The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  “It’s to make it easy for old folks and wheelchairs and baby buggies,” Rex says evenly.

  The guy’s face softens. And his voice, very soft. “The last shall be first and the first shall be last. It’ll be God’s will.”

  “That’s right,” says Rex.

  Before the guy roams off to chat with other people, he gives Rex a piece of paper with his phone number on it and his name. Again. In case Rex misplaced it from when he gave it to him twice before. Then he pats the opposite side of his own chest and winks. “Keep your powder dry.”

  Rex says, “Yep. You too.”

  And then.

  A woman with a short version of a Cleopatra cut, graying, steps up onto one of the porches, followed by two other women, one blonde. The first woman wears something purple, and her eyes look from face to face to face, and she smiles. This is the Unitarian Universalist minister. And see that big burning thing sliding off to the west? That is the tired-out sun.

  Meanwhile, a procession moves toward the tiny permanent stage.

  It’s the one made for skits during warm-weather meals, the one inside the piazza off the kitchens. Two men carry a chair between them, and in this chair rides an old woman with a crisp new tightly curled snow-white perm, a great hooked nose, Indian-dark skin, eyes black behind her linty eyeglass lenses, her legs, long and swinging, dressed in trousers a ghosty shade of blue. She wears a winter sweater with a heavy cable pattern, and she waves limply to people as she is transported past, her smile good-humored and tolerant of all this they do.

  Walking along with the swaying chair and its bearers is an army of children, dressed in plastic helmets and feathers, tricorne hats, kepis, and robes, carrying their weapons: sticks, plastic swords, one plastic Uzi. Their faces, solemn. Military escort.

  Because Annie B has trouble sitting in chairs for long, a mattress has been arranged on this little stage, with a number of pretty pillows, quilts, and all manner of soft things. The men arrange her there in a semisitting position, and the women give her a patchwork lap quilt for her knees. She waves out to the people at both ends of the big piazza; they cheer and call out, “Happy birthday, Annie B!”

  And she nods and smiles.

  A young teen voice calls out, “Happy hundred years!”

  Annie nods, her head tipped to one side a little tremblingly.

  They all sing “Happy Birthday” and bring out the cake, a cake big enough to cover a sheet of plywood. It is bright red and for some reason shaped like a lobster.

  There are a couple of small speeches.

  There is the presentation of the story box, a box filled with story stones with the oral history of Annie’s life recorded in single words and phrases on each stone. Bev and Barbara explain this concept to many puzzled strangers, and there’s a demonstration where people who have written on the stones tell their stories: stories about Annie and stories told by Annie to them over the years, stories of a century of ironies and softened sorrows . . . and some stories that are very, very funny.

  Out on the quadrangle and in the fields and parking lot, down along the gravel road, word is passed of Annie B’s giant red cake and story box, and some say, “Isn’t that wonderful.”

  Meanwhile, what is Annie B thinking behind those eyes in their satchels of withery skin?

  It’s cold. They say it’s fall. Feels like January. A lot of people want to talk. But everyone whispers. They smile and they hug. That’s nice. I like the babies. The world is full of babies. They all look alike. Even those that they tell me are my great ones or great-great-great. They don’t walk well. They fall in the most comical ways. While everyone whispers. Everyone racing around, like Wee Willie Winkie.

  There’s another baby. I like that one. Where am I? Why is Judy here? That’s not Judy. Maybe that’s her daughter.

  Everyone is smiling, holding rocks. Duty. You always got duty. Even in the end, like me. You want to just sleep. But to make them happy, here I am.

  A young man stands smiling on one of the porches.

  He is watching them cut the big red cake. His billed cap reads SEA DOGS. He has fresh blond looks. (Yes, right, he is Kevin Moore, a government agent.) A few young women glance his way and wonder about him. It seems he is wondering why the cake is shaped like a lobster. He gestures at the two claws, the legs, and, yes, the eyes on sticks and smiles at one of the Settlement women, who laughs, and he seems to hear her words because he nods and laughs too, though it is hard to hear her words due to the commotion of running children, yakking adults, and an electric buggy whining along on the grass, just beyond the screen, giving rides to guests, one of these guests being the Unitarian Universalist minister with the graying Cleopatra haircut and purple shirt. And now a small white flat-faced curl-tailed very homely dog lifts his leg on somebody’s shoulder bag left slouched against a tree, a beige semisoft leather shoulder bag, maybe a camera bag. And out between the teeth of the grinning Tyrannosaurus rex (Settlement idea of a jungle gym), a child waves and the sun moves westward another significant notch.

