Bentley Little: The Association

The road wound between two low hills covered with old-growth ponderosas before hitting the highway. Doris waited for a roofing truck to pass before turning left and heading into town.

Barry smiled. He liked the idea of having to go Into town, of it being a town instead of a city. Hell, he liked the whole damn thing. When they'd first started talking about moving out of southern California, when they'd looked at their options and discussed their preferences, this had been exactly the type of place he'd imagined, and he could hardly believe their good fortune at having discovered such a picture-perfect location.

Truth to tell,Corban wasn't much of a town. The population was somewhere around three thousand, and while there were a few restaurants and gas stations, a rundown hotel, a couple of shops, and a market, there was no Store, no fast-food franchises, no tourist traps, none of the usual amenities that made rural America palatable to city dwellers like themselves.

But he liked that.

And he knew Maureen did, too. This wasn't Aspen or Jackson Hole or Park City, one of those co-opted communities that had turned into playgrounds for Hollywood's elite and the ultra-rich. This was a genuine small town in a non trendy part of Utah, where real people had real jobs, a place where the wave of service industries cresting over the rest of the nation had not yet reached.

The real estate office was a doublewide trailer across the street from a converted house that served as the Corban library, and Doris swung into the microscopic parking lot, braking to a halt with the skid of fat tires on gravel.

Barry got out of the car and looked up at the hill where their house was.

Their house.

He was already starting to think of it as theirs, though they had not even made an offer. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

The three of them walked up the rickety outside steps into the office, where an overweight man and an underweight woman sat at desks in the larger of the trailer's two rooms, unhappily staring into space.

"Good afternoon all!" Doris announced cheerfully, and falsely happy expressions appeared on the faces of her coworkers. The man immediately picked up his phone and started dialing, the woman began shuffling papers.

"Let's go into the conference room." Doris led the way past the desks and into the trailer's other room, a smaller space dominated by what looked like a dining room table.

The agent closed the door as they sat down. "All right," she said.

"As you know, the asking price is one-ten."

"The price is a little steep," Barry said.

"Especially for a house that ugly," Maureen added.

"It needs a lot of work."

"A complete makeover."

Doris laughed. "I understand. How about I offer a hundred?"

"How about you offer ninety-five?"

"I have to tell you: there's no guarantee the seller will come down at all, let alone fifteen thousand. But let me make a few calls and see what we can do." She motioned toward a coffeepot and a pile of Styrofoam cups placed on top of a low bookshelf at the opposite end of the room. "Have some coffee if you want. I'll be back."

They waited until Doris left, closing the door behind her.

"How high are we willing to go?" Barry asked.

Maureen met his gaze. "I like that house."

"It's not a bad price even at full." He stood and started pacing around the room. "But it's a big decision. Should we be rushing into it like this? Maybe we should take a few days, think about it."

"We have thought about it. And we've been looking for a while now.

This is exactly the kind of place we wanted and, as you said, it's a fair price. And if we can get them to lower it even more..."

Barry looked out the small window. "You're right." He walked over to pour himself some coffee and grimaced as he took a sip. "How much you think they'll counter with?"

Maureen shrugged. "Who knows? I'm hoping, after all the wrangling's over, that we'll at least be able to knock four or five off."

He sat back down at the table and they waited for Doris' return.

A few minutes later, there was a knock, and Doris pushed the door open, walking in. "I called the seller," she said, "and offered ninety-five."

"And?" Barry prodded.

Doris smiled. "You've got yourselves a deal."

The first thing Barry unpacked was the stereo.

He wasn't used to the quiet, to die absence of cars and sirens and soccer game screams--the sounds of a city on a Saturday--and the silence of the country made him nervous. Besides, he thought, it would be nice to hear some tunes while they unpacked, and he set up the various components while the others continued bringing in boxes from the truck and van.

He still had cartons of vinyl albums from his college days, and he put on something they could all agree upon—Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick--cranking up the volume and facing the speakers toward the door before walking back outside.

"Whoa!" Dylan said, grinning. "Head music!"

Maureen rolled her eyes. She elbowed Barry's side as she headed into the house carrying a pile of clothes. "Thanks a lot."

She was not thrilled with the fact that Jeremy and Chuck had left their wives back in California, or that Dylan had come at all, but they'd elected to rent a giant U-Haul truck rather than hire movers, and mere was no way the two of them could have loaded and unloaded everything themselves.

Jeremy pulled a dripping six-pack out of the ice chest in his now nearly empty van. "Unpacking fuel!" he announced. "Get it while it's cold!"

The rest of them took a break while Barry made up for lost time and started unloading the U-Haul, carrying out lamps, chairs, and cartons of kitchen items. Maureen remained inside, trying to find the box containing the pots, pans, and cans of soup she'd intended to heat up for lunch.

In the driveway, Dylan, Jeremy, and Chuck had finished their beers and were tossing cans back into the van.

"That hit the spot," Chuck said.

"Sure you don't want one?" Jeremy called out.

Barry shook his head, and Jeremy closed the lid of the ice chest.

"Cool!" Dylan said. "Look at this!" He pointed over at the house's mailbox, a rural rounded red-flagger situated on top of a short pole.

Like Barry, Dylan had probably only seen such mailboxes in movies, and Barry watched as his Mend walked over, flipped the little red flag up and down, then leaned forward and pulled open the metal door.

He leaped back. "Jesus!"

"What is it?" Barry asked, hurrying over.

Dylan didn't answer, but Barry immediately saw for himself. A dead cat had been shoved into the mailbox, and its twisted head and crooked paws were facing outward, the blood-matted fur crawling with ants. A line of the insects was marching into the empty hole that had been the animal's right eye. The smell was disgusting, and he instinctively stepped back, covering his nose.

Jeremy and Chuck showed up behind them and peeked in.

"Probably just kids," Chuck said.

Jeremy whistled and shook his head. "Pretty sick kids."

Barry looked around, saw that Maureen was still in the house, and quickly closed the mailbox door. "Don't say anything to Mo," he said.

"She'll freak about this. I'll just clean it out later. I don't want to stress her out on our first day here."

Chuck and Jeremy nodded as Dylan saluted smartly. "Yes, boss," he said.

"Come on. Let's finish unpacking."

With all three of them working, they were able to pull out the big furniture--the couches and dressers and bookcases and beds--swearing as they attempted to maneuver the bulkier objects through the house's front door. They stopped for lunch, eating soup and crackers on the upper deck, then went immediately back to work, but the dead cat remained at the forefront of Barry's mind. He had no idea how he was going to get the animal out. The mailbox was too small to handle a shovel--his preferred method for disposing of dead animals--and the only thing he could think of to do was put on a pair of rubber gloves and pull out the body. He had no idea if the dead cat had any diseases, if handling a rotting corpse like that would spread contamination, and he decided he would do it this afternoon, have one of his friends help him while the other two kept Maureen occupied.