The Association

by Bentley Little

  He saw all the evidence he needed in the president's eyes.

  The bathroom seemed to be getting smaller as the six black-robed men pressed forward, advancing on him. Ray looked around desperately, trying to figure out some way to get by them, some means of escape, but the only window was a small opaque one above the toilet, and the board members had taken up all available space between the shower and the door.

  He was trapped.

  They weren't wearing gloves, he noticed, and a wild optimism flared within him. They'd left their fingerprints all over the doorknobs and anything else they'd touched. So maybe they weren't planning to take this all the way.

  At the very least, if worse came to worst they'd be caught. Even Hitman couldn't shield them from a murder rap, not with Liz on their backs.

  "We heard that you were rabble-rousing, inciting rebellion, telling people to--" He inhaled deeply, grimacing, obviously having difficulty even speaking the words, "--ignore the C, C, and Rs ."

  There'd been a spy at the party, a traitor, and Ray quickly ran down a list of names and faces, trying to figure out who'd betrayed them.

  Frank, he thought. It had to be Frank.

  Everyone's an informant.

  He should have heeded his own dictum, not been so open in his dissent, so free and easy with his opinions. He had not entirely trusted Frank since the man had tried to defend the association after Barry's cat had been killed, and Ray should have been more circumspect around him. Hell, he shouldn't have invited him to the party.

  But he had always been one to see the best in individuals, even those who belonged to organizations and institutions he distrusted, and he had given Frank the benefit of the doubt.

  Ray looked into the angry eyes of the president. The smart thing to do would be to deny everything, to explain that he was drunk at the time, to bow down to the board and kiss their asses. But he had the feeling that nothing would make any difference, so he stood up straight. "I

  did," he admitted. "And I told them, Tuck the association!""

  "You worthless little shit." The president came at him.

  And pushed. Ray slipped, fell backward, hit his head. There was a flash of horrendous pain, the warm feel of blood gushing from beneath his scalp, and he closed his eyes and lay there unmoving, hoping they would think they'd killed him, hoping this would be the end of it.

  But people were that stupid only in movies. These six were not about to assume anything, were not about to walk away without checking whether their attempts to kill him had been effective, and as he lay there bleeding and in agony, trying to feign lifelessness, he was yanked out of the shower by his leg. His head hit the edge of the stall, and bleeding erupted from a new fissure behind his ear. He opened his eyes, but his vision was strobing and he could not see.

  There was only a moving blackness against a pale blurred background:

  the robed figures of the board encircling him.

  Other hands grabbed his arms. He was pulled into a modified standing position and dragged out of the bathroom, into the hallway, into the kitchen. On the way, he was unceremoniously slammed against doorjambs and table edges and countertops.

  The battering seemed to restore some of the clarity to his vision. He could now see where he was, and he both saw! and felt the vice president grab his right wrist and use it to J swat the wall phone. Pain flared up his arm, and the receiver was knocked off the hook.

  He was dragged out to the living room, his right knee forced into the corner of the coffee table, drawing blood, his shoulder shoved against a potted palm stand, knocking the plant over.

  The vice president opened the door to the deck.

  He realized what was happening now, he understood what they were doing.

  They were making it appear as though he'd slipped in the shower and hit his head. Suffering from a disorienting head wound, he'd then staggered out of the bathroom, made his way to the kitchen where he attempted to dial 911, but, baffled and confused, he wandered into the living room, then onto the deck.

  Where he fell over the railing and died.

  It would look like an accident, he realized. No one would know that he'd been murdered.

  As much as he hated himself for it, he began to scream, and to his horror his screams were the high-pitched yelps of a frightened woman.

  The board members were laughing and joking about his manhood as they pressed his right palm against the sliding glass door and rammed his genitals against the metal door frame. He kept screaming, and there was no thought behind it. He was not trying to frighten them off or attract attention from possible passersby, he was screaming because he had to. It was an instinctive reaction, an innate response.

