The Collection

by Bentley Little

  The whirring, which had risen to an all but inaudible level, began a downward spiral, dropping in tone until it dis­appeared. He took a few tentative steps forward, toward the source of the sound, and peeked through an open doorway off to the right. Something black and shapeless lunged quickly from the center of the room to its shadowed edge.

  He turned back, shocked and scared, running through the doorway the way he'd come. The woman was now lying on the ripped and legless couch, her panties down around her ankles. Both hands were shoved up her hiked dress, working furiously. She was smiling, and her eyes were wet with tears. She was moaning something in an alien tongue.

  As he scanned the room quickly, he saw the bluish glow of the now unprotected cocoon in the corner. Forgetting all about the black shape in the room off the hall, he started for­ward, his head craned curiously. The cocoon was lying in a makeshift sandbox, its rough translucent skin flat against the pale sand. It was glowing strangely, the blue light pulsating, and as he watched it slowly cracked open. Blue light and yellow liquid poured out of the crack in a sudden rage, and he felt some of the liquid hit his arm. It felt sticky and alive. As he stood, unmoving, the liquid coalesced into some sem­blance of a shape-something like a twisted tree branch. And now it was pulling him. He tried to peel the dried sub­stance from his arm but only succeeded in getting it all over his hand. Liquid continued to pour out of the cocoon. Some of it glopped onto his shoes, dried, and began pulling as well.

  The whirring noise, less mechanical this time, started again.

  "No!" he cried.

  A glob of liquid spurted onto his face, pulling at his skin.

  "No!"

  The woman looked up at the cry. She took her hands from beneath her dress and sat up on the couch, pulling on her panties. She stared dully toward the cocoon. She saw the man, now covered with the yellowish drying liquid, waving his arms, screaming. There was a sudden flash of blue-white light, and the man seemed to shrink, deflating beneath the yellow covering like a balloon.

  She stood up, walking toward the cocoon. The two halves closed, locking everything in. Through the rough translucent cocoon skin she could see a hunched and twisted form strug­gling to break free. She knew that by tomorrow the form would be gone and the cocoon would be all right again.

  In his high chair the old man cackled.

  She shook her head slowly and walked into the hallway, where dust-filled pillars of sunlight fell through open holes in the roof, illuminating the weeds which grew through the tiles. She shambled into the bathroom and pulled off her dress, her nipples hardening immediately as wind from out­side somewhere blew into the bathroom through the cracks and knotholes in the ancient boards. She pulled down her panties, letting them fall around her ankles, and sat on the dirty porcelain toilet.

  She waited, hoping it would come.

  The Pond

  This is a story about lost ideals and selling out-moral shortcomings which are not limited to the boomer generation depicted here.

  By the way, there really was a group called P.O.P (People Over Pollution). They used to gather each Sat­urday to collect and process recyclable materials. Back in the early 1970s, my friend Stephen Hillenburg and I belonged to an organization called the Youth Science Center, which would offer weekend science classes and field trips. We got to do Kirlian photogra­phy, visit mushroom farms, learn about edible plants on nature walks, tour laser laboratories-and one Sat­urday we worked with People Over Pollution, smash­ing aluminum cans with sledgehammers.

  Stephen grew up to create the brilliant and wildly popular cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants.

  "Hey hon, what's this?"

  Alex looked up from the suitcase he'd been packing. April, kneeling before the box she'd found on the top shelf of the hall closet, held up what looked like a green campaign button. "Pop?" she asked.

  "Let me see that." He walked across the room and took 1 the button from her hands. A powerful feeling of flashback I familiarity, emotional remembrance, coursed through him as he looked at the button.

  POP.

  People Over Pollution.

  It had been a long time since he'd thought of that'll acronym. A long time.

  He knelt down next to April and peered into the box, see-ing bumper stickers and posters, other buttons, pamphlets with green ecology sign logos.

  "What is all this?" April asked.

  "People Over Pollution. It was a group I belonged to when I was in college. We collected bottles and cans and newspapers for recycling. We picketed soap companies until they came up with biodegradable detergent. We urged peo­ple to boycott environmentally unsound products."

  April smiled, tweaked his nose. "You troublemaking radical you."

  He ignored her and began to dig through the box, sorting through the jumbled items.

  Buried beneath the bumper stickers and buttons, he found a framed photograph: an emerald green meadow, ringed by huge darker green ponderosa pine trees. A small lake in the center of the meadow grass, its still and perfectly clear water reflecting the cotton puff clouds and deep blue sky above.

  Major flashback.

  He stared at the photo, reverently touched the dusty glass. He'd forgotten all about the picture. How was that possible? He'd cut it out of an Arizona Highways as a teenager and had framed it because he'd known instantly upon seeing it that this was where he wanted to live. The photo spoke to him on a gut emotional level that struck a chord deep within him. A chord that had never been struck before. He had never been to Arizona at that point, but he'd known from the perfection presented in that scene that this was where he wanted to settle down. He would live in the meadow in a log cabin, just he and his wife, and they would wake each morn­ing to the sound of birdsong, to the natural light of dawn.

