Chapter One
June
[The screen insists, scolds, grins, cajoles] The screen shouts
Beeeee afraid! Low types of people are everywhere, in cities, in towns,
in your backyard! In other countries. Drugged, crazed, mindless evil is
at large!
[Out in the World] Out in the World, Mickey Gammon remembers his
last day of school a few weeks ago. Mickey speaks
Last March, my mother wanted to come back to Maine. My brother
Donnie came and got us and he had gotten a little fat, but I recognized
him. (Ha! Ha!). Okay, just a little fat. A gut.
We rode back in the night. To Maine.
The school here in Maine is a joke. Like the other school was a joke.
In Mass. You were supposed to keep your locker locked to keep people
out, but there was a rule they could search your locker on demand.
There’s two types of teachers wherever you go. The kind with slitted
eyes that try to get you to fight. And the ones, mostly women, who talk
to you like if they say the right thing, they can change your life, that there
is something wrong with your life. I say, fuckem, there’s nothing wrong
with my life. That was the same thing back in Mass. It’s like they either
want to kick your ass or sniff it.
My brother’s wife is sweet. She has everything … looks, brains, composure.
And I especially like her t-shirt with the Persian cat printed on
it … something about the idea of that cat’s face goes with her face … the
big eyes. Meanwhile, she has arms like Wonder Woman, like she could
wrastle you down if it got to that. But she’s not one of them man-women
you see around. Erika is soft like a pillow. My brother Donnie ever lays
a finger on her, I’ll break his face.
Meanwhile, I was just taking the bus to school, to finish out the year
at this school here. I don’t mess with their books, you know, frig with
them, write shit in them or vandalize things. That’s stupid. But I figured
before the last day in June I was going to draw a picture of Mr.
Carney sucking a pony’s cock on a separate piece of paper. And you
know, tape it into the book.
Okay, so my life isn’t perfect. You wanna hear this? I got a little
nephew … Erika’s and Donnie’s kid … name’s Jesse. He’s got a weird
cancer. At first it was slow, but now it’s fast. Imagine! A little kid like
that. He don’t even talk any more.
So while I was in class one morning drawing some doodles on my paper,
listening to them all whine about South American exports and the the
Incas or some such shit, the door opens and, yes, it’s the cops. They have
a marijuana-sniffing dog and the teacher who is in on this like some
fucking spy says that the dog is here to sniff our lockers, all the student
cars, and yes, us. She says that the officer is just going to walk with the
dog down between the rows, that unless the dog indicates illegal substances
on us, none of us will be searched. “It’s just a routine thing,” she says.
“We’re sure that no one here has any illegal substances on them.”
Wellllll, I was sweating in a cold way all over. I hadn’t had any weed
on me for weeks, but I had this horror suddenly, that that sucker was
going to take an interest in me because of my THOUGHTS.
So the Nazi-Pig comes along and his dog is going along … you know
… like an ordinary dog … and he’s cleared two rows without finding
what he likes and as he is coming nearer to me I’m feeling freaked
… and this kid Jared behind me, he says, “That dog sniffs my crotch,
I’ll kick his face in.” He said this wicked soft, but Mrs. Linnett with
fucking amplified-radar-electronic ears that could probably hear your
faucet dripping in another state, says, “What’s that, Jared?”
And so the dog has gone past me and Mrs. Linnett tells Jared to “Go
to Mr. Carney’s office.” And she apologizes to the Nazi and makes a
real scene over Jared.
At lunch, we heard that three kids were caught, one with a toothpick-sized
joint and two with a smell that meant they’d had the stuff
on them recently. Everyone, the teachers and all the obedient Honor
pansies and killer sheep were pale in the face wondering how OUR
SCHOOL has got this terrible DRUG PROBLEM. Some were saying
they just KNOW there must be LSD, too, and coke, and heroin,
crack and crank, OxyContins and whatever, but dogs can’t sniff that
yet. The whole cafeteria was in a kind of high squeally furor …
LOUD … like panicked mice. I wasn’t hungry. I stabbed my fork
into my apple. I said, “Fuck this Alcatraz!!” and I stood up, without
my tray, and walked outta there. And out to the hall, Mr. Runnells,
one of them that guards the cafeteria doors, says, “And where do you
think you’re going, Gammon?” And he reaches out like he’s going to
put his hand on my arm. And for some reason beyond reason, I started
to cry-the trembling mouth, the shaky voice, tears, in the eyes. It’s
like they got an electric paddle touching every part of you, making
you do things against your will. The place has an ugly power over
people.