  And so the cake is eaten.

  Wiped out, actually.

  Meanwhile.

  The musicians test their mikes in earnest. Golden stars of the late-day sun slip up and down the keys and buttons and front plates of the beautiful instruments. Leaves of every color of the soul seesaw softly downward through the cooling air. Around the shoes and boots of the musicians, a few leaves settle. A chicken on the stage pecks at leaves and shadows. Someone helps the chicken off the stage.

  And so.

  Before the music begins, Samantha Butler steps up to one of the microphones. She is, for the moment, wearing a black tricorne hat and a frozen smile. Before the crowd is done with applauding and cheering and hooting, Samantha too quickly has begun her announcement. Something about a “speaker” or “speech for her,” no one can tell for sure, “after the music is over. So don’t leave!” She salutes the crowd, which again cheers and applauds, whistles and shrieks. Samantha steps over wires, between two fiddlers, and disappears down the stage steps to the piazza.

  Jane Meserve stands as still as she can, just a few jiggles.

  She is hearing what the plan is as Bree tells it, the thing Jane will be doing tonight that is “of great importance.”

  “Are you scared?” Tamya Soucier asks, with big eyes.

  Jane laughs. “Why would anybody be afraid of importance?”

  Meanwhile, Mickey Gammon hangs around by one of the Quonset huts.

  A bunch of Settlement and town teenagers are there, smoking grass. Mickey is laughing at something someone just said, his eyes pink and a little popped from the stuff, and he notices the air is chilling and he looks straight up into the cloudless sky with its orangey cast of dying October sun and he is glad he is alive.

  Tumult and joy.

  As the chilling-down sky behind the near hill darkens, the music becomes the sun and all of life’s business. Not much slow dancing, but a lot of dancing that would please the Devil, who is also known to steal souls during sneezes. There are chains of figures, frenzied and giggling through their idea of the bunny hop, and some contra dancing too, lunging in and out of the tight jiggling mass of rock and rollers.

  And see there, Gordon St. Onge and the Unitarian Universalist minister (with the graying Cleopatra haircut), doing the jitterbug.

  At long last.

  One of the accordion guys—cowboy boots, dress pants, cowboy shirt of a slippery satiny cotton-candy pink, and grimy dark-blue billed cap that reads DAIGLE OIL across the front—speaks a greeting into the mike as the last plucks and wails and drum rolls finally die out around him.

  An uproarious applause replies.

  “Mercy! Have mercy on us!” he calls out in French-accented English, when he hears hoots of “Encore!” and “More!” from the darkly lighted faces on the packed Quad. “Mercy on us! We arrr going to find some ciderrr, rosin up t’ bows, and cool off t’sweat t’at boil us. We willl be back. T’ night is still young. It iss not even ni
ne o’clock!”

  More wild applause and whistles and happy shouts as the band members exit stage right down the little shaky steps to the piazza into the anonymous near-dark there.

  When the last spatters of applause fade, someone in the crowd yells, “Where is the Prophet! Talk to us, Gordon St. Onge!”

  A few screams, yips, cheers, and people calling out, “Prophet! Give us the word!” and “Have the Prophet speak!” and “Where is he?”

  “He’s over there!” calls someone else. “I see him! It’s him!”

  “Where?” the pink-shirt musician asks, having come back to one of the mikes.

  Another musician stands on the little temp stairs at one side of the actual porch stairs, smiling and shrugging.

  Pink-shirt musician speaks low into the mike. “Gordon St. Onge. Where are you? Get on up here, you!” He growls the rest: “And talk politics!”

  The crowd shrieks and whistles and claps, and various chants begin in different quarters—Yes! Yes! Yes! and Speak truth! Speak truth! Speak truth! and Revolution! Revolution! Revolution!—mixed in with spatterings of applause and happy howls.

