The Association

by Bentley Little

  Was this merely a warning, he wondered, or the beginning of regular organized attacks against him? He didn't know, but neither possibility was promising, and he backed up his files on diskette and took the diskette with him as he locked up the office.

  It was nearly midnight, and they lay in bed, not speaking, listening to the soft murmur of the television.

  "Maybe we should move," Maureen said softly.

  "No." Barry could feel the resolve stiffening within him as he spoke.

  "I'm not giving those bastards the satisfaction."

  She answered in an exaggerated western drawl. "No one's gonna run us out of town before sundown."

  "That's right."

  "But it's cutting off your nose to spite your face. No one in town will hire me. I'm not exaggerating. No one."

  "We don't need these assholes. I'm making enough for us to live comfortably."

  "Yes, but I have a career, too, and I don't want to give it up for some stubborn, misguided pissing contest you feel you have to win."

  "What about your old clients from California?"

  "There are a few," she admitted, "but that's not the point. If we were back in California, I could triple that number."

  "You have your e-accounting empire."

  "I could do that better in California, too."

  "I don't want to turn tail and run. And I resent being blamed for something we had no part of."

  "We're getting it on all sides, from the association and the association's enemies. I don't see any reason for us to stay."

  "Because we like our house. Because we like the area. The reasons to stay are the same reasons we moved here in the first place. Nothing's changed. So we have a few less friends. Big deal."

  Maureen sighed. "If we'd bought property in town instead of up here, none of this would be happening."

  "Wewouldn't've bought property in town," he said. "Ray was right.

  We're only here because we like the view and the paved streets and the nice homes. We wanted to live in a sanitized, movie version of rural America and now we're paying the price." He looked at her. "Can you honestly say you'd be happy living in a trailer or one of those rundown shacks that the townies live in?"

  "We could've built our own house."

  "And lived down there with the rednecks and the wife beaters, staring up at Bonita Vista?" He shook his head.

  "So it's a class thing, huh?"

  "Yeah," he said. "I guess it is. No one likes to talk about that anymore, we all pretend it doesn't exist, but it does. There's a gulf.

  We're educated and fairly well off, and these are people who've graduated from high school at best and have probably never even left the state. We're not like them, and we wouldn't fit in." He thought of the day he'd invited the guys from the coffee shop up here, and it scared him that his attitude toward them seemed to coincide with that of the association.

  "We don't fit in here either," she said.

  He smiled at her sweetly and batted his eyelashes. "But we have each other."

  Maureen was silent for a moment. "I'm not putting up with this forever," she told him. "You can write anywhere, a house in California or an apartment in New York as well as here. But I don't work on my own. I'm an accountant. I need people for my business. I'll see what I can do with conference calls and faxes and E-mails, but I'm not promising anything. If I start going stir crazy, we're out of here, we're gone."

  She was wrong, though. He couldn't write anywhere. He was not allowed to write in Bonita Vista, and there was a good likelihood he would soon be evicted from his little teapot museum office. That would be cutting off his nose to spite his face, but, to throw another cliche ' into the mix, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Neither of them said any more after that. Maureen scooted down on her pillow, put her arm around his midsection, snuggled next to him, and they both fell asleep listening to the quiet, comforting murmur of the television.

  "Barry?"

  He opened his eyes groggily.

  "Barry?"

  There was a hint of panic, a touch of fear, in Maureen's voice that drove away the sleepiness and caused him to sit up instantly, wide awake. The sun was streaming through a part in the curtains, and when he looked at the clock, he saw that it was after nine. He'd been asleep nearly twelve hours.

  He glanced over to see Maureen standing by the side of the bed, holding up a copy of the Carbon Weekly Standard. Her hands were shaking, and the rustle of the newspaper sounded strangely amplified in the silent house.

  He was filled with a sense of dread, and he reached out and took the paper from her, reading the banner headline:

  CHILD POISONED, BONITA VISTA BLAMED

  "It says there's going to be a rally tonight. The people of Corban , the parents of Corban , are planning to meet outside the gates of Bonita Vista at eight to protest the poisonings."

  Barry read through the article. The rally was being organized by Claude Richards, the father of Weston, and it was his goal to intimidate the guilty parties within Bonita Vista--the people who had made the decision to lay out the poison and the people who had actually done the deed--into giving themselves up.

  He wanted to put pressure on the homeowners' association and all of the residents, a tactic that each of the individuals quoted in the article as well as the newspaper itself seemed to support wholeheartedly.

  Surprisingly, there was no quote from the sheriff, and Barry wondered where Hitman would stand on this, whose side he would take. No matter how great his loyalty to Bonita Vista, no matter how much he was being paid off, there was no way he could turn a blind eye to a killing. Not of a child. Not in a small town. Not if he wanted to keep his job.

  "I don't like the sound of this 'rally,"" he said, handing back the paper.

  "Me either. I see a bunch of drunk bubbas bringing their shotguns and talking themselves into mob violence."

