The School on Heart's Content Road by Carolyn Chute Page A

sweet as sugar?
    It is soon told.
    The Border Mountain Militia
    Mickey knows the way to this house by heart now. He even knows the shortcut through the rest area off the highway, through a narrow stand of planted white pines called “research area” by a paper company, and then another quarter mile across a lumpy, flowery fallow field. He knows Rex has been called Rex all his life.
Rex
means
king,
so of course the guy likes it. Unlike
Mickey,
which Mickey sometimes despairs over, it being the name of a mouse.
    With each visit, Mickey knows more about the Border Mountain Militia and other militias across the country. And yet, so much isn’t told. Somehow it doesn’t seem secret, as in
top secret,
but more or less things Rex can’t or won’t express, things to do with fear and anger and shame, things to do with the ways evil power can be something else besides a foreign army, something you can’t kill.
    Rex has told him that the Border Mountain Militia is composed of four hundred members, although Mickey has met only fifteen and heard mention of the names of six or so more. Rex’s computer, in the corner of a small bedless bedroom upstairs, glows an agitated bright blue.
    Rex has said Mickey can be a full member after he checks him out a little more. This is something above and beyond the already seeand-record-everything gaze of Rex’s eyes. Mickey once asked, “You mean
school
records?” and Rex said, without a hitch, “I do not mean school records.”
    Mickey knows he doesn’t mean credit check, and Mickey doubts there’s a Michael Daniel Gammon FBI file, and how would Rex have access to it anyway? He keeps trying to figure what Rex could be checking out. Whatever it is, it feels kind of nice.
    This meeting has only drawn a few members, which Rex says is due to its being summer. Although today is another dark and steamy downpour. The ceilings are low here, and in the kitchen a coil of flypaper has one fly on it. It is Saturday, so Rex’s brother’s kids are in and out. Rex’s brother Bob lives in a ranch house on the other side of the field. Rex says his brother is
not
into the Patriot Movement. Rex hints that his brother is a weird character, not to be trusted. Over time this summer, it is revealed to Mickey that Rex’s brother is, yes, a
schoolteacher
. Mickey feels a bond with Rex in their common disaffection for brother Bob.
    At today’s meeting, they are talking about the terrain of the White Mountain foothills here as compared with Aroostook and Bangor area highlands and the relatively flat southern Maine coast. Topographical maps are in a loose floppy pile on the foot hassock and much of the rug. Then somebody brings up the subject of radio transmitters, and a guy named Dave goes out to his vehicle for lists of data he keeps on shortwave frequencies and installation and everything one needs to know about shortwave.
    There is some mention of Willie Lancaster at this point, a member who was in jail last week for an hour or so. Rex is
grim
about the subject of Willie Lancaster, even though Willie Lancaster has a pretty good shortwave setup and is planning big things with it. So the conversation about Willie Lancaster begins to trickle off under the weight of Rex’s steely, pale, disapproving eyes.
    Rex’s La-Z-Boy is not in its TV-news-watching position. He is sitting on the edge, footrest folded down, his boots flat on the floor, a palm on one thigh, forearm on the other, squinting at the nearest map. He wears a short-sleeved camo shirt with an embroidered patch on the left sleeve that features the snarling mountain lion and around it the crescentof letters, BORDER MOUNTAIN MILITIA . The rest of his uniform is a pair of newish jeans and, of course, his military boots. No cap.
    Meanwhile, Rex’s daughter. Mickey’s only seen her once, except for her graduation picture, which he glances at from time to time. The time he actually