  They pulled him onto the deck.

  He wanted to remain cool; disdainful toward them to the end. He wanted to make cutting remarks that would wound and hurt them, that they would think about after he was dead, but he could not do that. He simply screamed those girlish screams as the men held his body and smashed it repeatedly against the railing until a just-painted two-by-four came loose.

  He could feel nothing below the waist, but his arms were working and he could still see through the blood, and he attempted to break his fall as he flew through the air and landed with a bone-crushing thud on the rocky soil of the wooded sloping hillside.

  He was still alive.

  The realization filled him not only with hope and an insane glee but with the unshakable desire for revenge. Despite their best efforts, the board had been unable to eradicate him, and their ineffectiveness would be their downfall. He did not know if he could move, if he was paralyzed or simply badly injured, but he knew enough to remain still.

  They were no doubt watching from above, and it would be best to play dead for a while. He could check his vital signs later.

  But there was no later.

  He must have drifted into unconsciousness because in what seemed like seconds, he was squinting through half closed lids and drying blood at the feet of the board members. They were implacable, and more than anything else it was their relentlessness that finally sapped the last of his will and hope. Ray opened his eyes, not caring if they knew.

  He saw the president accept a large rock from one of the other board members, place it on the sloping ground inches from his face, then methodically repeat the procedure.

  He felt several sets of hands lift the top half of his body, and he understood what they were going to do.

  Please, he thought. Let it be quick and painless.

  But no death was quick, he realized, no death was painless. And in a second that seemed to last an hour, that realization was brought home to him in a very profound and personal way.

  After the funeral, they all went back to Liz's, where even with the large gathering of people, the house seemed curiously empty. Maureen, along with Audrey Hodges and Tina Stewart, had made the food and organized the informal social. The three women were gamely trying to get Liz involved, to keep her occupied with small details and thus prevent her from dwelling obsessively on her husband's death, but even amid the low buzz of multiple conversations, Ray's loss was acutely felt, and Barry could not help thinking how lonely this house would seem once all the people were gone and Liz was by herself.

  He stood with Frank and Mike, and the three men watched their wives shunt a zombified Liz across the living room to refill an hors-d'oeuvre plate. They were talking about road construction on the highway that had narrowed the route to Interstate 15 down to two lanes. They had been talking about baseball... and the weather ... gas prices...

  anything except Ray. They didn't know each other well enough to open up, to be emotionally truthful and share their feelings, and the three of them had been assiduously avoiding the one subject they'd each been thinking about. Ray had been the catalyst between them, the one who enabled them to speak honestly in front of one another, and with him gone there was a stiltedness to their interaction. He felt the way he had when Todd Ingalls , his best Mend from kindergar
ten through third grade, had moved away and he'd been forced to play with John Wakeman , a casual friend, a backup friend, someone with whom he eventually found out he had almost nothing in common. Now Frank and Mike were his backup friends, and while they seemed like good guys, it was not the same, not the same at all.

  He hadn't realized how much he had come to rely on Ray, how close the two of them had become. There was deep sorrow within him when he thought about the old man, and as he looked out the windows at the crowded deck, it hit him that they would never again sit out there barbecuing and discussing the Big Issues. Or just shooting the breeze.

  It was as though a huge chunk of his life had simply been cut out and discarded, and what was left behind was a painful emptiness.

  Along with the sadness, however, there was anger. He had not yet figured out how, but he knew in his gut that the association had been involved in Ray's death. Not directly, that's not the way they worked, but in a circumspect, roundabout way, not doing the deed themselves but bringing about the circumstances that allowed it to happen. From across the room, he caught the eye of Greg Davidson, who nodded a weary hello. Greg and Wynona, he knew, were moving out this week, priced out of their own home by Bonita Vista's gate. That's how the association operated. They were facilitators.

  He thought aboutDekeMeldrum , lying dead in the ditch as a crowd gathered in the darkness.