  The girls with whom he intended to live in this paradise had changed throughout his teens-from Joan to Pam to Rachel-but the location had always remained constant.

  How could he have forgotten about the photo? He'd been to Arizona countless times in the intervening years, had scouted a resort site in Tucson and another in Sedona, yet the memory of his old dream had never even suggested it­self to him. Strange.

  April leaned over his shoulder, resting her head next to his. She glanced at the photo with disinterest. "What's that?" He shook his head, smiling slightly, sadly, and placed the picture back in the box. "Nothing."

  That night he dreamed of the pond.

  He could not remember having had the dream before, but it was somehow familiar to him and he knew that he had ex­perienced it in the past.

  He was walking along a narrow footpath through the for­est, and as he walked deeper into the woods the sky grew overcast and the bushes grew thicker and it soon seemed as though he was walking through a tunnel. He was afraid and he grew even more afraid as he moved forward. He wanted to turn back, to turn around, but he could not. His feet pro­pelled him onward.

  And then he was at the pond.

  He stood at the path's end, trembling, chilled to the core of his being as he stared at the dirty body of water before him, at the ripples of bluish white foam that floated upon the stagnant black liquid.

  The trees here, the grass, the brush, all were brown and dying. There were no other people about, no animals, not even bugs on the water. The air was still and strangely heavy. Above this spot, dark clouds blotted out all sunlight.

  At the far end of the pond was an old water pump.

  Alex's heart beat faster. He kept his eyes averted from the rusted hunk of machinery, but he could still see out of the corner of his eye the corrosion on the old metal, the algae-covered tube snaking into the water.

  More than anything else, more than the dark and twisted path, more than the horrid pond or the blighted land sur­rounding it, it was the pump that frightened him, its very presence causing goose bumps to ripple down the skin of his arms. There was something in the cold insistence of its po­sition at the head of the pond, in the unnaturally biological contours of its form and the
defiantly mechanical nature of its function, that terrified him. He looked up at the sky, around at the trees, then forced himself to face the water pump.

  The handle of the pump began to turn slowly, the squeak­ing sound of its movement echoing in the still air.

  And he woke up screaming.

  The corporation put him up at Little America in Flagstaff. The accommodations were nice, the rooms clean and well furnished, the view beautiful. It was late May, not yet sum­mer and not warm enough to swim, but the temperature was fair, the sky clear and cloudless, and he and April spent the better part of that first day by the pool, she reading a novel, he going over the specs.

  The quiet was disturbed shortly after noon by the loud and laughing conversation of a man and a woman. Alex looked up from his papers to see a bearded, ponytailed young man opening the iron gate to the pool area. The young man was wearing torn cut-off jeans, and the blond giggling girl with him had on a skimpy string bikini. The young man saw him staring and waved. "Hey, bud! How's the water?"

  The girl hit his shoulder, laughing.

  Alex turned back to his papers. "Asshole," he said.

  April frowned. "Shhh. They'll hear you."

  "I don't care."

  Yelling in tandem, the couple leaped into the pool.

  "Leave them alone. They're just young. You were young once, weren't you?"

  That shut him up. He had been young once. And, now that he thought about it, he had at one time looked very sim­ilar to the sixties throwback now cavorting in the pool.

  He'd had a beard and ponytail when he'd marched in the

  Earth Day parade.

  What the hell had happened to him since then?

  He 'd sold out.

  He placed the specs on the small table next to his lounge chair, took off his glasses and laid them on top of the papers. He watched the young man grab his girlfriend's breast from behind as she squealed and swam away from him toward the deep end of the pool.

  Alex leaned back, looking up into the sea blue sky. Sold out? He was a successful scout for a chain of major resorts. He hadn't sold out. He had merely taken advantage of a for­tunate series of career opportunities. He told himself that he was where he wanted to be, where he should be, that he had a good life and a good job and was happy, but he was uncomfortably aware that the end result of his series of lucky breaks and career opportunities had been to provide him with a job that he would have found the height of hypocrisy in his younger, more idealistic days.

  He was not the person he had been.

  He found himself wondering whether, if he had been this age then, he would have supported the Vietnam War.

  He had supported the war in the Persian Gulf.

  He pushed those thoughts from his mind. He was just being stupid. Life was neither as simple nor as morally black and white as he had believed in his college days. That was all there was to it. He was grown up now. He was an adult. He could no longer afford the arrogant idealism of youth.

  He watched the couple in the pool kiss, the lower halves of their bodies undulating in the refracted reflection of the chlorinated water, and he realized that, from their perspec­tive, he was probably one walking cliche. A traitor to the six­ties. Yet another amoral baby boomer with fatally skewed priorities.

  He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, turned his head to see April staring worriedly at him from her adjacent lounge chair. "Are you okay?"

  "Sure," he said nodding.

  "It is because of what I said?"

  "I'm fine." Annoyed, he turned away from her. He put on his glasses, picked up his spec sheets, and started reading.

