The Association

by Bentley Little

  The road was rising, high desert chaparral giving way to pinion and juniper forest, and he rounded a hilly curve to see a white Jimmy pull out from an almost invisible side road. He slowed to let the vehicle onto the highway, and the Jimmy accelerated quickly and roared away, rounding the next curve before Barry was even back up to speed.

  He encountered it again ten minutes later, stuck behind a silver Lexus and honking furiously. He was still a good half mile back, but even from this distance it was obvious that the Lexus driver was playing games. He would speed up and slow down, brake nearly to a halt, then, when the Jimmy tried to pass, veer into the opposite lane to block the vehicle.

  Finally, the Jimmy driver had had enough. He swerved onto the narrow dirt shoulder and attempted to pass on the right. The Lexus increased its speed, preventing the other vehicle from getting back on the road. There was a dry streambed up ahead, a fairly deep gully that the highway crossed with a bridge. The shoulder disappeared at that point, and dirt flew as the Jimmy shot forward in a desperate effort to pull in front of the Lexus.

  The Lexus kept pace.

  It was only at the last moment that it seemed to become clear to the Jimmy driver that his rival would not pull back and let him in, that this was some bizarre game of chicken the Lexus driver refused to lose.

  The driver slammed on his brakes, but it was too late, and the Jimmy slid headfirst down the steep incline into the dry streambed.

  Barry had closed the gap between himself and the other vehicles considerably and had a clear view of the accident. He braked to a halt on the last stretch of shoulder, got out, and ran toward the embankment. Ahead, he saw the Lexus' passenger window roll down, heard the driver yell something down at the victim. The car sped away. Barry tried to get the license number, but the back end of the Lexus was in shadow, and by the time it was again in full sunlight, it was too far away for him to read.

  He slid down the slope in a crouch. The Jimmy had not rolled, but it had crashed headfirst into the sandy streambed, and the driver had apparently been thrown free of the vehicle through the open door.

  Barry ran up. "Jesus! Are you all right?"

  The man nodded, touched a hand to his bruised forehead, brushed sand and leaves off his shirt.

  "You need some help? Want me to call an ambulance or the police?"

  "No!" the man practically shouted. "No police!"

  "Are you kidding? That guy ran you off the road. I saw it. I'm a witness."

  "I'm not pressing charges. I don't want... I'm just..."

  He shook his head as if to clear it. "Look, you offered to help. All I want is a ride up to the Shell station in Corban . Buck there'll come back with his tow truck and get the car."

  "Sure," Barry said. "Anything you want. But you need to get the police out here. For the insurance report, if nothing else." "No!"

  Barry held up his hands. "Okay, okay."

  The man pressed various spots on his face, looking at his fingers.

  "I don't see any blood," Barry offered.

  The man took a tentative step forward.

  "You need some help?"

  He shook his head. "No. I can make it."

  "What an asshole," Barry said. "I saw him playing games with you, not letting you pass--"

  "I'd rather not talk about it," the man said shortly.

  Barry nodded.

  The two of them made their way up the steep incline. Barry took it slow, in case the man needed assistance, but he made it to the top without help.

  "You from Corban ?" Barry asked as they walked toward his Suburban.

  "Yeah."

  "Me, too. I live in Bonita Vista."

  The man's voice was quiet. "Me, too."

  And though Barry tried to engage him in conversation, the man did not say another word until they reached the Shell station in town.

  Barry did not even learn his name.

  Russ Gifford came home from work to find his girlfriend gone.

  He probably would have thought she was at the store or down on the tennis courts or out for a jog along the bridle trail, if not for the pink piece of paper that had been slipped between the metal supports of his screen door and was fluttering noisily in the strong post-monsoon breeze.

  It was an official notice from the homeowners' association.

