The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  Militia on hold, he watches TV a lot after work and does little favors for his brother Bob, next door. Now he sits at the table and listens to his mother talk in her soft coaxing way about the Legion. And he eats a cookie, the first in years. Also new is face rubbing. Rubs till his eyelids are pink and his eyebrow hairs turn backward like small quills.

  He does not like the way his mother wears so many silver and turquoise rings today, which accentuate her aging hands. He doesn’t like anything about anything.

  He has even started to sleep too late.

  Again from the future, the Unitarian Universalist minister who was at the big Settlement event speaks.

  This following of Gordon St. Onge that accelerated over those coming months after his near death was a sign of how bad things had become for those Americans who had normally thought in terms of trust and promotions, rewards for doing one’s job better than the other guy, positive thinking, Merry Christmases (shop, shop, shop), faith in progress (that technological wizardry of the high order of humans).

  Industrial-era woman. Petroleum man. The age of growth. The age of image overload. The belief that evolution means a species can transcend God.

  So now the frightening descent from the thunderous promises of modern education, glossy mags, the six o’clock news team, and screechy sponsors. Now that TV smile was making the La-Z-Boy viewers uneasy.

  So yes, from the people who flocked to him, Gordon St. Onge’s image was born. I say image because who knows what he really was like, other than his close ones?

  Was he really so wonderful, truly God’s milk? Could his fingertips change you? Surely not! It would not be natural (let alone divine) that it should follow.

  Who was Gordon St. Onge? He could have been anything.

  The thousands of persons who would adore him would never be embraced by him anymore than I. And I danced with him!

  Hear me now. I confess that our dance was nothing like a blessing. It was (this makes me smile) just a jitterbug.

  Mickey alone.

  It seems that when he is most hollowed out (chocolate rabbit Mickey) is when he is jammed in with all the St. Onge people on a toasty morning, eating eggs, all their food-smelling mouths breathing at him. “Oh, Mickey, pass the sauce stuff” or “Oh, Mickey, there’s no one on the list for Helen’s firewood for Thursday. You interested?”

  Not depressed. Not like his old school days. Ha-ha. Mr. Carney, go suck on a pony. Ha-ha. I’m definitely outta there!

  But here in St. Ongeland, he just isn’t the real Mickey Gammon. He is ghost Mickey. Mickey Casper-Unfriendly-Ghost Gammon. The rest of them here just seem too alive. Too St. Onge-ish. And too many.

  Presently, he is sitting on a boulder up in the wide-open sort-of-snowy field; anyone can see him. And the wind is cold and bone-damp and skull-damp today, but here he is, collar open, letting it be cruel. All the big boulder needs is graffiti. A bunch of initials in black paint, maybe pink. Or some obsession maybe. Like Ski-Doo. Or Madonna.

  Okay, so he is here on the mighty rock. He is, like, on a hard cloud, only this baby ain’t gonna float.

  Wishes.

  Very quiet for a few moments. The child Jane’s eyelids are closed loosely and flutteringly, upon her face the golden stutter of firelight. Eight chubby, thumb-sized Settlement-made candles. One for good luck, seven for the years of her time so far on this mortal coil. Then her midnight-dark eyes go wide and she blows the flames out and the only other person at this party, Gordon St. Onge, claps and whistles.

  She sighs and smiles guiltily. “I forgot to wish for the other thing. I was all nervous and got mixed up.”

  Now there is only the sickly and sickening glow of the fluorescent light over Gordon’s big desks across the old kitchen.

  “You don’t need birthday candles to make a wish, dear,” he informs her. “It’s a free . . . uh . . .”—he closes his eyes, searching—“free country.”

  She laughs and slaps the air between herself and the dim, bluish, gloomily not-very-well-lighted image of his face across the little table, his terribly scarred face, one eye rather St. Bernardish. “You are so funny.”

  She had specified only him and her for this party. None of them up there, even the Soucier family, with whom she now lives and kind of loves.

  And of course, Lisa Meserve, Jane’s mum, is not here. It’s a bit stomach-trembly to think of, isn’t it? The word mother. The words faraway cage.

  Okay, and for tonight she had specified a pink cake. And real (store-bought) ice cream: Chunky Monkey.

  So now a huge (size of a small mattress) piece of cake teeters on the spatula as she guides it to his plate. “Oops!” It flips off the spatula, turns upside down. She laughs, gasping. “I’m”—gasp gasp—“very very”—shrill giggles and more gasps—“sorry!” With teary eyes, she laughs on and on as she now guides another huge piece to her dish, which also falls, this time missing the plate and breaking into pieces. “Omigod, this is so bad!” She laughs and wipes her eyes with the top of one hand, plows the wayward cake toward her plate with the other, and wipes both hands on her napkin, her eyes on his scarred, forever-changed face. “This is so bad.” She sighs, resigned to the fates that make cake accidents happen.

