And, yes, this dynamite guy sure does love to get into Rex’s space. Though this time, he doesn’t have that Wizard-of-Oz lion laugh and there’s no trying to outshout the din of the lusty crowd.
He sees that Rex has his head cocked, sort of, listening for all he’s worth to the words and the rustles coming from the gigantic nearby speakers.
Meanwhile, from the stage floor, Gordon smiles at the crowd.
He fussily sets down the bottle and “joint.” Snickers and tee-hees float forth. Gordon takes the mike, stand and all, into both hands as if to balance himself. Belching beerily, he asks, “Say, what is globalism?”
Answers from near and far are scrambled, overlapped, squeaked and squealed, roared.
Gordon smiles broadly. “Well.”
More offerings, some clear, all enthusiastic. Cackles and cheers. Having fun.
Gordon squints at the mike. “Globalism is one civilization. Like a net around an orange.” Shakes his head. “Civilizations al . . . ways . . . go . . . down. ALWAYS. Like a hornet’s nest, it has its season.” Closes his eyes. “But the Sumerians and Mayans, Incas and Romans were not in a global net. Frontiers were left between those collapsing civilizations, which had committed suicide by wrecking their soils, cutting every tree.”
He is now giving the crowd a sickly smile.
“No frontiers left now. Genocide and relocations, sure. But no fresh unspoiled green vistas to trudge or sail to. Sorry.” He sighs. He digs into the tightness of his pistol-less pistol belt. He grinds his teeth, softly, privately. “THE PLANET EARTH, OUR ROCK, IS DYING OF SUCCESS!”
Groans answer him. Some light applause shows they are with him. Also some whistles. He likes the groans best. More fitting.
Sorrowfully and deeply, he goes on. “Success. It’s the thing modern schools tell us to march toward, isn’t it? But, my brother, my sister, the more of that success you have, the better trained and the less human you are. You imitate the system, so now you are just a little piece of something . . . something totally without a mind! Pet! Livestock! But you don’t even shit in your stall! You are just a knee-jerk lever of the big grid!”
Applause like thunder.
He waits. Then, before it even subsides, he shouts, “Man . . . I . . . want . . . to . . . get . . . back . . . home!” He steps back and wags his head sheepishly as the applause swoops down, crackling and gusting in its returned thunder. A few moos and woofs.
Gordon laughs. A merry moment.
Mickey stands with Butch Martin and another Settlement guy way to one side of the crowd. At the open bay doors of the largest Quonset hut, Mickey is working for Rex, now wearing the service pistol outside his BDU shirt, eyes squinty, watching for the unbelievable. Would somebody really try to kill Gordo? Mickey is thinking.
Man, this is a herd. Totally fucking weird. One guy even said he and his dad are from Texas. Willie’s here, up on the roof of the Quonset hut for goats. Has a scope trained on the whole thing. He said this is what you get when you let females start militias. And Rex is tense. I can tell, even though he looks just the same as always.
Meanwhile, on stage, Gordon contemplates.
“The net that is squeezing the orange is a centralized water-food-energy-and-media grid, almost totally. Soon it will be total.”
More noises of agreement, overlaid with some partytime sounds.
The Prophet leans back, eyes closed. Praying? Does Gordon pray? With eyes still closed, he bellers, “We want to get OFF! THE! LEASH! Into the arms of THE! MOTHER! the mother of men!, the great turtle Gluskap, the swollen round magnificent green SOURCE of life that is beneath our feet!” His eyes fly open. “Fuck the global grids and their waste and deceptions and sophisticated terror tactics and holy finance . . . so-called civilized. It’s immoral madness! We want LIFE! IT’S! RIGHT! HERE!”
He drops to his knees, limber from so much self-inflicted hard labor here in his little Settlement world, which years ago he gathered together out of weakness and fear. “Pretend this is the ground!” he shouts off mike. He pats the stage. He kisses it.
The crowd goes bonkers.
Finally, back on his feet, face reddened and chest huffing a bit, slowly in a whisper, “You guys understand me? Is what I say madness? Or truth?”
Truth! Truth! comes the reply from the living darkness before him.
