The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  Dawn of another day.

  You tip your head, your hearing troubled by the rain, which punches you all over. You consider Mickey Gammon’s tree house, seeming to produce rain from its soggy edges. The uncovered window reveals the inside space still stuffed with tree-boy gear. But no Mickey.

  The whole.

  In the west side leg of the Settlement’s horseshoe are shops and piazzas—screen ones and open ones—parlors and library, also the kitchens. Built at first as one room, the floor is laid with Settlement-made ceramic tiles painted in designs and images with all colors known to the eye, especially lime and red. Under the tiles, copper tubes flow with sun-warmed water when needed. The floor surface is fiercely attended by cleaning crews to make things right for crawling babies.

  This Grange Hall–sized space is divided into two areas by partial walls of cubbies and an archway of sign-up sheets, mailboxes, notices, complaints, photos, and art.

  The first kitchen you enter from the piazzas has sinks and stoves. Tall many-paned good-for-the-soul windows frame at this moment a small dawn-dim foggy field, the rain solid and sparkling. Sometimes three deer appear there to graze, churning, fluttering ears and tails giving them away.

  Significant thumps and clangs of Settlement life will bring their heads up.

  And always there are crows, who can’t seem to mind their own business. Even now in the downpour one is out there slumped on the point of a broken-off pine.

  The first kitchen is called the Cook’s Kitchen. It is hotter than the other, warmed by shouts, orders, jokes, frying smells, and lots of lid, drawer, and door slamming.

  People who need to be fed by other people’s hands are arranged in thronelike chairs near the radiance of this hubbub, and on days like this a few extra sticks crackle in one cookstove firebox.

  The bigger kitchen you get to through the archway. This is called the Winter Kitchen. Only on stuffy days or steamy days are the piazzas fully set up for meals. Today they are not.

  See from this inner kitchen the same little field through the tall windows. To the right of the field, close enough to block the summertime view of the southwest sky, are the rain-blackened shaggy trunk and limbs of a hundred-year maple. Its foliage is hot-tempered, more purple than red or orange. Majestic to human eyes.

  But most eyes are turned inward. Many dozens of persons this moment, making plans, gobbling hungrily or daintily, testing the steamier stuff, sipping, leaning back—or forward and ready to lunge out into the big day.

  Three long tables are made up of smaller ones, and smaller ones are in Ts or alone. Biscuits in piles. Meat and eggs in bowls. Raw milk of the cow and the goat in tall pottery pitchers, and some pitchers of well water, if you prefer. Jam and preserves in jars with missing spoons, some empty. Real butter. Black store-bought pepper and salt. Roughly sliced dark and light breads, warm or cold. Ripped-apart breads. Muffins with bites. Syrup of the maple tree in jars and pools and trickles. Potato cakes. Tomato juice in shapes like the bottoms of somebody’s shoes crossing the floor. Someone with a mop is already on the way.

  Lights are dimmer in the kitchen of tables than in the kitchen of stoves, but Settlement-made candles hither and yon make a greenish light on faces and throats, the same green as the candles’ wicked green and weedy scents.

  A catlike sound, a very new baby, stops suddenly.

  Groaning laughter at a bad joke trying too hard to be good.

  Stories. Always the stories.

  Gossip. Always the gossip.

  Gordon St. Onge sits with a table of snowy-haired solemn-faced women and men who have eaten before sunrise to get that out of the way. Teacups, coffee cups. A dried-out muffin. Each set of hands clasps a fan of playing cards. A spindly hunched-into-contortion woman slides her eyes to Gordon’s face and winks. He squeezes both eyes shut. A code? Are they cheating?

  Gordon doesn’t have cards, just one Zeus-sized arm around a woman who is asleep. Her cards still rest where they were dealt. In a moment or two, her nap is over and she awakes with a smile. Pats Gordon’s arm and speaks, part French, part English. All brightness, not at all sleepy.

  The cards whir and slap, open and close. A gravelly voice speaks of the rain. Gordon now watches a man wearing a brown dressy sweater and pastel shirt. He dolls up like this for meals and for Settlement meetings (announced on the bulletin side of the kitchen archway). This gentleman’s chin lifts slightly, faking a good hand.

  Gordon’s chair goes back suddenly as he sees a storm of small boys headed his way. Swamp monster! they scream.

