The School on Heart's Content Road (72 page)

There is something stupidly comforting about the cement smell of this place and its hollowness. Its dry heat. They are talking to him, instructing, giving him something to wear.

Between times, when he is waiting for another one of them, with more that they want him to do, he thinks about God. He tries to imagine
God's voice, if God had a real voice. The voice would be calm and instructive. Do this. Do that. God is never angry. Rex knows this. Unlike, for instance, Doc, who would tell you about an eye for an eye. Yeah, sure, God would feel surprise at times. And fatherly-type anger. But nothing like revenge. And
never
anything like flipping out.

Rex can't imagine life in the coming weeks, years. In a place like this, he can't recognize himself. Richard York no longer exists. He thinks of himself, the way he was before today, not so much as a being, but as a place. And his people. And the way he handled things. He was proud of that. Before today.

They told him Gordon is dead, but he's pretty sure they are making that up to break him. He knows how they work. They want him to bust into tears and tell them his life's story.

His pal, Gordon. His daughter, Glory. All of it.

Gordon. Yeah.

Rex has always liked to think of those moments in early television when spilled milk whooshed up back into the bottle, when a broken dish snapped back into a seamless glossy whole. Hey, and remember when the lady used to smile into her dish . . . and you'd see her face in the dish smiling about how great a job her dish soap did. And in real life too. His mother and father were smiling. They got along. There was a lotta years there where he never knew how nasty life can get. His life then, it was just like on TV . . . yeah, it really was.

Secret Agent Jane speaks.

The path is so easy to find. Sometimes woods are okay. You get used to woods after a while. Sort of. I go along in a beautiful sexy way in case somebody in the trees is spying on me. Maybe Mickey. But really probably not. He is with some guys working to make their shortwave radio, which they
love
. They say it will be for “patriot news” when it is finally fixed. Butchie who lives here says soon the only news will be like on horsebacks. This is way weird.

The path gets steepish here and my new moccasins make scruffs, and then acorns roll and there are hard red berries growing in a plant, and once I saw here some white ones with black dots like small eyeballs.
Everybody says don't eat the eyeball ones, they are poison. Ha-ha! Who would eat a thing that looked like an eyeball anyway?

Here is a tiny tree cone. So tiny. So cute. I hold it a minute. Mickey is kind of in the air. Everything feels Mickeyish and wonderful and speedy and leafish and bright.

Now I'm walking in a sunny place of shriveled flowers, but some flowers deep down are still alive and bugs are singing with their legs. This sound is pretty. But also it is sad and autumnish inside you. Most bugs have died in frost. Only these lonely ones now.

The path goes back in the woods and up along a steep part again. A lot of rocks and moss stuff. A lot of up up up in a mountainish way.

Okay, so here is Mickey's tree house right where they said it would be. Looks like a fort. Nobody here because, like I say, Mickey is working on the radio studio. Sometimes he goes with guys and girls (the big women-girls) to bring meat or furniture or wood and they get money or trade. They take trucks when they go. Mickey is so
grown up
.

A very cute ladder. Mickey probably made it himself. He is so good at stuff. Everybody says. Mickey. Mickey. Mickey.

It is very scary sneaking up here, but here I am. I don't have my secret glasses, which was a mistake. But I remembered to bring the letter, which is full of all my love.

Smells cigarettish here. Sleeping bag and blanket and pillow all have got that smell. Two paper bags with some shirts, some socks. All Mickey's.

God. I am going to die touching his stuff; it is really his stuff. And all his magazines in a pile. And a Bible. So much boring word stuff, all Mickey's. Mickey's very own. A cute window with real glass but very small and cute.

Now here is a long thing of cigarette packages, three packages missing. Yes, these are HIS cigarettes. What's this? Under this shirt which is a maroon nice one . . . it's a gun.

Out comes my hand fast. Jeepers. I actually did touch it a little second.

In this other bag is YESSSSS potato chips and YESSSSS cheese curls! And candy. The store kind! And yes, really a Coke. Boxes of Little Debbie pastries. Mickey gets to have this stuff? He is so lucky!!!

I eat just one thing. Fast.

And then, a noise.

What's that? It's feet on the way here. I'm trapped! Really trapped! Omigod. Yes, it is feet and crunching leaves underneath. The feet are getting on the ladder.

I hold my head together, squeeze my fingers on my face. A head comes inside the door thing. It's HIM. I open my fingers and see HE is looking at me with his gorgeous eyes, and how can I tell if he's mad with a face that never shows expression, which is the face he's got. He crawls over to the middle and he says, “They are looking for you,” and he doesn't look at me when he says it and his voice is so soft and sexy I am going to die before I breathe.

“I'm not going to pick up any more trash with them,” I say, in a sexy way. “I've done it already for two days.”

He is breathing in a way of having walked a lot in a fast way. He looks at me quick and then looks away. He looks down at his stuff.

“I didn't touch anything,” I say, pretty quick. But there's the Little Debbie wrapper on top of the bag. “Well, I'll pay you back. I was starved.”

“That's okay,” he says. He looks at me again, but quick. Now he looks back at his stuff some more, kind of at one spot. Then he looks at his hands.

I have breathed only three times since he came in. His eyes are so gorgeous. He is a gorgeous person. I can't believe this is happening to me. It is even more powerful at this moment than when we were in the sole car, for some reason. It is good to be sexy right now and get him to have me in his heart and stuff, but I can hardly move, hardly breathe. My neck is hard. I swallow and it makes my neck squeak. I am so embarrassed!

