The School on Heart's Content Road

by Carolyn Chute

  A few masks. A gorilla. A lion. One boy about age seven is naked to the waist, his body painted red, his face red, his squirt gun not the cute lime-colored plastic kind; his is made of black plastic, an AK-47. Around his head a leather band and ten chicken feathers. Oddly, one child wears a lovely sundress. She is long-legged, with no war paint, just a beautiful face of African-European-American Indian heritage. She carries a placard that reads THROW OUT THE ALIEN GOVERNMENT.

  And that was just the little kids. Big drum (BUROOM!) is carried by a strapping older teen who looks part bull, part biker, horns coming from his head (how does he do that?), leather jacket reads HARLEY DAVIDSON across the back and, of course, the wings. Black T-shirt. Ratty jeans. BUROOOM! Several tall girls walk slowly beside him, pacing their steps with the “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” . . . “Hup!” called out by a small soldier. Small soldier in a yellow raincoat and bush hat, her long dark braid over one shoulder decorated in—yes—dozens of chicken feathers.

  Isn’t that “Hup” . . . “Hup” . . . “Hup” pace a lot like the graduation march the schoolteachers here would approve of?

  A preteen girl with a lovely Nordic-looking face has her thick pale hair knotted up in a pink bandanna. She wears camo pants, military boots, and a black jersey with small cardboard messages pinned all over it, messages the teachers can’t quite make out. But the full-sized flag on a long rough stick, which a chubby preteen boy totes proudly, is plain to see. Blue with the Maine state seal—moose, farmer, sailor, tree, star—but with something extra, big gold lettering across the top: The TRUE MAINE MILITIA.

  Most of the schoolteachers behind the horseshoe feel so disapproving, they could faint. But the blonde one, now snorting with disgust, is energized.

  Such a racket! The cowbells. The spoons. Hollow sticks. Big drum. Fiddle screeling, poorly played. And now what? Three recorders and a dozen kazoos doing “Yankee Doodle.” Small graveyard-sized American flags quiver in the hands of a long single-file line of small fry at the rear. No, not quite the rear. More militia hurrying to catch up, churning up the stairway, crossing the great room, and then the whole militia angles to the right and heads for the governor’s office.

  A sea of placards passes. CORPORATIONS OUT, WE THE PEOPLE IN!!! and NO MORE FUNNY BUSINESS!!! and NO MORE GRIDS! ABOLISH CORPORATE PERSONHOOD!!! and WHOSE BUTT IS AMERICA KICKING NOW???!!!! CORPORATE BUTT!!! YOU BET!!! and PETROLEUM TELLS LIES. and CORPORATISM IS FASCISM. LOOK IT UP!

  “This is disgusting!” proclaims the blonde schoolteacher, her eyes on fire, her lip curled. None of the other teachers can hear her words. Not with the racket of the militia storming past.

  One really cute, chubby, round-faced blond boy, barely out of diapers, runs up to the teacherly assemblage and passes out fluorescent-orange copies of The Recipe for Revolution, or Recipe, which lays out the steps for dismantling corporate power and putting energy, food growing, water, education, and banking into the control of small communities only, thus “saving the world!”

  Two other chubby three-year-olds, one with distinctive Passama-quoddy looks and a sleek, almost blue-black bowl-shaped haircut, march past wearing sandwich signs that read (both front and back) SIEGE! The teenage boy accompanying them waves his sign, which reads: HAVE A NICE DAY (AFTER THE REVOLUTION). And then two older figures with skull faces and tricorne hats trudge past with their placards: SAVE THE REPUBLIC FROM GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND THE CORPORATE GRIDS’ GRIP! and DEATH TO THE CORPORATE PAPER GODZILLA! LIBERTY TO FLESH AND BLOOD ONLY!! and BRING BACK OUR COMMONS.

  The blonde schoolteacher reads a couple of lines of the Recipe and sniffs. “What is this drivel?”

  Children hand out copies of the same to the corporate lobbyists, who continue to smile and look immeasurably pleased.

  Corporate lobbyists are coming down the marble staircase. Corporate lobbyists are slipping out of the governor’s office. Corporate lobbyists swarming everywhere, stepping aside to let the sea of children pass, while the faces of these children remain soldierly and grim, arriving at last at the closed door of the governor’s office, not the one that reads USE OTHER DOOR but the correct door.

