The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  “Yes, you said that. It probably is.”

  “They’re getting us ready for the future.”

  She leans her right ear against her hand.

  He goes on. “They want us Americans to get used to their fucking with our neighbors. One excuse or another. One American at a time!” He leans back and looks down into the shadows of Jane’s eyes burning behind the two pink heart-shaped lenses in white plastic frames. He looks around the room, sees that the deputy is watching the hall through the open door. Now in a soft voice, “I wish you hadn’t heard about the house. Not good for the spirit.”

  Lisa laughs. “Fascist prototypes are good for the spirit?”

  Gordon bows his head. Doggy expression, full of apology. “Forgive me.”

  “Dad warned me.” She blushes. Her eyes show tears. Small smile. “He said—” She smiles quite crookedly, doesn’t go on.

  Secret Agent Jane’s patience wears thin.

  This what they are saying has to stop. I sigh loud like wind. Woooooofsh. I ask, “Mum, what’s the name of the farm Cherish is at?” This is because Mum has said Cherish is at a farm when I was here with Claire.

  Mum looks at me. Mum looks at Gordie. Mum looks at me. Fast eyes. Back and forth. Back and forth. She says, “That farm doesn’t have a name. Real farms don’t have those cute names. Only city people who have fixed-up farmhouses give them names. This is just a plain ol’ farm with real farmers and real tractors and real mooing cows. You know how Cherish loved to see cows along the road. And you know when she was happy how she made that little mooey noise and that little butting-head thing like she was pretending to be a cow? She really was into cows. A regular cowgirl.”

  I watch Mum’s lips being very thin on this lie she’s saying. And her voice. It isn’t her voice. It’s her special new voice for lies.

  Gordie reaches out and gives my arm a squeeze.

  Mum bows her head for one second. Gordie is very quiet. Mum looks up again.

  I say, “Mum, when are you coming home?”

  She says, “Soon.”

  “When’s that? Soon. What is soon?”

  “I don’t know, Jane.” Her voice is faded and croakish.

  I say, “Talk to the man about a visit.”

  “What man?”

  “Kane.”

  “How did you know his name is Kane?” She looks quickish over to Gordie, then slowish back to my heart-shaped eyes.

  I make a face. “You said his name was Kane.”

  “Okay. I’ll ask him.”

  “Ask him now.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Call him.” I glance over at the door, which is a hallway that goes to the other hallway where the phone for money is. There is always somebody using it when we go by.

  “I’ll call him later.”

  “Call him now so you can go with us now.”

  “I can’t.” She closes her eyes.

  “How come?”

  “I can’t, Jane.”

  “How come?”

  “Stop it, Jane.”

  “Why? Why can’t you come home?” I am almost crying, on the very very edge. I will be crying soon.

  “Jane, I can’t come home. The government won’t let me.”

  I scream, “The government is MEAN!”

  “Yes! Yes it is! It is FUCKING TERRIBLE!!!!” Mum starts screaming, jumps up, and hurries around the table. She holds me and I’m holding her, both screaming, both holding, both hugging and hopping and screaming. And the HUGE copguard with the shaved head and inner-tube middle is standing up so he can do something horridable to Mum and me, his eyes right on us, his mouth moving, but Gordie holds Mum’s head back against his shirt and she hugs him, and I run out of the room, out into the giant hall screaming and there are cops everywheres with eyes as dead and metal as springs and fenders, more movie-ish than Gordie’s scary eye. And they all have extra shiny belts. Brown shirts. One gets me by the arm, tells me not to cry, tells me everything is going to be okay. He pretends to be very nice but I can see into his BRAINS that he would cook you or burn you if he wanted to. And he would love to KILL your dog. I stop screaming. I am very polite. I fix my secret glasses straighter ’cause they are tipped and I am very polite. I pretend to be polite. It’s all an act.

  Here’s Gordie coming and he’s telling me it’s time to go home.

  Mum is screaming and sobbish somewhere behind the doors. I run toward her doors, but Gordie grabs me and holds me hard against his middle, his shirt and his buckle, which is a sun face and pokes me a little. He rubs my hair and tells me Mum will feel better in a few minutes.

  I see the legs of cops around the edges. But I don’t look at them. I pretend I don’t know cops are there. I say to Gordie in a plain voice for all cops to hear, “Do they have Cherish’s body here?” I look up at Gordie’s face and his eyes the one that blinks funny and the other one that is regular . . . both eyeballs look into my heart-shaped glasses. He knows I have the power.