I stepped away from him and said “Bye now” in a kind of nice way
and went past Mr. Carney’s office and out the glass doors and out into
the sun and then I started running like hell.
[The screen insists, scolds, grins, cajoles] The screen brays
These flavorful burgers, these potato-flavored salt strips, these fizzy
syruppy brown-flavored drinks in tall cups are waiting just for YOU.
Go to it! NOW!
[Out in the World] Out in the world
Thousands of little red, grey, white or blue cars and billowy plastic-bumpered
sport-trucks and SUVs snap on their directionals and whip
into the asphalt passages of the drive-in order windows of any one of
thousands of the identical burger stations.
[Neighbors] Now in summer, we see Mickey Gammon at home
The walls of this old house have a weary cream and green wallpaper.
Horses, carriages, men and women. Tall arched elms.
The shades here are drawn. Shades yellowed with age. The light of
this room is therefore dark but golden.
There’s a car chase scene on the TV. Vigorous and bouncy. But
Mickey Gammon’s mother, Britta, keeps the sound down because of
the child, Jesse.
Jesse, almost age two, is shrinking. A thick-legged, noisy, grey-eyed
boy whose favorite word was not “No”, but “Why?” Now shrinking.
Stretched out on the couch. His skeletal legs seem awfully long.
Toys all around. Blue plastic car. Yellow plastic car. And a plastic-haired
doll. Plastic, convenient, affordable, but terrible to the touch.
Mickey has just come in. Fifteen and free as a bird. He smells like
somewhere, somewhere different than here. Other homes. Other considerations.
He kneels against the couch. His grey, always watchful,
almost wolf-like eyes press like a hand over Jesse’s baseball print pajamas
and the nearest small hand. Mickey speaks something low which
his mother, Britta, over there in her chair, cannot hear, but Jesse hears.
Jesse stares steadily through the magnificent pageant of his pain into the
soft spoken word.
In this household, there is no money today. No money. No money.
No money.
Out there in the world are whole bins of pain pills unreachable as
clouds. The key to painlessness is money. Money is everything.
[Neighbors] Mickey finds honor
He is walking the long back road some call “The Boundary”. He is a
light and fast walker, staying to the road’s high crown. Light and fast,
yes, but also cautious and manly, a gait that is articulated at the knees.
Such a fine-boned creature, this Mickey Gammon. Narrow shoulders.
Little tufty streaky-blonde ponytail. Dirty jeans, and hipless. Fairly
androgynous at first glance. At first glance.
He can hear shots up ahead in the Dunham pit. And then beyond
that, a deeper and darker aggression, a thunderstorm rumbling in from
the southwest. When he gets closer to the opening of the pit, the silvery
‘popple’ leaves are already starting to flutter, and upon his hot face, the
restless air is like a big God hand of airy benediction.
He sees four pickups, a newish little car, a pocked Blazer and at least
eight men, none he recognizes, yet he is under the good and nearly
true belief that his brother Donnie knows everyone in Egypt who is
near his, Donnie’s, own age, and yes, almost anyone might also be a
distant relative.
Mickey walks his arrowstraight and lightstep walk to where the
group is standing with their firearms and thermos cups of coffee and
he sees one man squatted down with a .45 service pistol aimed at a
black and white police target , target with a silhouette of a man, only
about fifty yards away on a wooden frame. Mickey slows his pace just
before reaching this group. Guns? Mickey has no problem with guns.
It is having to talk that brings him terror.
The man is rock steady in his aim, taking a lot of time. Silence before
the pounding crack of a gun is always a momentous thing.