“The Patriot Movement—those gentlemen believe in preparedness. Better be ready, boys, ’cause no matter which little bit of this monster you are focusing on to bitch about, it’s a lot bigger than you can see at any one time . . . or see at all. The government leaders they show on TV? That’s theater! The real government is secret. Think tanks. Foundations. Corporations. A rogue network. We waste time here talking about government treachery. Dig up the dirt, understand the danger . . . fine. But”—he whispers the rest in an evil voice that almost swallows the mike—“we cannot fix something that is not broken! The system izzz working as designed. It is FLOWERINNNG! Tonight we too, begin a shadow government. We turn our backs on E-VILE. FORGET THEMMMMM!”
A solid wall of sound, almost vitreous, is delivered of the darkness of the Quad, shadows and silhouettes and dreamlike flashes of the many faces, but the sound is a diamond blinding Gordon.
Gordon screams, as if in pain, “FORGET!!!!! THEM!!!!!!”
Jane’s heart spins.
It’s Mum! Out there! It’s her! She’s there by those two guys with hats! (Sigh.) No, it’s not actually. It sort of looked like her. And the other lady there is sort of like Mum too. What’s that? That man’s face is burned maybe. Scary with no skin. And the man with the neck thing, scarf thing, his nose might be gone. I’m tired of this darkishness, no good lights. I have the Boston germs again maybe and my head hates this noise. People screaming, screaming. But it is wicked important to keep the flag up and look mean and soldierish. I peek at Kirky and at his flag too; we are together in this.
Gordon’s screaming advice is lost in their screaming participation.
Waiting for a softening in the crowd’s voice, he states quietly, “Forget the Constitution. Forget the rat holes of corporatism, state capitals, and D.C.” He turns and peers into the temporarily opened side of the nearest piazza, where this event’s temporary stage has been attached, the captains of the True Maine Militia huddled there overseeing the spectacle of their creation. He talks to the mike. “Even the great and true True Maine Militia got sidetracked a couple weeks ago with corporatism’s Augusta branch of E-vile.”
Girl voices yell from the piazza their good-natured objections.
“But you had fun, right?” he yells back.
Voices in the affirmative.
“FORGET THEMMMMMM! Forget EVILE!!!!” he screams, holding up a fist. “Shut off the TV! Rescue your kids from the schools! Hurry! Now! Let’s build our own cooperatives, local sane agri-culture, energy co-ops, trade co-ops, slower, more intelligent travel, neighborly travel, stalwart citizens’ militias and more.” He is huffing hard now, dripping on neck and nose and down through the beard, sparkles of his passion. Closes his eyes again as if dreaming, head going from side to side. “They want your kids for the armies of corporatism’s empire! To murder the planet. You want your kids working with you and your neighbors in survival. The public schools are about to be privatized like the prisons. Then no oversight! They will be an arm of the army, mark my words, brothers and sisters! Get your babies, your beautiful sons and daughters, out of that fucking dangerous place!”
Crowd makes an ugly sound.
Gordon’s head is boiling. His fears at last are shared, thus transformed from fear into muscle.
“All those years we spend in their six-million-dollar-a-year schools, and not one peep about these emergency skills we need! Where was that and all the other stuff we needed to learn? Real education is like the sun! It’s always been there, all these basic principles, but groups of people hoard those principles so they can fleece us . . . so they can bleed our asses and control us, the goddam motherfucking fuckers!”
Gordon is feeling like the twenty-foot-tall guy on the vegetable can.
His heart is hot, blood hot. Lava is cracking his skull, both painful and pleasant. He loves these people. Don’t hurt these people is his prayer. The blackening night above: pure space. Below: them, him, them, him, in tandem.
Claire watches from the open screen door of another piazza of the horseshoe of shops. From here, Gordon looks so small and wavery, candles around the stage playing tricks. She is thinking.
Once, during a knitting spree back when the world was only young Gordon and young Claire, colt and filly, I made him a pair of hunting mittens with variegated yarn: red, orange, and a wild yellow. With this style, you have a thumb and a separate trigger finger to the right hand (if the wearer is right-handed). But the rest is just mitten, so the other fingers can snug up to each other. He used those mittens for years.
