The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Lamar turned the device off with a huff and tested the power cell with the pad of his index finger. It was warm to the touch.

  “Why’s it keep cutting in and out?” Coop asked.

  “I think the battery’s overheating,” Lamar replied. “The C.B. requires a lot more juice than this is designed to deliver, so it stresses the power cell.”

  “Can’t you do anything to solve that?” Ken asked.

  Lamar shook his head.

  “We’re fitting a round peg into a square hole, and no amount of MacGyvering will change that,” Lamar explained. “Intermittent power is the best we can hope for.”

  “A C.B. that shuts off mid-transmission isn’t very practical,” Ken replied, the annoyance evident in his voice. “How was this anything other than a waste of time?”

  Ken had been insufferable all morning, and his attitude was beginning to grate on the others, even more so than usual. His domineering attitude had made more sense last night, when their lives were on the line; indeed, his militant insistence on repeated drilling before confronting Wade had probably saved their lives. But now that the danger had passed, he showed no signs of letting up. If anything, his Patton routine had deepened.

  “A slim chance is better than no chance,” Lamar countered. “We’ll just have to make every word count.” He stood up and stretched, trying to work out a kink in his neck after spending the past hour hunched over a log stool while building his Frankenstein machine. He raised his arms over his head as he stretched, giving Ken and Coop a good whiff of body odor, causing both to involuntarily step back and turn their heads from the stench.

  “Here’s what I think we should do,” he continued, not seeing Ken and Coop’s pained responses as he finally lowered his arms. “Let’s set it up on the highest peak around to give us better broadcasting range and just hope the battery holds out.”

  “Any idea how long that’ll be?” Coop asked, his head still turned away from Lamar as the stench gradually faded.

  “No clue,” Lamar replied. “It depends on how much of a charge the battery has left. What I do know is the C.B. will drain it fast. We could get an hour of use or 10 minutes. I suppose it’s really a blessing that it can only transmit now. If it was receiving, too, that would double the battery consumption.”

  “Say what?” Ken asked, too shocked by this revelation to bother insulting Lamar about his poor hygiene. “Are you telling me we won’t hear any replies?”

  “The leaking battery ate through the receiving wire,” Lamar reminded him. “And I ‘borrowed’ the receiver’s circuit board to hold the battery in place,” Lamar explained. “So, yes, that means one-way communication only.”

  Ken chuckled and shook his head in disbelief.

  “For fuck’s sake! This just gets better and better,” he exclaimed.

  Lamar ignored his sarcasm.

  “So, who wants to give it a go?” he asked, hoisting the C.B.

  “I’ll do it,” a voice behind them said. The trio turned and saw Gaby wringing her wet clothes out after washing them. It was the first thing she’d said all day. She squirmed under the group’s gaze but didn’t break eye contact this time.

  Lamar smiled warmly at the overture. Gaby slowly, hesitantly, responded in kind.

  “I’ll come with you,” Ken said.

  Gaby’s small smile instantly disappeared.

  “No,” she replied, now beginning to regret volunteering.

  “It wasn’t a suggestion,” Ken said.

  “I could really use some alone time, Ken,” Gaby intoned, making her displeasure clear.

  “Nobody goes out alone, nobody goes out unarmed,” Ken reminded her, motioning to the spear in his hand. “My strategy kept everyone alive yesterday, and it’ll keep working so long as everyone abides by it.”

  “You’re not Napoleon, and this isn’t Waterloo,” Gaby shot back, balking at the demand. “We scared away one guy.”

  “I think Napoleon lost at Waterloo,” Lamar chimed in.

  “That’s not the point!” Gaby snapped. “Ken’s strategy barely held together, and now he thinks he’s some military genius. You trade stock!”

  “I run a Fortune 500 company,” Ken corrected her with an air of self-satisfaction. “I have day traders to do the buying and selling.”

  Gaby looked to Lamar and Coop for support, but could read in their faces that none would be forthcoming.

  “Gaby, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Ken’s right,” Coop said, sounding almost embarrassed. “Safety comes first.”

