The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  Lamar looked for some way to announce his presence. He spotted an egg-shaped rock at his feet and kicked it a few feet. Ken started and looked over his shoulder at Lamar, sending his spray veering wildly to the right. He saw who it was and turned back to face the tree as he did his business.

  “What do you want?” Ken’s back asked. “You here to shake the dew off it?”

  Lamar removed Ken’s bomber jacket from his shoulders as he approached and draped it over the branch of a nearby tree.

  “I’m returning your jacket.”

  Ken snorted.

  “The mantle of leadership proved too much, huh? Well, if you’re looking to apologize, you can forget about it. All three of you are now on my permanent shit list.”

  Lamar shook his head.

  “Actually, I’m returning it because it doesn’t fit.”

  “You could have done that back at camp,” Ken said. “Why are you really here?”

  “I thought we should discuss something.”

  “Yeah?” Ken intoned, clearly unconvinced of Lamar’s intentions. “Like what?”

  “The Series 7,” Lamar replied.

  Ken chuckled lightly to himself as his stream started to peter out.

  “Sooo, you want to learn about trading securities from the master, huh?”

  “No,” Lamar responded evenly. “I’m wondering why the CEO of a brokerage has a how-to book on passing the Series 7.”

  Ken cocked his head to the side quizzically as though he were still trying to process what he’d heard.

  “Come again?”

  “The book in your suitcase,” Lamar continued, his tone rapidly turning accusatory. “It’s a test for a broker’s trading license. How is it you don’t have one already?”

  Ken didn’t reply immediately. He shook his hips as he finished and zipped himself up.

  “You went through my personal belongings?” Ken finally responded, his voice turning guttural in anger. “I’ve drop-kicked people for less.”

  Lamar seemed unfazed by the threat.

  “I may have peeked.”

  Ken growled menacingly, his back still turned to Lamar.

  “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t rearrange your face.”

  Lamar smiled grimly, sensing Ken’s unease.

  “You don’t run a brokerage at all, do you?” he pressed. “That’s why you couldn’t keep the number of employees straight. Did you really think …”

  Lamar was cut off as Ken suddenly whirled around and pinned him against the same tree his jacket was hanging from. His hands dug painfully into Lamar’s shoulders, and his eyes burned with the same explosive rage that Wade exuded. His rank breath came out in steaming puffs of animus.

  “You just don’t know when to shut your mouth, do you, you little jackoff?” Ken roared between heaving breaths of barely controlled wrath. Despite the danger, Lamar knew he still held the trump card, and decided now was the time to lay it down.

  “Careful, Ken,” he warned. “One word from me and your whole charade goes up in smoke.”

  Ken seethed, and for a moment Lamar worried that he’d overplayed his hand.

  “You tell anyone and I’ll …

  “You’ll what?” Lamar interrupted. “Beat me so bad I can’t speak?”

  “Fucking A!” Ken fairly screamed in that guttural voice again, spittle flying from his lips onto Lamar’s cheeks.

  “And how will you explain my injuries to the others? You think they’ll just accept your version of events?” Lamar replied icily. “You’ll be brought up on assault charges the minute we make it out of here. Good luck getting your precious Series 7 license with a conviction on your record.”

  Ken’s face turned scarlet with rage. The vein on his forehead bulged in rhythm to his sputtering as he struggled to form coherent words, swept up in a maelstrom of impotent fury. Lamar just stared at him coldly, refusing to be intimidated.

  Ken dropped his right hand from Lamar’s shoulder only to ball it up into a fist and rear back. Lamar continued to stare him down, even as the cocked fist on the periphery of his vision suddenly shot forward at frightening speed. Half a second later his head snapped to one side as Ken’s fist connected cleanly with his jawline. Hundreds of flashing lights danced before his eyes as he tasted his own blood. But Lamar never broke eye contact, even as Ken reared back again.

  “You can’t punch your way out of this one.”

