The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  The tree boy doesn’t go in the house with the towering one. No, he stands at the back of the truck making baggy puffs of smoke through teeth and nose, being manly. His dirty tiny tail of hair, in an elastic above his collar, is curved up like a sprout.

  Back in the cab, the new passengers cram in with twitters and squeals and the smell of butter. Someone in the doorway of the yellow house waves good-bye. The driver of the truck beeps the horn and, finally getting his leg and foot in, slams his door. The truck windows are all aflutter with waving hands, the house person waves again, and the waves go on and on as the old truck rolls back toward the road.

  You, crow, flap your way to the top of the utility pole directly over the action.

  Even with Gordon St. Onge’s foot’s light well-meaning touch on the truck pedals, exhaust from the tailpipe blooms far and wide. You sneeze. Yeah, petroleum is king.

  The prayer.

  Too many people squashed together in the cab of this truck. Gordon, Mickey, a preteen girl named Stacia, and two little kids that look like they might be girls, though they are boy-haired and tough-looking. One has a commercially made baseball jacket but has its arms around a Settlement-made rag doll almost as large as Gordon. The doll has black button eyes and a smile made of white fake pearl buttons, embroidered ears, yellow yarn hair, and a patchwork dress with embroidered pockets. The other small kid has a paper bag on its lap with the top neatly folded over, and this kid sits on the lap of the preteen girl.

  Gordon turns up a back road a half mile before Heart’s Content Road and stops the truck off on the shoulder. “I need to see a man about a horse,” he says, and galumphs off into the trees.

  Mickey gets out to smoke and one little kid, the one with the bag, rolls down the window to ask Mickey questions like, “Do you like night?” and “What do you think Gram calls her cat now?” Mickey answers all these questions with a manly nod, or just a hard stream of smoke from his nose and a small smile. The preteen girl keeps glancing at him when she thinks he’s not looking. But she has nothing to ask him or to tell him.

  When Gordon returns, he invites everyone to go up in the woods for a quick history lesson.

  This is the Settlement way. Life rolls out opportunities for lessons. Lessons pop up everywhere!

  The kids inside the truck step down, chattering. Mickey crushes the last of his cigarette in the sand. One little kid runs ahead up the ferny trail. The other one starts crying. The preteen girl starts yelling at the running one. The huge yellow-haired doll waits behind, slumped against one door.

  Gordon says, “I haven’t been up here in a while. It’s grown up a lot. Used to be a stone cattle pound here somewhere.” He stops and stares at a humpy area around a jungle of sumac. “Every one of those pieces of granite are gone. People steal rocks nowadays, you know.” He looks at Mickey, his pale eyes blazing with disgust. “Yuppies take ’em.”

  Mickey pictures hundreds of yuppies lugging off the big rocks.

  Crows are cawing in the near distance. A great dither.

  Gordon starts walking again. “I want to show you a neat old graveyard. It’s up here.” The crying little kid rushes Gordon and throws itself at Gordon’s legs, and he hoists the child up, makes a loud smooching noise into its crying mouth. Little kid laughs tearfully. Its short hair is all dark curls, and though it wears little jeans and little leather boots and a sweater, its shirt is really just a pajama top left from the night. Mickey now hears Gordon call this kid Anna. Gordon carries Anna against his shoulder, her legs clamped around his rib cage. He says, “I just wanna check this little yard and see if it’s still there. Antiquers steal graveyard gates. Everything is a commodity these days, even our history.”

  Mickey notes that Gordon’s face is different now. Voice instructive rather than frantic. How many guys is Gordon St. Onge? Mickey isn’t creeped out by this, but he is braced.

  They find it. It is still all there.

  There are ten graves in all, five with fine old slate stones, tall and elegant with weatherworn old script. But there are also five graves with just plain small rocks for markers. The yard itself is built up on three sides with high walls of impressive granite stonework. The granite pieces are long, like coffins. Wrought-iron gate still intact. Young trees have taken over the graves, forcing some stones to lean, while shifting earth tips the others. Gordon explains. “Barringtons don’t do this one. Only military veterans get care, orders from the selectmen. And as you see, there’s no veterans here. Let the good doctors, mothers, farmers, and little dead babies and pocked children sink into the earth’s core, devoured by trees! Forget ’em! They were nothing but plain boring gloryless trashy peace types. Ack!”