  Sometimes they were direct, though. Sometimes they did the dirty work themselves.

  There's no telling what they're capable of.

  Maureen and the other wives brought Liz by to say hello and accept condolences, and the three men reiterated what they'd said at the funeral, how sorry they were for her loss, how much they'd miss Ray, he was a great friend. Barry kept his words short and sweet. He was unnerved by the listlessness of Liz's gaze. It was like looking at a completely different woman than the one he knew, and he glanced at her for only brief seconds before turning his attention back to Maureen. It was pathetic and heartless and selfish and self-centered, but he felt extremely uncomfortable. He was not one of those people who was good with the sick or the troubled or the dying. He could write about it, but in real life he was a complete washout when it came to offering others emotional support. Thank God there were people like Maureen, who always knew the right thing to do and who had the constitution to follow through.

  "Can you help us in the kitchen for a moment?" Maureen asked.

  "Sure." He followed the women, leaving Frank and Mike to their own devices.

  Audrey and Tina busied themselves at the sink and dishwasher, while Maureen led him over to the breakfast nook, where an old leather suitcase sat atop the table. She glanced toward Liz and lowered her voice. "Ray's books," Maureen said. "For some reason, she packed a whole bunch of them in this suitcase and then put the suitcase here on the kitchen table. I don't know how she even lifted the thing. We could barely move it."

  Barry nodded. Grief did strange things to people, and somehow this irrational act, more than anything that had gone before, more than the words and the tributes and the funeral itself, brought home to him the enormity of Ray's passing. Liz had obviously loved him a lot.

  "What do you want me to do with it?"

  "Take it into his den," Maureen whispered. "Just get it out of the way. We'll figure things out later."

  He nodded. Grabbing the handle of Ray's suitcase, feeling the heaviness of the books inside, the anger rose within him. "God damn that homeowners' association," he said. "I know those bastards are behind this."

  He was speaking to Maureen rather than Liz, but it was Liz who reacted, who responded to his accusation. She strode over, her gaze hardened, suddenly focused. "I don't want to hear anything about that association stuff," she said fiercely. "That craziness was why he was out there on that deck to begin with. If he hadn't been so paranoid about those people, he'd probably be alive today."

  Barry said nothing. He did not want to argue with her, did not want to cause her even more pain, and he picked up the suitcase and looked over at Maureen. His wife's expression was unreadable.

  Walking out of the kitchen, he saw Liz revert, her body slump, the tension that had momentarily animated her giving out and disappearing as if vacuumed away. He carried the heavy suitcase down the hall. How had she lifted it? He was struggling with it himself. He found the closed door and placed the oversized piece of luggage on the floor of the darkened den. Glancing about, he saw the hulking shadow of Ray's empty desk in the otherwise spartan room and he quickly hurried back out to the hallway, unaccountably feeling as though he were intruding on the couple's privacy. He closed the door behind him.

  Had the association really been behind Ray's death?

  He wanted to think that was the case, but he realized that he was grasping at straws, ready to believe any conclusion save the logical one: his friend's death had been an accident.

  Barry took a deep breath. He was turning into one of those conspiracy nuts, those loonies who saw government plots behind all ill events, who believed in Bigfoot and UFOs, who refused to believe in luck or chance or even fate and attributed even the smallest occurrence to the complex and illogical machinations of a group of ultra-organized human beings.

  And he was forced to admit the possibility that Ray had been one of those people, too.

  Sometimes, he thought, the simplest explanation was the real one.

  Sometimes what was obvious was what was true, and looking for elaborate reasons was just a waste of time.

  Still, he was glad there was no one from the association who had come by to offer sympathy, that there'd been no official attempt at wishing Liz condolences. It would have been hypocritical at the very least and an insult to Ray's memory.

  He walked back out to the living room. Frank had wandered off somewhere, but Mike was still in place, talking to a woman with a broken arm, and Barry grabbed a drink off the coffee table and joined them.

