The Consultant

by Sean Oliver

  They talked so much, all of the people here. They talked of a world others didn’t understand—a world they desired and felt they were owed. The entire encampment was always abuzz with such rhetoric, seeking affirmative smiles and offerings from anyone listening.

  But Tommy’s perch was perfect. He could find the sea and let the rustling of the trees and the creatures of the forest erect a wall of sound between himself and the brothers and sisters below.

  Wasn’t he a part of all that, too, he wondered? He was. But lately a fire inside had pushed him up that banana tree and it was happening more and more. He needed to see the ocean down past the cliffs in the distance. He needed to be reminded that there was an elsewhere. And for the first time in his two years living in that commune, he would gaze not only at the water but beyond it.

  Someday. Maybe not this day. But someday.

  Something about this group grounded him. Tommy still needed them. Whatever was drawing him to the treetops wasn’t strong enough to pull him away just yet. It was enough to make him disappear for half the afternoon, though. He was burning through his twenties, finding direction for the first time. His teen years were a mess and he could never land anywhere that fit, but being away from anyone who knew him was great. Being with these people for the past couple of years let him hit the reset button. He’d tire of them one day, enough to move on. Some days he thought it might be real close.

  “Thomas, what in creation goes on in your head?” a voice asked from below. His cover was blown, his private spot found. Lasted only about three weeks.

  The unmistakable voice was Agatha—an elder and kind of Markus’s right-hand woman. Markus brought all of them together and was the reason they were at home, so far away from home. Agatha had unique access to Markus, and his ultimate trust. She floated around the compound and kept things on track. She gave members information from Markus, while also collecting information and bringing it back to him. Agatha was his eyes and ears, and she did her best to sniff out potential issues before they germinated.

  How would this treetop respite play out? Much as Tommy wanted to ignore her, he knew she wasn’t relenting. She’d found him and he knew she wouldn’t just leave him alone, let him wander back to the group on his own time. No, this would be a discussion, followed by a commentary on pulling away, or whatever she’d perceive this as. Of course, she was right. She didn’t need to know it, though.

  “Will you get down here before you fall and break something,” she continued, looking up the skyscraper of a tree and probably just catching a glimpse of his legs. He wasn’t moving. “If I were in my twenties I’d scramble right up there and bring you down.”

  Agatha clearly wasn’t going to move. Tommy slid across the branch he was on, hugged the trunk, and scaled backward down the tree. He dropped the final five feet, landing squarely in front of a disapproving face. Agatha stood there, head cocked, mouth crooked. She was a foot shorter than he, a couple of decades older. She raised her milky stump of a finger and poked the air, toward the sound of the distant voices.

  “Get on back, Thomas. I think it’s time you sat with Markus.”

  “No. I’m fine.” He dusted himself off, swatting at bark shavings on the front of his shirt. He started toward the voices with Agatha double-timing it to keep up with his long stride.

  “We aren’t so fine,” she said, struggling with the terrain. “We need you.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “Whoa—” she said as she tripped on a thick branch, grabbing Tommy’s arm to break an awkward stumble forward. He stopped and helped steady her. Agatha held her chest and caught her breath.

  “You okay?” Tommy asked. She ignored him.

  “We need you working with us, Thomas. Not hiding in trees. Not sleeping in until well into the morning. Look at Lawrence.” She gestured across the open area of the camp toward the short, heavy man as he attempted to hoist the trunk of a fallen tree atop a pile of wood scrap in what was clearly a losing struggle. He was working beside one of the cabins on the perimeter of the cleared space, his balding dome a glistening tomato in the midday scorch.

  “Jeez, Lawrence,” Tommy said to himself.

  “Go help him,” Agatha said. “Help us. Meantime, let me see if Markus can make some time for you.”

  Tommy watched Lawrence continue to struggle. He sighed and walked away from Agatha and headed toward the elderly man. He was still trying to get that massive log on top of the stack of wood. Tommy stepped beside him, grabbed an end, and began to roll the tree trunk atop the pile.

