In my secret agent notebook, I draw my beautiful Cherish black, a better black even than Cannonball, a Scottie who visits here. Cherish so very chubby and stubby, stubby legs, stubby tail. Everything is thick and stubby and strong on a Scottie. I make this picture almost perfect. Even under the circumstances of having to rush, squatted down here behind this big hot smelly truck and hot sweat making my eyes burn wicked. I draw very special details. Little moon places of white around her eyes. That’s the way Cherish would always look at you, sideways, like . . . like an old auntie lady would look at you. It was so cute how she did that. My beautiful Cherish.
On the next page I do a special revenge picture of what I wish. Cops. With their heads squashed. I draw arrows in them. And bullets. And needles. And knives. I squash their feet too. Make blood in their eyes. I make their round mouths screaming. Very, very quiet, I tear this page out. I twist my sandal on it till the cops are ripped. Next I will put them in a fire.
The screen purrs.
Oh, yes! Here is the NEWZZZZZ. WOW! Lots of police in special gear . . . thank goodness for FEDERRRRAAAAL funds . . . had to arrest a guy in Nevada today after he ate his mother’s ears. Forty-year-old Wesley Fergusson was HEAVILLLLY armed with a twenty-two rifle when police finally captured him this morning after he fled in blah blah blah blah blah . . . ads for insurance, investments, banks, loans, a car that seems to fly; a car of squarer shape that shows you are better fancier people; now another car all muddy and funnnn. Insurance. Medicines against aging. Blah blah blah. . . .
Breaking.
After work, Donnie Locke leaves the Chain and stops off at yet another big chain store for groceries, plops toilet paper into the cart, hefts a bag of dry dog chow underneath. He looks along down the seemingly mile-long case of meats, pink and deep red, rising and falling under waves of plastic wrap.
Now, back out in traffic, the late afternoon light gleams off hoods and fenders, Donnie’s head hurting.
At a red light, he feels the shape of his head through his cropped hair. He watches the changing set of lights too hard, head cocked, sunglasses giving up thousands of turquoise flambeaus. He sees shoulders and temples of other drivers ooze past on left and right. Bumper stickers and vanity plates and big white campers pushing and pulling away. Metal and tar, world of the cheap. World of progress. World where mistakes are not tolerated, while intentional malevolence is blessed.
He wears a face like a man just fired from his job. But Donald Locke has not been fired. The emotion is the same, hired or fired. The living death, the long thin membrane of a life already lived, his schedule, his soul in the lines between company policy and growth in the next quarter, no day different from the day before in the life that is worth less than the cheapest plastic comb. How can fired be worse?
He wants to die. He wants very badly to die. Though he doesn’t envy his dying son. He wants a death that is fast, like a hammer striking a nail.
Coming into the dooryard of his home, he feels the dear cloying heaviness of the house, the pull of that back door like centrifugal force when you ride the blue and red buggies of the Tilt-a-Whirl.
But inside the door is Mickey. To Donnie Locke, the boy’s narrow face and wolfy eyes look cunning, the arms, the shirtless chest and neck rather skinny a few months ago, more tanned today than yesterday, and more muscular . . . filling this house with threat.
Donnie is breaking. Donnie is dying. There is no shouting this time. Just the gloink-gloink of Mickey pouring Kool-Aid or whatever that red stuff is from the pitcher into a cup, and Donnie stepping very close. He takes Mickey one-handed by one bare shoulder. Because of the bag of groceries, he can’t use both hands, and he can’t think of what to do with the bag. There’s no time. There’s only seconds to deflect the threat, and it is all so graceful, not like a brawl, because the boy puts up no resistance, is easily shoved along, out through that back screen door, the spring making its thin wiry music, out into the yard with the million crickets in chilling song, sun gone, silver dusk turning to a sweet cold August night.
“Go away,” Donnie whispers. “You can’t live here anymore. Get out of here. Go!” All in a whisper.