  Now the militia halts in its tracks. The “music” stops. Weapons and flags and flyers rustle. Moccasins and boots and sneakers shuffle. A voice from the militia’s center hollers, “Shoulder arms!” and the placards rattle and squirt guns are jerked from holsters. The AK-47 is aimed at the governor’s door. Flyers rustle. Placards are now raised high. The highest one reads GET THIS CORPORATE MESS OUT OF OUR GOVERNMENT! And another: ONLY HUMAN HUMANS SHOULD HAVE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS! and yet another: THIS IS NOT ABOUT A FEW STOCKS TO LITTLE WIDOWS, THIS IS ABOUT GLOBAL CORPORATE POWER!!! and THE SOVEREIGN (spelled SOVERN) RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SHIT ON!!! and WE ARE NICE BUT WE AREN’T PUSHOVERS! and CORPORATE CHARTERS ARE NOT DIVINE CONCEPTION.

  Waving on the margins of the group are lots of repeats of WHOSE BUTT IS AMERICA KICKING NOW??? CORPORATE BUTT!! YOU BET!!! (a real favorite of preteen boys).

  Now the teen boy with the drum (Harley jacket, horns) leans to one side to whisper something to another teenage guy, one with a small yellow tail of hair and inside-out camo BDU shirt, and this guy whispers to a preteen girl and there’s some giggling. And now a whispered phrase ripples through the ranks. Meanwhile, a teen girl wearing a beret and camo BDU shirt unrolls a stiff beige scroll and reads loudly: “We are now here at the People’s House! The capitol of the state of Maine!” Her young voice echoes down the long halls, against all the marble, glass, bronze, and gold. “The People’s House is where we send the people we elect to conduct the affairs of the state on our behalf! This building belongs to the people of the state of Maine!!!”

  “Hear! Hear!” calls the husky voice of a midsized skull-faced teen boy.

  “Ahoy, mateys!” shouts another.

  The reader continues. “The business here is conducted in our name! We not only have a right to be here, we have a responsibility to be here!”

  The whole militia cheers loudly. A few spoons clank. Kazoos buzz tonelessly. One cowbell clanks merrily. American flags wave so exuberantly they appear as pink blurs. Big militia flag dips with solemn emotion.

  The door to the governor’s office opens an inch. An eye shows. Eye of a lady in a brown dress. Office-looking lady. Door shuts.

  A flash. Another flash. The indefatigable Press, three of them, have just appeared from somewhere.

  A lot of people stepping out from doors, peering at the scene.

  “Where’s the governor?” the teen girl with the scroll calls toward the governor’s door.

  “In bed with the insurance companies!” another teen girl calls back.

  “Naughty! Naughty!” someone scolds. And some real little kids sweetly chorus, “Naughty! Naughty! Naughty!”

  Other little kids hiss and boo. “The governor is bad! The governor is bad!”

  “The governor does not represent people!” a teen girl calls. This teen girl, like many of the others, is wearing a camo shirt and black beret. Three bandannas are knotted on the left bicep, one green, one black and white check, like a raceway winner’s flag, and one red. (These represent the Earth, the People, and Revolution.) On the right bicep, a black armband, to express Grief.

  Again, the teen girl with the scroll calls, “Where’s the governor?” She narrows her eyes on the closed door.

  A teen boy in head-to-foot camo and a KICK BUTT sign calls in a deep, almost manly voice, “He won’t come out! He’s chicken!”

  “The governor is scared!” calls out one of the oldest girls.

  “Why won’t the governor come out and talk with his constituency?!!” cries another girl.

  “The governor is a corporate slut!” screams the drum-carrying bull-biker.

  “Copwat swut! Copwat swut!” chant the littlest kids.

  Older ones in deeper resolve yell “Corporate slut! Corporate slut! corporate slut!” louder and louder and louder.

  More people arrive from stairways
and doorways, serious and stern mostly, one or two sort of smiling, eyes sparkling with nervous amusement.

  A small militia member passes out copies of the Recipe as well as a simple flyer, which reads THE ALIEN GOVERNMENT OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIERS AND DEBT-BASED ECONOMY IS ILLEGAL. THE PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY IS SATAN!