  “What are we doing with this thing?” Tommy asked. Lawrence fought for words through his growling as his red, trembling arms finally got leverage. The chunk of tree rolled up over the top of the pile. Lawrence turned and leaned his back against the tall pile. He drew a red bandana from his overalls and mopped his face.

  “Should’ve cut it one more time,” Lawrence said. “Felt lighter when I was dragging it.”

  “What the hell are we building? Another cabin?”

  “Going to build a ladder to run up that tree.” He gestured across the camp to a section of thick woods. Tommy squinted.

  “And why’s that?”

  Lawrence took a moment longer than usual to answer.

  “Markus thinks there might be some trouble,” he replied. “So it’s a precaution.” That explanation sat strangely with Tommy. Markus was the eternal optimist, having led sixty people down to the thick forest of the troubled Central American country. He was the reason they were all there working with him to create the new tomorrow he’d promised so many times. They worked together, to be alone together. To reset their lives together.

  “Trouble?” Tommy asked. Lawrence nodded.

  “He wants a lookout post up there. Have to build a ladder.”

  “And what if we do spot trouble?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  Tommy scoped out the trees, assessing the job—deciding which trees would be best for what they needed. In his line of sight, he spotted Agatha heading up the steps to Markus’s cabin. She stood on the porch for a moment after knocking on the door. She turned and looked back over toward Tommy. The door opened behind her and she went in.

  Markus’s cabin had the large, orange circle painted above the entrance, on its A-frame facade. Markus supported each and every one of the members, and he always made that known. They didn’t live in service to him. Rather, it was the other way around. That message was part of so many sharing circles and assemblies and was embedded in the group’s collective heads. Their work was important and could only be done together.

  Though not everyone had easy access to Markus Tarkay, despite that pronouncement. Agatha certainly did, keeping things moving when he wasn’t out and about, working his way though the land, giving hugs and inspiration. Markus was also working with them much of the time, right at their sides. He ate with them and made sure to have an exchange with each of them every day. But when he retreated into the cabin, that was the end of the public Markus. One might be invited in for a talk. Members were brought in for long meetings, sometimes in groups. But you didn’t just go up and knock on the door. Well, Tommy didn’t. Agatha did.

  Tommy hid from the affections of Markus and all the others. The Circle was important to him and he felt it probably saved his wayward life. It served as his reset button in this place tucked away and invisible to everyone he’d known, everyone that failed him. But he wasn’t ready to take chances on anyone else. He wanted to help build the Circle, eventually expand it out as far as it would go, as far as they could stretch it. Today it was around sixty, maybe someday becoming six hundred, maybe sixty thousand.

  If there were to come a day where anyone would serve as a parental substitute for the nearly thirty-year-old, it wouldn’t happen just yet. Could it be Markus? Lawrence? Sure. But Tommy needed Tommy before there was room for anyone else.

  Lawrence bounced between being the hardworking grunt with an academic flair, fully invested in changing the
path society was on, and also thinking Tarkay and a few of the Circle members were too “out there.” At nearly sixty years old, Lawrence was one of the older members of the group, and he’d been crucial in Tarkay’s acquiring the property they had in Florida, and also in getting clearances to travel and having many of their provisions shipped from the United States. He handled bank transfers for members when they first came to Honduras. He was put together and well spoken. You’d buy a vacuum from him, but also let him write your will.

  Beside Tommy, Lawrence was wheezing. Tommy turned to him.

  “When are we building this ladder?” Tommy asked. Lawrence began coughing and waved his hand at the question. “Why now?”

  “Guess something doesn’t feel right.” Lawrence wiped the bandana across his head again.

  “George, do you want to go in the shade?”

  “Nah. Wanna just sit.” They did. Markus’s feeling something wasn’t right bothered Tommy. They’d all placed a blind trust in Markus by heading here, foregoing any and all communication with the rest of the world. The Circle of Tomorrow was rooted in cutting all ties, all cords. Every one of the sixty people who followed Markus pledged to do that, and believed in doing that. Tommy was no exception. Man, cutting all ties was a godsend for him.

