The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  John led them past the shower and down the trail leading to the floodplain. Lamar and Coop struggled to carry one of the heavily laden coolers between them, while Ken easily hoisted the other by himself. The trail hooked right shortly after exiting the campsite and quickly reached the outer edge of the plateau, which ended in a two-story cliff overlooking the floodplain. Coop peered down and gulped, imagining what would happen if someone stumbled over the edge. Fortunately, someone had carved a narrow channel into the dirt cliffside that started at the foot of the trail and sloped sharply downward before ending in the floodplain.

  The trees were sparser and smaller down here, making room for thigh-high wild grasses interspersed with patches of barren, rocky soil and the odd huckleberry bush. Large stretches of the pitted landscape were barren, however, home only to moss-covered rocks eager to snag unwary feet.

  Two hay bales had been set up at the cliff’s feet. Ken spotted several broken shafts jutting out of them at odd angles and concluded that this was the archery range. Laid beside the bales were white tarps with hand-painted targets on them; presumably the replacements John had mentioned earlier.

  “Hey, look everyone!” Coop called out excitedly. “Deer!”

  The others followed his gaze to find a doe and buck quietly grazing on the edge of the overlook some 50 yards away. The creatures raised their heads, more curious than concerned. Shafts of sunlight streamed through the tree canopy overhead, bathing the majestic animals in a shimmering, golden light.

  “Bellos,” Gaby whispered in awe. She instinctively reached for her cellphone, intent on capturing the moment, only to come away with nothing more than a few wads of pocket lint. It was a sharp reminder that she had no way to memorialize this or anything else over the next week.

  The creatures moved on and the moment slowly passed.

  “Are there many animals here?” Coop asked John.

  “You’ll see all kinds,” their guide replied matter-of-factly, his eyes trained on the path ahead. “Snowshoe hare, beavers, black squirrels, several species of deer; you’ll also see grouse and ducks congregate down by the lake. One year, I had a wild turkey walk through the camp, bold as brass. Everyone ate well on that trip, let me tell you.”

  “What about predators?” Ken asked. He sounded weirdly excited at the prospect. “Are there any dangerous creatures around?”

  “Some black bears,” John replied nonchalantly. “But most of them are already hibernating. We get coyotes, too, even the occasional bobcat, but they know their place in the food chain and won’t hurt you.”

  Lamar and Coop exchanged worried glances.

  John led the group downhill for several minutes, across an open field and through a thicket of scrub bushes on the other side. They began to register a faint hissing noise, like a record player with a worn needle. As the group crossed between two rock formations, it grew louder until it was unmistakable: the sound of rushing water. They followed a rocky path through another dense brake of scrub plants and emerged several feet from the water’s edge.

  The creek was some 10 feet wide and fast moving, although it was barely knee-deep. The water was surprisingly clear for such a shallow body of water; Gaby could see the pebble-covered bottom of the creek despite the churn of the water. John motioned for the men to set the coolers down as he lifted a downed tree branch beside the creek. Beneath it they could see a T-shaped metal cleat planted in the ground with two nylon cords tied to each end.

  “Welcome to Mother Nature’s icebox,” he said as he fastened the free ends of both cords to the coolers and lowered them into a slower-moving pool on the creek’s fringes until they were nearly submerged.

  “Now, let’s get back to camp,” he insisted as he stood up and wiped his hands on his dungarees. “We need to prepare for tonight’s ceremony.”

  * * * * * *

  The next couple of hours were a whirlwind of activity. Lamar and Coop gathered kindling and dead leaves for tinder, while Ken was tasked with splitting logs, using a hand axe and stump behind the log rack. John filled two pails with water — one for drinking water and the other for the evening’s ceremony — before teaching Gaby how to start a friction fire using a bow drill.

  The only ones not contributing were Beverly, who was still pouting in the van, and Wade, whose continued absence sparked more curiosity than concern.

