Fortunately, Beverly seemed to have come away from her tumble with nothing worse than a bruised shin and a skinned palm from when she landed. Beverly laughed it off, insisting that she was fine.
“There’s no need to make a fuss over me,” she said. “I just need to watch where I’m going next time.”
Despite her protestations, Beverly still seemed dazed. When Gaby asked if she wanted to lie down again, Beverly gave her answer to Lamar. The two exchanged glances but said nothing.
Beverly insisted on returning to work and jumped back into her role with gusto, picking up the spade and quickly extending the trench. After a few moments of consideration, a worried Gaby joined her.
Lamar went back to the shed for more wood, puzzled by Beverly’s behavior. It was only later that he remembered the missing moonshine and started to question his earlier assessment.
* * * * * *
It was late afternoon before Ken and Coop returned, only to find a camp that looked very different from the one they’d left. The trench was complete, most of the wood had been salvaged and the others were already working on the fortifications.
“Hollleeey shit!” Ken exclaimed, marveling at how much had changed in such a short span of time. “This place is almost unrecognizable.”
Gaby, who was reinforcing the fortifications around the wigwam, stopped hammering and waved the two over.
“I see you all kept busy,” Coop remarked, equally impressed by the others’ work.
“We’ve been expecting you for a while now,” Gaby said, pausing to rub her aching shoulders.
Ken walked over to help out when Beverly’s head peeked out from behind the fortifications.
“Where have you all been?” she groused. “We’d be done now if it weren’t for you!”
“Careful,” Ken said with a smirk as he yanked Coop’s spear right out of his hands and raised it so everyone could see the squirrel impaled on its tip. “Complainers don’t get squirrel for their supper.”
Gaby and Lamar — who was coming over with another armful of timber — oohed and aahed at the accomplishment. It wasn’t that they needed the food; it just made the forest and its inhabitants seem a little less insurmountable. Perhaps they could overcome their perilous circumstances. Beverly, however, sniffed at the kill.
“Good, then I can go right on complaining,” she replied, disgusted at the sight of a corpse dangling from the stick.
The others quickly crowded around Ken for a closer look at tonight’s dinner.
“How’d you manage it?” Gaby asked him.
“Well, actually it was …” Coop began before Ken cut him off.
“It was easy to find,” Ken interrupted. “It was just sitting there in this mess of brambles. One thrust was all it took,” he said, omitting who exactly did the finding and thrusting.
“We can cook it later,” Gaby said. “For now, we could use your help building this thing,” she said, motioning to their construction project. “Both of you,” she said with a reassuring smile to Coop, who was beginning to feel marginalized.
“Sure thing,” Ken said, dumping the squirrel in a pail on the grill to cook later.
“I’ll help Lamar with the wood,” Coop said, drawing an askance look from Lamar, who had been pointedly ignoring Coop since his return. Lamar walked off without waiting for Coop, who followed quickly behind.
“Hey,” Coop said when the others were out of earshot. “Can we talk for a second?”
Lamar just kept walking.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Coop said, trying to keep pace. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Lamar intoned.
“You’re pissed,” Coop said. “I get it. But you put me in a real bind there.”
“You don’t say,” Lamar responded coldly as he continued walking.
“Will you just talk to me already?” Coop asked, grabbing Lamar by the shoulder to stop him.
Lamar wheeled around to confront him. His eyes were hard and distant, his jaw clenched tight.
“This isn’t about an apology!” Lamar whispered fiercely. “No amount of ‘sorry’ is going to get us out of here alive. You want to make things right? You know what you have to do.”
Lamar turned his back to him and started quietly gathering timber as Coop considered his demands in silence.
Lamar had collected an armload of timber and was starting to walk away when Coop finally caved.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll do it.”
Lamar turned slowly around. His expression was warmer now, but cautious, like a drowning man being offered a life preserver filled with explosives.
“No fooling?” Lamar asked. “Because if you renege …”
“You can have the battery,” Coop said. “But on one condition: you can’t tell the others where it came from.”