  Lamar nodded his agreement.

  “What if one of you comes with me, instead?” Gaby asked, now resorting to bargaining.

  Ken scoffed at the idea.

  “Coop’s scared of his own shadow, and Lamar would collapse before making it halfway up the ridge,” he said with a sneer. “Face it: it has to be me.”

  “Fine,” Gaby said with a sigh of resignation. “I’ll consider it.”

  “You do that,” Ken said. “But before that, there’s something else we need to address.”

  Lamar looked at Ken, confused. As far as he knew, everything was settled.

  “What?” he queried.

  “You,” Ken replied, glaring at Lamar. “You’re coming with us.”

  “Us?” Lamar responded, confused and quickly growing alarmed.

  Ken nodded to someone behind Lamar. Two hands clamped onto his right arm from behind, immobilizing it. It was Coop, and his face was grim.

  “What the …” Lamar began to protest but stopped when Ken seized his other arm and locked it in place with powerful fingers that dug into his flesh.

  Lamar started struggling, but the two held fast. He was now genuinely frightened.

  “Guys, this isn’t funny!” he insisted. “What are you doing? Let me go!” he shouted, flailing and kicking ineffectually as the two started dragging him toward the western side of camp.

  Lamar felt the pit of his stomach drop as he saw Ken and Coop share a knowing look together. Had these two been plotting against him all this time?

  Several yards away, Gaby stopped laying her clothes out to dry on the low-lying branches of a beech tree.

  “What are you doing to him?” she asked, her voice rising in alarm.

  “What needs to be done,” Ken said coldly, his voice deadly serious as they dragged Lamar to the shower and stopped.

  Coop opened the shower’s cabana door and reached in.

  Lamar squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to see what hellish torment Coop and Ken had secreted away in the shower as they plotted his demise.

  “Coop, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but let’s talk about it!” Lamar pleaded.

  “You can’t talk your way out of this,” Coop replied severely.

  Lamar gulped in anticipation. He opened one of his eyes a crack and could see Gaby in the distance, dropping her clothes back in the water pail and rushing over to stop Ken and Coop. But it was too late. Coop slowly withdrew his arm and revealed his instrument of torture.

  A bar of Irish Spring.

  Lamar stared, confused for a moment. Then Ken reached for the waistband of Lamar’s sweatpants and yanked them down.

  “Strip him!” Ken ordered, and Coop obliged by grabbing the collar of Lamar’s T-shirt, trying to pull it over his head. Lamar finally realized what they were trying to do and struggled even harder.

  “Get off me! Knock it off!” he demanded.

  But it was two on one, and Lamar quickly found himself standing only in his underwear, shivering in the chill morning air and doing his best to cover himself. He snuck a glance over at Gaby, who was now standing a few feet away. She was covering her mouth to disguise her amusement, which only added to Lamar’s mortification.

  “Okay, He Who Shall Not Be Laid. Insy-winsy,” Ken said.

  Lamar shook his head no, so Ken shoved him inside and blocked the door while Coop ran to the back of the stall to prime the pump.

  “Ready?” Ken called out after a few mome
nts.

  “Ready!” Coop replied from the other end of the stall.

  Ken hit the button in the shower. Cold water immediately streamed out of the spout head, causing Lamar to scream like a little girl. Ken grabbed the bar of soap and started scrubbing Lamar’s rolls of belly fat.

  “I can do it myself!” Lamar insisted.

  “You had three days to do it yourself,” Coop countered as he joined Ken in blocking the door, a savage smile plastered on his face. “We’ve had enough of your B.O. to last several lifetimes!”

  “Mouseketeers don’t do this to one another!” Lamar lamented.

  “Make sure to scrub his pits,” Gaby instructed Ken. “It smells like something died up there.”

  Lamar stared at her in disbelief.

  “Et tu, Gaby?”

  “Mouseketeers bathe more than once a week!” she countered with a smile.

  “This is unnecessary,” Lamar wailed.

  “This is very necessary,” Ken said as he moved on to Lamar’s pits, turning his head to the side to avoid the foul reek.

