The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  He smokes. The taste of the smoke is tired. But its work feels good to his blood. His head is busy, planning his life.

  What next?

  He is thinking about the people who own this land, the ones with the big leader who everyone talks about since he was in the paper: St. Onge. Gordon, Gordo, the Prophet. Rumor has it that the people worship him, and they are all very crazy.

  With time on his hands, Mickey strolls.

  Going down, down. Down the woodsy mountain. A zigzag path through the trees. Very steep. The sun is straight above. The hot steam is surrounding. The deerflies ride a tornado of their own making. The path is spongy in some places, mossy and mushroomy. But in other places, rooty and rocky. A broad weathered ledge is crossed in one area, wide open. Crusty rock but kinda looks fuzzy in the heat. Mickey’s eyeballs are as sticky as jam. The smoke of his cig is hot, too, but dry.

  Out here on the ledge, he feels like a stewing carrot. He looks down around his feet at many busy party-faced purple flowers on runners of small thick leaves moving at an unseeable speed around the shady edge of the big opening.

  Puff, puff. More smoke. He raises his eyes. Through a triangular swatch of “view” he can see, down there way below, the place called the Settlement where the St. Onge people live or are kept, depending on who you talk to.

  Big U-shaped building. Like a cowboy town in the old movies. In the yard of the U-shaped building is a grassy square. Tall trees. But also homemade-looking things, made of wood, painted in colors like green and purple and OSHA yellow. These are gigantic creatures with kids going inside them and on them and underneath. For instance, a dinosaur, a cow, a spaceship.

  Some boys about Mickey’s age, some younger, go along a brick path, behind them a brown dog. Sort of a shepherd.

  But, man, hard not to notice, there are enough little squirts . . . age four, age five, whatever . . . enough to feed the big dinosaur there, all it takes to feed Tyrannosaurus rex . . . tall as a barn. Some of the kids are in the head now, looking out through the tall teeth.

  A whole line of women come out of one screen door of the U-shaped building, and most of them have got a chubby-legged baby kid, carried on a hip or neck.

  On the part of the square U that looks into the grassy dinosaur area are screened porches and boardwalks with a ton of screen doors. Shadows of people—or, rather, light face or arm shapes—move inside the dark screeny shadows in there.

  Some call this a “home school.” Mickey wonders which ones of the mean-ass-looking guys over by the Quonset huts—three big Quonset huts—are the teachers. And principal. And vice principal.

  People trotting and trudging in and out of the big bay doors, arriving in trucks, and there are two sawmills and a sawdust blower, all quiet but no way abandoned-looking.

  A radio tower. Door now opens in the small building. Some people leaving, and people leaving the big sandy parking area. Very busy. Like a town. Like maybe even busier. Also cattle and sheep. Mooing and baaing.

  He notices a lot of black chickens, free as the breeze, walking chicken-leggedly along, diving between people, taking dust baths in the parking lot, scratching weeds, poking cow flaps.

  Now he sees some girls his own age. Real chicks. Not as free as the chickens. They seem weighted by thoughts and thrust forward by missions. Some wiggling at the hips, probably hot for sex. One wears a soft-looking shirt of an April-sky blue. Another a soft creamy orange. Mickey loves soft girls the best. Soft in all ways. He studies the blue and orange one hard. And smokes hard.

  Off to the right, up a hill higher than his, some guys on ATVs are pulling small loads. They are cruising as quiet as spaceships at least from this far it seems like that. He studies them hard and again puffs the dry calming smoke.

  Now going up a rough dirt road running parallel with rough-looking electric wires are more silent ATVs driven by girls. Three girls. Three ATVs. Three wagons. Wagons with black boxes. Big batteries?

  One girl is wearing a bathing suit top of yellow. Very small cups. Too small for her breasts. She is dark. Maybe she is an Indian. He can’t really see her face. But the black hair is in a braid as mighty as a ship’s rope, thick as her own arm. Something tough about her, the way she handles that ATV, jerking the handlebars around rocks and roots. Not really a soft girl. Mickey decides he is not limited to soft girls, only that soft and sweet are easier to be with. But for purposes of feeling crazy in the jaws, hands, and dick, there are no dividing lines.