Lamar nodded his acceptance.
“I have an idea on how to handle that,” he said. “Just out of curiosity, what changed your mind?”
“Two hours alone with Ken,” Coop deadpanned, eliciting a small chuckle from Lamar. “By the end of it, prison was starting to sound downright inviting by comparison.”
“Hey, are you two on a break or what?” Ken shouted from the top of the fortification. “Quit sucking each others’ dicks and help out already.”
Lamar and Coop shared an eye roll before returning to work.
* * * * * *
Two hours of backbreaking labor later, the fortifications were complete. The end result wasn’t pretty, but in the group’s exhausted eyes, it was the greatest thing ever constructed. More importantly, it was functional.
The sun had dipped low in the sky and was casting its brightest rays near the edge of the horizon as the group prepared dinner. To Beverly, it looked like a final, defiant gasp before the sun expired; a fitting simile considering what they were about to face, but one that left her cold.
Ken had skinned and spitted the squirrel, which he was holding over the flames of the firepit with one of his newly fashioned spears.
Coop was passing out cans of beef Stroganoff and spaghetti to the hungry crew while Lamar raised his shirt to wipe his forehead, treating everyone to a view of his paunch. Beverly chose a log stool downwind of him and immediately changed seats after a faint breeze carried his scent over to her.
“So, you two just found it out in the woods?” Gaby marveled.
“Actually, just past the archery range,” Lamar said, lowering his shirt. He motioned to Coop, who held up the battery cell for the others to see. “It was in a pedometer half-buried in the dirt.”
“I would have stepped on it if Lamar hadn’t spotted it,” Coop chimed in before tucking the battery into a pocket in the folds of his robes.
“So then where’s the pedometer?” Ken asked, his tone registering suspicion at this alleged stroke of luck.
“Well, uhmm … it was busted, so we kinda just left it there,” Lamar trailed off, finding the direction of the conversation uncomfortable.
“And you have no idea how it got there?” Ken pressed.
“I don’t know, maybe one of the previous groups that came here left it,” Coop responded, irritated by Ken’s grilling.
“Maybe,” Ken said, unconvinced.
“I’ll work on it later,” Lamar said as he polished off a can of unheated spaghetti with an appreciative belch. “Just remember that this might not work. Low-voltage batteries like this were never meant to power something as large as a C.B.”
Lamar dropped the empty can at his feet and wiped his hands on his shirt, smearing the front of it with spaghetti sauce.
“Ugh,” Beverly exclaimed in disgust. “Do you really have to do that?”
“Do what?” Lamar asked, mystified.
“You have the table manners of a Viking,” Beverly scolded him. “At least have the decency to wash your hands before wiping them on your shirt. You still have stains from last night’s beef stew on there!”
Lamar looke
d down to discover a brownish smear over the left breast of his shirt, several inches away from the marinara stain, meaning he’d forgotten to change T-shirts this morning. He blushed and looked away in embarrassment.
“Cut him some slack,” Gaby said with a yawn. “We have bigger concerns than getting Lamar into finishing school.”
Ken, who wasn’t listening to any of this, pulled his squirrel out of the fire and examined it closely, turning the spear over to ensure it was equally charred on all sides.
“Looks about right,” he said. “So, who wants the honor of the first bite?”
He extended the spear to Coop, who quickly declined.
“All you, man,” he said.
Ken looked to Beverly next, who emphatically shook her head no.
He then extended the spear toward Lamar.
“Big man,” he said coaxingly. “I know you want a bite.”
“No way!” Lamar said, turning his face away.
Ken turned to Gaby next. She considered it for a moment and then shrugged.
“What the hell,” she said, taking the spear from Ken. She examined the crispy critter up close. Its skin was completely blackened, with cracks in the skin revealing the meat beneath. She sniffed it and had to admit it smelled tantalizing.
She took a cautious nibble from the back flank.
A blissful smile crossed her face as the charred skin touched her tongue. As she started to chew, that smile rapidly turned into one of shock and revulsion.
