white pines called “research area” by a paper company, and then another quarter mile across a lumpy, flowery fallow field. He knows Rex has been called Rex all his life. Rex means king, so of course the guy likes it. Unlike Mickey, which Mickey sometimes despairs over, it being the name of a mouse.
With each visit, Mickey knows more about the Border Mountain Militia and other militias across the country. And yet, so much isn’t told. Somehow it doesn’t seem secret, as in top secret, but more or less things Rex can’t or won’t express, things to do with fear and anger and shame, things to do with the ways evil power can be something else besides a foreign army, something you can’t kill.
Rex has told him that the Border Mountain Militia is composed of four hundred members, although Mickey has met only fifteen and heard mention of the names of six or so more. Rex’s computer, in the corner of a small bedless bedroom upstairs, glows an agitated bright blue.
Rex has said Mickey can be a full member after he checks him out a little more. This is something above and beyond the already seeand-record-everything gaze of Rex’s eyes. Mickey once asked, “You mean school records?” and Rex said, without a hitch, “I do not mean school records.”
Mickey knows he doesn’t mean credit check, and Mickey doubts there’s a Michael Daniel Gammon FBI file, and how would Rex have access to it anyway? He keeps trying to figure what Rex could be checking out. Whatever it is, it feels kind of nice.
This meeting has only drawn a few members, which Rex
says is due to its being summer. Although today is another dark and steamy downpour. The ceilings are low here, and in the kitchen a coil of flypaper has one fly on it. It is Saturday, so Rex’s brother’s kids are in and out. Rex’s brother Bob lives in a ranch house on the other side of the field. Rex says his brother is not into the Patriot Movement. Rex hints that his brother is a weird character, not to be trusted. Over time this summer, it is revealed to Mickey that Rex’s brother is, yes, a schoolteacher. Mickey feels a bond with Rex in their common disaffection for brother Bob.
At today’s meeting, they are talking about the terrain of the White Mountain foothills here as compared with Aroostook and Bangor area highlands and the relatively flat southern Maine coast. Topographical maps are in a loose floppy pile on the foot hassock and much of the rug. Then somebody brings up the subject of radio transmitters, and a guy named Dave goes out to his vehicle for lists of data he keeps on shortwave frequencies and installation and everything one needs to know about shortwave.
There is some mention of Willie Lancaster at this point, a member who was in jail last week for an hour or so. Rex is grim about the subject of Willie Lancaster, even though Willie Lancaster has a pretty good shortwave setup and is planning big things with it. So the conversation about Willie Lancaster begins to trickle off under the weight of Rex’s steely, pale, disapproving eyes.
Rex’s La-Z-Boy is not in its TV-news-watching position. He is sitting on the edge, footrest folded down, his boots flat on the floor, a palm on one thigh, forearm on the other, squinting at the nearest map. He wears a short-sleeved camo shirt with an embroidered patch on the left sleeve that features the snarling mountain lion and around it the crescent of letters, BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA. The rest of his uniform is a pair of newish jeans and, of course, his military boots. No cap.
Meanwhile, Rex’s daughter. Mickey’s only seen her once, except for her graduation picture, which he glances at from time to time. The time he actually saw her, she had been taking a nap and came out the door from the closed attic stairs, her face puffy and blinky. She was wearing a big loose flannel shirt with no pants, maybe short shorts or a bathing suit, but you couldn’t really tell. The shirt was just a dumb red and blue and cream plaid. She was hugging herself, acting goose bumpy and looking around at the faces of the gathered militiamen like they were all a little bit funny. She didn’t look much at Mickey. But she tossed a scrunched-up Kleenex in the face of a young guy with a soft mustache who was almost asleep on the couch. She didn’t turn to look at Rex when she asked, “Dad, where’s the phone book?”
And Rex said, “Must be upstairs. In the computer room.”
And then she rolled her eyes in exaggerated despair, and tsked and said, “Jeepers, Bumpa. Nooga putee-way, you bad again, Bumpa.” This a special baby language she and her old man share? Mickey doesn’t dare look at any of the militiamen’s faces now. He looks at his hands. He is thinking how he has heard her name spoken a few times but can never be sure if it’s Glory or Gloria. Her hair is long enough to reach the backs of her pretty, nice knees. Auburn. Thick. Ripply. And . . . and . . . awesome. She is frighteningly beautiful, even without makeup, even though her brows and lashes are light and she’s freckled thickly. Worse than just beautiful. She’s teasy. Mickey supposes that Glory (or Gloria) doesn’t lose much sleep over Special Forces, United Nations, and “Socialists in the White House.”
No sign of her today.
Whenever Mickey stands up, to get one of Rex’s mother’s cookies, or to head for the bathroom again to piss out his black coffee, or to smoke on the glassed-in porch, he will see through this or that window two Herefords standing thickset in the downpour, chewing cud, eyes shut. These are the cattle Rex and his brother, Bob, share the raising of and then they share the meat. This leads Mickey to believe that Rex and Bob are at least on speaking terms, if not politically attuned.
Mickey is not the only teenager at this meeting. There’s Ben, maybe eighteen or nineteen, the guy Rex’s daughter bopped with the balled-up Kleenex, there in the deep fake-leather couch again, looking sleepy, like he does at every meeting. This time he sits between two big guys. One wears a tank-type muscle shirt and his trucking company advertisement cap; the other wears summer-weight biker regalia, denim sleeveless vest, tattoos, and a small earring. The sleepy boy’s mustache is nothing like theirs, just a little red-blond splutter. But he wears a camo shirt with an arm patch just like Rex’s.