The other men turn and see Mickey. Some nod. Some don’t. None
speak. One man is sitting on a tailgate, wearing earmuff-style ear protectors,
his fingers nudging the double action of a revolver with soft
sensuous clicks. The men who have acknowledged Mickey have
turned away now to watch the framed target. One guy watches
through a spotting scope on a tripod on his truck hood. The breeze
rises up and gives everyone’s sleeves and hair a flutter. And sand moves
a bit. And then there’s another rumble coming closer fast from the
southwest.
Mickey moves lightly, stepping inside the edgy-feeling perimeter of the
group, and sees there across the tailgate of one truck is a Ruger 10/22, a
Springfield M-1-A, and several SKS’s, three Russian with the star and red-yellow
finish, a couple with fold-up vinyl stocks, black, light to carry, easy
to hide. And a whole selection of full auto military-issue Colts. Two AR-15’s.
A Bushmaster. And two AK47’s. Some of these are, yuh, the real
thing. The thing made for war.
At last the shooter squeezes the trigger and the deafening crack of
this, it almost feels good to Mickey’s ears.
The guy with his eye to the spotting scope looks grim. “Seven!” he
calls.
The shooter, dressed in dark blue work clothes, no cap, bald but for
horsey grey hair on the sides and thorns of grey hair on his tanned and
lined neck, dips the .45, then raises it quickly, squeezes off four rapid
shots in a row. Echoes among the hills multiply the four shots to a lively
staccato. And then the supreme BOOOOMMM!, this the thunder of
the storm marching closer.
Mickey spins his studded leather wristband, which is what he always
does when he doesn’t know what else to do, watching the guy with the
spotting scope who now calls out, “Ten X! Ten! Two sevens!” And the
shooter slips the .45 into the holster, which is against his ribs outside his
shirt, but is the kind you wear under a shirt if you plan to conceal it.
Mickey says croakily, “Anyone got a smoke I could borrow?”
There is a guy standing very close to Mickey who is of medium height,
small-waisted, fit, wears a red t-shirt, jeans. Very square-shouldered.
Black military boots and a soft olive drab army cap, a very fancy black-faced
watch, looks more like a compass. Maybe it is a compass. And
sunglasses. Metal frames. Cop glasses. Like the Nazis wear to school
when they bring in their drug dogs. But this guy has a moustache, the
kind that crawls down along the jaws, Mexican moustache. Arms are
not thickly-haired. Nothing hides the impatient pulsing musculature.
He says, “What’s that you say?”
Mickey can’t exactly see this man’s eyes because of the sunglasses, but
he can tell the guy is looking him up and down.
A hefty white-haired guy with a white sea captain’s beard says, “Right
here” in a voice that is high and quavery for such a big guy. He steps
toward Mickey with the pack, shakes two into Mickey’s hand and says
cheerily, “I’m not starting you on a bad habit, am I?”
Mickey replies without a smile. “I’ve been smokin’ for five years.”
“Breakin’ the law.” This voice is shaly and made for hard reckoning.
Mickey doesn’t look to see which face owns it. It’s beyond the sunglasses
guy so it is not the sunglasses guy.
Another voice, letting go with a small shriek of laughter. But no
words. Also not the sunglasses guy.
“What! Artie break laws!” This, another voice as tight as a stricture
and yet it means to be teasy. This voice beyond the first truck.
Many small chortles overlapping and flexing. Earthworms in a can
overlap and flex, too. Faceless laughter. Mickey keeps his eyes lowered.
Hot breeze blows some more sand around. Then the BOOOMMM!
and matching flutter of light in the darkening southwest. Mickey now
watches two really young guys, maybe not yet twenty, murmuring to a
small, dark-haired, dark-eyed older guy with a mean-looking hunched
bearing who is reassembling a black vinyl-stock SKS. Even his ears have
an inflexible, shiny, mean look to them.