  "There's nothing scarier than groupthink," Barry agreed.

  "So what should we do?"

  "What can we do?"

  Maureen sat down on the bed next to him. "I thought we could take a trip. There's probably more national parks within driving distance of this place than anywhere else in the country, and we haven't been to any of them. Why don't we drive out, find someplace to stay in Cedar City, and go to Bryce or Zion or Cedar Breaks."

  "You've really been thinking about this."

  "I've been looking through our Triple A book," she admitted. She took his hand. "I don't want to be here tonight. I have a bad feeling about it."

  He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss.

  "I'm serious. There's the potential for danger here."

  "From which side?"

  "I don't know. It doesn't matter. I just don't want to be here when it happens."

  Barry sighed. "I don't think anything will happen--"

  "How can you say that!"

  "We have a gate with an armed guard. And even Hitman can't ignore something like this. The sheriff'll make sure things don't get out of hand."

  Maureen laughed shortly. "Right."

  He was about to argue that their home was far enough up the hill that even if the Corban protesters got through the gate and went on some kind of rampage, the mob would probably be stopped or spent by the time they reached their place Rampage --but he stopped himself. What the hell was he doing? What was he thinking? After everything he'd seen, after everything he knew or suspected, was he honestly arguing for the probability of normalcy reasserting itself? This wasn't a normal situation, this wasn't a normal place. Normal logic did not apply. Shit, if he didn't know better, he'd think that he'd been influenced or corrupted, bombarded with association mind rays or magical spells to make him more complacent and compliant and agreeable to the party line.

  "You're right," Barry admitted.

  "So we'll go?"

  "Yeah," he said. "After breakfast, after I take a shower. Just pack enough for overnight, though. We're coming back tomorrow."

  "To
survey the damage?"

  "Hopefully not."

  She kissed him. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown." She stood up.

  "Go take your shower."

  "Want to join me?"

  "Tonight," she promised.

  Barry had finished his shower and was up in the kitchen pouring himself some coffee when he heard a loud knock at the front door. Maureen, already downstairs, answered it and a moment later called his name.

  He moved around the corner and looked over the railing to see Mike enter the living room, newspaper in hand. "Hey!" Barry called, walking downstairs. "How's it going?"

  Mike held up a copy of the Standard. "I assume you saw this?"

  Barry nodded.

  "They're calling it a 'rally,"" Mike said angrily, "trying to make it sound like some sort of happy high school thing. It's a planned assault is what it is, an attack on us. They want to get enough people together so that they can storm the gates and ... I don't know what."

  "That's why we're leaving," Barry said. "Mo wants us to spend the night in Cedar City just in case things get too hairy."

  "I don't..." Mike shook his head, confused. "What are you talking about?"

  "I have a bad feeling about this," Maureen said. "I don't claim to be psychic or anything, but I just think we need to get out of here.

  Something's wrong. Something's going to happen."

  "Yeah, something's going to happen. They're going to vandalize our property. You'll come back to smashed windows and shot-up car tires and ... who knows what all."

  "Exactly. That's why we don't want to be here when it happens." Mike turned toward Barry. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "This is your home. This is your property. You can't tell me you wouldn't stay and fight a fire to save your house. Hell, we'd all be up on our roofs with hoses, wetting down everything in sight."

  Barry nodded reluctantly.

  "Same thing here. I know the association is fucked up, but we have no choice but to back them on this. Besides, this is what the association is supposed to be doing. Protecting Bonita Vista, standing up for the residents."

  "There wouldn't even be this rally if the association hadn't..." He looked into Mike's eyes. "If those kids hadn't been poisoned."

  "It's a deal with the devil," Mike admitted. "But we have no choice.

  Whether we like it or not, those Corbanites see this as an us-versus-them situation. And we're 'them.""

  Barry tried to smile. ""What do you think they'll do? Burn down our houses?"

  "Vigilante justice is not exactly unheard of in this part of the world, and, yes, that is something I think they might try to do."

  "Me, too," Maureen said. "That's why I don't want to be here. You can't fight a mob, you can't reason with a horde of angry stirred-up people, particularly ones whose children have been killed."

  "I understand your feelings," Mike said to her. He turned to Barry.

  "But why are you going? Because you fear for your personal safety?

  That's okay if it is; that's a legitimate reason. But if you're doing this to get back at the association, because you think it'll somehow hurt them, then you're wrong. You read that article. They blame us, all of us, not just the association, and I don't think the rest of us should suffer collateral damage because of it."

  It was the fire analogy that had gotten to him. As much as Barry hated to admit it, as much as he wanted to stick with Maureen and the promise he'd made to her, Mike's argument made sense. He should stay with his house, make sure his home was safe. It was his duty.

  And there was something else.

  "We can't leave," he told her. "Not this macho bullshit!"

