The Association

by Bentley Little

All eyes remained on the six figures. He thought the men would move forward and take charge, but they remained in place and there was something odd about that, too. The one in the middle appeared to be the leader, and Barry had no doubt that this was the president, the famous Jasper Calhoun. Liz had told Maureen something about Calhoun's peculiar appearance, had said there was some-1 thing unnatural in the way he looked, and while it could have been the angle of the lights, could have been the fault] of distance, Barry thought that all of the board members seemed strange, each of their too-white faces bizarre and abnormal.

  The townspeople had reached the gate and were massing behind the giant iron barrier.

  "You killed our son!" a woman screamed, her face red and teary, features distorted by rage.

  Another man grabbed one of the ornamental crosspieces and started shaking the gate. "Murderers!" he cried. "Murderers!"

  Other voices were raised, threats and epithets were shouted.

  "Call out the volunteers," the president said in a loud stentorian voice, and his speech overrode all competing sounds. He raised his right hand. There was the faint noise of a whip cracking, and from the trees behind the board members emerged three rows of shirtless men. The volunteers marched onto the road and pressed past Barry and Maureen, heading toward the gate. They were the same men who had been working on the pool and the community center, and this close he saw that some were missing hands. Others had serious facial scars or walked with limps. He thought of Kenny Tolkin's eye patch.

  Greg Davidson passed by him, staring blankly, the right side of his head shaved, that ear gone. The crowd parted before the volunteers, allowing them through. They carried no weapons, bore no clubs or guns or blades, but there was about them the hard, unyielding purpose of those who would stop at nothing to achieve their goal. They were Bonita Vista's army, Barry thought, and he wondered if their appearance was as big a surprise to everyone else as it was to him. Nearly all of the residents had brought weapons of some sort, obviously assuming they would be needed, but it appeared now that they would only be a last-ditch backup. The volunteers would be the first line of defense.

  Barry watched them go past, far more than he and Maureen had seen before.

  "Why are they acting like that?" Maureen said, a quiver in her voice betraying the fear she felt.

  "I don't know," he admitted.

  "They look like they're ...hypnotized or something."

  Unseen, Frank Hodges had moved next to her. "They're indentured," he said shortly. "They couldn't pay their dues."

  Neil Campbell, ever-present clipboard in hand, was suddenly on the other side of Barry. "Read your handbook. It explains all about indenture."

  "Open the gates!" the president commanded, and the twin metal doors swung slowly outward, pushing protesting townspeople out of the way.

  "You bastards can't treat us like this!" a woman screamed.

  Bert from the coffee shop raised a shotgun. "You know what you did! We know what you did! And we won't stand for it!"

  The volunteers marched through the open gateway.

  And the fighting started.

  There was a sick feeling in Barry's guts as he watched the shirtless men remorselessly punch grieving mothers in the stomach, watched them grab rifles from townspeople and use them to club the owners' heads. It felt odd to be standing here like this, overseeing the battlefield like generals while others fought on their behalf, and he was suddenly disgusted by his neighbors, by himself, by everyone involved with this travesty.

  Surprisingly, thankfully, there were no shots fired, but the conflict was brutal nonetheless, with both sides actively attempting to maim and injure their opponents, and his horror intensified as he saw an one-armed volunteer use his one hand to gouge at the eyes of an elderly man in rancher's J overalls.

  He'd wondered where Hitman's deputies were, and just as the volunteers appeared to be gaining the upper hand, the lawmen drove up, sirens blaring, lights on. They were forced to park behind the townies' vehicles, which were blocking the road. The flashing lights of their cruisers reflected off metal roofs and shone through glass windshields, bathing the entire area in garishly surrealistic circus colors, while a deep, distorted voice boomed through a megaphone:

  "Break it up! Break it up!"

  Uniformed deputies ran between the cars and pickups, nightsticks raised, and began to disperse the crowd, collaring and arresting those who refused to obey the orders to cease and desist. Unmolested, undisturbed, the shirtless volunteers, many of them battered and bleeding, turned and walked back through the gateway into Bonita Vista.

  Barry looked over at Hitman , and in the strobing red and blue of the lights, he saw the sheriff smile.

  Frank had moved between Maureen and Barry. "I heard you tried to fuck my wife," he whispered.

  "Elizabeth Dyson's filing a complaint against you with the board," Neil Campbell said on the other side of him. "Claims you forced her into giving you a BJ after Ray's funeral."

  "That's a lie!" Barry yelled. "You're both lying!"

  The men moved away, laughing, disappearing into the crowd. Someone passed by, bumped him. Another shoved a hand in his back. The scene was becoming more chaotic, and though there weren't nearly as many people here, he was reminded of the climax of Day of the Locust.

  He looked desperately around for a friendly face. Mike or one of those anti-association people from Ray's parties'. But there were only antagonistic glares from unfamiliar individuals, and the uniformity of this response made him think that perhaps it was dictated, perhaps it had been ordered.

  "Stay here," he told Maureen. He started toward the trees, toward the board. The robed men were watching him, their wrinkled faces serious but their eyes mirthful.

  It hadn't been distance or a trick of the light, he realized as he approached. Something about them did look peculiar. Liz was right.