  He probably would have joined any group that promised him an exit from the United States and, ultimately, from society. He’d gotten the hell out of Western Pennsylvania right quick after that oil truck blew up. Dean Wartler’s ignition fired, bad wiring popped that open filter line…oops. Horrible accident. Only someone very clever could have gotten under that truck’s hood and made something like that happen.

  But that’s exactly what the police thought happened. They came to that conclusion specifically because it was Mr. Wartler who was dead. They’d been out to his home a half-dozen times on calls that he beat his wife, and now her son, Mr. Wartler’s stepson, had been gone since the day the truck exploded into flames out in the driveway.

  Gone to West Virginia. Then to Georgia. Then Florida. Mom would be okay now. Wartler was no more.

  Tommy met Alma shortly after his days on the run brought him to Central Florida. She was magnetic, gorgeous. He’d gone up to her at that truck-stop diner for all the right reasons, and followed her and her cousin to a Circle of Tomorrow meeting for all the wrong ones. But after a few weeks, being there was comforting. His romantic pursuit of Alma dried up when he saw the entire world had basically formed a line beside her, asking for her hand. Tommy was still shaken after a few years adrift and still without firm footing. He wasn’t up for competition.

  There was also something so off-putting about Alma’s inseparable relationship with her companion Faith. They seemed too much a component of one another, like twins. She referred to her as cousin, but were they even related? He probably would have had to compete for both in order to win one’s approval for the other. They were work—work for which he didn’t have energy.

  Lawrence hacked and spit down onto the dirt. Tommy looked down at the overweight guy, past middle age. He thought Lawrence should have gone and seen Nurse Mary, and probably should have been rushed to a hospital, but there was yet another drawback of this arrangement. You forego a lot for separation, isolation, and the promise of unconditional love and immortality.

  FORTY-SIX

  Honduras—March 1961

  EVELIO PULLED HIS battered pickup truck into the compound and was met with waves from everyone he passed. Tommy watched as Agatha rounded up a few free hands to unload crates from the back of the truck. Evelio, a local farmer well into his upper years, would drive some necessary items up to the camp every week or so. There were some snacks, like mangos and oatmeal, also soaps and paper products. The big score for Tommy was always the razors. So many of the guys just let their facial hair grow wild, but Tommy’s face burned from the irritation of trapped sweat and dirt when he had any significant facial growth.

  Evelio and Agatha embraced for a time, then he released her and helped the others slide some crates off the truck. He was wiry and dark, like he spent every second in the Central American sun, and probably did. When all the crates were off-loaded, he stepped to the side with Agatha. They strolled alone, Evelio gesticulating passionately and telling some tale. Agatha nodded along, her hands folded at her midsection.

  Lawrence had said Markus had a feeling trouble was coming.

  Agatha and Evelio finished up their conversation and embraced again. He was off to his truck, Agatha was headed toward Tommy, but more than likely for the cabin he sat in front of. He slid over on the steps to allow room for her to pass.

  “Excuse me,” she said as she went up to Markus’s door. She knocked and turned back to Tommy. “He’ll be ready for you soon, so don’t disappear. Again.” He just turned away from her, back toward the camp. Behind him, Agatha was summoned inside and the door closed. Tommy watched Evelio fire up the beaten truck as it belched black exhaust. The old native backed the turquoise pickup down the dirt path as Miguel and David, two Mexican members of the Circle that joined as the group passed through their country, dragged two tree trunks and branches of masking foliage back across the entrance.

  Something was up. Evelio was short on smiles during that visit—rare for him. He was Markus’s guy on the outside and he hadn’t even gone up to his cabin door. Then all those obstacles blocking off the entrance road? That was new.

  The cabin door opened behind Tommy.

  “Thomas,” said Markus, softly. Tommy stood and turned. “Come inside for a minute.” He stood and made his way in. It seemed even hotter than under the sun outside. The windows were closed.

  “Aren’t you hot?” Tommy asked once inside.

  Markus gave him a grin and fixed his icy eyes on him.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t want a breeze?” Tommy gestured to the window. Markus didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he looked to Agatha.

