The School on Heart's Content Road Read Free

almost. He asks him what kind of gun he has. Mickey says a Marlin .22 Magnum.
    â€œJust one?”
    Mickey says, “Yep.”
    The guy asks, “Where do you live?”
    â€œSanborn Road.”
    The bony, urgent, eyebrowless guy, overhearing, calls to him, “You live in that new place over there?”
    â€œNo, in the big one. I’m Donnie Locke’s brother. Been in Mass for a while. 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.
    â€œNot 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.
    The tall full-camo guy just stands there looking straight up, eyes fluttering with the beginning rain, his big thick neck looking vulnerable and pale with so much of the rest of him covered. “Is this a break-up for home, Rex? Or should we wait it out in the vehicles?” His voice is soft, but he announces these words deliberately, words of consequence.
    The red T-shirt black-mustache guy has pushed his cap forward, as if to hide his eyes, which, because of the sunglasses, never showed in the first place. “These storms aren’t usually more than . . . what, twenty minutes?”
    And so they wait it out.
    Rain comes hard. Smashes down on the truck’s cab, where Mickey sits with the red T-shirt guy. The guy has folded up his metal-frame glasses and placed them on the dash. He reminds Mickey of a raccoon, meticulous and wary. His eyes are pale gray-blue in dark lashes, and there’s settling and softening around them, which means he’s at least forty-five, maybe fifty. Not real friendly eyes. Nor is there rage in those eyes. His eyes simply take in but do not give back. And with the mustache filling in so much of his face, the eyes have significance. But no, his eyes don’t show much more of his humanity than his sunglasses did.
    He has given Mickey a handful of folded flyers about emergencies and natural disasters and civil defense. There is a bold black-on-white seal on the front of the flyer, showing a mountain lion’s form silhouetted inside a crescent of lettering. The guy tells Mickey, “My number is there in case you are ever interested . . . also my address, Vaughan Hill. Come over sometime and bring a friend. You’re always welcome.” He indicates the truck parked on their left with a dip of his head. It’s only a hot grayish-green blur through the rain-streaked windows, but Mickey knows the big quiet full-camo guy is in that truck. “That’s John Stratham, my second-in-command. Another officer, not here today, is Del Rogers. He does a lot for us over in Androscoggin County—a unit that’s growing, maybe a little too fast. You’ll see him if you decide to come to meetings. He’s beenreal important to us in sniffing out some . . . uh, problems we had a few months back. He’s dedicated. A real patriot.” He places his right hand on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t play with the wheel like most would do. He says, “Some people don’t give their last names at meetings. That’s up to you. This is all in confidence. I
will
need to do a check on anyone who is seeking