  Russ read and reread the form, his hands shaking, his stomach churning with an unidentifiable emotion that could have been anger, could have been confusion, could have been fear. His name had been illegibly scrawled on a blank line reserved for that purpose, and a box next to the statement Action has been taken to rectify noncompliance had been checked. On the open lines that comprised the bottom half of the form was written the chilling and cryptic note: "Unmarried couples are not allowed to live in Bonita Vista (see Article IV, Section 9, Paragraph F).Tammi Bindler has been removed to ensure compliance."

  What the hell was going on here?

  He read the form yet again.

  Not allowed to live? Removed? The ambiguously threatening words and phrases could be interpreted to mean she'd been killed, although he knew that couldn't possibly be the case. Of course, the other alternative was equally unbelievable and almost as disconcerting--that she'd been kidnapped and forcibly taken elsewhere.

  He hurried inside, called Tammi's sister in St. George and her mother in Kingman, hoping that Tammi had called at least one of them to explain what had happened, but neither of them had heard from her.

  On an impulse, Russ ran into the bedroom to check the closet. Her clothes were all still there. In the bathroom, her toiletries were in place.

  He stood, stunned into stupidity, unable to think of what he should do, the next logical step he should take.

  The law, he thought.

  He walked over to the phone and immediately dialed 911, but hung up before anyone answered. He'd seen enough cop shows to know thatTammi wouldn't officially be a missing person until she'd been gone for forty-eight hours.

  Fuck that. He'd lie.

  He dialed 911 again, and when the dispatcher came on the line, he said that his girlfriend had been missing for three days and that he feared something had happened to her. The dispatcher took his name and address and promised that the sheriff would be there within the half hour. Sure enough, a patrol car pulled up in front of his house less than fifteen minutes later, and Russ went out to meet it.

  A hard-looking older man emerged from the cruiser, straightening his belt as he walked over. "I'm Sheriff Hitman . Are you Russ Gifford?"

  "Yeah. Thank God you're here. My girlfriend's missing."

  "Been missing for three days, I hear."

  Was that suspicion in the sheriff's voice? Russ frowned. "Yes, she has. Since Monday."

  "Mmm-hmm." Hitman fixed him with a hard stare. "Look, Mr. Gifford.

  There's no man alive that would wait three days to call in a missing persons if his girlfriend disappeared. Why don't you level with me."

  "All right. It happened today." He thrust the form forward. "This was on my screen door."

  Hitman took the paper.

  "I've tried calling her mom, her sister, but no one knows where she is or what's happened to her."

  The sheriff looked over the form, handed it back. "I'm sorry," he said. "This is out of my jurisdiction."

  Russ stared at him. "What?"

  "This is between you and your homeowners' association."

  "My girlfriend is missing."

  "She is not missing."Hitman nodded toward the pink sheet. "It states very clearly there that she has been removed from Bonita Vista because the homeowners' association does not allow couples to cohabit ate Russ let out a snort of disbelief. "You're joking, right?"

  The sheriff just looked at him.

  "You're telling me that if a crime has been committed in Bonita Vista, you won't raise a finger to help out?"

  "A crime has not been committed," Hitman said patiently. "If you read your C, C, and Rs , you'll find that the homeowners' association has a legal r
ight to enforce its rules and regulations."

  "Whose side are you on?"

  "I'm not on anybody's side. I'm a law enforcement officer and that's what I do. I enforce the law. Now good day, Mr. Gifford."

  Russ stepped after him. "Wait a minute! What am I supposed to do?"

  Hitman opened his car door. "If you have any questions, I suggest you address them to your association's board of directors." He got into the cruiser. "Good day."

  Russ watched the patrol car back up the driveway, swing around, and head down the street the way it had come.

  Board of directors.

  He realized that he didn't know who was on the board. He looked down at the form again, but the pink sheet of paper was unsigned and there were no individual names listed, only the name of the association. The officers and their titles could no doubt be found in those damn C, C, and Rs , but he'd tossed the booklet somewhere shortly after receiving it and had no idea where it was. He could ask someone, he supposed, but he and Tammi were not particularly social and hadn't gotten to know many of their neighbors, so he didn't feel comfortable imposing on a virtual stranger.