  Gaby gritted her teeth as she furiously worked the bow next to the central firepit, sawing it back and forth, watching as it rotated a spindle on top of a fireboard. She’d been at it for 20 minutes, and although the spindle had already bored a groove into the fireboard, Gaby had yet to see the telltale wisps of smoke that signaled the makings of a fire. John was kneeling beside her, holding the fireboard steady.

  “My arm feels like it’s about to fall off,” she said, growing frustrated.

  “We could trade places,” John offered.

  “No,” she insisted, holding up her hand to dissuade him. “If I could get Missy Elliot down to a size 6, I can start a fire.”

  “Give up already,” Ken said as he dropped off another load of split logs beside them. “Women don’t have the upper body strength to work a bow drill.”

  “You’re doing fine,” John reassured her. “It’s about friction, not strength.”

  Incensed at Ken’s casual misogyny, Gaby took out her frustration on the bow drill, working the spindle so furiously that it slipped its perch and launched itself into the firepit.

  “Hijo de puta!” Gaby shouted in frustration, throwing the bow drill at Ken’s feet, where it threw up a small dust cloud.

  “Did we miss something?”

  Coop’s bespectacled face poked out from behind a tree on the eastern fringes of camp. He and Lamar were dropping off another load of kindling, each of them carrying an armful of twigs, dead leaves, bark and anything else potentially flammable.

  “Nothing a little time and Bactine won’t cure,” John assured him as Gaby nursed her blistering fingers.

  “Hey, big man, what time you got?” Ken asked Lamar as he dropped the kindling beside the firepit and wiped his hands on his rotund belly.

  Instead of answering, Lamar turned his wrist outward so Ken could read it himself.

  Ken stared at the watch face in utter confusion. Instead of two rotating hands on a marked field, Lamar’s watch contained three columns of eight lights, with the lights aligned vertically.

  “What the hell is that?” Ken asked.

  “4:51,” Lamar replied. “Hours, minutes and seconds,” he explained, pointing to each column in turn.

  Ken just stared uncomprehendingly.

  “Dios mío, eres estupido,” Gaby muttered to herself as she watched the exchange. “It’s binary. Didn’t you learn basic programming in school?”

  “A binary watch?” Ken sneered. “You pretentious fag!”

  The rest of the group blanched at his language.

  “I close million-dollar deals before lunch,” he continued, oblivious to the others’ reactions. “I don’t have time to learn that crap. Success means delegation, as my father always says. I leave the techie shit to basement-dwelling pimple pushers like you.”

  Ken’s words hung in the air for a moment.

  “Is there anyone you don’t discriminate against?” Coop asked quietly, shaking his head sadly.

  Ken grew flushed as he looked from one face to the next. All of them registered varying degrees of contempt and pity.

  “This is a new era,” Ken lashed out. “Trump’s in office and P.C. is out! Best get with the program, Jehovah’s Witless!”

  He stalked off in a huff to find more firewood while the others shook their heads or clucked their tongues in annoyance.

  When he returned 20 minutes later with a final stack of split logs, Lamar was explaining hacktivism to a bewildered Coop, while John and Gaby had switched to a more modern fire-starting technique: a magnesium stick and a pocket knife. After scraping magnesium flakes onto the tinder pile, Gaby ran the blade’s edge on the flint
backing of the stick, producing a spark on her second try. Coop clapped politely as John presented Gaby with the pocket knife and the magnesium stick, christening her “Chief Pyro.”

  Within minutes they got a good fire going, and John set the thawed fish fillets on a mesh grill over the firepit. Coop added two cans of baked beans to the mix; he didn’t even bother taking them out of the can, he just heated them up on the grill top.

  The smell of grilled grouper and beans quickly permeated the air. As John had predicted, hunger ultimately overcame Beverly’s deep-seated sense of grievance, luring her from her self-imposed exile in the van. She grabbed a plate without saying a word to the others and sat alone, glaring daggers at John as she ate.

