Read The School on Heart's Content Road for Free Online Page A

gun
is
that?”
    Mickey replies, “Mine.”
    Rex says, “I don’t know you.”
    Mickey turns slightly, looks to the heavily draped picture window, beyond which he knows rain is smashing down onto yard and field and winding paved road. “I just thought I’d check.”
    The man stands, steps over to Mickey, grasps the rifle around the forearm, turns it sideways, jerks back the bolt, checks the breech, then deftly, with one hand, uncocks it, working the trigger and bolt. He feels over all the rain-darkened wood, studies the serial numbers. “You took all-rightcare of it. But”—his eyes fix again on Mickey’s unreadable face—“I got no more use for this thing than a zucchini, ’cept to trade it. But you can leave it with me as collateral, and I’ll loan you what you need.”
    â€œThat would be good, yuh.”
    And so there’s an exchange.
    And then a little chitchat, mostly Rex leading the conversation. Talk of the government and the United Nations and the Constitution and the way money is no longer backed by gold and the impending declaration of martial law by the president, of the New World Order and the liberals and the socialists, and then some about jury rights and separation of powers, the Federalist Papers, and on to Waco and Ruby Ridge.
    Rex’s somewhat young-looking mother appears quietly, from some cool part of the house. There seems to be cool air following her. She gives Mickey cookies, big nice vanilla sugar cookies, her hand cool, the cookies piping hot. She watches Mickey eat them. She stares openly at his hands and mouth, just like his own mother does.
    When Mickey stands to leave, Rex pulls keys from his pocket and commands, “Go get in the truck. I’ll take you home. You don’t love rain
that
much, do you?”
    The prince.
    Erika lies on the bed that is hers and Donnie’s. It is covered with a cheap yellow computerized crazy-quilt-print synthetic-fleece blanket that makes the skin on Erika’s bare legs and feet look a bright cheap yellow. The rain has left the air as thick and solid and tinted as green Jell-O. There under the blanket, close to Erika, is her shrinking child. On a small metal and wooden trunk at the foot of the bed is a television turned down very low. Erika’s eyes are even more fiercely deep and ringed than yesterday. These eyes are watching filmed excerpts of a trial. The TV has the sound turned nearly off. All the TVs in this house have the sound turned down these days. But no blank TVs. No pressing the OFF button. There is, to so many of us, something frightening about being totally cut off from “society,” from our “culture,” from the faceless mind that instructs and defines us.
    A big bee drones at the screen of the open window, tapping over and over and over, seeming to ask,
Is this it? Is this it? Is this it?
    With the excerpts of the trial over and a blast of jolly commercials, there is now a TV talk show host wheedling a guest, and Erika’s eyes watch this dully and she hears footsteps in the hall and knows it’s her brother-in-law, Mickey, whose room is on the third floor above her in that uninsulated blistering-hot attic space. She hears him stop. At
this
door. She had left the door cracked open. He hits it with his palm so it flies wide. Erika jumps, pushes herself up off the pillows.
    The old part-golden retriever, Boy, raises his head from his paws where he lies on the floor, and his tail thumps to see Mickey. Mickey steps over him. Mickey comes right over to the bed and stands there looking at Erika, stretched out there in her shorts and bare feet and Persian cat T-shirt, which he likes a lot, and she is scooting herself up to sit, then folds one knee up to brace herself for this unexpected moment and she sees that Mickey has a fistful of twenty-dollar bills that he is raising over her. She grabs his wrist. Much strength in her fingers. He laughs.
    She