  This does not seem like a school with rows. And no buzzers and intercoms. This might just be life. Puff puff puff.

  Secret Agent Jane reports from inside.

  This is not a school of officialness and for real. NO! NO! NO! NO, it is NOT! No small desks. No giant halls. No bell-buzzing thing to make you stand up or sit down. Nobody here knows the time! No principal to make you scared of talking or not standing or sitting down in the exact right way. No DARE man in a police suit.

  Here is just shops with big porches and Quonsets, which are big round-roof things. And sawmills. And a radio house, very small. Everybody is someplace here—inside, outside, either sitting and TALKING or making stuff or reading WEIRD stuff like books of history of a very fat kind, some thin—but NO TESTS. NO REPORT CARDS. So what are these history books for, to hurt your arm?

  Crow.

  At this hot saggy time of day, you, crow, have so little to report. Trees are filled with your kind, all in pensive attitudes. Perhaps it is prayer. Your prayer might be that you are never as lonely as the boy human, Mickey Gammon, standing on the ledge, his gray wolfy eyes stealing over the sun-bright and shady mysteries of Settlement life.

  Secret Agent Jane tells more from inside.

  I am exhausted. Too many people here, as you know. They are all exhausted. Big sizes and little sizes. No time for TV—if you can find a TV. I have looked everywhere. Instead it is just things you DO.

  You make boards at the sawmill, screaming noise.

  You also make fiddles. Tamya put a color on hers of iodine, a color like out-of-space at night.

  Also you make flutes and whistles and kazoos. This is a special shop with a pretty window.

  Furniture-making shop is messy and heapy and wood dust goes up your nose. Also it makes screaming noise.

  Also some people make roads!

  Also food, which nobody here buys. They do all these jobs, like seeds, weeds, pick, jars, cellars, cook, just for one thing. Ol’ food.

  Maple syrup starts in pails here.

  Also, they do Christmas trees to sell.

  In real school you do not sell.

  Back at the tree house, swatting tidal waves of biting bugs, Mickey tells us.

  Rex says he’ll pick me up on the way to the pit Saturday. So I says I’ll meet him down by the transformers. So he thinks I still live over there with them, Mr. King Shit Locke and his televisions. Well . . . I think Rex thinks I live there. Actually, he said that at Bean’s—the Variety—they said a woman called, probably Erika. I can’t picture it to be Mum. Erika, I picture. The store guys said I’d been in and told her I looked alive.

  So then Rex says to me, “You must have missed supper or something so she was calling around. Someone at the Convenience Cubical said there was a call there too. But they hadn’t seen you up that way.”

  Man, I do not lie to Rex. His eyes read you. Maybe something in his head beeps . . . you know, if you lie or feed him a line. I’ve seen him look into Willie like this when Willie is making up shit, like how he had to shoot an agent once to defend himself. But I knew that was made up and nothing beeped in my head.

  So Rex is looking at me, waiting for an answer, truth or lie, pick one. So, me, I just don’t say anything. I just stare at the rug we’re standing on.

  More from Secret Agent Jane on the learning situation at the Settlement.

  There’s actually one of the shops which is a newsroom. For doing news. It’s where you collect what’s going on so we can make the History as It Happens books. There is a printi
ng press, loud, smelly. Copy machines, but “too many drawbacks,” one of the mothers said. Typewriters. Not computers. I say typewriters are too old. And one broke, but they just went and fixed it. I asked why not get computers. A boy named Rawn said, “’Cuz they’re the devil.” So the history news books are made with glue and pens and too much work.

  People actually talk about history while they eat and walk around, about hydris and commons and slaves and galleys and poppists and robin barons. And they talk about world-wise news which they find out in altrinite news. They have medical education, and natomies studies, kromo zones, and stuff on munny sipal law.

  Also fruit flies. And haircuts in the beauty shop. I did one hairdo on Margo. She said thank you very much. Also people learn arki teckture. But not much for sports or any flying balls. And nobody goes home on a bus. They just stay and stay, stuck here like I am, only mostly there are mothers here too, and fathers and grandpeople. In a real school you have only kids who are all alike, all one size and clothes-perfect. No mothers or grandpeople allowed.