  Now the ice cream. She long-leggedly and gracefully fetches two pint cartons (the round kind) out of the freezer (otherwise empty) and plunks them down, one beside his plate, one beside hers. And two huge spoons. “The rest of the cake,” she explains, settling primly back in her seat. “You get half and I get half. Exactly.” This is justice.

  “Good deal,” he says, scooping out all his ice cream in one carton-shaped frozen-hard-as-cast-iron sculpturesque shape on top of his cake.

  She proceeds to jab at her pint of ice cream with her big spoon so it gets to be all these little slivers arranged in a pretty way around her cake.

  Everything is now ready to go. “Well,” Jane says, staring at his face across the two loaded supper-sized plates with their glazed pink and tan piles of wonderful sugary stuff.

  He nods.

  She nods.

  He says, “Happy seven years old, Lady Jane.”

  “Thank you, old guy,” she says, most tenderly.

  They both dig in, eyes bearing down on the job at hand.

  Mickey speaks.

  At breakfast, I signed up for the use of a vehicle, which you can drive even without a license, as long as you stay on Settlement land. Wound up with a biodiesel farm truck, the one with clutch-ball trouble. One of the dogs jumped up in the seat, one of the black ones. Dogs like rides. I said, “Okay.” Me and the dog was instant friends after that. He rode along with his big red open mouth and kept flashing his eyes on me. He watched the road ahead like he was helping me drive. Or maybe he thought we’d get to see a giant walking steak up ahead. Ha-ha.

  Well, I take the truck out. Off the land. I just go, okay? It was weird. Something came over me. I didn’t give a shit about anybody being pissed. Not them at the Settlement. Not cops. Before I even get to Rex’s, I’m passing his brother’s place that has the long tar driveway and the cattle pasture fenced up to it and all the brown frizzled weeds not chewed by cows and patches of snow, and there’s Rex and the brother up there, both squatted down by the garage with somethin’. Well, I just kept going and got down the road to a turnaround by a field, and the dog looked at me, and as I was backing the truck out to turn, the dog was swinging his tail like he was sayin’, Yes, do it.

  I don’t want to meet Rex’s brother. I really don’t even have anything to say to Rex.

  I figured I’d just take this piece’a junk back by Letourneau’s and see what they got for this year’s Fords for parts and then back to the Settlement to work on this clutch-ball situation. Tear it all down. Stay out of everybody’s way. Maybe Cory will help, if I can find him. He’s one’a them that circulates.

  But as I was going back by the tar driveway, my hands turned the wheel and up we went, and there I was, braking the truck nice ’n’ easy in the dooryard, a
nd Rex and the brother look up at me through the windshield from what they were doing, which was a pump . . . a pond pump . . . a bilge pump.

  And Rex stood up and came over to the window, which meant I didn’t have to get out and deal with the brother, and the dog was all happy to see Rex, like Rex was what he was looking for, not a big steak. Rex’s old jacket was unbuttoned. He was chin up: total soldier. The brother was wicked zipped. You know, zipped to his chin. Neatnik. Well, Rex isn’t some slob like me. But he doesn’t look like a little boy. The brother, the teacher, he was like some old ladies decided on making him shine. He was shining. His jacket was a funny green and his sweater under that was a pinkish yellow. Even on his fucking day off. A gold sticky star in the middle of his forehead or on the end of his nose would have gone with the rest. He didn’t look as Nazi as Mr. Carney but somewhere behind that face was Mr. Carney . . . at least the Mr. Carney gene.

  I said, “Sit!” wicked sharp and the dog sat down and Rex said, “Howzit going?” to me. And I shrugged.

  And I said, “You busy?” And he said, “It’s okay. We need a break.” And his eyes were on me funny-like, like he was real glad to see me.

  The End

  Please—Stay tuned.

  Author’s Note

  My old friend Jacquie Giasson Fuller made it possible for Maine Acadian French (“Acadian patois” or as some would say, “North American patois”) to be spoken on these pages. She is translator of some, while of some she is their author, their grace. She told me to be sure to say she couldn’t have done it without her mother and sister-in-law, Lucienne Merservier Giasson and Lorraine Bissonette Giasson. They all got together and went over the nuts and bolts of this beautiful, mostly oral, language of love, work, and home, no better experts anywhere than they, and I am grateful.