  Ray Dyson would have known. The old man had befriended them and had even invited the two of them to a couple of parties at his house. But Ray was dead.

  Maybe his wife. Maybe Liz would know.

  He started walking. The Dysons’ house was on the street above theirs, and if he cut through the greenbelt it would be faster to hoof it than drive. He crossed the road and started hiking over the pathless dirt.

  He'd known that Ray had hated the homeowners' association but he hadn't known why. Now he did. They were a bunch of self-righteous assholes trying to impose their own morality on everyone else. He andTammi weren't married so she had to go? The two of them had been together for ten years! Probably longer than some of the married couples in Bonita Vista.

  Goddamn it, if he had the money, he'd hire a private investigator to check up on those bastards, see how many of them were divorced or had had affairs or somehow did not measure up to the strict standards the homeowners' association required.

  Anger felt good. It drove off the despair, kept the self pity at bay.

  He walked around an oversized manzanita bush, emerging on the street next to the Dysons’ place. Still holding the pink sheet of paper--the Removal Form, as he was starting to think of it--he hurried up the driveway and rang the doorbell.

  There was no immediate response, so he rang again. And knocked.

  A few seconds later, the door opened a crack and Liz peeked out. "Yes?"

  she said. She looked awful--no makeup, hair uncombed, dirty bathrobe--but what really threw him was the fact that she didn't seem to know who he was.

  "It's me. Russ." He felt obligated to reintroduce himself.

  "Yes?"

  Her tone was brusque. Either she still didn't recognize him or wasn't in the mood to talk. He pressed on quickly. "I came home from work this afternoon and Tammi was gone. I probably wouldn't've thought anything of it, but I found this in my screen door." He waved the Removal Form at her. "It's from the homeowners' association, and it says that unmarried people cannot live in Bonita Vista and that Tammi has been 'removed." I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean--"

  Liz opened the door wider, poked her head out, and looked furtively around, as though searching for spies. "They're doing a purge," she said, and her voice was barely above a whisper. "They do that periodically, come down on homeowners who break the rules, get rid of the people they don't like, who offend them."

  "But why pick on me? I've never done anything to them. I don't even know who the hell they are."

  "I wonder who else is out," Liz mumbled to herself. She looked up at Russ. "Do you know Wayne and Pat? The gay couple?"

  "Yeah. I met them at your party."

  "Do you know where they live?"

  "Around the corner from me. On Oak."

  "Check their house. I bet they're gone, too."

  Russ realized that the Removal Form was crumpled in his clutched fist.

  "Well, who's on this damn board? I want to know what happened to Tammi. I want some answers."

  "My husband did, too," Liz whispered, and she closed the door on him.

  He heard the snick of a deadbolt, the rattling of a chain lock.

  "Just give me one of their names!" He pounded on the door. "Who's the president?"

  But Liz did not reappear, and after several fruitless moments of knocking and waiting and ringing the bell and shouting out pleas, he finally gave up. On the way back, he decided to follow Liz's suggestion, and he stopped by the house Wayne and Pat shared. But no one answered the door, and there was no sign of the couple. Although there were still two cars in the driveway, the place had an air of abandonment.

  Removed.

  The anger was subsiding, and he was filled with an increasing sense of hopelessness, a desperate fear that there was nothing he could do to find Tammi , that he was fated to stand helplessly and impotently by while whatever happened to her happened. He tried to keep the anger alive, wanting the strength it gave him, and he stopped off at the next house over. He didn't know who lived here, but the woman who answered the door seemed nice and neighborly, and he asked her if she could tell him who was on the association's board of directors. He didn't want to burden her with his own problems, so he didn't explain why he wanted to know, but she was taken aback by the question and started to shut the door on him.

  "Wait!" he said, but the door closed and locked.

