The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  The red T-shirt guy with the sprawling mustache, sunglasses, army cap, and awesome black-faced watch stares after the baldish guy, who is ripping his target from the fifty-yard frame.

  Big guy with full camo trudges the long open pit to a frame against the bank at a hundred yards, the wind wrestling earnestly with his target as he staples it to the wood.

  The red T-shirt guy now seems to be staring at Mickey, though with the sunglasses one can’t be absolutely positively sure.

  Mickey smokes his cigarette down. He has pocketed the other. He now leans against a fender, feeling the thunder in the ground, watching the purple-black part of the sky flutter with big jabs of light, splitting open right over Horne Hill, the sweet breeze touching him all over, the tobacco smoke’s big satisfying work done inside him, the men trudging around him, and their voices, both grave and playful. Alas now, they speak of the storm and discuss whether to wait it out in their vehicles or leave.

  The red T-shirt guy asks Mickey his name. Mickey tells him. He asks Mickey his age. Mickey says sixteen, which he is, almost. He asks him what kind of gun he has. Mickey says a Marlin .22 Magnum.

  “Just one?”

  Mickey says, “Yep.”

  The guy asks, “Where do you live?”

  “Sanborn Road.”

  The bony, urgent, eyebrowless guy, overhearing, calls to him, “You live in that new place over there?”

  “No, in the big one. I’m Donnie Locke’s brother. Been in Mass for a while. I’m livin’ here with him now.”

  The full-camo guy is coming back through the wind and wild sand. Wind getting some real gumption now. Mickey can see through one side of the red T-shirt guy’s sunglasses, eyes that never seem to blink.

  Now Mickey leans into the open door of the Blazer and casually sorts through shot-up police and circular competition targets. “You guys are good,” he says.

  “Not really,” the red T-shirt guy says, rather quickly. “When your life is at stake, your first four shots are what counts. There’s no chances after that. You can’t have twenty shots to warm up.”

  Mickey nods, picks something off the knee of his frazzled filthy jeans: a green bug with crippled wings. He scrunches it. With a murderous CRACK! and the sky dimming blue-black in all directions, light scribbles and splits into veins—and now rain. A few splats.

  The red T-shirt guy seems to be looking at Mickey hard.

  The tall full-camo guy just stands there looking straight up, eyes fluttering with the beginning rain, his big thick neck looking vulnerable and pale with so much of the rest of him covered. “Is this a break-up for home, Rex? Or should we wait it out in the vehicles?” His voice is soft, but he announces these words deliberately, words of consequence.

  The red T-shirt black-mustache guy has pushed his cap forward, as if to hide his eyes, which, because of the sunglasses, never showed in the first place. “These storms aren’t usually more than . . . what, twenty minutes?”

  And so they wait it out.

  Rain comes hard. Smashes down on the truck’s cab, where Mickey sits with the red T-shirt guy. The guy has folded up his metal-frame glasses and placed them on the dash. He reminds Mickey of a raccoon, meticulous and wary. His eyes are pale gray-blue in dark lashes, and there’s settling and softening around them, which means he’s at least forty-five, maybe fifty. Not real friendly eyes. Nor is there rage in those eyes. His eyes simply take in but do not give back. And with the mustache filling in so much of his face, the eyes have significance. But no, his eyes don’t show much more of his humanity than his sunglasses did.

  He has given Mickey a handful of folded flyers about emergencies and natural disasters and civil defense. There is a bold black-on-white seal on the front of the flyer, showing a mountain lion’s form silhouetted inside a crescent of lettering. The guy tells Mickey, “My number is there in case you are ever interested . . . also my address, Vaughan Hill. Come over sometime and bring a friend. You’re always welcome.” He indicates the truck parked on their left with a dip of his head. It’s only a hot grayish-green blur through the rain-streaked windows, but Mickey knows the big quiet full-camo guy is in that truck. “That’s John Stratham, my second-in-command. Another officer, not here today, is Del Rogers. He does a lot for us over in Androscoggin County—a unit that’s growing, maybe a little too fast. You’ll see him if you decide to come to meetings. He’s been real important to us in sniffing out some . . . uh, problems we had a few months back. He’s dedicated. A real patriot.” He places his right hand on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t play with the wheel like most would do. He says, “Some people don’t give their last names at meetings. That’s up to you. This is all in confidence. I will need to do a check on anyone who is seeking membership.”