  Author’s Note #2

  In this book, the fictional True Maine Militia shouts out a formal declaration concerning “The People’s House” at the closed office door of the governor of Maine. These words are an excerpt from real advice given during the actual Second Maine Militia State House siege in 1996, words of working-class hero Pete Kellman. Yeah, Pete is as real as it gets.

  Official and Complete and Final List of Acknowledgments

  The School on Heart’s Content Road owes its existence to so many helpful, supportive, and inspiring people that the author feared trying to list them all in this book. Thus, she put all the names in a hat and drew out the following. Those still in the hat will appear in future books. One that didn’t get drawn from the hat, who will appear later, is a person who has caused incredible terror in the hearts of most Americans, but has helped Carolyn out so much it brings a lump to her throat. But he’s still in the hat. Stay tuned to find out who this frightening person is. Meanwhile, here is a list of the names that were drawn blindly. Huge gratitude goes to:

  Bendella Sironen, David White, Bob and Millie and Melinda Monks, Jim Perkins, Bill Kauffman, Robyn Rosser, Rebekka Yonan, David Diamond, Cynthia Riley, Jonah Fertig, Sarah Wilkinson, Ceiba Crow, Dan C., Hillary Lister, Victor Lister, Sara DeRoche, all Jeders of Greene, Maine; Dr. Adele, Dr. Mark, Dr. Maggie, and Dr. Andy (our four family doctors); Yelena and Todd and Stasik, Missy Pinney, Beth Pinette, Mack Page, Howard Greene, Dennis Twomey, Laura Childs, Pal Tripp, Cecily Diamond, Carol Dove, Michael Vernon, Julian Holmes, Audrey Marra, Peter Holmes (in heaven), Elliott Favier, DDS (in heaven), Cullen, Sarah and Kats, Frank Collins (in heaven), Jerry Webber, Carole Taylor, David Haag, Christina, Mark Hanley, all my family on all sides (Maine, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and heaven), Nick Kingsbury, Morgan MacDuff, Eunice Buck Sargent, Hal and Mark Miller, W. D. Kubiak, Rita Kubiak, Kathy Kubiak, Michael Ruppert, John Sieswerda, Jo Eldridge Morrissey, Brie, Maureen DeKaser, Jenny Pap Hughs Yoxen, Rob Waite, the MacDowell Colony, Elisabeth Schmitz (world’s best editor on planet Earth), Sheila Smith, Gwen North Reiss, Patrick Quinlan, Joy Scott, Jonathan Beever (wise man), Tom Whitney, Alison Whitney, Robert Kolker, Sub Steve Kelley, Thomas Naylor, Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, Richard Grossman, Janet Baker, Miss Cathy, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Katie, Nick and Willa, Barbara West, Bruce Buchanan, Michele Cheung, Angelo Roy, Ray Luc Levasseur, Jamila Levi, Ellen LaVallee, Wayne Burns and the Dragon of the West, Evelyn Butler, “cousins” Kelley and Michael, Don Kerr, Colleen Rowley (FBI), Cyndy and Roland, Sandi Hamlin, Cynthia McKinney, Roger Leisner, Edie Clark, Debbie Dearth, Tom Dearth, Abigail Dearth, Balenda Ganem, Guy Gosselin, Wendy Kindred, Isabelle, Ed Gorham, John Muldoon, Daniel Rameau, Ellen Wilbur, Ruth Stone, Molly’s gang, all Nelpers, Don Hall, Jane Kenyon (in heaven), Charlene Barton, George Garrett (in heaven), Ken Rosen, Ellen Weeks (postmistress), Rose Metcalf (assistant postmistress), the Causeys, Steve Diamond, Bill Pagum, Barbara and Jerry Korn, Mary Howell Perkins, Dick Perkins, Christine Kukka, past clerk of the House of Reps Joe Mayo (in heaven), Steven and Marie, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and, as ever, my forever husband Michael “Beek” Chute of Beektown Road.

  The rest remain in the bulging hat till next time. Including the mystery man of terror. Guess who?

  Keep Going

  Character List

  The Prophet

  Guillaume (Ghee-yome), Gordon or Gordo or Gordie St. Onge, aka the Prophet. Age thirty-nine until September. He is six-foot-four or -five, depending. In the winter, gets a thick waist and an extra neck, but in summer looks like a marble Greek-god type, only tanned. Work, work, work, work, though not without talk, talk, talk, talk, and preach, preach, preach, preach. Darkish hair. Darkish beard with a parenthesis of gray beginning on the chin. Dark brows and lashes with weird pale greenish eyes like some creepy killer bird. Significant French-Italian nose. Add to that a Tourette’s sort of flinch to one side of the face, especially the eye. Drink is a problem for him at times, during spells of getting worked up over life’s cruelties and injustices. He’s often bothered and stirred, moody and broody, loved and hated. He has been accused of loving everyone in the world equally; that his love is too easy, too diluted.