  Mickey looks down at the plain gray rocks that mark the graves of babies. All those babies nobody could save. Somehow, in his heart, there is momentarily the confused image of yuppies lugging rocks, veterans lugging rocks, everybody stealing the rocks and handsome iron gates of babies’ graveyards, helpless, suffering, shrunken, cancer-killed babies, all babies with his nephew Jesse Locke’s face. He feels a hand. Little kid with all the questions pats him on his shirtfront. “Are you sad?” he or she asks.

  Mickey’s answer is a shrug.

  Gordon talks and talks. Mickey likes the way Gordon knows so much about these old graves, the old families of Egypt, farmers mostly, and all the ways they are tied into the families here in Egypt today. Through some exhaustingly tangled mess of then Elizabeth such ’n’ such married Abigail such ’n’ such’s cousin, James such ’n’ such, Mickey and Gordon realize that they are both related to people in this yard, and therefore related to each other, through about fifteen such ’n’ such’s and many marriages. Mickey likes this. So what if it’s distant? Related is related. If the tribe includes you, you are in it. You are embraced. You will survive.

  Gordon starts pitching some dead limbs out of the cemetery. “Honor our past,” he says, and everyone thrashes limbs out over the granite edges of the little yard.

  Mickey smiles to himself, imagining Mr. Carney and the rest doing shit like this.

  “Check this out.” Gordon holds his hand out for everyone to look. On his palm, an inchworm is raised up, poking its blind face around, looking a little frantic. Gordon says, “He has wonderful skin. Don’t pity him. He knows what none of us know.”

  Mickey strikes a match for a cigarette, still smiling his ghosty smile.

  When they turn back, the once-crying Anna is in better spirits, her baseball jacket flapping as she runs ahead, all the kids gone on ahead, shrieking happily.

  Three or four song bugs have begun to creak as the sun warms.

  Young noisy crows lead each other from tree to tree in an open bright space off to the right. As Mickey walks, he squints one eye manfully and blows smoke. Gordon is behind now, paused in his tracks, staring backward down the path toward the crows and the golden brightness. Gordon says, “Come here a sec. I’m just curious.” Mickey follows him now toward the crows and the alluring golden light.

  It is a clearing, S-shaped. Mushy. Wet. Filling it, a sea of late September yellow, the greener parts, splotches of a color that is otherworldly and whisperish, the leaves pointed and alert in a way that makes them seem centuries old, older than rock and water: plants that observe you. And there are clumpy buds the size of children’s fists. And a smell. The smell. And mixed in between, all the regular Maine-type wet-loving weeds and other green, lesser smells.

  Mickey looks at Gordon. Gordon closes his eyes. “My God.” A breathy whisper. He opens his eyes and says, “Shit.” And then, in another breathy whisper, “Lady Ganja.”

  Mickey says, “Yep.”

  Gordon grabs Mickey’s thin left arm and pulls him into an emergency-ish trot through the crackling ferns till they are out of the light, back into the dappled world of oaks and birches. “Get on your knees, man,” says Gordon.

  Mickey’s eyes widen. His cheeks flush maroon. He doesn’t question this scary guy, who is not the principal at school or any one o
f those types, not that kind of power, but a twisting, turning, pounding force, both sticky and awful but mostly sticky. Mickey gets down on his knees.

  Gordon gets down on his knees beside Mickey. Aloud he prays, “Dear God, give us the strength to never ever ever speak of this what we have just seen. Is this not the greatest Commandment of them all? Thou shalt not tell on your neighbor. Thou shalt not bring calamity on your neighbor, nor the evil of SWAT teams and guns and force and smashed children and imprisoned mothers and fathers. Give me more strength than for anything I have ever needed strength for before, to keep the knowledge of my neighbor’s crop to myself and never return here. Amen.” He springs up and starts running, keys jangling.

  Mickey, his ashless cigarette bent against his palm, runs too. He burps up a goaty cheese-maple taste. He gets an acorn cap wedged in the tread of his boot but just keeps on running.

  Back in the truck.