Also, there’s a kid named Thad who is a six-foot-one fourteen-year-old with a massive chest, massive in breadth and frame, and massive in extra flesh. Breasts point against his pearl gray knit shirt as he stands slouched against the kitchen doorway. So studious-looking, with his tortoiseshell glasses and feathered hair. Thad has a relationship with Rex’s mother’s masterpiece cookie pile. His crunching and chomping demolishes the stack in his hand within the time it takes Dave to unfold another map.
Mickey has a seat, a kitchen chair, set between the fake leather couch and a long blond table with a sewing machine on it. But several guys are squatted or leaning against other doorframes or walls. Not enough chairs. And now a couple of late arrivals, so there’s more standing and squatting.
Not many guys here are in their twenties, and not many are geezers. Mostly Vietnam-age guys, late forties, early fifties. One of them is skin and bones and wheezing loudly, seems to be dying. His eyes, with no eyebrows above, are ghosty and deep. Then there is the hefty, high-voiced, cheerful sea-captain-beard guy, Artie, whom Mickey also met that day at the pit. His white hair is in a monkish ring around a bald spot, quite pink. Red suspenders over a white T-shirt. And like the boy Thad, he has breasts.
One guy Mickey can never warm to is Doc, a really hard-assed guy who also wears a camo shirt with an arm patch. Although the word God comes up at all meetings in a rather rote fashion, this guy speaks the word God like you or I would say the words club or guillotine. Mickey fears this guy worse than Mr. Carney and his henchmen at the high school. Probably because back last spring Mickey had surmised it was only a matter of time before he’d walk out of that school scene forever. But here, he can’t imagine his future without the militia. It is everything.
August
The inevitably leaky press.
Gordon is working here in the largest Quonset hut with his son Cory. Tall, imperious-looking Cory St. Onge (although he is not in actual spirit imperious). A lament in his black eyes (though he is a fairly contented sort), Cory of the immense shoulders and back (like Gordon), is noticeably Passamaquoddy. Almost fifteen years old. Nothing like his father in the need to blab, no crooked smile, no twitching eye and cheek, no awkward charisma. Just a boy, ordinary as winter.
The rest of the furniture-cabinet-making crew are all and about as well.
In through the hum of lathes, the screech of saws, and drifting sweet light, and sweet dusty air strides a messenger. None of his children call him Dad or Father or Papa or any of that. Like all the rest, she—the messenger—calls him Gordie. She is his child by Claire’s cousin Leona, and a sister to Cory. Her name is Andrea St. Onge, the only one who has turned out to look so completely Passamaquoddy, not so much like a Frenchman, an Italian, or a folk of the shamrock (Gordon’s side). No, nothing like Gordon—except her stature, long arms, long body, and easy gait. And some of her squinty smiles. She is accompanied by two small spotty white dogs who often hang out here and now waste no time in wetting down the legs of the equipment and lower shelves. Three angry men chase the dogs out.
Andrea is not quite seven. Yes, tall. Short china-doll haircut, like her mother’s; long Settlement-made skirt of red. Baggy black Settlement-made T-shirt. Settlement-made moccasin sneakers. She is graceful and tiptoeish, bringing this “message.” Just back from visiting an old Settlement man in the hospital, some doctor appointments, windshield leafleting, and other Settlement-style gang-style missions, all made possible by one van trip out into the world.
Gordon is slipping off his safety glasses, sees in her hands a newspaper
folded in a careful odd way. She places it in his hands. She doesn’t leave until she’s nuzzled into his shirt, found the solidness of his ribs, and patted his back comfortingly. “It’s the lady in there who wrote something . . . about us. See the folded part? That’s where it is. Okay?”
“Yep.”
She leaves, looking neither left nor right, having important business elsewhere.
He walks quickly to the passageway that leads to the other half of the building, a narrow passageway with deep shelves and cardboard boxes and tools and “cultch” and not much light. He squats there under the little dim yellow bulb like a wounded animal, safety glasses still on his head, and reads what Ivy Morelli has written, although she had sworn she would not go ahead with the Settlement story. Quite a spread. Pictures. A lot of pictures. And, yes, a lot of words. He reads each word and the punctuation and the spaces between and the shapes of the columns and the feel of the newsprint against his thumbs.
“Betrayed,” he says to himself with a little snort, and holds his face awhile, lids shut, seeing Ivy’s blue eyes, the set of her small pointy-lipped clover-color mouth, the stalwart shape of her body, and, of course, her raffish laugh. How is it that when you do right by some it feels wrong to others? What now? What will this media “coverage” bring to his beloved family?
Mickey at Bean’s Variety.
He came in for the Eskimo Pie, which is frosty cold in his hand. He is too young by law to buy cigarettes, even though he’s low on them. He gets them through Matt Ackers, part of the Mr. Carney fan club he met at school here in Maine. Ha-ha. Like Mickey was Mr. Carney’s total biggest fan. Ha-ha. In Mass there’d been three friends who kept him in supply. Now there is only Matt, through Matt’s brother, the all-powerful Dom, who is at least thirty. Lots of cracks in the face, like the north side of a house. Fortunately, no chain of people is needed to buy an Eskimo Pie.
The School on Heart's Content Road Page 5