  Mickey looks down at the flyers in his hands. Mickey is very, very, very quiet. Mickey, whose pale eyes are just as unrevealing and steely as this man’s eyes are. The crescent of lettering around the mountain lion reads BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA.

  On the back fold of the flyer: Richard York, Captain/Vaughan Hill Road/Box 350, RR2/Egypt, Maine 04047.

  The guy explains that most people call him Rex.

  The rain really pummels the hood and cab roof now, and the windshield looks like a thousand dark and silver wrinkles.

  Mickey says nothing. His streaky blond ponytail is so thin and silky and without substance, it turns up a little to the right. Sweet. And now his unwashed smell is casually seeping through the humidity of the cab. This guy Rex smells like his T-shirt has had a real dousing of fabric softener. Mickey figures this is because there is a woman in Rex’s life. He glances at the hand that’s now kind of fisted on the left thigh of Rex’s jeans. Yes, a wedding band.

  Outside, after the storm, the air is as heavy as a rubber tire. But it smells wonderful. Rex invites Mickey to shoot his own service pistol, which he pulls from behind the truck seat. “Never go anywhere without your Bible and your gun,” Rex says, at least three times. The tall soft-voiced second-in-command, John Stratham, gives Mickey some good pointers. For the first time, Mickey notices that John has an embroidered patch on the sleeve of his long-sleeved BDU shirt, the mountain lion and crescent of lettering, black on olive green: BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA. Striking to look at.

  The target, like most of the others, is of a human shape and is placed at fifty yards for this particular gun. Mickey mostly misses the chest and head. In fact, he mostly misses the black targeted shape. From where they all stand, the spots of his hits show plainly and painfully against the white. He feels this is goofus, but these guys seem impressed. The hefty white-haired sea-captain guy, Artie, says “Good goin’!” and thunks Mickey’s shoulder. The hunched guy with the mean ears growls, “Got ’im runnin’.” The big quiet John nods. And Rex, with his sunglasses back on, says nothing, but his chin is up and he is feeling his dark, full, sprawling mustache carefully.

  In a small American city in the Midwest.

  A station wagon waits to make a left turn in snarling, fumy, carbon-poofing traffic. It exhibits a bumper sticker that reads MY CHILD IS A PLONTOOKI HIGH SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT.

  From frozen Pluto, tiny microscopic Plutonian observatory observers observe the brown daytime spotting and pink nighttime hazing of what we have come to think of as life here on Earth. Tiny microscopic Plutonian officials speak.

  wjox blup sssssooop £G jrigip bot wjp st wjpt xt!*

  Six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve speaks from a room at the St. Onge Settlement.

  It is bad for my Mum. Someone help her! Someone with power. Help her! Help me! And my dog Cherish. Gone. Nobody tells me what happened.

  Donnie Locke at home.

  This old and loyal house! Belongs to Donnie Locke. No mortgage. Donnie Locke, Mickey Gammon’s half brother. It is home for Mickey and Britta too. Britta is the mother the two brothers have in common. Different fathers, same mother. Yes, Britta lives here too since she returned from Massachusetts, because Massachusetts didn’t work out.

  Donnie
Locke watches Mickey hard from his chair at the table. There’s a TV here in the kitchen. TV in the living room. Other TVs in other parts of the house. Not great TVs, but something to make do with. Both the kitchen TV and the one in the living room as seen through the two open doors of the little entry hall show a one-half-minute musical spectacle of the generic modern woman in the shower with water beading up on the skin of her shoulder, the ecstasy of huge teeth and violent water, America’s message, BE CLEAN, BUY DETERGENT BARS, and BODY SHAMPOOS, HAIR SHAMPOOS, DEODORANT POWDERS, and ANTIPERSPIRANTS that smell like SEA BREEZES. Cleanliness makes for opportunities.

  Well, yes, Donnie Locke is clean. Fresh and perma-pressed, nothing to offend. Like obedience to God. Shouldn’t this guarantee you something? If not opportunities, at least forgiveness?

  Donnie Locke isn’t looking at the TV. He watches his unwashed, cigarette-stinking, raggedly-dressed half brother Mickey, the fine yellow-streaked hair tied back into an inessential ponytail, the pale cold eyes that never meet Donnie’s eyes. It is easy to watch the boy, to stare ruthlessly at him. He doesn’t seem to mind.