  Mickey and the militia captain visit the residence of Willie Lancaster.

  Fairly new pickup eases along to a stop at the road’s edge in front of the dooryard of the Lancasters.

  Truck door opens and Rex York steps out, square-shouldered with that military bearing he has always had, long before the militia movement came to give it reason to be, and long before Vietnam.

  From the passenger’s side, Mickey Gammon drops to the weedy shoulder, sticking a cigarette lighter to a Lucky. He smokes with his head down, scuffing the heel of one work boot in the sand, boring out a shape there, like three bananas. Sand art.

  From a dog door, five small, white, flat-faced, curl-tailed, ugly, spotted-in-various-ways dogs with open mouths and lolling dripping tongues hustle out to inspect pant legs, then on to the visitors’ truck to do tires and hubcaps. A couple of them bark their reedy small-dog barks, but just for a moment. Mostly they are silent. All business.

  Right next to the road is a slumped 1972 Dodge pickup. Paint was red once. Now it is orangey. A mildewy vinyl cap over the bed. All four tires rotted and flat. Stuff in the cab. Stuff stuffed in the inside of the capped bed. Stuff piled on top of the cap and the whole shebang carpeted with russet pine spills. Hornets go in and out, in and out, through a break in the aluminum and Plexiglas flap. Skinny but hale oak saplings have yearned up through some of the stuff piled behind it. A registered truck parked next to it has a bumper sticker. It says TRY AND TAKE MY GUNS AND I’LL USE THEM ON YOU and shows the barrel of a handgun pointed at the observer. A small oval seal on the window glass reads THIS VEHICLE PROTECTED BY SMITH & WESSON.

  Mickey smokes hard, trying to make it quick but complete. Rex has gone on ahead, wanting to get this job done, some of the white dogs hustling along with him, serving as escorts. But now Rex turns and looks back to see how far behind he’s left Mickey. Everything Mickey tries to take in looks hazy and blurred. Humidity is blinding. And the smells of pine and someone’s barbecue are mated together in each droplet. Mickey is running his fingers over a really new and costly-looking road-going-sized wheeled chipper. Warm to his fingers as a bathtub. Warm as piss. Warm as his mother Britta’s hand on his arm would be, if she were the kind of person who would touch you. Warm as Rex’s mother’s cookies. Warm as Rex’s fake leather couch when somebody has sat in it before you. Warm. He leaves his fingers there a good few seconds. The fingers of the other hand poke the Lucky back in his teeth. He sees up ahead, on the walkway where Rex stands, there are two house trailers, one new model and very grand, one a smaller, old-timey, rounded model. These are positioned together so the doors are only a few feet apart, with an elegant latticework archway and flagstone path between. This area is swept and fussed over, nothing stored or heaped here.

  As Mickey steps away from the chipper, forcing smoke out through his teeth, he hears a screamed word, “ROAST!!!!!” coming from the larger trailer. It jumps him. But now there is brotherly and pleasant laughter, several men. Mickey almost smiles along. But Rex is not smiling along.
Mickey takes a few steps toward Rex. But he needs to finish his smoke. So he is, yes, ass-dragging, as the saying goes.

  Now he squintily studies something else, something set off there to the right, a big shingled workshop with a surprisingly fancy window with a fan-shaped thing over the top, something that was part of a courthouse or old customs building or some such fine place. Maybe a judge’s house. Or a doctor’s. A yellow sign beside the door reads FIRE THE BOSS. And up above the pine trees, above everything, impressive as hell, an elaborate short-wave radio antenna. As Mickey’s eyes rise and then slide back down the tower with its guy wires in six directions, he looks to Rex and Rex is looking at him and Rex’s face has absolutely no expression. Just sunglasses. Mustache. Straight closed mouth. Chin up. And the Adam’s apple doesn’t move. He’s like a picture.

  As Mickey walks and smokes and looks back at the doorway to the shop, he admires an old American flag on an angled pole. The ornate tip of this pole almost touches the bark of a massive pine. At least a dozen big ol’ white pines crowd around here. Straight as man-made pillars. No limbs until you get wayyyy up there, while all the top limbs are raised up like triumphant muscley arms into the white-hot almost fleshy sky above, while below, the Lancasters live shadowy and shady. And hot. Hot is everywhere.