  Mickey has the kid with the baseball jacket on his lap now, one hand holding her steady, but he fixes his gaze on the rearview mirror’s toy Godzilla, twirling slowly and heavily from the poofs of the slammed doors. His eyes slide to Gordon’s profile, which now wears a goofy grin, like a kid when he’s being what Erika used to call devious. One of the Prophet’s many selves that Mickey is beginning to memorize.

  Gordon sighs and his face goes into deep-thought mode. He suggests that Mickey may want to live at the Settlement, there’s plenty of room. And Mickey says, with great dignity, that he’ll think about it.

  A jubilation of crows.

  You all take notice as the truck sputters to life and putt-putts up the road of many forks and twists, with its name of heart’s content, up, up, and away. You love the way things are turning out for the tree boy. So far.

  October

  Media magic.

  The papers (mostly in-state), with their letters to the editors and one-column updates, radio call-in programs, and the occasional television moment keep the Egypt matter covered daily, like a granule of sand in the eye or a pebble in a shoe. Some are still fascinated with the sign at the Settlement gate that promises to shoot trespassers. Others speak or write glowingly of how outgoing the St. Onge people are. And Gordon St. Onge seems like such a “loving man.” Some rave about the need for solar and wind and vegetable or hemp fuels, in order to save the planet, and speak of the Settlement people as shining examples we should all follow. Others warn that we should fear these separatists, or at least fear for the St. Onge followers, “especially the children, especially the girls.” “He speaks truth!” one caller exclaims. “He’s totally insane,” snarls another. Others stutteringly repeat the word militia. And paranoia and fringe and wacko. “Dangerous right-wing types,” say some. “Refreshingly leftist,” applauds another. With a sigh, one caller tells listeners, “It’s an embarrassment to our state. People will believe all of us in Maine are like this, losers with a grudge! Even their kids. I don’t know what exactly their problem is, but if people stop making so much of them, maybe it’ll all die down. It’s disgusting!”

  Out in the world, in a federal building somewhere, in America, S.A. (Special Agent) Kashmar is browsing through reports.

  He looks up as someone passes in the hall, headed out. It’s late. He draws his coffee to him and presses it against his shirt, as though giving it shelter from a storm. He flips through more printouts, clippings, pictures, faxes.

  Lotta bad eggs out there. Lotta bad boys with guns. Lotta crackpots with intentions, bad intentions. Putting into a lotta other people’s heads intentions those people never thought of. Stirring up discontent. Scaring everyone. Meanwhile, all kissy-kissy and talk of brotherhood, talk of God. How’s that go? “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” Yeah, but those guns used to be pointed at Germans and Russians and Japs and Vietcong. Commies and Jap crap. These guns are pointed at the United States of America.

  Okay, Mr. St. Onge, Guillaume—however you pronounce it. Okay, pretty boy, keep it up. You don’t get it? We do not allow groups, tight groups, groups intended to steer away from America. There’s only one thing worse than attacking America with guns or voices, and that is steering away. You see, buddy? If you become a nation, a new overzealous nation, you take a lot with you that is ours. And—well, you are not America. So you are dog shit. And—well, you are an example. Either you are an example of us putting down danger, or you are an inspiration to others to do what you do.

  And that example cannot exist in America.

  And so, yeah, it is our humble job, our employment, see, to neutralize you. Neutralizing leadership of problem organizations and situations doesn’t mean pretty please. It’s more like an Irish setter gets neutralized at the vet’s: snip-snip. Maybe even that’s not enough. You know what they do with rabid dogs? The head is cut off and sent to the state lab in a plastic bag.

  Okay, so you, Guillaume St. Onge, alias Gordon, ain’t nothin’ yet. Just a photo opportunity for the papers and talk-show subject matter. But it’s your intentions we don’t like. We’ve kicked down a hell of a lot of doors because of intentions we don’t like. At the same time, you could be very very useful to us.

  The agent now cocks his head. So much carpeting these days, even in these rat-trap old mausoleum-type buildings. Carpeting and cork ceilings and windows with glass as thick as two-by-fours. With only himself here now in this suite so late at night, it is absolutely and eerily soundless.

  The voice of Mammon (today).