  Upstairs in this large old house, the younger kids make a racket. Donnie’s kids by his first marriage to Julie Nickerson, and then Britta’s youngest child, Celia, fathered by what didn’t work out in Massachusetts. And then there’s some neighbor kids. A regular shrieking, thumping, crashing mob.

  Donnie Locke smiles a flicker of a smile, wrenched by a thousand emotions.

  Mickey has just come in from being out somewhere doing something, probably messing with cars or snowmobiles with some of his loser buddies he met at school this spring. Tinkering. Something to climb into and under. Donnie was never much for that stuff. He made good grades in school, working hard at it, the family’s pride and joy. And his BA from Andover Business School. Yeah, he worked very hard at it, and he hated every minute. But what else was there? You have to get ahead. Or sink. This is what the guidance counselor said, and . . . well, everybody says it. And what else on this planet besides his “success” could make his mother Britta’s heart sing?

  The boy Mickey picks open the refrigerator door and gets out the plastic pitcher of red punch and pours a glassful and drinks it. Neither brother has a single remark. No Hi. No Hey. No Hot ’nuff for ya? Donnie is afraid to speak because he knows it will come out resentful. He wants a happy home, like when he was very young. His quiet mother and aunts. His earnest father and Gramp. Hopes and dreams measured by seasons. That’s all he wants now. Happy home. Simple life. Hopes and dreams. Yes, that would make his heart sing.

  This man, Donnie Locke. Mid-thirties. Somewhat bald. But a great big blond, walrus mustache. Short sleeve beige-pinstripes-on-white shirt. Trim trousers. The generic man. The job requires this, his job at the Chain.

  Donnie Locke’s father, not Mickey’s father, “drove truck,” made okay money. Was one of the many Lockes and Mayberrys who have owned this house, its various farm buildings, and its land—field, woods, and stream—for a half-dozen hard-headed hard-hearted generations, all those Lockes and Mayberrys gone now, and their crumbling tools and outmoded thinking and outmoded dignity and laughable hopes and dreams, gone now to the Land of Death. More Lockes and Mayberrys there in the Land of Death than here in the Land of Life.

  Here in this life in the brand-new century is Donnie Locke, with the pink unused-looking hands and chain-store name tag and after-work pink TV light in his eyes. Still living in the old Locke-Mayberry place, the thing that makes him Donald Locke. Because nothing else in this world makes him be Donald Locke. Yeah, “one of the Lockes.” Yes, here he is.

  Nearby, at the St. Onge Settlement, six-and-a-half-year-old Jane Meserve speaks to us.

  I am hijack. And kidnapped maybe. I don’t even know how to get here. It might be Alaska even. Nothing to eat because they don’t let me have food. So I am dying. I miss Mumma and she is very afraid. Mumma my sweet sugar. Help! Help! Hel . . . p!

  Erika Locke, awake in the night.

  Donnie Locke’s wife, Erika, mother of the dying baby Jesse, lies on her side under the thin summer sheet, afraid. Anguished for her baby’s pain. Anguished with knowing that a year from now he will no longer exist. But afraid also of everything now.

  She remembers being told something, before Jesse was sick, but it impressed her big-time. Terry, her old friend. Terry, like Erika, young, but old friend all the same. Terry with blonde wild-woman hair. Sort of curly, but more like foam and sparks. Terry, who screams. That’s her regular voice; just telling you the weather, she screams. On the phone the voice cut into Erika’s ear, so Erika remembers it was Terry for sure who said this (screamed this): “Hospitals today can grab your house if you can’t pay a big bill! And the state eventually grabs your house if you use MaineCare and the hospital forces you to apply for MaineCare if you are eligible. Otherwise the hospital does the grabbing.”

  Erika told Donnie.

  He said that was dumb. “Hospitals can’t even charge interest and late fees.”

  But then another friend, Kelly (Kelly Smelly, Donnie calls her because it rhymes), said, “It was the collection guys at the hospital. They called Matt”—her brother—“and said to pay bigger payments on his hernia operation or they’d put a lien on his property—and you ought to see his so-called property, it’s just his dinky shit trailer on a wedge of swamp—and they said they would assess his furniture too, and his pickup, because he only needed one vehicle, his beat-ta-shit car. His furniture!!! Television and a beanbag chair! They had him all taken apart for value. Kev”—her husband—“says fuckem, tell ’em to come take the hernia back ’n’ stuff it up their asses.”