  He met with the realtors early the next morning, seeing them not one by one but all at the same time in one of Little America's conference rooms. He'd found from past experi­ence that dealing with real estate salespeople en masse gave him a distinct advantage, firmly establishing him as the dominant partner in the relationship, saving him from the sort of high-pressure sales talk that realtors usually used on prospective clients and putting the salespeople in clear com­petition with one another. It worked every time.

  After his prepared talk and slide show, he fielded a few quick questions, then scheduled times over the next three days during which he could go with the realtors individually to look at property. This time, the corporation was looking for land outside the confines of the city. Flagstaff already had plenty of hotels and motels, and Little America itself of­fered resort quality accommodations. To compete in this market, they had to offer something different, and it had been decided that a state-of-the-art complex in a heavily forested area outside the city would provide just the edge that they would need.

  They would also be allowed more freedom in design and latitude in construction under county rather than city build­ing regulations.

  There were more sites to scout than he'd thought, more property available in the Flagstaff area than he'd been led to believe due to a recent land swap between the Forest Service and a consortium of logging and mining companies, and he realized as he penciled in times on his calendar that he and April would probably have to skip their side trip to Oak Creek Canyon this time.

  It was just as well, he supposed. Sedona and the Canyon had been awfully overcrowded and touristy the last time they'd been through.

  The white Jeep bounced over the twin ruts that posed as a road through this section of forest, and Alex held on to his briefcase with one hand, the dashboard with the other. There were no seat belts or shoulder harnesses in the vehicle, and the damned real estate agent was driving like a maniac.

  The realtor yelled something at him, but over the wind and the roar of the engine he could only make out every third word or so: "We're ... southern ... almost..." He as­sumed that they were nearing the property.

  Already he had a good impression of this site. Unlike some of the others, which were either too remote-with the cost of water, sewer, and electrical hookups prohibitive-or too close to town, this location was secluded and easily ac­cessible. A paved road over this dirt track would provide a beautiful scenic drive for tourists and guests.

  They rounded a curve, and they were there.

  At the meadow.

  Alex blinked dumbly as the Jeep pulled to a stop, not sure if he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. They were at one end of a huge meadow bordered by giant ponderosas. There was a small lake toward the opposite end, a lake so blue that it made the sky pale by comparison.

  It was the meadow whose picture he'd cut out of Arizona Highways.

  No, that was not possible.

  Was it?

  He glanced around. This certainly looked like the same meadow. He thought he even recognized an old lightning-struck tree on a raised section of ground near the shore of the lake.

  But the odds against something like this happening were ... astronomical. Thirty years ago, an Arizona High­ways photographer had chanced upon this spot, taken a photo which had been published in the magazine; he himself had seen the photo, cut it out, saved it. And now he was in a position to buy the property for a resort chain? It was too bizarre, too coincidental, too ... Twilight Zone. He had to be mistaken.

  "Beautiful, isn't it?" The realtor got out of the Jeep, stretched. "This open space here, this clearing's some thirty acres, but the entire property's eighty acres, mostly that area there beyond those trees." He pointed to the line of pon­derosas south of the water. "You got yourself a small ridge that overlooks the National Forest and has a view clear to

  Mormon Mountain."

  Alex nodded. He continued to nod as the real estate agent rambled, pretending to listen as the man led him through the high grass to the water.

  Should he tell the corporation to buy the meadow? His meadow? Technically, his was only a preliminary recom­mendation, a decision that was neither binding nor final. His choice would then be carefully scrutinized by the board. The corporation's assessors, land use experts, and design techni­cians would go over everything with a fine-toothed comb.
>
  Technically.

  But the way it really worked was that he scouted loca­tions, the board rubber-stamped the go-ahead, and the cor­poration's legal eagles swooped down to see how they could pick apart the deals mapped out by the local realtors.

  The fate of the meadow lay in his hands.

  He stared at the reflection of the trees and the clouds, the green and white reproduced perfectly on the still, mirrored surface of the blue water.

  He thought back to his POP years, and he realized, per­haps for the first time, that he had been a selfish environ­mentalist even in his most ecologically active days. There was no contradiction between his work now and his beliefs then. He had always wanted nature's beauty to remain un­spoiled not for its own sake-but so that he could enjoy it.

  He had never been one to hike out to remote wilderness areas and enjoy the unspoiled beauty. He had been a couch potato nature lover, driving through national parks and pretty areas of the country and admiring the scenery from his car window. He had objected to the building of homes on forest land that was visible from the highway, but had not objected to the presence of the highway itself.

  He'd seen nothing at all wrong with building a home in his dream meadow, though he would have fought to the death anyone else who'd tried to build there.

  Now he was on the other side of the coin.

  He tried to look at the situation objectively. He told him­self that at least the corporation would protect the lake and the meadow, would preserve the beauty of this spot. Some­one else might simply pave it over. He might not be able to build a house here and live in the wilderness with April, but he could rent a room at the resort, and the two of them could vacation here.

  Along with hundreds of other people.

  He glanced over at the real estate agent. "Was this spot ever in Arizona Highways!" he asked.

  The realtor laughed. "If it wasn't, it should've been. This is one gorgeous spot. Hell, if I had enough money I'd buy the land and build my own house here."