  * * * * * *

  About 30 minutes later, Coop was cutting thin strips of plastic from the remains of the archery target, while Ken hovered over him doing what he did best: micromanaging.

  “No, I said ‘thinner’! We want them to focus on the bait, not the line!” Ken chided him.

  Coop closed his eyes and prayed for patience.

  “I can’t get it any thinner,” he explained after a moment. “If I cut any deeper, I’ll sever the cord.”

  Ken leaned in.

  “You poncey types are supposed to be good with your fingers. If all those hairdressers named ‘Dante’ and ‘Raoul’ can do it, so can you. Now make it thinner!”

  Just as Coop was about to unload on Ken, he noticed Lamar emerge from the wigwam, fully dressed but still shivering as he dried his hair.

  “Feel any better?” Coop asked, grateful for the company of anyone other than Ken.

  In answer, Lamar raised the left sleeve of his shirt to reveal a bluish bruise forming on the lower half of his bicep, where Ken had grasped him.

  “Don’t expect a Purple Heart,” Ken said dismissively as he took a break from berating Coop to whittle a crude wooden hook. It was a six-inch spike, pointed at both ends and curved toward the center to hold whatever it came in contact with in place. It was primitive but functional.

  “Are you all going fishing?” Lamar asked as he drew closer and saw what they were both working on.

  “If we’re stuck in these woods until Saturday, I’m going to make the most of it,” Ken said, not looking up from his carving. “I’m taking Coop up to the lake to try our hand at fishing, and you’re joining us.”

  He handed Lamar his spear, which had already been fashioned into a fishing pole, with a 15-foot line tied just below the tip and an even cruder wooden hook on the end.

  “What’s the 411 on Madam Margarita?” asked, pointing to the wigwam so there was no doubt who he meant.

  “Still out like a light,” Lamar replied, looking over his primitive fishing gear. Judging by the ragged cut of the plastic line and the double knotting on both ends, his was the prototype.

  The trio had just finished converting the last of the spears into poles when Gaby exited the sole remaining outhouse. When she saw them jerry-rigging the spears, Gaby walked over for a closer look, vacillating between amusement and bemusement.

  “Care to join us for a little fishing?” Coop offered.

  “Not a chance,” she said with a chuckle as Lamar fashioned dried apricots into bait, spearing two on each end of the primitive hooks. “Tell me you’re not fishing with dried foods.”

  Lamar and Coop both looked again at the apricots dangling from hooks, trying to decide why Gaby was so down on them as bait. Ken, on the other hand, responded with characteristic bluster.

  “Yeah, so?” he challenged. “What do you know about fishing?”

  “I know dried foods won’t attract any fish,” Gaby replied, covering her mouth to hide her amusement. “They hunt by scent. Use the canned beef Stroganoff.”

  Coop liked the suggestion and started to fetch some when a barked command from Ken stopped him in his tracks.

  “Hold it,” Ken demanded. “Who’s in charge here, her or me?”

  “Nobody’s in charge,” Coop replied coolly, with only a hint of his irritation seeping through. “And she has a good point,” he added before leaving to fetch the canned food.

  Lamar noticed that Ken’s face was turning a distinct shade of purple as he silently seethed at Coop’s insubordination. He hurriedly steered the conversation in another direction.

  “So, what are your plans this morning?” he asked Gaby.

  Gaby, who also registered Ken’s wrath but seemed altogether indifferent to it, shrugged.

  “Figured I’d chop some wood, maybe work on the fortifications a little.”

  “Would you mind keeping an eye on Beverly while you’re at it?” Lamar asked.

  Gaby immediately stiffened.

  “I’d say there’s no chance of that.”

  “It’s only to keep her from wandering off again,” Lamar pleaded. “I’m not saying you need to make up with her, if you could just …”

  Lamar trailed off as he spied Coop exiting the teepee with a can of beef Stroganoff in one hand and Beverly in the other. Coop had his left arm around Beverly as he escorted her gingerly over to the others. Her head weaved unsteadily from side to side, and her feet shuffled as she struggled to keep pace with him. She looked pale and badly hungover as she squinted and turned her face away from the sun’s rays.