  “Red ants!” Gordon groans, covering his eyes. Cringing. The wob of keys on his belt jangling almost tunefully.

  The kids (red ants) cover him, some climbing up both sides, some just muckling onto his legs. Some tug his shirt.

  Guitar strumming mixes in with the screams, bad jokes, whirring of cards, oven doors. On a foot-high stage in a corner far from the tall windows, sort of shadowy now, a teen, maybe twenty, wearing a chocolate brown satiny Nehru jacket, gives the breakfasters some early morning chords, heartbreakingly beautiful. Three-dimensional paper fish churn lazily on strings over his head. No kazoos yet. Eventually, a gang will whip out their trusty kazoos for more cheery wake-up music.

  Gordon is now effortlessly holding a screeching four-year-old upside down over the pack of red ants, who are snapping and clawing at the victim’s upright red hair. “Enough, Guillaume!” one woman scolds Gordon, and whatever it is she says in her snappy Aroostook French seems to work.

  Within moments, Gordon is crossing the room to a balding man in a denim barn jacket spotted blackly with rain.

  Gordon says, “Hey, man,” in a grave way and embraces the guy. Then, pulling away, shakes his head.

  The guy says, “He’s better off. That was no life, ya know?” Eyes swirling with tears, he speaks in even phrases of his father in some nearby town. In these ways the Settlement can never be and was never intended to be a barred-up place of separatists.

  “Your ma got anyone there right now?” Gordon wonders.

  “My sister Ginny, but only till Tuesday.”

  Arriving in the Cook’s Kitchen now, a very drenched and arrow-straight Mickey Gammon. A light step, but of course he is noticed by the breakfast crew and cooed over. And the cook herself, Bonny Loo, bullies him into taking a biscuit from a pan. Biscuit burns him but he hangs on to it manfully, nodding thanks.

  But he isn’t noticed yet by Gordon, who, beyond the archway, still listens to the man in the barn jacket and now suggests, “Let’s get a crew together to go over and at least take care of the hay. I’ll put it up on the schedule.” And then within a moment he has hoisted a diapered just-walking little guy up against one shoulder, his small face pinked from sadness. Points toward another little guy who is leaving the scene on a homemade wooden Trojan-style cow (yes, cow) on wheels. Disappears now through the dozens of tall legs of the breakfast crews and breakfasters coming and going.

  Against Gordon’s shoulder the child sniffs back nose tears, then wipes his nose across Gordon’s shirt, today a plaid of lime and red, almost matching the floor tiles. The child’s hair is a thick sponge of copper-colored curls.

  One of the card players, a tall straight woman with a white braid, has found Gordon, tugs his sleeve, winks.

  Now a wife, also tall: Penny St. Onge. Tucks something in Gordon’s shirt pocket, a receipt or maybe a saw logs order, maybe battery level readings or a call on the farmhouse phone.

  The old woman and the less old woman vanish into the crowd.

  Gordon looks into the face of the child gripped loosely in his giant arm. “My lamb,” he says, in a husky way, his throat now less a vortex of desperate words, more a harbor of simple prayer. He reaches to place his hand on the little boy’s head.

  Maybe the boy, Mickey Gammon, might wonder, as many have, how this father, this husband, this cousin or buddy to all, this giant guy—but indeed, only one guy—could give any one other person enough. How? When spread so wide, so thin, so a
ll about? Not when one friend, one father, one fellow soul is all some of us request of this world. Anything more than that is just a state of drowning.

  Saturday.

  Twelve members of the Border Mountain Militia, not including Willie Lancaster (who is “busy,” they say), get a tour of the Settlement’s shortwave setup. It has an impressive tower structure between two Quonset huts, not on the bald mountain, as was once considered. There is a little studio, its broadcast capabilities as yet nil. “A project that has not yet been top priority,” Gordon tells them.

  They are also led uphill to see the windmills and then down again for some of the solar stuff. They stand around, some with hands in pockets, for it is a smarting cold day. Snarly, sort of. Bit of wind. No BDU shirts or patches visible, though three of them wear military boots. Army caps.

  Down at the old farm place, the rotund ash tree, which had turned early, has leaves flying around on the sand and grass in fingered clumps, yellow edged in mauve. Inside, in the cluttery dining room, the men have a meeting. Nine Settlementers join them, including young Butch Martin, Eddie’s oldest, and fifteen-year-old Cory St. Onge. Also Mickey Gammon, who is now both Border Mountain Militia and a Settlement person. And, with some embarrassment, has connections with the girlie militia.