“Bllegghh!” Gaby exclaimed as she spit the food into her hand and started wiping her tongue on her sleeve, desperate to get the taste out of her mouth. “That thing is inedible!” she finally declared. “Where the hell did you find this thing, Ken?”
“What?” Ken asked, suddenly defensive. “Don’t blame me! It was the Queen of Sheba who found it,” he insisted, pointing an accusatory finger at Coop.
Remembering all too well Ken’s eagerness to claim credit for the kill, Coop quickly rounded on him.
“Ken just overcooked it, is all,” he said.
“It’s fine and I’ll prove it,” Ken said, reclaiming the spear-kebab. “She’s just being a prima donna.”
Ken took a healthy bite from one of the rear legs to illustrate his point.
“See?” he said through a mouthful of squirrel meat. “It’s perfectly …”
He shuddered, made a face like he’d bitten into the sourest of lemons, and spat the remains into the fire.
“What the fuck?” he exclaimed as he reached for the pail of drinking water and upended it into his mouth. Coop couldn’t help but smile as Ken swished the water around in his mouth to sweep up every last trace of the food before spitting it on the ground behind him.
“It tastes like … soot!” he finally explained, and Gaby quickly nodded at the description.
Ken stood up and rushed into the wigwam. When he emerged a minute later, he had two cans of beef stew in his hands. He sat down, opened one, and immediately started chowing down.
“Hey, you already had the spaghetti for dinner!” Beverly complained.
“Palate cleanser,” Ken said between mouthfuls of stew. “If you’d tasted that fucking squirrel, you’d be doing the same.
“Be that as it may, we don’t have an infinite food supply,” Coop pointed out. “We need to ration it.”
“I agree,” Gaby joined in, after washing the taste out of her own mouth with the last dregs of the drinking pail. “People can’t just take food as they please,” she said, looking squarely at Ken.
“Let’s appoint someone to keep track of the food,” Beverly joined in. “Someone to pass it out at mealtime and safeguard it the rest of the time, to make certain nobody steals it.”
“Makes sense,” Lamar said.
“Who should it be?” Coop asked.
“Someone trustworthy,” Lamar replied.
Gaby smiled.
“I’m glad you think so, Lamar, because I’m nominating you,” she said.
Lamar started at this.
“Wha … what, me?” he stammered, genuinely surprised.
Coop quickly seconded Gaby’s selection, followed a few moments later by an indifferent Beverly. Ken, however, merely chortled.
“You want that to guard the food?” he said, his voice dripping with disdain as he pointed toward Lamar’s pronounced gut. “You people are a hoot! That’s like giving O.J. the keys to the knife drawer.”
“Says the guy who just ate two cans,” Coop said.
Ken reared up in his seat to intimidate Coop, but Lamar spoke up before Ken could say anything truly cutting.
“Look, I don’t really want this, but if you all trust me, I’ll do it,” Lamar said a tone of resignation. “And Ken, if you don’t trust me …”
“If?” Ken asked mockingly.
“…Then you’ll know who to blame if any of the food goes missing,” Lamar continued, speaking as though Ken hadn’t interrupted.
Ken considered this for a moment.
“Fine,” he said. “On your own head, be it.”
When dinner was finished and the sun neared the horizon, the group started mapping out their battle plans. If Wade followed his usual pattern, he’d arrive from the southwest around sundown, which gave them precious little time to prepare.
Ken laid out the plan, which was simple enough: they’d wait until Wade entered the camp, at which point Gaby would give the signal and they’d all rush out with their spears from designated hiding spots and close ranks on Wade.
Gaby would be hiding in a maple tree on the southwestern edge of the site to block his retreat. Ken would be hiding in a slightly larger ash tree about 20 feet away to block off Wade’s access to the southern edge of camp. Coop would be hiding behind the Squaws’ outhouse to block off access to the eastern edge of the camp, while Lamar and Beverly would be hiding behind the fortifications around the wigwam. They would rush out to block off the northern and northwestern sections of camp.