  Lamar’s voice rang out with such clarity and conviction that it broke through Ken’s mania, startling him just as he was about to lash out again. Ken stood there, his fist primed to strike, shaking like a leaf as dueling emotions overwhelmed him. After several seconds the murderous hate in his eyes vanished, replaced in a blink by fear and self-doubt.

  The color started to seep out of Ken’s face as he lowered his eyes and his fist. His other hand, which had maintained a white-knuckle grip on Lamar’s shoulder this whole time, slowly relaxed its hold before falling limply to his side. He was beaten and he knew it.

  “What do you want?” Ken asked in a voice that was no longer guttural, but quavered instead with uncertainty.

  Lamar smoothed out the lapels of his bubble jacket and smiled.

  “Simple,” he replied confidently. “An end to your reign of dickishness.”

  * * * * * *

  It was nearly 6 p.m. before the pair made it back to camp. Their journey had passed in near-perfect silence — neither one had anything to say that hadn’t already come out during their confrontation — and Lamar was looking forward to seeing the others. He was tired, he was sweaty, he had a blister forming on his left heel and he was desperately hungry. Ken, his unwilling companion, was so sullen that he’d spoken only two words, and that was just to give directions.

  The pair came in from the south as the shadows started to lengthen, following the dirt road leading into camp. Lamar flashed back to the first time he’d taken this road: bouncing around in John’s van, staring out the window at a primitive and hopelessly dilapidated campsite. Lamar smiled at the memory. After spending most of the day in the wilderness, this place now looked like Shangri-La to his weary eyes.

  As they drew closer, Lamar could see Gaby and Coop in the distance, talking animatedly as they ate by the central firepit. Every so often, one of them would glance pensively eastward, presumably waiting for them to show. As Lamar drew closer, he started to pick up snippets of their conversation.

  Coop waved to Ken and Lamar as they approached the outskirts of the campgrounds. Gaby turned and motioned for the two to join them.

  “Glad you could make it,” Coop said, handing Lamar a can of chicken corn chowder and Ken a can of lima beans. “Hope you don’t mind if we started without you.”

  “Sorry, we strayed nearly a quarter-mile south,” Lamar explained. “It’s tough to navigate with the sun in your eyes.”

  “What happened there?” Gaby inquired, pointing to Lamar’s blood-encrusted split lip.

  “Nothing,” Lamar said as he glanced over at Ken, who was too busy wolfing down his dinner to notice. “I tripped, is all.”

  Lamar stared glumly at his unheated dinner for a long moment. Coop saw his reaction and anticipated his next words.

  “We’ll build a fire in the teepee tonight,” he promised. “We’ve already gathered the kindling and wood for it, though I doubt you’ll want to wait that long to eat.”

  Lamar nodded and started spooning food into his mouth.

  “So, who takes first shift tonight?” Gaby asked as she rubbed her arms and shivered against the rapidly encroaching evening chill.

  “Do we need to?” Coop asked. “I mean, Wade’s badly hurt. He wouldn’t try anything now, right?”

  Lamar shook his head slowly.

  “Logically, no,” he responded between mouthfuls. “But crazy people aren’t logical. We need to assume he’s still a threat.”

  “If you had seen him today, you wouldn’t even ask,” Gaby said. “He didn’t try to kill me out of anger, or even for spor
t. All I was to him was prey.”

  She paused, shivering at the memory this time instead of the cold.

  Lamar polished off his meager dinner and started running his finger around the inside of the can, desperate to scoop up every last morsel. When he was finished, he wiped the finger down the front of his T-shirt.

  “You keep that up and you’re shirt’s going to be another color before we get out of here,” Coop joked.

  Lamar looked down and saw he’d stained the left breast of his Pwn U shirt with sauce, partially obscuring the troll face meme in the center. On the right breast were grease stains from the fish they’d eaten the first night.

  “I’ll be sure to match the stains next time,” Lamar responded blandly. “Is Beverly still down in the floodplain, with all of the … dead stuff?”

  Coop nodded solemnly.

  “Just sitting on a rock and staring off into space,” he replied. “I don’t think she’s left that spot this whole time.”

