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

means either
ready
or
very red
. Even his mistakes seemed so smart. And his delight with everything. His delight: yeah, it was from the same place forgiveness is made. And no one else’s forgiveness matters.
    Next day, suppertime.
    Little girls stand at the table and pick from plates. There’s enough chairs, but they don’t use them. Elizabeth, the oldest, says “I want one of those” as she watches the parade of products on TV. Donnie says, “Sit down. You’re not a cow.” He says this only to Elizabeth, his seven-year-old daughter by his first marriage, singling her out. She gives him the finger.
    Mickey comes in from somewhere, screen door thwacking, and sees the finger raised and then Donnie standing with his coffee by the refrigerator, tie loosened, top shirt-button unbuttoned, but his light-color hair still neat. And on Donnie’s bare, pink, hairless face, a look. Full-blown fury. And Donnie’s eyes slide over to Mickey’s proud light-stepping walk, the knees, the T-shirt that reads BLAME IT ON EL NIñO , the slim hips.
    Neither Erika nor Britta have seen the finger. And so they don’t know of it, and they don’t see Donnie’s face, nor the brace of his shoulders.
    Mickey prances over to Erika and taps her shoulder. She turns from the pan of stewed tomatoes, big spoon in her hand, and into her free hand he presses a wob of money and she breathes, “Thank God.”
    And Britta. She coos.
    So Mickey is standing between Donnie and Erika, and he reaches for a glass from the drainer and Erika pushes the money into the front pocket of her shorts, against that warm place near the hip bone, and Britta is looking up at the side of Mickey’s face, at the pale, very soft, very sparse beard appearing there, and the glass slips from Mickey’s fingers and smashes into the sink and this gives Donnie’s right arm a life of its own. Fist smacks Mickey hard. Mickey’s mouth looks instantly thick and bright.
    â€œDonnie!” both women howl, for they are absolutely shocked, this being the first time Donnie Locke has ever struck anyone or anything.
    And two of the girls burst into tears, two of the four who live here, while the two neighbor girls slink toward the door.
    â€œTense! Tense!” Donnie hollers. “Fucking tense, okay?”
    Silence from the corner, the pallet of blankets where dying Jesse lies, breathing in an odd way.
    Mickey doesn’t shout back at his brother, nor does he cry, nor does he cringe, nor does he leave the room, but just goes over to the table and sits, facing the TV, which is showing a pale rerun of a large boisterous family living a lite life.
    Breakfast of champions.
    Early morning. All the TVs are on, two downstairs, two upstairs. All with the news, three different networks flickering with high-tech efficiency, more efficient than God. Or at least equal to God in its power to bend the knee.
    Donnie is in a kitchen chair, T-shirt and jeans, bare feet, legs stretched out, eyes faithful to the screen. Reportage on a trial. Ads. Urban crime. Ads. Welfare “reform.” Ads. Tax “reform.” Ads. A plane crash with forty-four dead. Ads. A weirdo less-than-human man eats his sexually assaulted boy victims. Ads.
    Summer presses on and on at the screened windows and door. Humidity and miles of weedy-smelling flowers, miles of crickets creaking in pauses and crescendos, a rhythm innate and old and creepily genius. And a car passes.
    Donnie’s day off, so he can let his mustache grow for one day, but its blondness keeps it invisible.
    Mickey comes down from his little attic room, wearing a fresh but wrinkled T-shirt. A camo print. The militia look. Jeans. Sneakers with double lacings and his light, proud, catlike walk. And his mouth, still swollen. Bruised berry-blue. A badge. Smacked mouth has given him more arrogance, not less. And his beard shows more now, a bit reddish.
    No women. No kids. Only the old deaf