  "Moira? Barry," Mike said by way of introduction. "Moira and her husband, Clan, live around the side of the hill in that stilt-job. Clan used to be a contractor, and he's the one helped Ray figure out how to build that famous storage shed."

  "He couldn't make it today," Moira explained. "So I came alone."

  "Barry's a writer. Hooked up with Ray because of their mutual hatred of the homeowners' association."

  Already, that description sounded embarrassing, childish, and he found that he was ashamed to be identified in such a way.

  "What happened to your arm?" Barry asked in an attempt to change the subject. He gestured toward the cast and sling.

  The woman reddened, became suddenly taciturn, the openness of her expression closing down. "It was an accident," she said in a voice that didn't sound at all sure that that was the case.

  Over her right shoulder, Mike was shaking his head, making a slashing motion across his throat that Barry interpreted to mean stay away from that subject.

  Spousal abuse, he thought, and was surprised at how calm he was with it, how un shocked and unfazed he was. In his dreams, in his fantasies, he was one of those people who got involved, who alerted the authorities, who stepped in and put a stop to wrongs and made them right. But here he was confronted with a situation, and he did not rise to the occasion. Like Mike, he felt more comfortable staying out of it, minding his own business and tiptoeing around that five-hundred-pound gorilla in the middle of the room.

  This day was just full of surprises.

  The afternoon quickly wound down as people who'd put in a token appearance and performed their neighborly duty excused themselves and headed home. This wasn't a party, after all, no one was having fun at this extremely awkward gathering, and Barry could see the relief on people's faces as they expressed their condolences to Liz one last time and escaped out the door, claiming prior commitments and suddenly urgent household chores.

  When Mike and Frank left, leaving their wives behind, Barry decided he might as well do the same. Maureen gave him her approval and walked with him to the
front door. They'd driven to the Dysons’ house--to Liz's house--directly from the cemetery, but Barry felt like walking home, and he told Maureen to drive the car back when she was through.

  She accompanied him out to the porch, closing the door carefully behind her. "What do you think?" she asked, her eyes meeting his. "Do you think it was an accident?"

  He was surprised that she was even asking the question. "Probably," he admitted.

  She nodded, but there was not the certainty in her face he would have expected, and he wondered if she'd heard something or seen something that made her suspect this was not the case.

  He didn't ask her, though, didn't want to know, not right now at least, and he said good-bye, gave her a quick peck on the lips, and headed up the gravel driveway.

  The air was hot and unmoving, not leavened by even the hint of a breeze, and the only sounds on this still afternoon were the scratchy scuttling of lizards in the underbrush abutting the road, the chirrups of unseen cicadas, and the occasional far-off rumbling of truck engines as Corban pickups headed on or off the highway.

  Bonita Vista seemed like a ghost town, as though all of the people had suddenly disappeared, and while in one of his stories that would have seemed creepy, Barry found the absence of audible neighbors almost welcoming.

  He felt better being outside, walking, even in this heat. Ray's house had been so close to the man, so filled with his memory, that it had been difficult to think, to sort things through. It was easier out here, alone under the wide blue sky, to remember the good things about his friend, to celebrate his life rather than mourn his passing.

  Ahead, Barry saw the entrance to his own driveway and the brown shingle roof of his house above the line of trees. As he drew closer and more of the house became visible, he saw something else, something that made his jaw muscles clench and the blood pump faster through his veins.

  A pink piece of paper attached to the screen door.

  The association had been here.

  He was filled with a rage entirely disproportionate to the offense, a rage he knew to be misplaced anger at his friend's death, but he felt it nonetheless, and he strode furiously up the driveway and up the porch steps. Those bastards had been here, snooping around, while he'd been at Ray's funeral, while he and his wife and their neighbors had been consoling the old man's widow. Did they have no shame? Did they have no respect?