Mickey, no shirt, no shoes, just jeans and his leather wristband, streaky blond hair, untied, hanging all about his narrow face like a little girl in early morning, looks up at one window of the big house fleetingly, then backs away.
Another night.
Jesse Locke’s breathing is ragged, the air stale, these second-story rooms holding the heat of many days.
Donnie Locke sits up, reaches for the bedside light. He looks down at Jesse, who lies flat between himself and Erika. The face of his son, dopey with medicine. The enormous bulging veiny head with its ever-soft yellowy hair. He runs a finger along the spiny back. Holds his hand there. The child’s breathing has great pauses now.
“Erika,” Donnie whispers.
“My God,” Erika whispers.
Donnie takes his hand away, pushes both hands between his thighs, hangs his head.
Jesse breathes harder and harder, then a great pause, longer than six breaths, then breathing again hard, a wizardy larger-than-life concentration inside every one of his elderly limbs. A beautiful thing to see. A capable thing.
Moments later.
When Jesse stops breathing forever, Mickey is somewhere out there. No one knows where. Has anyone on this earth seen him since Donnie made him go? It’s as if Mickey and Jesse have both masterfully risen out of their insignificant anatomies to start brand-new lives.
And the screen?
Concerning the aforementioned complexities, the screen remains blank and dumbstruck.
Maybe you, crow, are in the sky. Flapping along (whump! pause, whump! whump!whump! pause). Below you is the rounded flexing land of Gordon St. Onge, fields and ledge, juniper and dark clotted forest. What is that there below? Something sort of dangling but sort of fixed, quite tiny. You almost missed it. But there it is!
Yes, it’s Mickey Gammon’s tree house.
Mickey’s secret tree house.
How could this have happened to him? How could he be so cut off? Like a space guy whose capsule gets screwed up.
Nights cold. Days hot. Even the humidity is back. Down through the little gap in the trees that the path makes, he can see how the nearest mountain rises like a steamy green shower-room wall. Hot desolation.
He fears being found, though no one is looking. No search-and-rescue dogs. No Coast Guard helicopters. No bullhorns booming out “MICHAEL GAMMON! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!!! WAIT WHERE YOU ARE!!” Donnie would just say he had left pissed off. Maybe Donnie believes that.
But maybe those who built this thing might return. Probably not. It looks as old as the Alamo.
The bugs aren’t as bad as even a week ago, there’s no feverish swirl of millions through the rubbery air, marching up under his T-shirt sleeves, biting through his “new” T-shirt, even his heavy jeans, sweat running in rivers down his legs. But now there is still something hanging on a string in front of his face, something scuttling up the shadowy wall there . . . the wall of his tree house. And a spider bite on his ankle. And a million ants. A hornet flies in the windowless window and out again.
The woods here this morning look prehistoric, a certain edge to the light, boring down between popples, glossy greenish-gray bark, huge-girthed, sour-smelling. And pines. Like ships’ masts. Their carpets are rust-colored and soundless and soft. And all the rest. Miles of waist-deep fern and other bushy stuff. Mostly green, but some edged in yellow. Thousands and thousands of spotted trunks and shaggy trunks and trunks rivuleted with great age, and gold and gray and white birch. All of it pushing and bullying and striving up into the heavy swells of foliage and live needles. This, the violence of trees! Like humans. It is war, yuh, war. Endless, endless war.
Is there nothing in this world that will cradle you?
He feels for his pack of cigarettes. Ah, yes. It takes five matches to light up. Everything damp. Everything stubborn. He almost sobs w
ith impatience. He finally inhales the burning friend. He closes his eyes, exhales slowly.
In a future time, Claire St. Onge remembers that summer well.
The outside world’s children were coming to us on a painful current of need. I believed we were up to this mighty challenge, that we were special people.
Secret Agent Jane visits the county jail again. Jane speaks.
It’s Sunday. Gordie and I get in his truck and go the long way off to see Mum. I walk straight past the copguards with my secret agent glasses, knowing everything about them, knowing everything.