  It was the same at all the houses he tried. He hit every house on the street, and though a couple of them were vacation homes and a few other people had not yet returned from work, most of the people answered their doors. And none of them would respond to his question about the homeowners'

  association.

  He returned home troubled, depressed, and frightened. The C, C, and Rs were somewhere in the house, and he tore the place apart trying to find them. No luck.

  He spent the rest of the evening calling friends and family, seeing if anyone had heard from Tammi , laying out the situation and finding out if anyone had any ideas. No one seemed to believe his story. Hell, if he'd heard this from someone else, he probably wouldn't believe it either.

  Liz had spoken of purges, and he wondered what she'd meant by that. He should have asked, although she hadn't exactly been in the most talkative of moods.

  In his mind, he saw a group of robed inquisitors tying up Tammi and burning her at a stake in the middle of the forest for living with a man before marriage.

  No, that couldn't be the case.

  Could it?

  Removed.

  For the first time since childhood, he cried himself to sleep. They were tears of rage and frustration more than of sadness and loss, but his emotions flip-flopped and all of those feelings were somewhere in the mix. He felt as though he should be doing something, as though there was something he could do if only he could remember what it was, but that was an emotional response, and he realized intellectually that he was in the same position as any person with a missing loved one. All he could do was wait.

  Ordinarily, Russ was a sound sleeper. But the stress of not knowing Tammi's whereabouts and the uncomfortably unfamiliar sensation of having the bed all to himself ensured that he slept only fitfully. He tossed and turned, woke up at eleven-thirty, eleven-forty, eleven fifty-five, midnight. Sometime after one, he finally nodded off and slept for over half an hour straight. He might have made it all the way through the night, but he was awakened by the sound of pounding.

  He opened his eyes, automatically looked at the clock-- 1:43--and sat up, trying to determine where the noise originated. The pounding sounded as if it were coming from somewhere in the front of the house.

  In fact, it sounded as though large rocks were being lobbed at the building. But kids who threw rocks usually tossed only one or two and then fled. He'd heard at least a dozen since being awakened, and there seemed to be no letup in sight
. There was, as well, an even regularity to the sounds, as though it were being done by machine, as though some sort of reloading catapult was An explosive crash reverberated through the house as the living room window shattered.

  Russ was out of bed before the tinkling of broken glass had silenced.

  He ran out of the bedroom, down the hall, unlocked and yanked open the front door, and flipped on the porch light. "I know who you are, asshole!" He scanned the darkness, unable to see anyone. "I'm calling the fucking cops, you son of a bitch!"

  There were rocks at his feet, obviously ones that had been thrown at the house, and he saw others within the circle of illumination provided by the porch light. He felt chilled as he peered into the blackness.

  "Get the fuck off my property!" he yelled.

  There was no response. He could see nothing, hear nothing. Who was doing this? he wondered. And why?

  Removed.

  He reached down to pick up one of the rocks, and once again the sound of breaking glass shattered the silence of the night.

  One of the windows on his car.

  Thumping came from all directions as people in the bushes lobbed rocks at all four sides of his house.

  Russ shut the door, locked it, hiding inside, the pounding of his heart threatening to drown out even his racing thoughts. He'd wanted to call out, wanted to yell threats, but he was scared and acting on instinct. It was the fact that there was more than one person out there that really frightened him. And the fact that they were so organized.

  Who was it? And what could they possibly have against him?

  The homeowners' association.

  Yes.

  It didn't make a whole lot of sense--why would grown men be crouched in the bushes in the middle of the night throwing rocks at a house?--but then neither did the whole business of Tammi's "removal." And it followed that if they wanted to remove one of the offending unmarried fornicators, they would want to get rid of both.

  Russ had no guns, but he had golf clubs, and he went into the hall closet and pulled out a nine iron, and swung it at shoulder level, hearing the comforting swish of sliced air. If any of those motherfuckers tried to get in this house, he'd take off their goddamn heads.