  “Even for Beverly, that’s not normal behavior,” Lamar opined, slightly worried. “Someone should talk to her, in case she’s depressed or suicidal.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Coop said. “I’m not going down there again. That place gave off seriously bad vibes.”

  “You better believe I won’t do it,” Gaby unvolunteered. “Not after the things she said last night. Drunk or not, she can stew alone all she wants.”

  Coop looked over at Ken.

  “Ken, you’re being unusually quiet.”

  “Is that a crime?” he muttered sullenly, staring at his feet.

  “Why don’t you talk to her?” Lamar suggested.

  Ken flashed him a dirty look. Coop closed his eyes, expecting an endless torrent of profanity and blustery threats, topped off with a vaguely racist nickname for good measure. To his astonishment, Ken said nothing. He merely made a guttural noise of general disgust, stood up and headed west toward the floodplains. Coop and Gaby watched him depart, wide-eyed.

  “You just became my personal hero,” Coop gushed once Ken was safely out of earshot. “How’d you do that without a chair and a bullwhip?”

  “St … stop it,” Lamar stammered. “I don’t like people making fun of me.”

  “He wasn’t,” Gaby reassured him. “You don’t realize just how much you’ve grown since coming here. Three days ago, you could barely look Ken in the face. Now you’re giving him orders. We’re both impressed.”

  Lamar realized they were both serious and reddened in embarrassment.

  “So, how’d you do it?” Coop pressed. “What’s your secret?”

  Lamar bit his lip pensively as though he were trying to come up with a diplomatic answer.

  “It wasn’t my secret that was at issue,” Lamar finally replied. “Ken and I talked, and I think we have an understanding.”

  “But are we good?” Coop asked. “Have we heard the last from General Disarray?”

  “I think so,” Lamar replied, nursing his split lip. “If I’m right, he won’t be giving us any more trouble.”

  * * * * * *

  Ken ventured down into the floodplain just as the sun started to kiss the horizon, painting the western sky in fiery hues of yellow and orange, while the colors overhead slowly bled away, replacing the brilliant blue of day with twilight’s more subdued shades of blue and pink.

  He found Beverly sitting on a broad and flat rock just past the archery range in this strange no man’s land, ignoring her alien surroundings in favor of watching the sunset. As before, the minute he set foot on the contaminated soil all external sounds ceased, as if he were stepping into a containment bubble. Before long he also felt that sense of nausea that threw off his equilibrium and made it seem like he was walking with two left feet. He did his best to shrug off the sensations as he joined Beverly on the rock.

  She made no effort to acknowledge him as he sat beside her; she just continued staring blankly at the sunset.

  “Here,” he said, plunking a can of lima beans down between them.

  He leaned forward slightly to stare into her face for any sign of a response. He saw nothing.

  “You still beating yourself up over last night?” he asked. “And today?”

  No response.

  “We’ve all done stupid shit we regret the next day,” Ken continued, as if nothing was amiss. “The stories I could tell you from my college years would have you …”

  Beverly turned to face Ken, and his next words died in his throat. Bathed in the harsh light of the setting sun, Beverly’s age lines and crow’s feet were magnified, making her appear far older than she really was. But it was her eyes that shocked Ken into silence. They looked sunken and haunted, as if she were one unkind word away from slitting her wrists.

  “Did the others send you to find out if I’m crazy?” she asked after several uncomfortable seconds. In Ken’s ears, the question almost sounded like a plea for affirmation that she truly was sane.

  “First off, nobody sends me anywhere. I come and go as I please,” Ken insisted. “Second, I don’t think you’re crazy. Useless, maybe, but not crazy.”

  Beverly didn’t respond. She just kept staring at him with her pained eyes.

  “I don’t know how you can stand it down here,” Ken volunteered, growing uncomfortable. “The lack of other noises and the weird sensation in the pit of your stomach. Just … ugh.”