Gordie tells me to hold his hand, but I say “no thank you.” I feel the power. Cops will die, the giant building will explode, my Mum will be rescued, anything could happen if they make me mad. I stare into Mum’s eyes and she is staring into the heart shapes of my eyes and she knows I have the power. She says, “So what do you have to report to Headquarters?” Her voice is secretish and important.
Something tells me I can’t report the Cherish part. So I whisper, “Everything they eat is weird. They love pepper and green spice. Especially Penny and Stuart and Jacquie. Everything burns hot red and disgusting because of Penny, Stuart, and Jacquie. And Claire. And her slaves. And Bonny Loo. Especially sausages. Mum, they make sausages. They use squashed meat in a metal thing. And they love love love fish. Fish with skinnnnnnnn.” I point at my pocket down here on my cute sundress. This is to show Mum there’s my secret agent notebook and pictures of hot terrible food and fish with skinnnnn and everybody’s mouths eating like PIGS, especially Gordie, who is ALWAYS EATING. His pig mouth is the worst.
Mum is smiling at Gordie, smiling into his eyes. “Jane Miranda Meserve is a secret agent. This is Headquarters,” she TELLLLS him.
“What are you doing? Don’t tell him!” My lips say this but without voice, just lips.
Gordie reaches over to me and runs his finger around inside my ear, inside and around all the curly parts of my ear. I let him.
With Gordie right there it’s difficult to tell Mum about all the stuff I found out. Like about THE MOTHERS. And THE TOILETS WITH NO WATER, called COMPOST. And the old man who is dying in a bed. And the GUNS.
So I just kinda pull lint off my sundress and open and close the strap to one of my sandals.
Gordie and Mum talk about the people in Mum’s “room.” Rooms here are locked. And then Gordie and Mum talk about fedral court and fedral prison and seizures and many many words of fedral kinds, and Mum whispers to Gordie something about the house.
I push my foot hard into the leg of Mum’s chair. It makes me so mad when Mum and people do that! You know, when they talk outside of me.
Gordie is breaking the copguard rules and reaches for Mum’s hand. But then stops. He is always feeling people, especially ears, and he also does a weird-willyish thing to your fingernails. Scratches them, which is just a plain thing to do, you would think, but you almost feel faint. Feels nice. I seen him kiss an old lady on the lips. And he blows breath on the man’s head with no eyes. And he hugged and danced with Oh-RELL. It was funny.
Gordie is not really Mum’s friend. He’s Granpa Pete’s friend. But I bet Gordie thinks Mum is pretty because she is. She is so pretty. Pretty hair. Pretty mouth. Pretty mole thing. Eyes very big—blue for a color—like wonderful jewels. Her hair she has fixed, called Light ’n’ Streak. It is really blonde with brownish lines. But with these secret agent glasses, it looks to be quite a nice streaked pink.
Mum is not the brown color. That’s my father, named Damon Gorely, in California. He is a star. He is famous in rap and has a perfect kitchen, Mum said, which is what he said after the concert. The Civic Center was wicked packed but he picked Mum. When you love someone of the different colors, you get a girl like me, which Mum calls a golden gypsy queen. Queen for sure.
While the child, Jane, appears to be deep in thought, the talk goes on.
Lisa says, “Kane wants me to tell all that I know about Bob Ross and Jeff if—”
“He’s trying to get you off,” says Gordon. “He’s only playing it the way they set it up to be played. Drug laws are now conspiracy laws. You know . . . like you’re a threat to the country.” He laughs.
“Sure. Rat and run.” Lisa frowns.
Gordon touches the child’s ear.
