Bentley Little - The Association

He'd wondered where Hitman's deputies were, and just \ as the volunteers appeared to be gaining the upper hand, the lawmen drove up, sirens blaring, lights on. They were forced to park behind the townies' vehicles, which were blocking the road. The flashing lights of their cruisers reflected off metal roofs and shone through glass windshields, bathing the entire area in garishly surrealistic circus colors, while a deep, distorted voice boomed through a megaphone:

"Break it up! Break it up!"

Uniformed deputies ran between the cars and pickups, nightsticks raised, and began to disperse the crowd, collaring and arresting those who refused to obey the orders to cease and desist. Unmolested, undisturbed, the shirtless volunteers, many of them battered and bleeding, turned and walked back through the gateway into Bonita Vista.

Barry looked over at Hitman , and in the strobing red and blue of the lights, he saw the sheriff smile.

Frank had moved between Maureen and Barry. "I heard you tried to fuck my wife," he whispered.

"Elizabeth Dyson's filing a complaint against you with the board," Neil Campbell said on the other side of him. "Claims you forced her into giving you a BJ after Ray's funeral."

"That's a lie!" Barry yelled. "You're both lying!"

The men moved away, laughing, disappearing into the crowd. Someone passed by, bumped him. Another shoved a hand in his back. The scene was becoming more chaotic, and though there weren't nearly as many people here, he was reminded of the climax of Day of the Locust.

He looked desperately around for a friendly face. Mike or one of those anti-association people from Ray's parties'. But there were only antagonistic glares from unfamiliar individuals, and the uniformity of this response made him think that perhaps it was dictated, perhaps it had been ordered.

"Stay here," he told Maureen. He started toward the trees, toward the board. The robed men were watching him, their wrinkled faces serious but their eyes mirthful.

It hadn't been distance or a trick of the light, he realized as he approached. Something about them did look peculiar. Liz was right.

Something was off.

"You must be Barry Welch," the president said as he came closer.

Barry pointed a finger at him. "Don't fuck with me!" he ordered.

Jasper Calhoun smiled slightly, nodded.

Someone bumped him, and he turned to look at the gathered residents and the milling volunteers, but he could not see who'd done it. He again faced the board.

They were gone.

Simultaneously, the lights of the guard shack winked off, and the strobing red and blue of the cruiser lights diminished as several deputies drove their vehicles and prisoners away. Around him, individual flashlights were turning down toward the pavement, moving up the road as homeowners started to disperse. The old men had faded into the woods, and he did not understand how they'd been able to disappear so quickly. Had they turned and run, dashing through the trees, their robes flapping behind them? He couldn't imagine such a retreat by those pompous old men, but the only alternatives were scenarios more appropriate for one of his novels, and those he didn't want to think about.

"They're watching you," a woman said to him as he passed by, and Barry recognized the old lady who lived across from the tennis court. He didn't know if it was a friendly warning or an intimidating threat.

Barry strode angrily back toward where Maureen stood, now talking to Mike and Tina. The people before him moved sullenly aside, strangers casting suspicious and hostile glances in his direction.

"Is everything okay?" Mike asked worriedly.

Barry shook his head.

"What did you do?" Maureen asked. "What did you say to them?"

"It's war," he told her.

Maureen finished answering the five measly E-mails that her web page had generated over the past three days, knowing even as she typed them that their senders would not engage her services. It was disheartening to realize that something on which she had spent so much time and for which she'd had such high hopes was simply not panning out.

Thank God for her California clients.

She leaned back in her chair, postponing leaving the room. In here, she was cushioned from the realities of the outside world. She could pretend that she was not in Bonita Vista, that she was merely an accountant in an office, and that the things happening on the other side of these walls did not affect or concern her in any way.

Barry was still angry, still stubbornly defiant, but he was worried as well.

Maybe it was time to give up, she'd told him, maybe they should return to California.

That was the wrong thing to say.

"Who's going to fight them if not us?" he demanded. "Would you just abandon Liz and all the other people terrorized by these murderous bastards? We're not just doing this for us! This is our chance to make a difference, to stand up and be counted!"

She'd nodded, raised her hands in acquiescence. She knew better than to press the issue and paint him into a corner If she left him an out, he might eventually take it, might: eventually see that it was the smartest of all possible options and that they could always continue their Quixotic battle from afar.

She shut off her computer, switched off the monitor. The strangest thing, the most unsettling thing, was their temporary alliance with the association. It felt wrong to her. And to Barry, too, she knew. The association had poisoned dogs in town and, intentionally or unintentionally, two children had been killed as well. The sheriff had refused to do anything about it, so families, friends, and neighbors had taken matters into their own hands and staged a rally to draw attention to the problem and intimidate the guilty into giving themselves up. It was a just cause, a moral purpose, and she and Barry and all of their neighbors had only opposed it because they were concerned for their own safety and for the condition of their houses.

They were practicing self-defense, went the rationalization, the most natural and legitimate reaction a human could have. But it did not feel that way to her. It felt as though they were shallow, self-absorbed assholes more concerned about their own real estate values than the lives of other people's children.

She and Barry had participated unwillingly, as a result of a threat, but they had participated nonetheless, and that made them morally culpable. She felt guilty about that, and she wished to Christ that they'd defied the association, that they'd at least attempted to stay neutral by remaining home and sitting it out--even if they'd had to pay a fine. They should not have lent their support or given their tacit approval to anything the association had done.

To her surprise, they were still able to shop at the market in Corban .

Even after all that had happened. It had been a nerve-racking trip for groceries yesterday when they'd made their first post-rally trek into town, and they'd invited Mike and Tina, and the Stewarts' friends Lou and Stacy, to go with them in case there was trouble, but neither the clerk at the checkout stand nor the store's two other customers had said a word. They'd bought enough groceries for the next two weeks with no problem.

Perhaps the sheriff's deputy stationed by the cash register had something to do with it.

Even if it was only Wally Addison.

They were already making contingency plans, though. Mule Park was the closest town to Corban , and while it was forty miles to the south, they could easily make the trip there and back in the space of a morning and stock up enough food and necessities for a month. The people of Corban had to be resentful of Bonita Vista residents and of the sheriff's obvious partiality, and it was only a matter of time before that resentment bubbled up and boiled over.