Tonight, his bare hands gesticulate emergency. Like scrambling to get that perfect shot in fast. That perfect buck, perfectly in his sights. Life with Gordon has always been the emergency. There is nothing strange about tonight. As I watch his hands now, thumbs hooking his belt, trying to look casual and intimate, I remember every single time his hands were on me. Some people say, “How on earth can you share your husband with other wives?” But they don’t understand. To love Gordon is to share him with everybody. So maybe that makes what he feels for me thinner and what I feel for him somewhat bitter. But beyond all that, I could not expect you to understand.
Out! In! Out!
The crowd seems bigger now. Not just louder, more voices. Closer. Tighter.
And now more leaves are letting go from the maple and oak boughs overhead, some descending in a pale eerily lighted veil around the Prophet, settling thickest on and around his scuffed work boots, as if by choreography. And the air chills another notch.
But Gordon’s face is as polished as a new car. He is swelling his chest, puffing up. He gulps on the first word but recovers—“And never kid ourselves. The system, the great cold steel and paper and oily mother, is not too kind or too moral to commit extermination: germ warfare on innocents, guns and bombs on innocents, false flag terror attacks on innocents, sneaky intelligence operations on innocents, plane loads of mean narcotics for innocents. Mono crops and forced debt. Like a mummy or a vampire in a bad movie, it is especially fond of the taste of innocents.”
The crowd moves in closer, tighter.
Jane Meserve wiggles her flag a little, dark eyes sultry. And soldierly.
Kirky Martin, with the other flag, stands stiffer, more soldierly.
Gordon lifts the mike, stand and all. Beer bottle falls over, rolls away. He steps to the edge of the tall stage, wipes his forearm across his mouth and beard. “Each and every one of you has a wise word, a little something we all need to hear. We need to hear each other. And to listen. Especially me. I need to listen more. Talk less.” He hangs his head. There are chuckles.
He rubs the back of his sweaty head hard, causing some hair to stand up in cowlicks. Now he hunches into the mike, speaks in a clear moderate voice, ascending to loud and louder. “We need to prepare. We need to prepare! WE NEED TO PREPARE! The exterminators are moving over the earth—Africa, the Middle East, Panama, Colombia, and on—coming, coming, coming! Not for certain nations but for certain types. Are you useful enough as you are? Or more useful to them dead or incarcerated? Or maybe something weirder, even. We need to prepare! We need to LIVE!!!!”
Again the crowd makes much noise and then applause, which splatters away to a single person clapping, then stops.
Gordon stands with his head cocked. Then he raises a hand. “Okay. Do that again. Clap your hands.”
The applause resumes. Then again splatters away. People turn their heads to smile at each other, enjoying this game.
Gordon says, “Okay. Now let’s clap together, all at the same time.” And he brings his hands together for one clap and then space, one clap and then space, and all over the Quad and out across the lot and edges of the fields, the people clap, hands in sync—SMACK! . . . SMACK! . . . SMACK! . . . SMACK!—and you feel each SMACK! in your chest, in your jaws. It is as if all the people here are one animal, connected through one heart, a body as big as the Quad, open parking lot, gravel road, and field.
Fifteen minutes of this clapping before some youthful voice screams, “Tyrants out ! People in! Tyrants out! People in !”
And off to the left another voice. “Kill the fuckers. Gun ’em down!”
But meanwhile, many voices have joined in with “Tyrants out!” and then just “Out,!” the word out paired with the unified single clap, and this takes off: OUT! . . . OUT! . . . OUT! . . . OUT! And the unified big CLAP, overlaid with the unified thunderous word OUT! comes faster and faster and closer together and louder and louder.
Another ten minutes filled with this building crescendo, aching hands, dripping faces, thunder in the bones, human-caused sound salvos, aimed and ready, the sky thick with stars, and—except for the faces in the fore, lighted by flickering green and rose and yellow—this devilish beast like the other beast—the globalized one that now rules—this beast too, is faceless.
But now a light sweeps over the crowd. Then light from another direction, painting an even broader light. And then another. And now these lights all come together on Gordon and the two flag bearers. Gordon stops clapping and crosses his arms over his chest, staring down into the closest of these white blazing TV eyes.
For another few minutes, the monster crowd booms on and on—OUT! . . . OUT! . . . OUT! . . . OUT! . . . OUT!—and Gordon just stands there and the flag bearers just stand there and the expensive, not usually patient, white TV light bores upon the stage.