  In an earlier time when Gordon was first married to Claire and only Claire, he got some cousins and friends together to start the Settlement on land his mother gave him, land and an old farmhouse where he had grown up. This wasn’t just a commune, but a statewide cooperative in furniture, alternative energies, farm produce, and trade. The Settlement is thought to be a school by some who live out in the world. Citizens of the Settlement see it as home.

  The Locke/Gammon Family

  Michael (Mickey) Gammon. Fifteen years old. Not a big guy, a bit scrawny and shrimpy, with a blond and brownish ponytail so thin and insignificant it twists to one side and up. He does not bathe or change routinely. He stays too busy going and coming back, walking for miles, smoking. His eyes are gray. He has a cold aspect. Not a talker. Much of the time, his jeans and T-shirts are rags.

  Donald (Donnie) Locke. In his thirties. Mickey’s half brother. Also gray-eyed and not much of a yakker either. A more solid build than Mickey. Married. Father of kids. His hair is a lighter blond than Mickey’s, almost white. His mustache is weak in color, pale, pale, pale but quite wonderfully walrussy. Much of the time, he is dressed for “the Chain,” his job at a chain store.

  Erika Locke. She’s in her twenties. She’s Donnie’s second wife, Mickey’s sister-in-law. She’s plump. Not stout, not fat, but soft-looking. Round face. Plain hair, cut medium short, medium brown. Soft-spoken. A very ordinary young woman whom you would barely notice in a crowd. Wears T-shirts with pictures and words. Or plain T-shirts or plain tops, shorts or jeans. Mickey enjoys watching her in her T-shirt with the face of a Persian cat.

  Britta. In her fifties. Mother to Mickey, Donnie, and Celia. She has had her real teeth pulled. Her false teeth have a noticeable false look. Gray eyes; nondescript brownish hair with some gray. She is a short person, pudgy in some places. Probably her forearms and hands are slim, her ankles too. She is so shy she does not meet your eyes.

  Children of the Locke/Gammon household. Britta’s youngest is Celia. Isabel is Erika’s
brother’s child. Jola is from down the road. Travis is the baby of another Chain worker. Erika and Donnie’s child is Jesse, age two. Jesse is very ill. Donnie’s girls by another marriage are Audrey and Tegan, plus Elizabeth, his oldest—very active girls.

  The York Family

  Richard (Rex) York. Captain of the Border Mountain Militia. His age is about fifty. Keeps his thinning hair trimmed and tidy. Wears military boots, usually with pant legs over. His pale eyes have a way of gauging you totally. He is not shy but seems unable to verbalize information unimportant to meetings and maneuvers of the citizens’ militia movement of America or the work he does as an electrician. He has a dark mustache, more Mexican than walrus. He doesn’t eat desserts. He has an exceedingly fit appearance, possibly due to all the push-ups, deep-knee bends, and sit-ups he has done every day since Vietnam.

  Ruth York. Rex’s mother, older than he by fifteen years. Her husband (Rex’s father), John York, is dead. She now has a boyfriend. She has longish black hair, heart-shaped face, good figure. Wears turquoise “Indian” jewelry and T-shirts with wolves and eagles or western landscapes printed on them. Also oversized chamois shirts. Jeans. And moccasins. She is quiet. Bakes desserts for the American Legion, which she is involved in. And desserts for home. Rex doesn’t eat them but his militia does.

  Glory York. Almost twenty. Rex’s only child. Her mother lives in Massachusetts, divorced from Rex and remarried. Glory is quite freckled, has long thick wow-type hair, dark auburn. She is beautiful in every way. But she flaunts it and has a drinking problem and causes mess and havoc wherever she goes. She is not evil, just young and foolish.

  The Lancaster Family

  William (Willie) Lancaster. A wild unpredictable thirty-nine-year-old. In some ways he is predictable. Meanwhile, he is a member of Rex York’s militia. Willie is gray-eyed and somewhat bucktoothed. Hair, brown. A brown beard, sort of pointed. And an insincere mustache. He’s medium height. Has the athletic qualities of a squirrel. His work involves climbing trees with ropes and cleats. He wears the single dog tag of his brother’s dead body returned from “the conflict.”