  "Who's going to protect our house--"

  "What, you're going to buy a gun and sit on the porch to shoot at intruders? Come on! This is craziness! If there is any damage, our homeowners' insurance will cover it. Half the homes here are unoccupied! They're vacation homes! What about those people? They're not rushing back for the last stand at the O.K. Corral." She looked into his eyes. "There's no reason to do this."

  "What if it's a test?" he said quietly.

  "What?"

  "What if the association just wants to know who's willing to stay and fight?"

  "Fight?" she practically screamed.

  "Figuratively, not literally. What if they're just trying to gauge the mettle of their opponents? Us."

  "I'll let you two discuss it," Mike said, backing off toward the door.

  "I think you should stay, though. There's strength in numbers, and we need all the bodies we can get. Like she said, there aren't a lot of full-timers up here, and we don't have a newspaper recruiting people for our side like they do." He stepped outside, and carefully closed the screen. "It's something to think about."

  She slammed the door behind him. "It's not something to think about."

  "Mo..."

  "You promised me we'd leave."

  "I know."

  "What is this? The great iconoclastic horror writer Barry Welch is afraid of what his neighbors will say about him? Fuck them! If you want to show someone that you have balls, show me, your wife, and stand down this peer pressure and get the hell out of here for the night."

  That was the problem with being a writer, Barry thought. He could see things from both sides. It was his job to get into characters' heads, to articulate the thought processes behind opposing points of view.

  Maureen was right, but Mike was right, too. He spent each day engaging in such schizophrenic empathy, and it was why he was always aware of the duality in any given situation.

  But he'd never seen things from the association's side.

  That was true. And that was why his logic broke down when it came to the homeowners' association.

  It was still not inconceivable to him that the association wanted him to agonize over this choice, that they were behind this entire scenario and had placed him in this position in order to observe him and study his reaction, like scientists examining the behavior of a lab rat. Such Byzantine deviousness might seem absurd, the product of an overactive imagination, but when all of the events since their arrival here were viewed as part of a continuum, it was a conclusion that did not seem at all farfetched.

  "What if this is all part of some elaborate scheme on the part of the association?" he asked. "I'm serious about this. What if it is a test?"

  "Now you are being paranoid. Get real. They poisoned pets and children because they knew it would get the populace up in arms and they'd descend on Bonita Vista with baseball bats and guns and then Barry Welch would be forced to decide whether or not to remain home for the evening? You don't think that's being just a little egocentric and self-absorbed?"

  He grimaced. "Well, when you put it that way ..."

  "It's about time you came to your senses. Now let's get out of here before some other version of Satan tries to tempt you away from the path."

  "Mike's Satan?"

  "Just get ready to go."

  Barry nodded. "Okay." He happened to glance over at the television^

  "Wait a minute. Let's check out the Weather Channel, see what the weather's going to be like." He picked up the remote from the coffee table and started flipping through channels, trying to find the station.

  "Hey," Maureen said. "What's ... what's that?"

  "What?"

  "Flip it back a few."

  He pressed the down button and the channels reversed.

  "There!"

  Barry frowned. What was this, some kind of community access station? A fuzzy, nearly colorless videotape of a tennis match, seen from above, was being broadcast. There was no sound, only the bird's-eye view of an elderly couple in matching whites stumblingly attempting to dash about the court despite an obvious lack of athletic ability.

  "That's the tennis court!" Maureen pointed. "Our tennis court!" She picked up the list of cable channels from the top of the television.

  "Sixteen," she said, her finger running down the station lineup.

  "BVT
V." She frowned. "BVTV? What's ..." But the expression on her face said that she'd already figured it out.

  "Bonita Vista Television." Barry stared at the match on screen. "So that's what that camera's for." He looked triumphantly at Maureen. "I

  knew it wasn't just security."

  "My God."

  They watched the man awkwardly try but fail to return the woman's serves.

  "I've seen those two before," Maureen said. "I think they live down by Audrey."

  "What else do you think they're taping?" Barry asked quietly.

  As if in answer to his question, the scene shifted. Now it was a live video feed from inside someone's house, the camera focused on the movements of a lone woman.

  Liz.

  She was not doing anything, merely sitting on the white living room couch, hands in her lap, head looking up, sobbing, but the scene was so intimate, so invasive, that Barry immediately shut off the television.

  He could not watch. After only those few seconds of unsolicited voyeurism, he felt dirty and guilty. It was uncomfortable to see a person in so private a moment.

  He wondered if the board members were watching on Their own televisions.

  And if they were smiling.

  The thought filled him with white-hot rage, a righteous , anger. He had never hated the homeowners' association more than he did at that moment. He thought of that weasel Neil Campbell, of the prissy seriousness of that unrepentant toady, and he realized that to him Campbell was the face of the association because he had never actually seen a member of the board. He'd seen Jasper Calhoun's car and his house, but he'd never seen Calhoun himself. And he'd never seen any of the others, either. Hell, he didn't even know their names.

  A tear snaked down Maureen's cheek, and she drew in a ragged breath.

  "How could they do something like this?" "Liz told you the board was after her."