When the crowd’s chanting and clapping grows softer, Gordon speaks deeply into the mike, his head cocked, eyes straight into the nearest white glare. “Need a sound bite, huh?”
Chuckles, cheers, mingled hard-to-make-out suggestions shouted from every direction and one low bray: “ Kill ’em! Mash ’em! TV scum!”
When the crowd gets sort of quiet, Gordon still stares at the nearest white light. Then he whispers into the mike, “You gonna do one of them nice big insurance company ads right after you play my sound bite?”
The crowd shrieks, laughs, and claps, and there is a small start-up chant of Truth! Truth! Truth!
Gordon draws an arm back, swinging a leg forward as if to throw a fabulous fast ball, then pitches the imaginary ball to the nearest TV light, and the crowd howls and resumes its clapping and chanting of OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! OUT! Into this chant, Gordon screams the scream of a ghoul—“DISMANTLE THE GLOBAL BEAST!” and “TAKE OUR HUMANITY BACK!”—and then throws up his fist—“GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC!” and then shakes his fist, his massive calloused fist—“OF MAINE!”
As if the crowd size had doubled in half a moment, its voice a colossal spasm of agreement, it repeats GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC OF MAINE! (And see, these six words will become the TV networks’ sound bite, the only thing Gordon St. Onge said tonight, along with a stranger’s yell of Kill ’em! These will run all day tomorrow all across this great big anxious nation.)
One of the distant TV lights goes dark. Either it has gotten all it wants or it has been trampled by the compressed and agitated crowd. Another light draws back slowly, zigzagging, then shrinks away.
And now, as if the Lord God’s (or Mother Nature’s) fist pounds the nearest mountain down, a reverberating BOOOOM! shakes the night. Six hundred grains of black powder and a wad of toilet paper in one Dixie Gun Works deck cannon, the saintly patience of Gordon’s cousin, Louis St. Onge (a gentle man), and real good timing.
Operative Marty Lees still hovering at Rex’s elbow in the crowded foody-smelling greenly lit piazza, thinking with disgust (though his face remains gently pleasant).
Maine secede from America? Is this what the big puppy is suggesting so publicly?
And now.
The three-evil-chimps T-shirt fiddler stands at one mike and calls out, “Par
ty’s over!” and walks away through the flickering lights.
And so.
Like several hundred snails, the mob slowly and sluggishly moves off into the night.
The Unitarian Universalist minister remembers that day.
I listened to so many that night, overheard a lot of little huddles, and some I plied with questions. And after that night too, I asked people, “What do you think? Do you believe Gordon St. Onge’s prognosis for humankind if we don’t learn to do things for ourselves?” And “Maybe even secede from the Union?” And “He says stop shopping. Stop depending. Grow up. What of that?”
I found that his fullest warnings rarely reached an ear.
He was just a big rumbling television set to them, loud and colorful. They had watched him, true. Inside each American in those days was fear, fear dense enough to fill a bucket, a generalized fright. A terror that was real. Reality poured through our skins but not through our brains, so it was fear without explanation. Nothing he said could wake our snoozy, hiding brains. That’s not what people wanted. They desired a savior, his great long arms, his sky-filled eyes, his empathy, his growls.
Back in the present time: afterthoughts.
Nothing really bad has happened. No big fights. No heart attacks. No serious vandalism. But after the last of the crowd is gone, and after most of the kitchen crew has finished up and gone home to their respective cottages, the dark Quad and parking lots hold a spooky silence that feels more dangerous than all the day’s confusion.
Alone, Gordon has settled into a big, intricately carved and stenciled pine rocker. The porch floor creaks underneath, but the chair is too new to creak. He drinks from a bottle of beer. Little glass candleholders encircle him, some gone out, some still dancing.
Out on the Quad, bunched around the ankles of the grinning wooden dinosaur (whose grin nobody can see up there in the dark treetops), several of Rex’s militia are still on hand, visible only by the capricious little on-and-off winks and glows of their cigarettes and digital watches. Rex tells them they can leave now if they want. Job done. Security duty complete. But they linger, talking in low secret voices. Among them, only Willie Lancaster’s laugh is loud enough to be heard outside their circle. Among them, only Willie has had real fun today.
The School on Heart's Content Road Page 37