  Some soldiers are waving their water guns. None loaded.

  A teen girl with beret, camo shirt, various arm decorations—and cornsilk blonde hair—and crisscrossed cartridge belts of. 22 shells (no gun), signs up people for membership, mostly the press. “Sign here and we’ll send you stuff,” she tells one TV reporter and hands him a blue militia card with his name scribbled on it, under the little American flag and bold lettering: THE TRUE MAINE MILITIA. This recruiting officer has a brick-sized bag of these cards with an elastic around them, all ready to go.

  A tall red-haired girl with a deformed face wears the camo shirt and bandanna but no bandoliers, and no beret. Her hair is wild and magnificent. On her shoulders rides a year-old toddler, wearing overalls of a print of red hearts and a rabbit-fur trapper hat. Little face under the big hat is smiling and blinking, little hand points in various directions. Little voice trying sincerely to copy everything that’s being said or chanted. “Co-putt! Co-putt! Co-putt!”

  And the whole militia screams “Corporate slut!” at the governor’s door, until, alas, the clerk of the house (a handsome but harried-looking gentleman, almost a Joshua Chamberlain look-alike) arrives with the capitol security, and one or two plainclothes state cops, to usher the militia out. But not before all the science exhibition doughnuts have been stuffed into dozens of hungry militia persons’ mouths.

  Shortly.

  It is starting to rain from a lavender sky. Some yellow and bronze leaves still resist falling down in the park, where nobody walks enjoying America, enjoying freedom.

  Water hits pavement but does not make it clean. The water is from the heavens but no blessings are given, not many wanderers at the moment, just a tattery zigzag of kids and young people dressed weirdly, the true motley crew, heading down the east-facing stairs.

  Mickey and CC (whose real name is Christian Crocker) and Margo St. Onge (you wouldn’t recognize them in face paint resembling grinning skulls) wearing black robes (resembling judges) and a sign written on now-soggy cardboard (under CC’s long arm) which reads NO MORE FASCIST PUBLIC SCHOOLS. NO MORE INDOCTRINATION FOR ROBOTONS!

  Another unrecognizable individual with cracking, creaking teenage voice jogs to catch up, gasping, “The People’s House, huh? (gasp gasp) They threw us out!”

  Mickey, dressed only as his usual musty, woodsy self, offers one of his rare snorts of laughter and now words, even rarer. “It was an honor.”

  A letter is sent to the Record Sun.

  To the Editor,

  There was a time when we saw our capitol as a place of reverence and respect. But no more. Sixteen schoolchildren, presenting their prize-winning projects, half of these children representing the highest science scores in the state, and sixteen teachers, including myself, and several aides, representing sixteen schools, had the unfortunate experience of being at the statehouse this week at the same time as the True Maine Militia.

  This “militia” is a gang of about forty dirty-mouthed, disrespectful, loud children (some old enough to know better). None were dressed appropriately, considering the place. They marched through the halls with toy guns and pointed these guns at the door of the governor’s office. Yes, the governor!

  This was nothing less than criminal behavior in the making. The literature they were distributing was senseless and antibusiness. While our students looked on helplessly, the “militia” ate all the doughnuts that we had on the tables for people who were interested in viewing the science projects. At this point, I must add that a generous corporation donated those doughnuts. The children of the True Maine Militia might take a lesson from this: the generosity of corporations. If it weren’t for corporations, we’d have no jobs! And no wonderful medicines and, yes, so many other important things we take for granted.

  But I am afraid that this gang of ill-behaved unchaperoned children will, no doubt, terrorize many more people before someone puts a stop to it. Such unfortunate behavior makes many of us, who have worked hard to raise and educate civil children, wonder what this world is coming to.

  Diane Barteaux

  Gardiner, Maine

  A follow-up meeting of the True Maine Militia in the East Parlor, a dictionary and three thesauruses opened on various laps.

  “Okay,” Samantha says, “corporate slut has got to go. No more of that.”

  Pages flap softly. Margo taps a pen against her knee. “How about corporate suckling?”

  The answer is several scrinched faces.

  Bree laughs. “I love this.”

  Kirky asks, “Where exactly are you guys looking, anyways?”

  “Right here.” Alyson Lessard leans toward him with her tattered thesaurus. He thumbs through his, finally matching her page.