  Something was off.

  "You must be Barry Welch," the president said as he came closer.

  Barry pointed a finger at him. "Don't fuck with me!" he ordered.

  Jasper Calhoun smiled slightly, nodded.

  Someone bumped him, and he turned to look at the gathered residents and the milling volunteers, but he could not see who'd done it. He again faced the board.

  They were gone.

  Simultaneously, the lights of the guard shack winked off, and the strobing red and blue of the cruiser lights diminished as several deputies drove their vehicles and prisoners away. Around him, individual flashlights were turning down toward the pavement, moving up the road as homeowners started to disperse. The old men had faded into the woods, and he did not understand how they'd been able to disappear so quickly. Had they turned and run, dashing through the trees, their robes flapping behind them? He couldn't imagine such a retreat by those pompous old men, but the only alternatives were scenarios more appropriate for one of his novels, and those he didn't want to think about.

  "They're watching you," a woman said to him as he passed by, and Barry recognized the old lady who lived across from the tennis court. He didn't know if it was a friendly warning or an intimidating threat.

  Barry strode angrily back toward where Maureen stood, now talking to Mike and Tina. The people before him moved sullenly aside, strangers casting suspicious and hostile glances in his direction.

  "Is everything okay?" Mike asked worriedly.

  Barry shook his head.

  "What did you do?" Maureen asked. "What did you say to them?"

  "It's war," he told her.

  Maureen finished answering the five measly E-mails that her web page had generated over the past three days, knowing even as she typed them that their senders would not engage her services. It was disheartening to realize that something on which she had spent so much time and for which she'd had such high hopes was simply not panning out.

  Thank God for her California clients.

  She leaned back in her chair, postponing leaving the room. In here, she was cushioned from the realities of
the outside world. She could pretend that she was not in Bonita Vista, that she was merely an accountant in an office, and that the things happening on the other side of these walls did not affect or concern her in any way.

  Barry was still angry, still stubbornly defiant, but he was worried as well.

  Maybe it was time to give up, she'd told him, maybe they should return to California.

  That was the wrong thing to say.

  "Who's going to fight them if not us?" he demanded. "Would you just abandon Liz and all the other people terrorized by these murderous bastards? We're not just doing this for us! This is our chance to make a difference, to stand up and be counted!"

  She'd nodded, raised her hands in acquiescence. She knew better than to press the issue and paint him into a corner If she left him an out, he might eventually take it, might: eventually see that it was the smartest of all possible options and that they could always continue their Quixotic battle from afar.

  She shut off her computer, switched off the monitor. The strangest thing, the most unsettling thing, was their temporary alliance with the association. It felt wrong to her. And to Barry, too, she knew. The association had poisoned dogs in town and, intentionally or unintentionally, two children had been killed as well. The sheriff had refused to do anything about it, so families, friends, and neighbors had taken matters into their own hands and staged a rally to draw attention to the problem and intimidate the guilty into giving themselves up. It was a just cause, a moral purpose, and she and Barry and all of their neighbors had only opposed it because they were concerned for their own safety and for the condition of their houses.

  They were practicing self-defense, went the rationalization, the most natural and legitimate reaction a human could have. But it did not feel that way to her. It felt as though they were shallow, self-absorbed assholes more concerned about their own real estate values than the lives of other people's children.

  She and Barry had participated unwillingly, as a result of a threat, but they had participated nonetheless, and that made them morally culpable. She felt guilty about that, and she wished to Christ that they'd defied the association, that they'd at least attempted to stay neutral by remaining home and sitting it out--even if they'd had to pay a fine. They should not have lent their support or given their tacit approval to anything the association had done.

  To her surprise, they were still able to shop at the market in Corban .

  Even after all that had happened. It had been a nerve-racking trip for groceries yesterday when they'd made their first post-rally trek into town, and they'd invited Mike and Tina, and the Stewarts' friends Lou and Stacy, to go with them in case there was trouble, but neither the clerk at the checkout stand nor the store's two other customers had said a word. They'd bought enough groceries for the next two weeks with no problem.

  Perhaps the sheriff's deputy stationed by the cash register had something to do with it.

  Even if it was only Wally Addison.

  They were already making contingency plans, though. Mule Park was the closest town to Corban , and while it was forty miles to the south, they could easily make the trip there and back in the space of a morning and stock up enough food and necessities for a month. The people of Corban had to be resentful of Bonita Vista residents and of the sheriff's obvious partiality, and it was only a matter of time before that resentment bubbled up and boiled over.

  She stared at the blank monitor and found herself wondering if she and Barry weren't barking up the wrong tree by attributing everything to the homeowners' association. It seemed to her that Hitman was the real power behind the throne. He was the one straddling the two communities, enforcing the laws as he saw fit, allowing Bonita Vista to run roughshod over the town. He could have--and should have--sided with the families of the victims and investigated the poisonings and brought the perpetrators up on charges, but instead he'd ignored the situation, allowed it to fester, and when people had tried to take the law into their own hands, he'd reasserted his authority, allowing them to be beaten by the volunteers before he had them arrested. Now he'd stationed a deputy at the market to ensure that Bonita Vistans could purchase groceries and assigned another deputy to guard the gas station and make sure they were unmolested and able to buy gas.