  Food is money. Money is food. Food is a weapon. No bang, just a whimper. It crosses the sea. It zigzags. Food from here goes there. Food from there goes thataway. Special seeds. Special soils. Special stuff to squirt on everything. And poke it into cows. Do as we say and you can be part of the deal. Look at the pretty food in sky-high piles. It is in the sky, headed somewhere to win this bloodless war.

  And—

  With rich and artificial hopes, the population grows richly, but in the absence of frontiers.

  And—

  Corporate power grows.

  Meanwhile.

  Latest studies show that Americans now have 15 percent more anxiety than two years ago. Twenty percent more mistrust. Experts explain that these trends should level off, as Wall Street and their economists expect the dazzling economy to continue and the spectacular profits to continue. Experts explain that Americans were just edgy in that last study, due to the imminence of the new millennium, that the anxiety was just a normal response to that.

  The screen croons.

  Everything will be all right if you just listen to meeeee!

  From frozen Pluto’s tiny microscopic Plutonian observatory, observers speak.

  juto pssssdrip pt truk bxox wjp litopt jlswdn mnrd prtd ncln!*

  Out in the world, all over the big round world.

  The militias grow. And the resisters, the raised fists, the pamphlets, the huddles, the blocking of streets. Cries for liberty, libertad, free will. The hydra coalesces. It is beautiful to its mother.

  God speaketh.

  The create-lings are ever busy, following design, never unnatural. Never “bad.” The dynamo of the universe is rosy and warm in the chambers of my “heart.” No complaints on my part. (Yes, it’s true. Nobody ever understands God.)

  The tromping of feet and the warning caws of a nearby guard-duty crow wake Mickey.

  Not that he was truly asleep. Nowadays, as everyone says, mosquitoes stay around until snow flies. He has had three or more on each ear all night. The creaking grass and tree bugs, which he likes, have all gone silent, due to the moose-herd-type tromping on the path. And also a jingling. Takes him only about fourteen seconds to flip himself over the door hole in the floor and drop, landing Superman-style on the scruffed rooty spot below: visitors. He stares them down.

  It’s the Prophet with a buncha women and kids. A dog in the lead, a golden retriever’s head, body of a beagle.

  Uh-oh. Mickey has not gone very far to use “the toilet” since he has resided here. A dog is the last thing he needs snooping
around. He shuts his eyes very tight for two seconds, a hurried prayer.

  The Prophet says, “Good morning!” The jingling Mickey heard was the keys on the man’s belt.

  Mickey nods, rubs one eye. The other eye is on the bushes, where the yellowy-brown tail of the dog is all that shows.

  “We brought breakfast!” an Indian-looking girl about seven shouts, running up with a darkly varnished basket.

  Behind her, more baskets, more Indians, and a boy as blond as an old man. Three women, not exactly hot babes, as Mickey had liked to imagine, but somehow he knows these are St. Onge wives.

  A crow veers in and settles in the tree’s tip-top above the rummaging dog. The crow is silent, its feathers rippling and adjusting as easy as pond water.

  Kid hands are reaching into the softer baskets; lids of the hard baskets are flipped wide.

  The small Indian girl hands Mickey something wrapped in cloth. Feels cold and dead.

  Gordon says deeply, “No American home is complete without stuff” and hands Mickey a can of paper flowers, spotty with on-purpose-looking raspberry-juice-looking dye. Gordon’s eyes widen. “Say you love them.” He winks, rolling his eyes sideways toward the kids. A mosquito finds the Prophet’s big neck. Big hand mashes it.

  Mickey takes the flowers.

  “They look real, don’t they?” says one of the taller Indian girls, tall enough to be a teenager, but Mickey figures she’s not. She has Gordon’s doggy smile, one of Gordon’s many types of smiles and grimaces.

  “Do you think somebody made them?” asks the very blond, very small boy.

  Mickey says, “They look real.” He looks into the faces of this boy and the little girl, much easier than looking into the gaze of an older person.

  Another of the taller girls, as tall as Mickey, hands him a jar sloshing with tan stuff. Looks like maple milk. She says, “We’re learning to make paper. You have to press it.” Her eyes—light brown and deep as molasses—are on the flowers. Her black hair looks like it has been pulled out in chunks. A fight? A mean older brother?