  When Erika brought this bone home, Donnie said there had to be something lost in the telling here. But then Donnie’s cousin Steve was over one Sunday afternoon and told how the DHS had threatened to take his neighbor’s kids away if they couldn’t afford health insurance. They said, “No health insurance is child abuse . . . puts the kid in danger. You must apply for MaineCare.” Donnie said nothing to this. Ever since Jesse has been dying, Donnie is a quiet man who questions nothing.

  The screen shrieks.

  See the situation comedies that portray Americans who are just like you! They are cheery, bubbly folk with cute, easily-solved problems. And see here! The court trials, not actors, no way! This is reeeeeal court. See the troubles of the victims, their grief and need for revenge, and see those on trial, all these Americans whose troubles are mighty and ghastly and gory and outrageous and far WORSE than your troubles. See! Watch close!! Isn’t it astonishing!!! Real people on trial. Bad, ghastly, unapologetic people ON TRIAL. Watch close.

  Erika Locke at the Egypt town office.

  It has come to this. Erika is going to see about some “assistance.” She has put this off for a long time, afraid of social workers, the way once you make out that first paper, cash that first check, rip out that first food stamp, the government eye is on you. Everything about you, maybe even a print of your DNA, is theirs, quick as a computer key-tap. They, the mighty foot; you, the ant.

  Erika is so afraid, she has seen small frisky stars cross her vision all morning ever since she got up.

  She has worn her sea-green top with the lacy collar, which fits better since she started her little diet two weeks ago. And a denim skirt. Flip-flops. And socks. Early this morning her hair shined, but now the humidity has claimed it.

  Behind the high counter is Harriet Clarke, the town clerk, reciting to someone on the phone all there is to know about purchasing a permit to move heavy equipment. Beyond is a computer with a deep-blue lighted screen with words that run along the bottom, then off the edge, then return from the other side to repeat. BE PATRIOTIC . . . CELEBRATE JULY 4 . . . BE PATRIOTIC . . . CELEBRATE JULY 4 . . . BE PATRIOTIC . . . over and over and over.

  And now, repeating across Erika’s eyes, her own personal fear-stars. They drift along like something crushed, multiplying into hundreds.

  Erika has heard that “social work” nurses will pres
sure you to let them inside your home to look around, scope the place out. They will interrogate your children. They look at their bodies for marks—bruises, scratches, burns—which all kids have unless you strap them to a chair for the first ten years of their lives. Erika has had three friends lose their kids temporarily, because of two bruises on one kid, a broken finger on another. The third had a burn. Three families. Two families loud and physical; the kids play as hard and rough as lion cubs. One family, quiet and nervous, nasty-neat types; the kids, too, very nervous, high-strung. None of these families are into heavy-duty punishment. But all three are poor.

  A man saunters in from the hall, yellow, white, and blue motor vehicle registration papers in one hand. He wears glasses. A shave has given his pores a chemically scoured look. Wears a floppy madras fishing hat. A man of the legs-apart, arms-crossed, short, bullish, freckled, fifty-five-ish, hard-working, old-Yankee-blood, proud, proud, proud iron-fist-Republican variety.

  The clerk finishes with the phone and asks Erika, “How you doin’ today? What d’ya need?”

  “Who is it I need to see about some town assistance?”

  The clerk has a hard face with lines around the mouth, but a soft expression. She disappears a moment, squatting down behind the counter at some floor-level drawer or cubby, then pops back up, paper in hand. She uses the flapping paper and her other hand to point, shape out, and underline her words. “Take this. Go over across the hall to the meetin’ room where it’s quiet. Pens on the tables there. Make this out the best you can. Sign it. Then come back and I’ll see what I can do, long’s you have everything you need: your last pay slips, W-2 forms, any proof of pay for the last twelve months. State card if you have it. That would save us a lotta trouble at this end.”

  The man behind Erika has been listening in dead silence, moving his eyes over Erika’s breezy little sea-green top and plain brown hair with its sweet part, her round face and pink spots of emotion, one spot to each cheek—an ordinary girl, yes, like tens of thousands of sometimes giggling brown-haired American girls who, one overlapping the other at this hour, would make a vast plain of soft sturdy silhouettes that threaten no one.