  “Those things I told you about in the dream, those … creatures,” Beverly said softly, as though she were speaking to herself. “That was no dream. They did all this,” she said, motioning to the radically altered landscape. “And when they return, they’ll do the same thing to us. And thinking I’m crazy doesn’t change that.”

  “If you’re so convinced that these imaginary bogeymen are coming back, then why aren’t you running?”

  Beverly didn’t answer. She just lowered her head to her chest and started slowly rocking back and forth as if she were trying to comfort herself.

  “Look, I honestly don’t give two shits what you’re going through or whether you’re stark raving mad,” Ken finally admitted, dropping any pretense of small talk. “What I do care about is that you have the same problem as me: we’re both on the outs with the group.”

  Beverly raised her head, revealing a new emotion to Ken besides the desperation and fear painted on her face: a tiny flicker of curiosity that shone through her passive acceptance of some terrible imagined fate.

  “Since when did that matter to you?” she asked.

  “Since the fat one started calling the shots. Let me show you something.”

  Ken reached into his pocket and fished out his wallet. He opened it and pulled a business card from the right billfold that he held out for Beverly.

  The curiosity in Beverly’s face quickly ebbed.

  “Are you giving me your shrink’s number?”

  “Just read it,” Ken instructed.

  Beverly took the card and studied it.

  Ken R. Berman

  President and CEO

  Berman Investment Solutions

  “Okay,” Beverly said, handing the card back. “So what?”

  “It’s a fake. I had it printed at Kinkos. Something I give to the ladies and the occasional scrub investor,” Ken confided as he reached into the left billfold for another business card. “This is the real one.”

  Beverly examined it, her curiosity piqued once more.

  Ken R. Berman

  Junior Sales Associate

  Shales & Wilder

  “You’re a glorified salesman?” she asked, puzzled both by the subterfuge and his inexplicable admission. “Why the façade?”

  “My father is a … difficult man,” Ken explained. “You probably guessed that already from hearing all his maxims, but they don’t fully convey just how demanding he is. As and Bs weren’t enough in school. I had to have straight As. If the neighbor’s boy ran the mile in seven minutes, I had to do it in six. Anything less than perfection was met with rejection. When I didn’t make fi
rst cut for varsity football, he changed the locks and refused to let me in the house for two weeks.”

  Beverly gawked at the story, her depression and anxiety momentarily submerged by this tale of casual child abandonment.

  “So senior year, I get an acceptance letter from his alma mater,” Ken continued. “Full scholarship. I’d never seen him so proud. It was the first time he ever treated me like an equal. That feeling … it was like mainlining heroin. I had to have more. By my junior year, I was struggling to make dean’s list so I joined a test-sharing ring. I was caught and expelled. I couldn’t tell him so I … kept pretending to go. When I ‘graduated,’ I naturally told him I’d gotten a plum assignment at a top brokerage. Things kinda snowballed from there. The lies kept getting bigger … and more expensive. Successful brokers don’t drive 12-year-old Audis, so I started leasing a Lamborghini. A loft in the East Village. Expensive restaurants. Sales associates don’t make much, so I went underwater pretty fast. I took out multiple bank loans, half a dozen credit cards, anything to keep the party going.”

  “The simple fact is, I didn’t come here for a nature retreat,” Ken admitted. “In two weeks, I have to file for bankruptcy. I’m going to lose everything. And I’m here because I don’t know how to face my old man.”

  Beverly’s expression was midway between pity and confusion. After a few moments of struggle, she finally raised the question that had been nagging her ever since he’d started his sudden, unprompted confession.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because Lamar figured it out and now he’s holding it over my head. As long as he’s in charge, my days are numbered. And after last night’s drunken escapades, I’m guessing yours are as well.”

  Beverly looked away. The shame of her conduct was still fresh in her mind, if not the details.

  “Alone, neither of us can do much against a unified group,” Ken said. “But together, we just might upend the status quo. Interested?”

  Beverly paused to consider the offer.

  “What do I have to do?” she finally asked.

  Ken smiled wickedly, his eyes narrowing to fine points. In the light of the setting sun, he looked truly malicious.