  It was already late afternoon, and the shadows were growing long. The sun was starting its slow descent toward the western edge of the floodplain as the roaring fire staved off the encroaching cold. The group had finished eating, and John started collecting plates as Coop detailed his first experience with transcendental meditation to a less-than-enthused audience. Lamar handed his plate to John and wiped his hands on his shirt appreciatively. Ken stood off to the side puffing on a cigarette and staring at the sunset. John had just set one of the pails of creek water on the grill to boil when a tree branch snapped in the distance.

  Coop paused midstory when he heard the sound, and he had just started up again when another branch snapped from the same direction, only closer. Whatever it was, it sounded large, and it seemed to be coming toward them.

  They heard a rustling noise in the undergrowth just outside the tree line.

  “Should we be concerned?” Coop asked John.

  A dense thicket of rhododendrons on the southwestern edge of the campsite started to shake and out came Wade. His jacket was torn and tattered, as though he’d spent hours crawling through thickets like the one he’d just emerged from. However, the group was more focused on his face and arms, which were streaked with dried blood. In his left hand he held a freshly skinned and dressed duck carcass. In his right he held an eight-inch serrated hunting knife covered in blood and feathers.

  “Ah, there he is!” John said with an inviting smile, as though this were perfectly normal behavior. “Sorry, but you just missed dinner.”

  Gaby tried to force a weak smile, while the others made no attempt to hide their discomfort. Beverly’s eyes were fixated on the knife, whose blade glinted dully in the slowly fading light.

  Wade held up the duck carcass.

  “I’ve brought my own,” he drawled.

  Wade stalked toward the group, knife still in hand. His grim, unshaven visage was unreadable but his eyes were wild, reflecting the dancing flames from the campfire.

  As Wade approached, Beverly hastily stood up and walked to the other side of the fire. Coop and Gaby — who were sitting on log stools — scooted their seats away from him. The only one left in his path was Lamar. Wade strode forward while Lamar quivered in fear, like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

  Wade stopped a foot from Lamar and reached out. Lamar squeezed his eyes closed and waited for the inevitable to happen. After several uneventful seconds, he hesitantly opened one eye.

  Wade towered over him, staring at the grill. Lamar could heard the sizzle of cooking duck and realized Wade wasn’t going to throttle him today. Not that Lamar wanted to tempt fate by sitting beside him. He got off his stool and slowly backed away.

  “You can, uhm … have here seat,” he stammered as he backed away, so flustered that he didn’t realize how garbled his words were.

  Wade didn’t acknowledge the gesture, he just continued warming his hands over the fire and staring at the grill. The only person he acknowledged was John, who offered him a dinner plate.

  A guttural “no” and a small shake of the head was the best Wade could manage.

  After a few minutes of cooking, Wade plucked his kill off the grill with his bare hands and raised it to his mouth.

  “Hey, I don’t think that’s fully cooked yet,” Ken cautioned.

  Wade ignored the warning and proceeded to scarf the duck down in under two minutes, pausing only occasionally to wipe away bloody juices with his shirt sleeve and to spit larger bones into the fire. The smaller bones he ate right along with the barely cooked meat, crunching them viscerally. Beverly looked like she was going to faint.

  When he was done eating, Wade belched contentedly before throwing the remains into the fire. He then stalked over to the water pump on the other side of the shower, presumably to clean up.

  The others exchanged uneasy glances.

  “Anyone else super uncomfortable right now?” Coop asked in a hushed tone, eliciting affirmative nods from the rest.

  “That man is a savage,” said Beverly, who was so shocked that she’d momentarily forgotten her own indignation.

  “The process starts differently for everyone,” John muttered as he removed the now-boiling pail of water from the grill and set it at his feet. When he noticed the others staring at him blankly, he elaborated.

  “Remember our earlier discussion about how this is a journey of self-discovery? Wade’s off to a bit of an early start, and it’s jarring to the rest of you because you’re still thinking of this as a vacation.”

  “You expect us to act like that by the end of the week?” Ken asked. “Running around in loincloths, beating our chests and saying, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane?’”

  John smiled enigmatically.