Then they’d all close in, spears at the ready, and order Wade out of camp. Critically, the group would intentionally leave a gap in their circle to the west — leading down into the floodplains — to drive him out of camp.
“After all, the goal is to scare him away, not kill him,” Ken explained.
The beauty of the plan, which Ken repeated often and loudly, was that it still worked even if Wade didn’t come in from the southwest. The spacing of the hiding places enabled the group to adapt on the fly if he came in from the south or the west.
“Whaddya think?” Ken asked with a self-satisfied smile.
The others had to admit that, Ken’s self-congratulations aside, it sounded like a solid plan. They agreed to conduct a few practice runs to get a feel for how things would go. Coop passed out spears to everyone, but since there were only four, he had to make do with the small hatchet. Lamar consoled him by pointing out that this wasn’t a serious problem because he’d be the last to close in on Wade, owing to his far-flung location.
While Gaby kept an eye out for Wade from her perch in the maple tree, Ken drilled the others, barking out instructions like a drill sergeant as they practiced charging at one of the log stools — a stand-in for Wade — placed at various points to the southern, western and southwestern sections of camp. While the others normally would have balked at Ken’s militant drilling, they all recognized how high the stakes were; one mistake or miscommunication could cost them dearly. So for a rare change, they listened and followed instructions.
The trick, Ken assured them, was to let Wade walk 10 to 15 feet into camp before springing into action; that way, he be far enough in that Gaby would be able to prevent him from beating an immediate retreat, but still close enough to the edge that they could drive him westward with minimal effort.
After four run-throughs, Ken was satisfied that they had the pattern down. Everyone got into position to wait for Wade’s arrival.
* * * * * *
Coop was getting anxious. It was now dusk, and the light was fadi
ng fast. He was already straining to see farther than 20 feet and worried that their carefully laid plans would be for naught if Wade waited until dark to return.
He also was less than pleased about hiding behind the Squaws’ outhouse. It wasn’t the smell so much — a rural upbringing had exposed him to plenty of unsavory odors — it was the three-foot drainage ditch behind it, which he had to straddle to remain hidden. Maintaining such an unnaturally wide stance had gone from amusing to uncomfortable as the minutes ticked away, and was now verging on painful.
Even though he wasn’t supposed to, Coop occasionally snuck a peek around the right edge of the outhouse to see if anything was happening, if only to break up the tedium and take his mind off his barking quads. Still no sign of Wade.
Coop mulled his assignment. He’d been given the farthest post from the front lines: stationed on the eastern edge of camp while all the action would be on the southwestern end of camp. While this was an enormous relief, as Coop detested violence, some tiny, primal part of his brain railed at this perceived insult to his masculinity.
In preparation for the upcoming skirmish, he’d cut a foot of cloth from the bottom of his robes to make running to the other side of camp easier. It’s not like he needed them to be that long anymore, now that his ankle monitor was lying in a gully a quarter of a mile away.
Coop tried to calm his mind by silently mouthing his mantra as he stared across the eastern expanse of the forest, watching a cluster of rhododendron bushes in the darkening distance swaying gently in the breeze. He noticed some of the leaves seemed to be reflecting the rays of the sun setting in the west. He squinted his eyes, wondering why dry leaves would cast such vibrant reflections from 30 feet away. The bushes suddenly began to shake, moving rapidly and erratically, as though the light breeze had suddenly turned into a squall. Except the wind hadn’t shifted at all.
An arm bearing a long hunting knife emerged from the bushes, the blade catching and reflecting the light. A moment later, the rest of Wade emerged from the bushes.
He’d fashioned the fox fur into a Davey Crocket-style cap, with the tail swaying to and fro as he walked. A dead beaver dangled from the belt loop of his jeans, which were in tatters below the knees, like he’d been hiking through a forest of thorns. He’d carved a fifth scar into his bare chest, one that crossed through the other four diagonally, making them bleed anew. And his eyes burned with a savage purposefulness that eclipsed the setting sun.
The Truth Circle Page 16