  They talk about the mail Gordon has been getting from patriots around the country, invitations to attend meetings or just to exchange information. Kentucky. North Carolina. Western Mass. Colorado. Florida. Idaho. Ohio. Oklahoma. Montana. Texas. Rex advises which ones to avoid and which to go for. Rex pushes something across the table to Gordon. It’s a patch, olive and black. Then he issues patches to the other Settlement men. He says, “I suggest the group in western Mass. See them first.”

  Late-afternoon sun, autumnly and solid and cold as a refrigerated peach, roams entirely to the other side of the building. And so this causes a backyard maple and the blue-violet shadows from some old sheds to make a polychrome flush on the dining room walls and on several overly serious faces.

  Gordon looks at his patch, front and back, then positions it on the table in front of him so that the mountain lion—or bobcat or lynx, whatever it is, in its dark border of words—is perfectly upright.

  Gordon says into Rex’s eyes, “I was sort’ve hoping you guys would go with us.”

  “Of course,” says Rex. And he actually smiles.

  Gordon says, “In a convoy, right?”

  Rex makes a disgusted face. “Not exactly a convoy.”

  Gordon says, “Think they’ll listen to me?”

  Rex is sitting very straight, eyes into Gordon’s eyes. “Don’t say democracy and don’t get overexcited. All right?”

  Gordon grins. “Okay, captain.” Gordon looks over into the faces of Ray Pinette, Paul Lessard, Stuart Congdon, Rick Crosman, Gary Kennard, and Eddie and Butch Martin, who happen to be watching him. He sighs. He looks down again at the patch. “Well,” he says cheerily, “this is it.”

  Meanwhile, Mickey Gammon’s own wide, alert, wolfy eyes press upon an old dish hutch, where a heartily and hysterically pink ceramic cherub, which is sort of flying, is definitely pointing at him, Mickey. The cherub’s lips smile wicked pleasantly.

  Secret Agent Jane in love.

  He is the new person. He is of the Milishish but beautiful, with a little hair thing in back and nice eyes. I wish he would notice me. If I had new earrings, maybe. And a new outfit from stores. Something bright like pink. If I went out on a date with him, I would probably die of happiness with one small kiss. Then a big kiss. But he spends every minute with the sole cars. His name is Mickey but they call him Hey, Mister Sole Man. Last night with these secret glasses I watched him at supper eat a whole pile of FISH and gross spiced stuff, and I could tell he was suffering.

  In the cold blue-wallpapered dining room of the old farm place, Gordon buttons the sleeves of the stiff BDU shirt.

  Old Lucienne, one of the Aroostook tantes who live here now, in Egypt, stands behind him in the doorway and says something softly in French. And he, in French, replies. Softly.

  She tsks.

  He picks up the olive-green pistol belt from the table and twists the buckle into place, the belt snug around his waist outside the jacketlike shirt.

  Lucienne points at the mirror, again tsking.

  He steps up to the mirror, which is small and only shows the collar of the jacket and his face. He can’t really admire the full effect, those blossomlike shapes of woodland camo: greens, tan, black, brown.

  He hunches a shoulder up to see the patch Lucienne has sewn on the sleeve for him. She had offered.

  Now she places a hand on the middle of his back and he turns and looks into her face, which is a storm of fine lines all summoning their concern over the scratchiness of this shirt. Her eyes a summery blue. For the moment, she is his buddy, in collusion over this, his transformation. Member of an armed citizens’ militia, so-called terrorist.

  In a future time, Claire St. Onge (Gordon’s only legal legallegal wife, although actually now legally an ex) remembers Our Purple Hope.

  The heat was back. Thick like summer. Some call it Indian Summer. Some call it global warming. Whatever, it wasn’t October feeling! Bay doors were open wide. Under the high rounded ceiling of the largest Quonset hut, you could look to your left or right and see the amazing bright fleet of small electric cars and buggies. Mostly these used replenished special batteries. Only one with collectors. Some of the cars were not yet equipped, only steel frames. All but two were just buggy-sized, like ATVs, with big deep-tread ATV tires. Made for pulling small loads. Made for errands. Some were those we’d been using for a few years, now in this bay area for repairs. Lightweight with lumpy homemade finishes, thick paint of your standard fairy-tale red, blue, yellow, rose, or orange.