  Yeah, except for the short-wave antenna, trees rule here. Everything snug and close. A lot of stuff heaped against the side of the shop. Some would call it junk. But indeedy it is not. It is the stuff of purpose and value and strategy. Mickey smacks a mosquito. Fewer mosquitoes in heat. But nowhere, no time, are there no mosquitoes.

  The dogs really like Rex, staring up at him in an admiring way. They know Rex. He’s no stranger here. But Rex has no squeaky doggy talk for them. No snacks. Not even recognition. He is looking only at Mickey. Trying to hurry Mickey.

  Note that there are no doghouses. No ropes or chains for the necks of dogs. Nothing here in the lives of Lancasters is caged. Willie Lancaster’s worst fear, they say, is the cage. Makes news of Willie in the Cumberland county jail about three weeks ago most interesting.

  Lotta company here today in the shady shadows of the Lancaster residence. A logging rig with its vast high empty bed and clam spread open across the end, chains limp against the stakes, parked at a mean slant inside the road’s ferny shoulder, almost touching the stone wall. DICK O’BRIEN / LOGGING & PULP on the doors, Winchester in the rack.

  All over the rooty soft parking area beyond the shop are cars and trucks and one low-slung stripped-down Harley. This explains the barbecue aroma perhaps? Lotta Lancasters here in Oxford County. And other related families. Family with a capital F.

  Mickey breathes in the cookout smell as he breathes out the last of his smoke, almost choking, now a few steps closer to Rex and the door of the trailer and the infamous Willie Lancaster, who Mickey suspects is a person he is not likely to feel warm and fuzzy about.

  Warm and fuzzy, no. But hot. And hotter.

  The barbecue smell is definitely coming from the backyard. Another much deeper trellis arch and flagstone walk is how you find your way to the backyard. And see there, a third fancy trellis walkway, which takes you to the front door of the house of Dee Dee and Louis and Cannonball St. Onge, a few yards behind the shop.

  What kind of house is that thing? Tall. Pink. Puts you a little bit to mind of a rocket. Or, yeah, a big prick. Five stories. Yes, five stories. On the first floor, a lot of doors. A door on each of the three visible sides. None of the doors match. Why so many doors? Such a narrow house, all these doors must enter the same small first-floor room. And the windows don’t match. One is a window of colored glass squares, a proud thing to own. But a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot house of five stories? A lotta ladders and hatches, perhaps. Definitely a code man’s nightmare. Has the code man been in the Lancaster vicinity much these days?

  Near one of the tall house’s side doors, snug between two massive spires of pine, is Louis St. Onge’s little beat-ta-shit flatbed Datsun. But Mickey doesn’t know Louis (or Lou-EE) St. Onge yet, Louis being a Settlement regular but also son-in-law to Willie Lancaster.

  A lot of dog turds around. And heaped against the intersection of trellis archways are several beer bottles and beer cans. Worth five cents each at the redemption. The Lancasters are not drinkers, so these have been brought by guests.

  “THAT’S A CROCK!!!!!!” screams the same voice as before. No laughter this time, but much hollering. Sounds like a fight. Now a sound like a stick on hollow wood. And there’s TV laughter. Mickey catches up with Rex. Rex is not interested in the barbecue out back. Rex is intent on reaching the source of the screaming and hollering. He turns back again to look into Mickey’s face, then jerks a thumb at a glossy one-ton dump truck parked close to the shop. It is the newest rig in the yard, a pretty sight. Printed on the doors: WILLIAM LANCASTER TREE WORK & LANDSCAPING 625-8693.

  Rex says gruffly, “Like I say, this guy’s a lot more focused than he will seem to be. He’s smart, and he’s a problem.”

  Mickey has spent his entire life with quiet people. He is used to quiet people, the quieter the better.

  Now, as they step up on the low stone step, a white flat-faced dog from inside pushes up the dog door, which is rigged in the aluminum combination screen-storm human door. He doesn’t bark. He just stands there, panting miserably, the little door resting on his back in its flipped-up position. He gazes past Rex’s black military boots toward the other dogs, who are cruising casually around the yard.

  Now inside the trailer, a wild thumping and a squeally but hoarse totally sickening laughter. Refrigerator door sucks shut. The little dog jerks backward, letting the flap swing closed.

  Mickey looks down directly at his own feet as he crushes the last of his cigarette with his fingers, sees the doorstep is pretty jazzy. Cement with all kinds of stuff set in it. Pieces of flagstone, tiny colored tiles, the sides of old-style painted heavy glass soda bottles that say CASCO and have a ship scene in red and white. Rex pulls off his sunglasses and folds them meticulously, into the pocket. He looks into Mickey’s eyes. Anyone might think these two were father and son. Maybe even Mickey has begun to think this.