  Seems Gordon is not out in the crowd. Seems no one has seen him in a while. Where is he?

  A long wait. Now oddly quiet. A lot of rustlings and murmurs. A shout. Some laughter. More rustly, mumbly quietness. Thumps and scratches from the tall speakers as the accordion player fondles the mike patiently. “Gordie. Your mother is waiting for you at the concession stand.”

  Big rocking laughter, cheers, applause, and whistles, and then, when Gordon is seen walking up the stage steps to the mike, the crowd moans happily, with chants of Truth! Truth! Truth! and applause, whistles, and cheers like never before.

  Gordon stands with his arms across his chest, the Viking-at-ease look, one eyebrow raised, far enough away from them all that most can’t see his alcohol-reddened eyes. His dark beard streaked with gray looks green on one side from a nearby glass candle globe. The opposite side of his green plaid shirt looks yellow and pink. Everything is a far-fetched dream this evening.

  The accordion player ambles away.

  Talk! Talk! Talk! the crowd calls. Truth! others scream.

  Gordon bows his head over the mike, adjusted for a much shorter man. His voice is soft, soft and sore-hoarse, worn out from the day’s thousand and one conversations, and yet the words tumble fast, run on, almost choking. “Are you all trying to say you are tired of losing everything your homes your families your dignity your jobs your independence your life-sustaining skills your hoped-for power to govern as the American people!?”

  The crowd now moans in a deep ugly way. And there are hisses and yeses.

  “What’s the matter?!!” Gordon calls to them. “You don’t believe politicians and respectable economists and other experts and so forth when they say everything is going to get better? Maybe you’ve even heard some of these people saying everything is good now! That you are crazy or something because you just think things seem kinda queer. Even the funky weather. It’s all just in your silly head, right? Media-approved economists say the economy is glowing! Okay, pal, to hell with the word economy. I don’t wanna hear how the economy is, I wanna hear how LIFE is, ’cause, pal, I ain’t in the ECONOMY, I’m in the Land of Life! That’s what you are thinking, right?!!!”

  The mob howls. And while Gordon waits it out, there are more spatterings of Truth! Truth! Truth! sweet and coaxing. Now, at a motion on his left, Gordon turns and sees Whitney standing beside him. She steps close and pushes something into his hands. She shouts something, but he can’t hear it. He assumes she is saying Put it on! because it’s his camo BDU shirt for Rex’s militia, and there is the wide woven green pistol belt with rows of metal-trimmed holes. He hesitates three beats, longer than he hesitated before taking hold of a stranger’s handless stump this morning. He looks back around down to the piazza where Rex’s face is, shadowy and unreadable. He knows Rex had nothing to do with Whitney bringing this shirt. Mr. Secret Hide-in-the-Shadows York.

  He thrusts an arm into the sleeve.

  Truth! Truth! Truth! the coaxers coax.

  With the shirt on, belt fastened with a twist, olive-green and black mountain lion on the shoulder declaring its place declaring BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA, the crowd goes nuts, shrieks and bellers, mixed with every possible human sound magnified by hundreds. And now, one voice somewhere near yells, “Give ’em hell!” another yells. “Kill ’em! Kill the president! Kill the governors! Blast ’em all!”

  Gordon waits it out, one hand on the mike, one hand raised to mean Quiet! but it has no effect. The noise goes on and on.

  But when the crowd has finally had enough of hearing itself and settles down, Gordon speaks softly and reasonably. “Good people. Good Maine people. Good neighbors. You are tired of hearing them tell you that our troubles are caused by welfare mums . . . gay people . . . poor city people . . . foreign people . . . or people who don’t work slavishly enough . . . people who complain . . . people who want good pay . . . union people . . . unemployed people . . . disabled people . . . left-wing people . . . right-wing people . . . people with funny hair and gold rings piercing their eyelids—” Snickers and laughs drown out the next few words.

  On the piazza behind the temporary stage, Whitney and her sisters Michelle and Margo stand arm in arm in darkness lighted only by the weed-scented candles. Whitney is thinking.

  In some ways, I always knew I’d see him like this. In my night dreams and in my daydreams there’s been this flash of the way he looks to me now, from the back, facing a jillion upturned shadowy faces, and him whispering words of love. No, it is not politics, it is love. Because my father has always been just twisted up in love and yearning.