A guy with a camouflage print t-shirt, very thin, bony, urgent-looking
guy, clean shave, freckles, almost no eyebrows, reddish hair
and a big smile asks Mickey, “On foot today, huh?” He selects one of
the SKS’s from the tailgate, pulling it away quite theatrically with both
hands, raises his foot to rest on a plastic ammo case, then places the
rifle across his thigh with stiff, animalish, almost bewitching-to-see
grace. Mickey eyes the flash suppressor on the end of the short carbine
barrel, the long, dark, curved, extended magazine, says, “I have
a ’66 Mustang in Mass … everything but the body is real nice … sixty
thou’ original … but needs some stuff … tires mostly. Couldn’t move
it. Not road worthy.”
“Lotta road between here and Mass,” declares the hefty sea captain
beard guy with a cackle. This is the guy called “Artie”.
Mickey nods. Pokes a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. Snaps a
match alive, cupping his hand and hunkering down to give the flame
shelter from the wind, takes the first drag hungrily, drops the match
into the sand.
“You walk from Mass?” softly wonders another guy, great, tall, rugged,
clean-shaved guy in full camouflage, heavy-looking BDU’s. Long
sleeves. Looks hot.
Mickey replies, “No.”
The guy with the sunglasses and red t-shirt, thick dark moustache,
has turned away, sort of dismissively, but he still hangs back, an ear on
what’s being said.
The full camo guy picks up a stapler and fresh target and trudges off
toward the open pit area.
The sea captain beard, hefty, high-voiced Artie asks Mickey, “Do you
shoot?”
Mickey says, “Yuh, some.”
The bony, urgent-looking, red-haired guy, not smiling now, advises,
“If you keep your aim up, you’ll be glad some day.”
Mickey says, “I like shootin’ alright.”
The red t-shirt guy with the sprawling moustache and sunglasses and
army cap and awesome black-faced watch stares after the baldish guy,
who is ripping his target from the fifty-yard frame.
Big guy with full camo trudges the long open pit to a frame against
the bank at a hundred yards, the wind wrestling earnestly with his target
as he staples it to the wood.
The red t-shirt guy now seems to be staring at Mickey, though with
the sunglasses, one can’t be absolutely positively sure.
Mickey smokes his cigarette down. He has pocketed the other. He now
leans against a fender, feeling the thunder in the ground, watching the
purple-black part of the sky flutter with big jabs of light, splitting open
right over Horne Hill, the sweet breeze touching him all over, the tobacco
smoke’s big satisfying work done inside him, the men trudging around
him and their voices, both grave and playful. Alas now, they speak of the
storm, and discuss whether or not to wait it out in their vehicles or leave.
The red t-shirt guy asks Mickey his name. Mickey tells him. He asks
Mickey his age. Mickey says sixteen, which he is, almost. He asks him
what kind of gun he has. Mickey says a Marlin 22 Magnum.
“Just one?”
Mickey says, “Yep.”
The guy asks, “Where do you live?”
“Sanborn Road.”
The bony, urgent, eyebrowless guy, overhearing, calls to him, “You
live in that new place over there?”
“No. In the big one. I’m Donnie Locke’s brother. Been in Mass for
awhile. I’m livin’ here with him now.”
The full camo guy is coming back through the wind and wild sand.
Wind getting some real gumption now. Mickey can see through one side
of the red t-shirt guy’s sunglasses, eyes that never seem to blink.
Now Mickey leans into the open door of the Blazer and casually sorts
through shot-up police and circular competition targets. “You guys are
good,” he says.
“Not really,” the red t-shirt guy says rather quickly. “When your life
is at stake, your first four shots are what counts. There’s no chances after
that. You can’t have twenty shots to warm up.”
Mickey nods, picks something off the knee of his frazzled filthy jeans.
A green bug with crippled wings. He scrunches it. With a murderous
CRACK! and the sky dimming blue-black in all directions, light
scribbles and splits into veins, and now rain. A few splats.
The red t-shirt guy seems to be looking at Mickey hard.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The School on Heart’s Content Road
by Carolyn Chute
Copyright © 2008 by Carolyn Chute.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Atlantic Monthly Press
Copyright © 2008
Carolyn Chute
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87113-987-0