  It was as if the sheriff had declared martial law in Corban , and it occurred to her that he could have accomplished all of this without the association.

  That was wishful thinking, though. The sheriff was just a pawn. He was the muscle. The association was the brains.

  No, he was not even the muscle. Or not all of it. She remembered those shirtless volunteers with their missing fingers and hands and ears beating the hell out of local farmers and ranchers, using the Corbanites' own weapons against them, and she shivered.

  Hitman might be keeping Corban safe for Bonita Vista residents, but Barry had not returned to his office. Not yet. For all they knew, it had been ransacked and vandalized, his computer smashed, but he was not ready to see for himself. His landlord and his old pals from the coffee shop had been in the forefront of the skirmish at the gate, and it did not seem prudent to provoke them.

  He'd write on her computer for a while, Barry told her. He'd go back, pick up his equipment, and clear out his office after the furor died down a bit.

  Mike was still working at the Cablevision office, and his friend Lou at the telephone company, but it was tense, they said. Several Bonita Vistans worked in town, and Maureen wondered how the rest of them were handling it. No doubt there'd be more than a few fights during breaks and lunches as tensions spilled over, and she just prayed that no one got seriously hurt.

  She looked out the window, saw green pines against a clear blue sky.

  God, she wished that they'd never driven through Utah, never found this place.

  She stood, left her office, and walked upstairs to where Barry was lying on the couch watching a political talk show. On the coffee table beside him was the pen he'd planned to use to jot down notes for a new novel, and a spiral notebook turned to an empty first page.

  "Doesn't look like you got much done," she said. "My brain's not working."

  "I'm not working either. No one wants my e-services. Want to sit here with me and watch some BVTV?" "Very funny," Barry said. "Very funny."

  They went to bed early, both of them tired and fatigued not from any physical exertion but from stress.

  They were awakened in the middle of the night by banging, thumping, and heavy scraping that sounded as though furniture was being moved. The bedroom door was closed, but from underneath the door shone a strip of yellow light. Someone was upstairs.

  Maureen sat up quickly, looking into Barry's face and seeing there an expression that mirrored the way she felt. "What do you think they want?" she whispered.

  Who do you think it is? was what she'd originally intended to ask, but she already knew the answer to that and so did he. These weren't burglars who had broken into their home. And while she didn't know the specific identity of the individuals who were searching the house, she knew what they represented, she knew where they were from.

  The homeowners' association.

  "I'm going to find out," Barry said grimly. He threw the covers off, grabbed his bathrobe, and angrily opened the bedroom door.

  She quickly picked up her own bathrobe and put it on over her nightgown, and the two of them walked into the lighted hallway and up the stairs to the living room.

  They should have brought along some type of weapon, she thought. A

  heavy blunt object. Just in case it was a prowler. But their first instincts had been correct. The man who stood in the center of the well-lit room, smiling at them, was obviously not a criminal. He looked more like a stockbroker.

  "Sorry to disturb you," the man said cheerfully. "We were trying to be quiet."

  There were five men all together, each of them dressed in identical business suits, each with a pen and clipboard. Two of them were in the living room, reading the titles of
books on the bookshelf, examining the artwork on the walls. The three others were upstairs in the kitchen, loudly opening cupboards and digging through drawers.

  "What the hell is this?" Barry said.

  "It's time for your four-month inspection."

  "How did you get in here?" Maureen demanded. She felt vulnerable, violated, more exposed than she ever had in her life. Upstairs, a familiar click-squeak told her that someone had opened the refrigerator.

  "The association has the master keys to all locks in Bonita Vista." The man continued to smile at her, and she thought now that there was something not nice about that smile. He was looking at her as though he could see through her bathrobe, and she instinctively looked down to check, to make sure nothing was being exposed.

  Barry stepped forward, crowding the man. "Who are you?"

  "My name's Bill." He held out a hand.

  Barry's voice was calm, even, and all the more threatening for it. "Get the fuck out of my house, Bill. Now."

  The man smiled, nodded. "I think we've seen enough, Mr. Welch." He started scribbling on the paper clipped onto his board. "Let's hit it, boys!" he called out.

  The three men upstairs came down the steps, writing on their own clipboards, unclasping the forms and handing them to Bill. The other man by the bookcase did the same.

  Bill finished with a flourish, tore off the top sheet, and handed a pink piece of paper to Barry. Maureen looked over his shoulder, reading along.

  "It should be self-explanatory. You are required to place out of sight all photographs and personal keepsakes. This includes but is not limited to souvenirs from vacation spots, family heirlooms, and knicknacks that serve no functional purpose." Bill's voice was all business, and there was a coldness to it that belied the happy, hearty act he'd put on for their benefit. Behind him, the other men were filing out of the house silently. "You must have a minimum of three bare walls in each room, and the fourth wall may only have artwork that has been approved by the association's interior design committee. All walls must be white or off-white, and sheets, pillowcases, and bedspreads must be solid colors, preferably earth tones." He smiled again. "But as I said, it's all pretty self-explanatory."