Lisa says, “I’d like them to think I have an iron will. That all this about the house, my daughter, prison, and everything won’t break me. Not even electric shocks to the bottoms of my feet could make me tell.” She smiles. “But I’m no iron will. I just don’t know anything. I never even saw any of the stuff. But somehow they’re saying there was stuff in the house. That’s made up! Unless it was some microscopic flake left from that party before Christmas! And Bob Ross . . . I never even saw him before. I just knew Carla. I just introduced him to Jeff ’cause Jeff wanted to get some stuff. I’m starting to get the idea that they wouldn’t mind a bit if I just made things up! The DA and the MDEA just want to hear stories about Bob Ross. They don’t care if the stories are true or not. That’s pretty low.”
Gordon groans. “So you are being framed for a million dollars’ worth. It makes perfect sense. Perfect.”
Lisa closes her eyes.
Jane tells us.
I stare at her mouth. With these glasses, I can read her mind. I can see in her mind that she’s really thinking how horridable them at Gordie’s are to expect me to eat hot food and fish skin. And also in Mum’s brains I see Cherish trapped inside the car watching the cops arresting Mum with guns and metal handcuffs and driving fast, and Mum can see out the cop car, can see back at Cherish inside our car inside the hot windows, her tongue long and crying and getting very small, for cops go fast and probably had the blue lights and siren noise.
Gordie feels down along both sides of his brown mustache with his fingers, the mustachey part way longer than his beard. One of his eyeballs grows, then it shrinks and blinks and then a way big mess all shivering around.
Mum looks over at the copguard. His outfit is brown and beige if you look at him without pink glasses. He is a huge guy like Gordie, only his middle is HUGE around like a HUGE giant inner tube for floating in the lake is under his shirt. His hair is shaved but for a small place like a little hat, and his mustache is HUGE but no beard thing. He must weigh wicked. He has set back in his chair now and has his arms crossed, and he is staring right at Mum. Mum looks fast back at Gordie, who has his eye very wild-looking.
Time ticks on at the jail.
Though visit time is ordered to the split second, there are moments when a visitor can feel lost in time, even as he or she feels boxed in by the sickly overhead schoolhouse-type lights and the eyes of the untrusting deputies. And you must never touch the prisoner.
Gordon St. Onge’s fingers move again toward the prisoner’s. Not a thrust. Just edging along. It is the fingers of both hands, a giant’s hands, one nail purpled from Settlement work or play, that breathing, unbraiding world so far from this unbending place.
Lisa’s eyes drop, as though in horror, to the next inching forward of his fingers.
The deputy doesn’t see this.
Lisa raises her eyes (“wonderful jewels”) to the “madman” (said by so many talk show call-ins), the pale pale eyes of Gordon St. Onge. And here is the secret of his success at drawing so many of his fellow humans to his table, to his hearth, to his embrace. For he is no suave creature. But this, the eyes into eyes, his sorrow, his inability to separate his meaty heart from the wailing hearts of those such as this woman. Her need. There is a tremble to his chin, the widening eye, the narrowing other eye, the horsy twitch. For a moment, he is becoming the caged one.
And Lisa, like so many, is yearning toward that yawning hole of empathy and the face, handsome but for its extreme expressions, particular in its Black Irish and Italian and French and Indian light-dark thick-necked way. Lisa makes a sound in her throat, not a word but a creaking. Like pond lilies against the metal bottom of a small boat. A brushy sound. Her eyes close.
Lisa looks toward the deputy.
The deputy crosses his arms, seemingly lost in thoughts of an unpleasant personal life.
Lisa says, “My friend Maggie here says that even if I did get off, even if the court says I’m innocent, they won’t give me the house back. Everything I own is gone. They seize everything when you’re arrested . . . so it’s part of the arrest, not part of the conviction. What kind of crazy nuttiness is that?”
Gordon leans a little toward her. “That’s why it’s called the Drug War. The state of war makes pillaging and hostage-taking okay. And the idea that your so-called rights are even worth less. That’s war. You know . . . like everything’s fair in love and war.”
Lisa whimpers. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She sucks her breath in, holds it painfully. Lets it out through her nose slowly like a pot smoker would do, only no smoke.
Gordon squinches his face in matching pain, swallows. “It’s a prototype—”
The School on Heart's Content Road Page 10
