Bentley Little - The Association

They'd arranged several days earlier to play tennis with Mike and Tina in the morning, and after a quick breakfast of Total and orange juice, they walked down to the courts, rackets in hand. It was a Sunday and it was early, but the Stewarts were already there and had obviously been warming up for some time. Mike's light blue shirt had a huge sweat stain on the back, and the court was littered with fluorescent balls.

"Practicing," Maureen whispered. "They're afraid we'll beat 'em."

"Yeah." Barry smiled thinly. Playing tennis was the last thing on his mind right now, and he was here only because Maureen had said it would be rude to cancel. "We need all the friends we can get," she told him.

They walked past the Stewarts' Acura and Barry opened the metal chain-link gate.

"Howdy neighbor!" Mike raised his racket in greeting.

"Good morning!" Maureen answered.

They stepped onto the court, the two women hugging, the men shaking hands. Barry had not yet told Mike about his encounter with Audrey, and he'd asked Maureen not to tell Tina anything either. The Stewarts and Hodges seemed to be closer to each other than either of them were to Barry and Maureen, and he could not be certain where their loyalties lay. He did not think either Mike or Tina were into anything kinky or were aware of Audrey's proclivities, but their friendship with the other couple might make them predisposed to believe any alternate version or explanation, no matter how far-fetched. And at this point, the last thing Barry needed was an eroding of his reputation.

They decided to volley first, and they split up: men on one side, women on the other. It was an easy, non taxing back-and-forth, allowing them to talk as they warmed up, and Barry described the night's excitement, explaining how Stumpy had been run over in front of their house and how the sheriff had made little effort to disguise the fact that there wouldn't be an investigation.

Mike looked taken aback. "What?"

"That's what happened. Then Hitman drove away ..." He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"That's not possible," Mike said. "I just saw Stumpy less than an hour ago."

Barry felt a familiar tingle at the back of his neck. "Stumpy's dead."

"No, he's not. I saw him."

"Where?"

"I was running the loop. You know, the same way we ran that time?" He gave Barry a warning look. "And I saw him sitting by the side of the road off Ponderosa Circle. Well, not sitting exactly. Lying. Or whatever the hell he does. Anyway, he was there and making those retard noises--"

"Mike!" Tina admonished.

"Well, they are! And, as usual, I said hi to him, pretended to be polite, and ran on by. That was it."

Mike obviously believed what he was saying, did not appear to be lying, and that was what was so disturbing. Both of them couldn't be right.

And if neither was wrong ... A man passed by. He smiled and waved.

"Hey, Travis!" Mike called out. "You heard anything! about Stumpy being killed in a hit-and-run accident?"

"Killed? I don't think so! That geek was rootin ' around in Merl's compost pile this mornin '! I had to chase him out with a shovel!"

"Thanks!" Mike called out.

The other man nodded and kept walking.

"I know what I saw," Barry insisted.

"I saw it, too," Maureen added.

Mike shrugged. "Well, I know what / saw." He shook his head. "Let's just forget about it. You two get your butts on , the other side of that net. Me and Tina are in the mood to whip 'em."

But Barry could not forget about it. His distraction probably cost them the match, but he didn't care, and after they said their good-byes and walked back up the hill to home, he told Maureen he was going for a walk.

"Oh no you're not," she said.

"What are you talking about?"

"You think you're tricky? I know what you're planning to do."

"What?" "Look for Stumpy."

"How do you do that?" he demanded, caught.

"I know you. I've lived with you all these years, and I know the way you think."

He tried to explain. "Look, we both know Stumpy's dead. We both saw it. I just want to confirm the fact."

"Why don't you call the sheriff?"

"Yeah, like we'd get an honest answer from him."

"Well..."

"You're welcome to come if you want."

Maureen shook her head. "I've had enough exercise for one day. I'm going to take a nice cool shower and read a good magazine. You can play Hardy Boys by yourself."

"Wish me luck."

"Luck."

He walked down to the bridle trail and headed up the path toward where he had first seen Stumpy. The trail ran through the forest just below Ponderosa Circle, where Mike claimed to have spotted him this morning.

He had no idea what Mike and that other guy had seen, but no matter what they thought, it had not been Stumpy, and he was going to prove it.

The dirt pathway wound through a copse of manzanitas and dipped into a muddy runoff channel. Barry avoided the mud by stepping on a series of half-protruding rocks, then followed the trail between an oversized boulder and an exposed section of hillside before it once again leveled off and continued through the trees and foliage.

He'd gone much farther than he had that first time, and he stopped for a moment to rest. As he'd expected, as he'd known, there was no sign of Stumpy. He had no idea what was going on, why anyone would try to fool others into thinking Stumpy was alive, how they could actually do such a thing, how they could physically accomplish the deception, but he had no doubt that the association was mixed up in it somehow. The motives were murky, and he couldn't figure out what anyone could hope to gain from such a ruse, but it appeared to be what was happening nonetheless.

He was about to turn back and make that call to the sheriff when he heard a noise off to the left. A heavy rustling in the bushes. Barry's heart leapt in his chest. It could have been a bird, could have been a javelina, could have been a mountain lion, could have been a hundred other things. But he knew it wasn't. He'd heard that sound before.

He recognized it.

No, he told himself. It wasn't possible. Stumpy was dead. He'd seen the broken body. Maureen had checked it. Hitman had confirmed it.

A branch snapped, leaves soughed.

This really was something out of one of his novels, and I in his mind he saw the sheriff dropping the body off at the j coroner's, saw Stumpy resurrected, saw the limbless body snaking out of the morgue, flopping up the highway in the dead of night, inching through the underbrush to get back to Bonita Vista.

There was the sound of moaning coming from somewhere around ground level, and he turned, got ready to run. What if Stumpy was a zombie?

Or a vampire? Or something worse? It was broad daylight, but he felt like a little boy confronted with the prospect of walking down a dark alley after seeing a scary movie.

Stumpy flopped onto the path, crying out.

Only... It wasn't Stumpy. It was someone else. Another dirty naked man with no arms or legs who forced himself forward with spastic thrashing movements, head and chest bobbing up and down, bloody genitals scraping dirt and twigs. Burrs and bristles were caught in the wild hair, and the face had only one eye, that one clouded and opaque. The other was a deeply hollowed out hole. Two cracked teeth were all that was left in the bruised and puffy mouth.

There was something familiar about that mutilated face, and though he was seized with panic and the instinctive urge to flee, Barry remained rooted in place, staring. He knew why Mike and that other man had been fooled. At a casual glance, even at a not-so-casual glance, this looked like Stumpy. But the differences were there if one bothered to take a look, and as the limbless man squirmed across the path toward a thicket of ferns, screaming incoherently while jagged stones scraped underbelly skin, it came to him.