He looks really only at his stuff and his hands, and once at my foot, and then he says, “Gordon's dying.”

I laugh. “Not really,” I say. He can see I'm not stupid. I laugh again.

He blinks a few times, like five times, then looks at his hands. Wiggles his fingers.

I laugh again.

He looks at me kind of meanish. “It's not funny,” he says, meanish.

I do just one small laugh and wiggle my foot. He looks at my foot. I wiggle the other foot. He says, “They took him down to Portland 'cause they can do brains. He might need to have a brain operation.”

“Brains?”

He pulls his sleeping bag out to the middle and makes himself a seat. He looks over at his stuff. “You been in those bags?”

I say, “No.” Then my hard neck swallows again. “Just a little, maybe.”

“What did you look at?”

I smile as sexy as I can. “Your pretty gun.”

He says, real quiet, “You know anything about guns?” He looks right at me and his eyes are beautiful ice and I am so paralyzed and a little scared that I might have did something.

I shrug and my face has a stupid expression of a mental retard.

He says, “Well, if you don't know about 'em, don't touch 'em. They could be loaded.”

I look at the bag, then back at him, and he says, with a little twiggle of a smile, “That one ain't loaded.”

Then I do the next stupid thing. I make a big sigh, but it makes my lips vibrate like a small fart. Oh, gawd, I am ruining this. “I love guns,” I say.

He looks at me hard, then feels his pockets and gets out his cigarettes. He puts one in his mouth and then he wants a match but can't find one. He gets up on his feet but squattish and then he feels around in his bags and in a little box but no matches.

I say, “I'm freezing. Don't you have a heater?”

“Nope.”

I says, “It's nice up here. Pretty and nature-ish.”

He looks at me. His cigarette is in his mouth, hanging down but not lit. He looks in a couple more places but no matches in those places.

I say, “I like your sister, Erika. She wants me to do her hair.”

“Sister-in-
law
,” he says. He picks his cigarette out of his mouth.

“She told me about your little brother.”

“Nephew.”

“Oh. And who was the man? The one that just died by making exhaust in himself.”

He looks at me. “My brother.”

“That's awful. Is he ashes now? She said he was ashes.”

He looks at me and nods. And says, “Something's weird. Everybody's dying. Or going to jail.”

“My mum's in jail.”

He nods. He hangs his head in a beautiful way. “Everybody's in jail.” He looks up and he has eyes of tears. He goes looking around all through his bags some more. He goes faster and faster through the bags. He says
shit
a couple of times.

I say, “If we eat here, we won't have to eat with
them
.”

He says, “They're having a bird. They think you're gone or something. Gone to the troublemaking schoolteachers' house . . . or fell in a well. You oughta go down there and make 'em feel better.”

“If I had a nice tree house like this, I'd live in it,” I say, with a nice smile.

“Well, you can have this one. I'm moving in with Evan and them in a couple days.” He sits down, then scoots backward on his bum till he's sitting back on the sleeping bag.

“Oh, but this is so pretty.”

“Yuh. Pretty. It's all yours.”

“Well, thank you.”

He hugs his head now so his face doesn't show. His pretty hair, the little ponytail, sticks up so cute between his fingers. It is the cutest hair. And pretty. Yellow and brown streaks, like Mum's. In the movies there would be beautiful love music playing every time they show him. Now he holds his head forever.

I say, “Tired?”

He doesn't move, except to squeeze down on his head harder.

“Is this 'cause your matches are lost somewheres?”

He doesn't answer me.

I say, “I'll go get you some matches, okay?”

He looks. His face is squeezed and red which makes his eyes look wicked pale, like white eyes. “There's some here somewhere. I'll look again in a minute.” He stretches his legs out in front of him.

“Mind if I stay awhile?”

He shrugs. “I don't care.” He points his thumb at the wall. “But first go tell them you're okay.”

“No way. They just want me to be their slave. It's going to take a hundred years to get all that trash up.”

“Nobody's picking up trash. They're all meeting in the kitchens. Everybody. Even them that went to Madison on that science thing. They're coming back 'cause of Gordon being in the fight. Some's at the hospital with him. He'll probably die, or turn out brain-damaged.”

“Don't keep saying that. You think I'm stupid.”

“Okay. I won't.”

I get nice and comfortable. I can breathe pretty good now. I'm getting used to being with the world's most cutest boy. “I can sing. Want me to sing?”

He makes his eyes roll funny.

“I can tell stories good. Want to hear?”

He looks over toward his stuff. “Can you read?”

“Yes. It's easy.”

He crawls over to his bags like a cat or dog walking and he shows me a magazine which has big pictures of guns. He finds a page—with a gun, of course—and he says, “What's this say?”

I read all of it easy. It's like school, the real kind.

He pulls the magazine away and looks at the page a minute, thinking and feeling his lip. Then he sticks his cigarette in his lips again and goes over to the pile again on his arms and legs and it's that Bible this time. “Some words are hard,” he says, with his cigarette in the middle of his mouth. “Especially in this.” He gets on his knees beside me. There's a bookmark made of cloth with a real tassel. He fixes the Bible open on the floor by my leg and one of his hands bumps my arm and my veins turn to blue lightning inside my arm and this is the biggest fattest moment of all time. He says, “What's that word?”