  Erin offers, “How about corporate fawner or corporate sycophant or corporate truckler?”

  “How about corporate boot . . . lick . . . er?” Jane reads, she and Tabitha hunching together over one thesaurus, Tabitha’s finger pressed hard to a spot on the page.

  Another offering, this by Gabe. “Corporate lady of the night?”

  “Corporate harlot,” offers Christian Crocker grimly.

  Young Sigh St. Onge snorts with appreciation. Mickey smiles thinly, chin up. Mickey is here. Yes, Mickey . . . is . . . here.

  “Corporate daughter of joy,” adds Christian Crocker.

  “Corporate toady,” suggests Kendra.

  Whitney says gloomily, “Whatever you come up with, it’ll make some people mad. Might’s well go with corporate slut.”

  “Right! It’s gotta be that we like it.”

  “I like it. Slut,” says Carmel softly.

  Margo says firmly, “As long as it is true.”

  Michelle agrees. “Yeah, true.”

  A lot of nods.

  Kirk stands up, closes his thesaurus. “So let’s leave it be corporate slut. If we spell it right, isn’t that all that matters?”

  Jane leans on her chair arm and says in a tone of finality, “Just make sure it’s spelled right, and that’s that.”

  A bit later, Mickey tells us.

  I’m not really into this, just trying to keep an eye on things and help them feel like a real militia. The next so-called militia thing they’re scheming up is—heh-heh! I try to picture Cap’n Rex’s militia doing this and I almost crack up out loud. Here it is. A birthday party for a hundred-year-old lady combined with a rally where they say two thousand people will show up—heh-heh, no shit, two thousand—and sing songs with drawings on the song sheets of this big mole thing, which is supposed to be Bigfoot, called the Abominable Hairy Patriot.

  They even think they can get a band, some relatives of the Prophet, buncha Frenchmen playing accordions. And everybody will dance—all two thousand—and listen to speeches by the officers about the New World Order and FEMA and centralized banking—which is stuff Rex would definitely be interested in—but also corporate charters and food shortages worldwide, clean-water shortages, CIA drug dealing, and CIA terror on the world, and petroleum price manipulations, and they say petroleum “is everything, even fertilizers for agribiz.” And they want to talk about global warming to the two thousand people, and why it is our duty to speak out and do something. And when they say do something, the older girls sort of hop. Like cheerleaders.

  “Because,” whimpers Michelle, one of the Prophet’s oldest daughters, “the financiers who own our government are taking over the world.”

  “It’s called corporatism,” says one very pink chubby little squirt who has to take his thumb out of his mouth to say this word.

  Bree, with the hair like red snakes and eyes far apart who is the artist of the mole things, hugs the little guy and that squeezes more out of
him. “Mussolini said it. Fascism and corporatism are perfect and the same.”

  Bree laughs, silentlike, with her head turned toward the others. Everyone thinks the kid is cute. But I am thinking how they all talk just like the Prophet. Probably those over a day old don’t suck on bottles. They just talk.

  Samantha, who is wearing a desert camo BDU shirt, earrings, olive-drab army pants—the bushy World War One kind for maybe riding a mule—and skinhead boots and her usual hot-babe expression, hollers out, “Op-ed time again!” and raises a fist. With her, everything is a fist.

  The small Indian kid they call Dragan squeaks, “Can I do a speech there too? I know Moose-leeny.”

  The girls are hiding more laughs.

  When I reach for my cigs, I realize I’ve already got one in my mouth.

  Late P.M. Marty Lees slouched on the couch of his rented trailer, thinking, Pepsi in hand.

  Paid a social call on York this evening at his home. Lives with his mommy. Tsk.

  Talked “patriot.” Talked New World Order. Talked martial law. Talked weapons. Talked the talk. I talked. The son of a bitch mostly just stared at me like he was a paid therapist and I was emotionally out of whack. So okay, no Border Mountain Militia invite yet.

  I’d like to do something to the son of a bitch’s eyes, like make them cry. But not yet. First I want to help him. Help him and his buddies get real. Help him with his goals. I just gotta keep being everything he ever wanted in a friend. And showing my incredible capabilities. My possibilities. His possibilities. To show him the difference between a mommy militia and an honorable one.