  But that night, the main attraction was the roadworthy, low-slung, sporty, full-sized, though still windowglassless, Our Purple Hope. The gate was being opened for a lot of people from around Egypt, Brown-field, even Porter, here to witness the first road test. The brightest light-bulbs in the whole Settlement were overhead, giving our purple car reflections like lumpy suns. It felt good to me to have a nice big group visiting. Events of this size had always been natural to Settlement life, and it was getting a little bit sickening to be so closed off.

  In a future time, Penny remembers back.

  Among the townspeople, there was one guy I didn’t think looked familiar. Not that I knew everyone from town by name, but I knew their faces. This guy was a total stranger. Midforties. Square-jawed. Fit. His brown hair was short and combed with care. His face was shaved. I couldn’t decide if he was a schoolteacher, an insurance salesman–type, or maybe a churchman. He looked controlled and capable. I offered him the last of the lemonade. He said, “Yes, thank you.” A gentleman. His accent wasn’t local.

  Some details Claire remembers.

  Outside, the parking lot was packed with cars and trucks. A cheery gatekeeper crew had been formed. They had set up an ice shack as a guardhouse by the pole gate near the tar road. But the pole and the mean signs were tossed into the bushes. Like I say, it was a warm night. A lot of big male bellies, some torn greasy T-shirts. Those whose fashion statement was work. And they each brought along at least a single beer, like a torch of freedom. There were lots of sleeveless women, many kinds of arms. And shirtless kids, the pudgy and the ribby. In our Lee Lynn’s arms was her baby, Hazel, plump, cherubic, quite naked, scrubbed sweet. At home.

  This was the great and grand solar finale. Our Purple Hope ready to set sail at last. This is the sort of thing that attracts mostly men—you know—like moths to light. But every woman of the Settlement who wasn’t infirm was here that night in that echoey Quonset hut, laughing to see how many of us had turned up wearing the red sash, not at all planned. Just a synchronized red-sash mood.

  May I tell you of the sash? Red wool, the sash. And, in satiny embroidery, suns. Every sash featured a powerful boiling-yellow sun. And vegetation and tiny fairy flies in bl
ues and purples and many greens. The embroidery showed in a wide variety of levels of accomplishment, but all of the sashes were unhesitatingly red. We, the sisters, wives of one man. No, the creation of the sashes had not been an agreement, no result of a meeting of yesses, but a spark. One day, one of us made one. Then in a summer, there were many, their meaning remaining a secret among ourselves.

  It tickled us all to see how we had each individually thought to wear the sash that night. Even vastly pregnant Vancy wore hers, but over her shoulders, like a priest. And let me remind you, these sashes were wool.

  Penny.

  I saw the stranger turn from facing the center of the room to face the nearest open bay. He watched keenly as Gordon pushed in through the crowd, coming from somewhere. At a glance, I knew Gordon had been drinking, though no bottle was in his hand. Rex York was with him, Rex not drinking, of course, just solemn and interested in the photovoltaic car.

  Claire.

  There was this great dither when Gordon showed up, people hollering his name, whistling, working their way around others to greet him, and Aurel gripping Gordon’s arm and saying something about the lead wire and battery four and “What you t’ink, t’at iss t’same one somehow sneaked back when my back was turn’—not by Butchie, dere, or Mickey, but somebody acting wa-wa wit’out dere maman!” Aurel’s eyes crackled with the light of all those overhead watts. The blackness of those eyes! The Indianness of his great-grandparents more evident in him than in Gordon. Like everyone here, I always cared a lot about Aurel, a first cousin of Gordon, even though he brags and fibs, mostly fibs while bragging, and I saw that although he was a lively, gifted, snazzy little guy, he was not the showstopper Gordon was, and that night I think I really resented this, that Gordon had stolen Aurel’s thunder.

  I watched Aurel turn back to work, his khaki shirt always a little loose over his small shoulders, a wetness beaded up and trickling through the hairs of his dark, fussily trimmed pointy beard. And beside him, Mickey. Mickey, who was shirtless that night, way too ribby. His jeans were ragged and splotched black. I remember the moment I realized how those young fingers could literally divine all the perfect connections of that electric and automotive mystery.