  “Like I said, the process is different for everyone. You’ll experience it at your own pace and in your own way. As for Mr. Rollins over there,” he said, using Wade’s last name, “while his transition is … accelerated, he also looks to be heading down a dark path.”

  “You mean, like the last group,” Gaby said. “The ones that wrecked the place.”

  John nodded.

  “And he’s going to need everyone’s help to avoid falling into the same trap,” the old man said.

  The group quickly fell silent as Wade returned, looking cleaner but no less savage, like a lion that has groomed itself after a particularly bloody kill. He stood beside the fire with the setting sun to his back, casting a long shadow across the others in the fading light.

  John stood up and banged his fork on a plate to get everyone’s attention.

  “Now that everyone’s together and we’ve all got a good meal in us, I think it’s time to begin the sweat lodge ceremony,” he said. “I still have some preparations to make, so I’ll attend to those while the rest of you change into your swimsuits.”

  “I forgot mine,” Coop said.

  John sighed.

  “Anyone else?”

  Gaby raised her hand.

  “I didn’t forget, I just don’t have one modest enough for this,” she said. “I’ll wear normal clothes.”

  John shook his head no.

  “You’ll get heat stroke,” he warned. “The temperature can spike over 140 degrees. Wear a towel and undergarments.”

  “Thanks, but I’m a big girl,” Gaby replied in an uncharacteristically dismissive manner, “and you have a signed waiver proving it.”

  The old man threw up his hands in exasperation.

  “Suit yourself.”

  He looked to the setting sun, which was slowly retreating behind the western ridge in the distance.

  “Since we’re a little pressed for time, ladies, why don’t you each use an outhouse to change, while the men can use the back end of the wigwam as a changing area? It’s large enough to accommodate two at a time.”

  With that, John selected the leftover wood and kindling beside the still-roaring bonfire, along with the unused pail of creek water, and entered the sweat lodge.

  * * * * * *

  The brilliant red and orange hues illuminating the horizon were starting to fade, replaced with streaks of pink and purple as Ken, Coop and Lamar sifted through their luggage for swimwear. The ladies had gone ahead of them and were currently changing in the outhouses as the men decided how to pair
off to do the same.

  The deepening shadows made it harder for them to locate their belongings in the mishmash of baggage.

  “So, how do we pair off?” Ken mused as he located his Speedo.

  He looked up after several seconds when neither of them answered. They were both staring at Wade, drinking from the water bucket like a barbarian, tilting it back until almost as much liquid was spilling down his front as down his throat. Ken found their wide-eyed reactions amusing until he remembered that not 15 minutes ago, that bucket had been sitting on a red-hot grill; both the water and the container must be scalding hot.

  Wade exhibited no signs of discomfort. He polished off more than a third of the bucket before placing it on the ground and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. With that, he stalked toward the group, grabbed his duffel bag from the top of the pile and went around the back of the wigwam without a word to the others.

  Coop and Lamar exchange worried glances before Coop plucked up the courage to speak.

  “I’ll go with Lamar, you can go with … him.”

  Lamar fervently nodded his agreement.

  Ken snorted derisively.

  “You guys are pussies,” he said with a laugh.

  The pair stared at their feet, embarrassed and emasculated, as Ken walked away, twirling his swimsuit nonchalantly on his index finger.

  Ken was still chuckling to himself when he rounded the corner and nearly stumbled into the back of Wade. As John had indicated, there was little room behind the wigwam, only a few feet of space on either side before the ground sloped sharply downward into a depression some 12 feet down lined with brambles and bushes. This natural shelf was large enough to accommodate two people, but little else.

  Wade turned to face him. There was something profoundly unsettling in Wade’s stare. It seemed less of an acknowledgement and more like a warning.

  “What are you laughing at?” he asked gruffly.

  “No, it’s nothing,” Ken hastily assured him, sounding uncharacteristically apologetic. “Just those clowns back there. They seem to think you’re some kind of psycho killer just because you bagged a duck. It’s just … funny, is all,” he finished lamely.