  “We are good,” he said. Agatha nodded and left.

  Once the door closed, Markus moved over to a pitcher and poured two glasses of lemon water. He wore a long, white, linen shirt and shorts. He was barefoot. He carried a glass over to Tommy, who stayed put right where he’d landed when he entered the cabin. He took the glass from Markus.

  “If I opened a window, everyone would hear what you and I were talking about,” he said in his kindly, professorial way. Everything Markus said was an invitation to bare one’s soul, every discussion a confessional.

  “Why shouldn’t they hear me?” Tommy asked.

  “You’d want them to? Your private thoughts? Surprised to hear that from you of all people.”

  “Thought we never kept anything from each other in the Circle.” Tommy looked away and sipped the drink. Markus was smiling at him like a proud baseball coach watching a kid getting his first base hit.

  “If you truly believe in that, then go open a window.” He watched Tommy, who was still standing, wiping at the condensation growing on his glass. He didn’t open any windows.

  “Look,” Markus said as he walked to a window beside the door. It overlooked the expanse of the camp, squarely down onto the open common area around which the other cabins were situated.

  Tommy walked beside Markus. The two men stood with their glasses in hand, looking out over members of their Circle working, walking, living. Faith and Alma were just outside the open green, under the protection of a thatch of small trees. They were singing, Alma strumming a well-traveled acoustic guitar. Lawrence was back at it, growing the woodpile. Agatha crisscrossed the camp. Neither Tommy nor Markus was speaking. Tommy was certain they were both looking at the same things.

  “You thirty yet?” Markus asked.

  “Not quite.”

  “I think Lawrence is near sixty years old. Look at the girls.” He chuckled. “Singing, happy.”

  “Agatha,” Tommy said. “Singing, happy.” Markus smiled at Tommy’s sarcasm.

  “Agatha—working hard for all of us,” Markus said. “Different ages, different
personality types. Some like the sun and some the shade. All of them…here. And why?”

  He left it open ended, waiting for a response, it seemed. Tommy didn’t offer that gateway to his mind.

  “Love?” Markus asked. “Freedom? An ideal?”

  “You tell me,” Tommy said.

  Markus turned from the window and crossed the room to a sofa. He sat down, crossed his legs, and adjusted his oversized top. He was taking the question seriously.

  “We call ourselves the Circle of Tomorrow, Thomas. I hold the belief that if we can perfect this model society, set up a world better than the one we were given back home because we are creating it—then our tomorrows are worth whatever we endure today. That’s an exchange worthy of the temporary difficulties, the moving around, and the uncertainty.” He put his glass down on a table beside the couch. “Like the uncertainty you have now.”

  Tommy turned from the window. Markus gestured toward the spot on the couch beside him. Tommy walked to it and sat.

  “The big goal is to leave the world we create to others,” Markus said. “This is what we all discuss in our meetings, and I rarely hear you share anything about our work.”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Thomas,” Markus said as he leaned in. “You’re the smartest one here. Smarter than me. And I have waited two years for you to take a leadership role, stand up and start discussions. But I watch you decide not to. You don’t look toward us anymore, Thomas. You’re atop trees, looking away.”

  “I look at the water.”

  “The water is your past.”

  Tommy didn’t have a reply to that, but he was beginning to think that water might be his future. He looked down into his glass of lemon water.

  “Join us today, Thomas. Come to the food cabin with me and carry out the trays. It’s nearly ten o’clock. Time for breakfast.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  DEANNA WAS OUT of bed in the middle of the night and on her way into the living room. She stopped in the hall closet on her way to the recliner and grabbed Trisha’s laptop with Jared’s flash drive. She sat down and booted up, staring out over the balcony to the blinking metropolis across the Hudson River. She got lost in considering the number of people she was seeing in one glance, the sheer number of building stories. Just by looking at ten or fifteen stories of a Manhattan high-rise building in the distance, she was sure she was catching glimpses of love, jealousy, betrayal, ambition, suicidal thoughts, plans for a weekend, disappointment and anything else the world served, all at once.