  But in real school at least when you get home your mum is there, but always very tired from helping the dentist with millions of rotten teeth.

  Mickey in his tree house, arms around his head to protect his face from the bugs.

  I would tell Rex, but then what? Offer me the couch? Then I’d be wicked in the way. Maybe he’d hate me. And her—his mother. They’d hate me, like here’s Mickey Gammon in the middle of the living room. Who wants a totally useless guy in the middle of the living room?

  And besides, how can I explain what happened? Fuckin’ A, what was it that happened? I don’t even know. One minute I was in Donnie’s house. The next minute I’m here. Like, poof! It’s not a thing you can talk about, not like the Constitution, the UN, Mini-14’s, and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

  Saturday. Mickey, lighting up a “borrowed” cigarette, speaks.

  So I’m watching Doc shoot Big John’s new Bushmaster at the man’s head, the bad-guy shape on the cop targets we’re using now.

  This is pretty funny. I’ve got to sit here on Rex’s tailgate and pretend I’m not surprised by Willie asking me if his wife should send flowers or something. For Jesse.

  Okay. This means Jesse is dead. Right?

  How should I know? I’m just out on the moon, the last person to know, right?

  But I live there with them, right? I should know if Erika and Donnie want flowers or “something else.”

  I probably got a look on my face, sorta squinty, like I’m twisting my brains over whether it should be daisies or roses or chicken casserole.

  I don’t look at Rex. ’Cause he’s got the mind-reading thing, remember? I do not look in the captain’s eyes.

  Bonny Loo speaks.

  My real and legal name is Bonnie Lucretia Sanborn. Sanborn was Danny’s name, his family. But Danny is dead. The accident. No drinking. No overtiredness. Just a really big truck and a fluke. Danny the one driving the really big truck.

  I won’t say things were great before he died. We were having it hard, making ends meet. Even if it hadn’t been for the accident, I would like to have had us all move here to the Settlement, Danny too. He would not have wanted to work here with them. He never liked working with a bunch of people. That’s why he drove truck. That’s just the way it is for some. They don’t do their best in a bunch. He was always on the road. If he were to live here, you wouldn’t really call him living here, just kinda stopping by. It would have worked out. But that never happened.

  Everything seems pretty good in my life these days. I can’t complain. Six years since the accident. I guess it takes that long to get used to your dear one rotting in the grave. But also, all the circumstances, you know, my financial situation then. It sucked. You know, everything is affected by the financial. Out in the world, outside the Settlement, everything costs. Like Gordon says, “Everything is a commodity. Justice is a commodity. Information is a commodity. Honor is a commodity. Dignity is a commodity. Health is a commodity. Death is a commodity. Land is a commodity. Freedom is a commodity. Air, water, energy, art, song, info, thoughts, peace of mind, your soul—it’s all for sale, and if you can’t buy it, you will not have it.”

  Anyway, it was terrible for a while, especially after my mum-in-law Dorothy went to the nursing home and the state grabbed the house. I came this close to slitting my wrists. Even with Gabriel depending on me. It didn’t matter. My thoughts were not normal; they had gotten gray and small and squeezed. I figured Gabriel was better off dead too. I figured everybody was better off dead. Well, it’s true. Life isn’t a great gift. It is shit. Just various adaptations by various organisms to various environments of various ages of planet Earth. That’s the science view. And me, I’ve always been a scientist. Don’t laugh. Anyway, a normal brain says, “A new day is coming! See the fresh morning! Get up and go!” The brain of a human person in a hopeless trap wants only to escape to the comfort of nothingness. It sees everything different. Big things look small. Small things look big. And everything is ugly.

  My mother says maybe I take after my father, who also fell apart. He flipped. Only he started shooting. And the cops didn’t try to talk him out of it. I was right there watching when they all shot him. I was there watching him fall from the top of our cousin’s truck, heavy and dead, like a stack of newspapers is dead, like an old sweater is dead, like a book, a lamp, a rag, or a sawdust doll. Where does that aura of vigor go? Weird, huh? One minute you are everything; the next minute you are nothing. Ma says it had an effect on me. Sure it did. But what about the world, the real world here and now? Trying to get by, you are lost in ice-hot space, the living dead.

  Until the Settlement people come to save you!