  Saving the republic.

  Mickey stoops to pat one of the dogs. He thinks how it is, when a dog is panting like this, it looks like a nice smile.

  Rex doesn’t knock. He just holds the door wide open for Mickey to step ahead of him.

  The place has lost its vinyl new-mobile-home smell. It smells like life.

  Kitchen of this trailer is central. Living room on the right is raised with a little wrought-iron rail as a partial partition. Linoleum down in the kitchen is made to look like bricks. Carpet up there in the living room. Yellow-gold. Dirty. Not filthy, just dirty: walked on. A guy stands on this higher level against the wrought-iron rail, nice and high above everyone else down here in the kitchen. He stares in the other direction from the kitchen, however, because he is watching the TV, which shows an old black-and-white movie tinged green. He’s a guy in his midsixties, very thin hair, only three or four teeth in front, small head but large thick-lobed ears, red T-shirt faded to splotchy pink, rugged arms, dark work pants splotched with the pine pitch and grease of his life’s work. He doesn’t look as hot as everyone else. He looks cool. He makes a foolish face at one of the dogs who runs up to him now. Says “Wuf” to this dog. This is not Willie Lancaster, this is Dick O’Brien . . . guest.

  Two small brown-haired girls, who have just come in behind Rex and Mickey, are now pulling folded-up paper grocery bags from where they’ve been stuffed behind the refrigerator. They handle the bags in a dainty way, some mission of great honor under way.

  “Three for you,” one tells the other.

  Judy Lancaster, Willie’s wife, comes in from outside carrying a plastic mustard bottle. She wears a curly frizzy perm. A short, square, firm-looking gal with a T-shirt that reads GIVE ME ALL THE CHOCOLATE I WANT AND NOBODY GETS HURT. She wears polka-dot shorts. Her feet are bare. Her legs are smooth and very whi
te. Her eyes are round, sleepy-looking, and nearly lashless. This might be considered unattractive elsewhere, but in Egypt at least a hundred people have these eyes. The Gallant eyes.

  A very young, very tall skinny guy, not even twenty yet, standing with slumped narrow shoulders, arms folded across his narrow chest in a protective manner, steps away from the cupboard Judy needs to get to. His plastic-billed cap reads OXFORD COUNTY POWDER BURNERS. His small face goes perfectly with his small shoulders, the head and shoulders of a little five-foot-two guy with a body stretched to give him the height of six-foot-three. His black hair is parted in the middle and held back in a slim ponytail with a red elastic. He has really nice hair. But all you can see from the trailer doorway is the billed cap, which is enormous and basketlike on top of that small face. His eyes are large and green-gold-brown with dark lashes and dark, perfectly formed eyebrows. Long neck, like actresses all wish they had, but for the Adam’s apple, which you can’t see because of the long scraggly thin beard that touches the front of his mostly unbuttoned scarlet chamois shirt. His chest is knotty-looking and not much for hair. One dark nipple shows. This, too, is not Willie Lancaster. This is Louis St. Onge, Willie’s son-in-law. He is from Aroostook County and lives in the tall pink rocket-shaped house a few yards away. He often wears a cowboy-looking holstered revolver. As you may have guessed, he is a distant cousin of Gordon St. Onge, founding father of the St. Onge Settlement. And he’s a Settlement regular, as a few others from around town are, but also a Lancaster regular . . . so, yuh, he stays busy.

  Wearing a limp black Harley Davidson T-shirt with sleeves ripped off is a stout six-foot-four guy with a clean shave and double chins, jeans and engineer boots. This is Artie Bean, not Artie from the militia; there’s a lot of Arties in Egypt. He and a shorter somewhat younger guy drink from returnable cans, one beer, one orange soda. Side by side, they both lean back against the stove and counter. The younger guy is also rather heavyset, with breasts and a plenteous girth, wearing a baby-blue muscle shirt with dark blue piping, red sport shorts with white trim, dirty sneakers, no socks. This short guy is not Willie Lancaster. This is Willie’s son, Danny. Danny works with his father in the landscaping and tree-work biz. Danny hates tree work and fixing cute yards, that kinda thing. He loves computers. And movies. And games. And reading. And eating. And people. And fun.