The School on Heart's Content Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoulders, and Erika shoves Donnie with the palms of both hands, but this also jars Jesse and he is taken by a terrible ghostly lament, both weak and filled with power. And Donnie bellers, “
Maybe it’ll kill him!
Yeah, let’s
kill
him! Let’s make him happy! Die baby boy sweet fuckin’ Jesus
die!
” And he grabs the boy’s skeletal shoulders. But Erika is, within a split moment, on Donnie’s back, so the bottle tips and a stinking bourbon wave spreads over the child’s pajama top and face and he goes rigid again with wrinkled brow, wide-open jaws, straight-out legs, arms to his sides, his fair little trill of despair seeming to come from the center of his concave chest, and somehow now Erika has the bottle, running to the kitchen, and Donnie just kneels and covers the rigid, now breathlessly panting, Jesse with himself.
    â€œA gun,” Donnie whispers. Then yells it. “A
gun!
For a gun, I would give anything, Erika!
Where is Mickey’s rifle?!
”
    Erika’s voice from the kitchen: “
monster!
”
    And then he hollers, “No, you!
You!
You, Erika, are the big bitch monster who says
No, we don’t sell the house or mortgage it.
And
Oh my, my, the hospital might take it!! You
are the one who says not to get him his chemo! They
said
they’d save him!
They said they’d save him!!!!
”
    In the kitchen, silence.
    In the night, into the silence of their wide-awake regrets and into the silence of Jesse’s wide-awake dying, Donnie whispers.
    â€œI’m sorry, Erika.”
    And she whispers, “I couldn’t believe you said that.”
    And he whispers, “It came out.”
    â€œWe
agreed
about the treatments. We
agreed
.”
    â€œIt came out.”
    And now she is off in a free fall of sobs.
    And he says, “No no no no no no,” so gently, and strokes her soft young wifely neck and wrists and forearms, all the most trusting places.
    â€œNo no no no no no no . . .”
    The screen shivers.
    Be afraid. Poor people are lazy and immoral, and violence is on their fingertips for some reason, who knows the reason, it’s just their idea of fun. It’s always this way; they steal cars drugs money and gunnnnnz! They are filled with sex and rotten teeth and food stamps and Cadillacs and bad English! The men are bozos and incestuous. Poor women are all victims of poor, domestically violent men. But the big thing to remember is poor men for some reason all want to be armed and want to hurt hurt hurt kill kill kill. Here comes another one out of court, shackled and in an orange suit for shooting three times in the air to scare his girlfriend, who had all the charge cards. Weeee are so lucky to have police and politicians to keep these poor and violent and lazy-for-some-reason guys off of you and your darling Brendan and Olivia and your golden retriever and your
stuff
.
    The militia at home.
    It is Sunday, early evening.
    Two days of rain: warm rain, cold rain, a lotta rain. The culverts hiss and giggle with road runoff from the higher hills.
    Mickey moves along the road’s crown, light-footed as ever, the rain punching his eyes, punching him all over.
    Richard “Rex” York’s home welcomes you. When Mickey raps on the door inside the little glassed-in porch, a voice hollers from somewhere, “
In here!
” And beside the door is a varnished plaque shaped like a hand with a pointing finger that reads ENTER .
    And so Mickey steps into the kitchen. There is a smell. Something supperish, a supper already eaten. But something else too, somethingbesides meat and potatoes. He thinks it is hot cookies or cake, you know, cookies or cake still baking away. The gray Formica-topped table and the counters are wiped clean. Mickey glances to his right, through an open pantry door that shows a red and green metal Christmas tree stand on top of a small barbecue grill with a laundry basket on top, and other pantry-shedway-type