  Gordon’s voice hops from its whisper, breaks into a run.

  “Wondering what all those Washington senators and their ilk are trying to hide? Because, man, they are hiding a lot. Yes, conspiring. Yes! The controlled media asks, ‘What’s the matter with people?’ You are all to blame!” He punches himself in his left bicep. Stomps one boot. “Bad.” And then he grabs the mike with both hands and hollers, “Don’t you know it’s not nice to complain? Or mistrust them! They tell us that it is unpatriotic to complain and mistrust; they say America, love it or leave it; remember that one, brother? Don’t talk back now! It’s the New World Order. Big-finance boys want order? They want us to shut up! To work! Work, brother, work! Work, sister, work! Little child in school, you gotta work: get As, get honors! Be a more honored child than your neighbor. Work, little child, work! And shut up! Jump through those flaming hoops! Work! Shop! Shop! Shop! CONSUME! And if you can’t, join the government’s army! Then die! die! die! DIIIIIE!” He stops and waits while the crowd makes a truly ugly unified deep growl.

  And while this lasts and lasts, Kirky Martin and Jane Meserve appear, lighted by eerie flickering colors, one on either side of Gordon, Jane wearing a black tricorne hat and Kirky bareheaded. They unfurl flags, one the flag of the True Maine Militia, the other the Stars and Stripes. Now the crowd is whistling, yowling, sounds of pride and approval, a whirl of applause, and a few groans.

  Secret Agent Jane worries.

  My hair is a mess. And my sexy outfit doesn’t show because Bree and Whitney said I had to wear this jacket of the army kind. But hundreds of people are looking at me and I am part of this importance. You would not believe how many people. So: famous, important, and horridable looking. Tsk.

  Being bad.

  Gordon spies an open bottle of beer behind the drummer’s seat. He dips down and snatches it up. He grips the bottle close to his chest, returns to the mike, looks straight down at the top of it, and says, “We love shopping, right? Fun, right? Lotta choices, right? But tell me—brother, sister, little child—what will shopping mean to you when a loaf of bread is ten dollars, your pay is three dollars a day, and gasoline to get to work and to the store is eight dollars a gallon, and your payroll tax comes to half your pay, and there’s no more Social Security, just something
funny and funky? You are thinking, Oh, Gordie, that won’t happen; they won’t let that happen.” He draws something up from his throat, something thick, and spits on the floor of the stage. And while the crowd screams and hoots and applauds, Gordon tips up the beer and works about half the warm contents down his throat, the crowd happily condoning, Yesssss! Can he do anything they would not condone?

  He growls into the mike, “But you see, these financiers manipulate the dollar and the markets. They make it happen! But gee, we’re bad.”

  Applause. Whistles. Hoots. Agreement.

  Now from a nearby folded chair, he snatches a True Maine Militia song sheet and rolls it up. Twists each end to make it look like a huge joint. He pretends to toke it up over the open top of a candle globe and, while the audience roars and whistles and applauds, he pretends to smoke it. He booms into the mike, “EVERYTHING WE ORDINARY PEOPLE DO IS BAD! Why?”

  He waits.

  He asks again, “Why is it everything we do is bad? And even illegal?”

  “Control, sir!” Kirky hollers out in military fashion.

  Gordon swings around to Kirky and grins. Then speaks into the mike. “Kirky says it is control.”

  Maple leaves seesaw between the stage and the dark zone of hundreds of faces.

  Gordon plays one-handedly with his dark mustache, sort of grooming, mighty “joint” and beer bottle dangling from the fingers of the other hand. Then he leans toward the mike and makes the big speakers thump and scrape with the effects of his roughened palm. “America is a mean place. Time to move on. We Mainers need to go home. We have forgotten home.”

  On the dusky candlelit piazza next to the stage.

  The friendly militia guy with sleeves ripped off his BDU shirt over a black T-shirt, a proper businessman’s shave, and a fondness for dynamite (yes, he’s an agency operative) comes to stand almost shoulder to shoulder with Rex. Much of the Settlement family is bunched around in here, basically women and teen girls keeping an eye on their leader, on the stage.