Lauren Groff - Arcadia

The Pigs go into Arcadia House and come out with Harrison, bellowing, icy Midge. They come out with Hank and Horse, who are clean-living, who don’t do drugs.

Planted, someone mutters nearby.

Bit spins, squinting for Hannah; in a wave of despair, he remembers the pounds of weed she’d been holding. He closes his eyes and prays that she had given it all to the others to sell last night, that she is somewhere calm, on a hike in the woods. That, at the very least, Bit and his parents can find some way to escape together. There is a pressure on his shoulders, Helle grabbing him from behind, her arms around his neck and her smell of vanilla, her dreadlocks slithering over his shoulder. He sees Hannah beside the Bakery, shouting in the face of a boy-cop. He dissolves with relief and feels Helle’s warm breath in his ear, saying, Oh, God, Oh, God .

He is glad Helle can’t see his face. He is crying. Not because of the police, not for the dead boy, not for all the people he loves being yanked, bewildered, away. For Helle, for her thievery of Arcadia’s future, for what he remembers of the night before, the men in the leather jackets.

He can’t stand for her to touch him; he can’t shrug her off. He stands suffering her arms around him, unable, just yet, to comfort her. He watches Cole and Dylan holding hands, until he can bear to look at the scene again.

The rest of the Pregnant Ladies are running as fast as they can up to the Octagonal Barn. All together, shouting, they strip themselves naked, veiny and rashy and swollen, silvery with stretchmarks, each one with the most gorgeous breasts he has ever seen. Now everyone is shedding clothes. Helle’s arms cross as she lifts the hem of her shirt. Bit looks away, sick to death of it all.

Come on, Bit, Helle says, removing her arms from the buds on her chest, and he takes off his clothes, slowly, covering himself, afraid both of smallness and of sudden expansion. Ike runs up, grinning, and swings his dick so it flap-flap-flaps against his thighs.

None of this bothers the police at all. The ones who usually take photos of bodies are now snapping photos of the naked hippies. From afar, Bit can see the police in the Circenses Singers shed take out the papier-mâché puppets and slit them, looking for a stash, and Leif falls on his knees and rips at his white hair.

The crowd hushes: the police emerge from the Eatery with Handy, in a holey army shirt. His face is pillow-creased, drowsy as a koala’s, his hands are bunched at the wrist and cuffed. He is murmuring instructions to Fiona, who is walking beside him, her chestnut hair so filled with light it seems like it’s on fire.

Bit looks at Ike and Helle, frozen in the naked moil. Dad, screams Helle, and when Handy doesn’t look up, she screams, Handy! and Handy hears and searches for her. When he sees them, he gives both of his younger children a broad smile, that poor gray eyetooth flashing. I’ll be back, kids, don’t worry, he shouts. Handy is barefoot, in boxer shorts. The officer hits his head hard on the edge of the doorframe when he pushes him into the squad car.

One last pale wave in the window. Then the lead car pulls off, followed by the vans and buses they brought in to cart the people away. All that is left is a ring of yellow tape in the tomato patch, detectives still stomping the plants, Saucy Sally leaning against Titus, telling her story again, her newest baby as wide-eyed as a lemur in her sling.

Bit touches Helle’s thin arm, but now she shies away.

One hundred fifty-three were arrested for drug charges. Five for outstanding warrants. Twenty-six for resisting arrest. Fifteen minors, all runaways, sent back to their parents or juvenile court. Handy charged with fifteen counts of unlawfully harboring a minor. Twenty-four counts of aiding and abetting drug transactions. Five counts of possession. For the boy’s death, a count of criminally negligent manslaughter: Handy, at least nominally, owns Arcadia’s land. He allowed a party to happen at which drugs were freely available. Astrid goes to the courthouse and comes back at night, her face raw. She heads to the Biz Unit and makes a call on their telephone, and when she comes down to the Eatery, Leif and Helle and Ike are waiting for her. Around them, a protective shield has gathered: Hannah and Abe, Midge and Marilyn and Eden, Lila and Hiero, Sweetie and Cole and Dylan. Fiona, far from Astrid. Bit, of course.

Well, Astrid says. I have money for the bail. Handy’s, that’s all I could get. My mother, Margrete, in Norway. Old witch.

Helle says, Conditions?

There are always conditions with Margrete, Astrid sighs. One, I must divorce Handy, as she has always wished. And, two, you children go to her in Trondheim.

I’m not going, says Leif, his strange elfin face tight against its bones. I’d kill myself.

You are eighteen. You are not a child. It is your choice, Astrid snaps.

Me neither, Helle says, and Ike repeats.

Oh, yes, you are, Astrid says. Margrete always gets her way.

But what about Handy? says Ike, trying not to cry. It’s not fair.

Astrid strokes Ike’s fuzzy cropped head. She touches Helle’s face with both cupped hands. Handy wouldn’t want you to see the trial, all that. Norway will be good for you. There will be nobody to care for you here when Handy goes to jail.

The Eatery seems to grow so small it presses against their skin. In the weak light, every single one of them looks wan.

The visitors ebb away. Some of the Runaways leave with them, some of the Newbies. A number of Wolfs have encountered a number of Meadows and vanish into the sunset. Dorotka shocks them all. She finds a mate among the revelers at the concert, the dead boy in her garden proves the tipping point, and she packs a bag and, weeping in Polish, goes. As soon as she does, the aphids move in and coat the soy yellow.

Some of the charges are dropped. Most people make bail from outside Arcadia, but many are furious that the community to which they’d dedicated their lives wouldn’t bail them out. Whole families disappear into the night. There are beds open in the Ado Unit. Among the Old Arcadians who leave are Pooh and her mother, who vanish in the early morning after Cockaigne Day. Cole and Ike both look guilty when they hear the girl is gone.

Bit comes in from his Photography Tutorial with Mikele. He finds Hannah alone at a table in the Eatery, head in her hands. Hannah? Bit says. What’s wrong?

She stands, wordless, and leads him by the hand to the pantry. The shelves, which are usually stocked full, now shine, mostly bare. There is vegetable oil, white sugar, some spice.

We have no more food, Hannah says. We have tofu. And bread. And a few preserves from last season. We’re going to starve to death unless we come up with something. Nobody has sent back money from the Plot, and I don’t even know how much of it was confiscated.

Her voice, serrated, hits Bit in the gut. What about the Motor Pool? Bit says. Can’t they sell an extra car or something?

Extra? Hannah says. Have we ever had extra anything?

Pregnant Ladies and Trippies and mud, Bit says to make her laugh. He can’t help it: he thinks of Hannah’s secret cache, the miniatures in their frames, the Belgian lace, the tea set. As if she knows what he’s about to say, she says, There is only so much you can sell before you start to sell yourself.

What about sending Monkeypower out? he says, and she says, Bit, take a look at the fields. This morning we sent out a hundred of our best workers. That will feed all six hundred of us for a few days. Then, nothing.

Even when she walks back up to her room, Bit wants to call after her, Let me talk to Helle. Let me get back whatever weed she has left, or the money she made.

But he can’t: he can’t approach Helle without seeing the men in the trees, Helle’s face cometing off into the dark. He can’t go near. Helle first looks wounded at his coldness, then she too stays away.