  Now when I wake up in my little pale-pink house with my three children nestled around me, or if my new husband is here, I am in his arms and the kids are tucked into their really jazzy carved pine beds, and I think of the day’s plans, always so many plans, so many sisters here, and I want to live. My brain is normal. I get the kids in the tub. I sweeten them with kisses. Or a lecture, if they are acting like shits. Then there is the getting-dressed race. And then we head down the path to the shops.

  Okay, so everything ain’t perfect. The husband situation has a kind of creepy twist. You know, the P word, polygamy. Yes, I am one of the wives. No, it’s nothing like you can imagine. In fact, at the moment I’d rather think about something else. Like cooking!

  It’s one of my most favorite things. I think of myself as a cooking scientist. Or cooking explorer. I never use receipts or cookbooks. No measuring cups or spoons. Each pot or pan of stuff I rustle up, I wonder why it doesn’t explode before I get it to the table. But you know something? Everything I put on those tables, the family says it’s the best ever. The best ever. And there’s seldom a crumb or spoonful left when the tables are cleared. My huge egg-shaped breads they sometimes call “clouds.”

  I won’t report to you now which of my sisters burn food or make food that just doesn’t appeal. Mean talk is mean and would quickly turn to heartache among us.

  I admit there are nights when I wake with a low moan, and the faces of my sisters here look huge and distorted and leering, and they steal from me or push me and pull a sleeve hard so that I begin to fall . . . off a cliff or something . . . but only in dreams. In real life they are very nice people. Basically.

  Going to visit Marian St. Onge. Secret Agent Jane speaks.

  Gordie takes me in his truck to go visit his mum. We bring her peas and radishes and piles of chard in a basket. And orange cow butter shaped like a heart. She lives in Wiscasset near the nuclear thing. This is something Gordie does every week, drives to Wiscasset “to check on my mother.”

  She is not real friendly. Her house is huge with a white rug and naked angels. When she sees me, she says hello and shows me some of her house so we can look at it like you do in a store, cruisin’ the racks. I think she’s rich. She has these baby angels with real pee-pees and other statues. Ev
erything is also red . . . like curtains. Or white. Her chairs are white. But it’s a pinkish-white when you are me with these special secret agent glasses.

  Her TV is in the wall.

  Gordie is talking-talking, but his mum is quiet-quiet. Then we go to the kitchen, which is the best kitchen! All the stuff for a kitchen. I bet my dad Damon would love it here. The toaster is more shiny than even normal.

  Marian is Gordie’s mum’s name. She offers me a cookie, which I accept. It is huge. You’ll know when you look at a pizza how huge. It is perfect. Big and perfect. With chocolate chips perfectly spaced. She must have paid a bunch of money for cookies like this. Definitely not a cookie made by hands.

  She puts me at the breakfast nook, which is in the wall and has a window to look out and see the outside statues. These are also naked boys. And beautiful, with their perfectly curled hair. With pink flowers on bushes. Outdoors is very nice and rich.

  She offers me a pretty napkin with cows on it. And milk, but I say no thanks to milk. Even her perfect store kind that doesn’t squirt out of cows. I hate milk. Then she goes right into the other room, another living room with all-white stuff and a metal God statue of a guy with clothes, and Gordie and her talk very low for a long time.

  I eat the cookie real fast, so then all I have for something to do is nothing. I would ask to watch TV, but I guess I won’t because it is weird with them. They have stopped talking, and then in a minute she says, “These people are like a disease with you. Like your alcoholism.”

  Gordie is quiet.

  I use the cow napkin to wipe my secret agent glasses clean. If I stand a certain way I can see Gordie’s mum through the archway, standing in the middle of the pretty room holding her head. TV is right behind her. If it were on, I could watch it from here.

  Now Gordie’s mum begs and begs him to use “common sense.” She says someday he is going to be in a lot of trouble because of people like Lisa Meserve.

  Whoa! My mother is Lisa Meserve!!!!!

  Then she says more stuff. “I used to think these friendships you had were teenage rebellion. But you are almost forty now, and it’s every hippie and biker and indigent widow and farmer and food-stamp queen and riffraff relative of your father’s you can get your hands on. You draw them like flies.”