  “Well, speak of the devil,” Ken intoned.

  “Incarnate,” Gaby muttered, her expression instantly darkening.

  “Look who’s awake,” Coop said cheerily. “Thought I’d bring her by to say ‘hello.’”

  “How long was I out?” Beverly croaked in a voice barely above a whisper. She attempted a feeble smile.

  “You mean, ‘How long was I drying out?’” Ken responded, crossing his arms defiantly.

  Beverly did her best to glare at him, but between her squinting and her parched lips, the best she could manage was an Elvis-esque half-sneer.

  “We don’t know how long you were out because you wandered off in the middle of the night,” Coop explained as he held her steady. “Ken found you passed out by the showers just after dawn. You’re lucky you didn’t get hypothermia.”

  Beverly didn’t appear particularly surprised by this revelation.

  “I had a dream about walking in the moonlight,” she said hazily, wrinkling her nose as she struggled to remember what else was in the dream. It was something really important.

  “The only thing you were dreaming about was pink elephants,” Ken replied with a snort.

  “So I tied one on last night,” Beverly said with a dismissive wave.

  “Beverly, you downed the entire jug. It’s a wonder you didn’t need your stomach pumped,” Coop said emphatically and a little too loud for Beverly’s comfort, causing her to wince in pain and pull away.

  “Can you lower your voice, please? My head is killing me,” she begged as she removed Coop’s arm from her shoulder and took a step back, determined to stand on her own power. She wobbled unsteadily for a moment but soon found her balance.

  “Well, if your head doesn’t finish the job, I know someone who wants to,” Ken offered, making no attempt to hide his amusement at her suffering.

  Beverly finally noticed Gaby glaring daggers at her.

  “What’s the matter, Gaby?”

  Instead of answering Beverly directly, Gaby turned on her heels and addressed the whole group. Loudly.

  “I have work to do!” she yelled before storming off to the other side of the fortifications.

  Beverly winced in pain, covering her ears with her hands and waiting several seconds before cautiously removing them.

  “Was it something I said?” she asked earnestly.

  “An
d how,” Ken snickered.

  “Don’t you remember?” Lamar asked her, not even trying to hide his surprise.

  “You all keep alluding to something, so out with it!” Beverly demanded, her confusion turning to irritation as it became increasingly clear that everyone knew something she didn’t. “What did I do that was so terrible?”

  “Oh, it’s not what I did, darling, but what I said,” Ken responded mockingly in an exaggerated version of Beverly’s posh New York accent, fanning himself with his hand as though he were some genteel socialite. “I relayed the most awful gossip about Gabriella of the Muffington clan at last night’s polo match! Can you believe a lady of her pedigree keeps running into her husband’s fists, again and again? It’s simply ghastly! Now, be a dear and pour me another mint julep.”

  Beverly’s eyes shot open in horror.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did,” Coop assured her. Lamar nodded affirmatively as well.

  “Oh, God,” Beverly replied, covering her mouth in shock. “So much of the evening is a blur. I remember fragments. I talked about rehab, and … I didn’t describe anything personal, did I?”

  “That depends. Does your sex life count?” Ken replied with obvious relish.

  Beverly’s face turned several different shades of red and purple as she wrestled with warring emotions. She sputtered, trying to find the right words as humiliation slowly won out over anger.

  “If … if you tell anybody about this, I’ll … I’ll …” she stammered, trying to regain her composure.

  “I’m gonna stop you right there,” Ken said, talking over her. “You’re not in any position to dictate. You want to buy our silence? Then keep an eye on Little Miss Green Card while we’re fishing. She seems to be doing a lone-wolf number this morning.”

  “It should only be for a few hours,” Lamar chipped in, eager to lessen the blow.

  “I don’t think she wants to talk to me,” Beverly said quietly.

  “Who said anything about talking?” Ken replied. “She’s your responsibility. And teaching these clowns how to fish is mine.”