South Village (Ash McKenna) (13 page)

Looking for disciples, maybe?

“Marx, this isn’t the time,” Tibo says. “It’s definitely not the place.”

“When is the time?” he asks, spinning around. “When are you going to stop with this lazy leadership? You’re nothing but an enabler. It’s like you’re on their side.”

“This isn’t what we do here, Marx. You want to go pick a fight, go pick a fight. Do it away from here. Don’t bring violence to our doorstep.”

Marx shakes his head. “Violence showed up uninvited. Don’t be such a damn coward.”

Tibo steps forward and says something to Marx, low enough I can’t make it out, but the way Marx tenses up, I know what’s coming. He reaches his arm back, twisting his body to swing, but Tibo doesn’t wait. He throws himself into Marx’s midsection. The two of them topple over, barely missing the fire, crashing to the ground, and everyone is so shocked at the display of violence they stand there frozen.

Me and Gideon and Aesop all make it to the scrum at the same time.

Gideon puts his hands up and says, “Guys, guys,” thinking that’s going to calm the fight. I look at Aesop and point to Tibo, and Aesop gets it, grabs Tibo behind the arms and pulls him away. Marx sees the opening and reaches his fist back, to slam it into Tibo’s gut. I lock my arm into his and yank him away. He spins and falls into me. I grab him by the shirt and throw him at a picnic table, climb on top of him, press my body into his.

I raise my arm, ready to drive my fist into his jaw.

See if maybe I can break it. I bet I can.

For a moment, there’s a flash of genuine fear in his eyes. I’m about to bring my fist down when I feel the lapping of the wave at my feet, threatening to engulf me, pull me under. I loosen my grip and he sees this moment of weakness, but before he can exploit it Tibo’s voice reverberates through the clearing.

“Enough!”

Again, everyone freezes. I drop my hand and Marx jumps up, pushes me away so that there’s a little distance between us. His stare is like a drill, boring into my skin. I return it in kind.

Seems we’re on a path now, him and I.

Tibo speaks up again, says, “Everyone, that’s enough. Temperatures are running high right now. We can schedule an assembly to discuss this as a group. Right now, let’s call a pass on this.” He looks at me and Aesop. “Can you set out dinner?”

We stand there for a moment. Clothes bunched up, hair tousled. Teetering on the border of something bad. I’m ready to step over the line. Not that I want to, but it’s a gravity thing. Aesop looks frightened, which is a little surprising. Then I look down at his hands and see they’re clenched so tight they’re white and shaking.

“Can you do that,” Tibo asks, except it’s not a question.

I exhale. Pat Aesop on the shoulder. He jerks out of whatever daze he’s in and follows me to the kitchen.

N
ot a whole lot of talking goes on during dinner. People split into small groups, little islands spread across the picnic benches, heads down. I sit on a bench and chew my macaroni salad and when I’m done take out my copy of
The Monkey Wrench Gang
and flip through it. I can’t concentrate enough on the words to actually read it. I’m curious to see if there are any notes or scribbles in the margins, but it doesn’t look like it.

The book is about a bunch of environmentalists sabotaging construction sites, so between this and the Soldiers of Gaia, I’m beginning to sense a theme.

I watch Marx, too. He’s talking to people. Hushed tones, mindful of who’s around him. I keep a running tally in my head of who he talks to.

Tibo sits down next to me with a plate of food and pokes at the salad, separating the various components into piles on the plate. He eats the carrots first.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Welcome. What did you say to him?”

“That if he kept it up I’d make him leave.”

I nod my head. “So, what, you figure Marx is fomenting rebellion now?”

“‘Fomenting’. That’s a good word. SAT word.”

“I’m not just a pretty face.”

Tibo eats a little more and puts the plate down on the table next to him. “Marx is a dangerous asshole and I need you right now.”

“I’m out of here in less than two weeks. Leaving on a jet plane.”

“I don’t care what you do in two weeks. I need you right now.”

I laugh a little bit at that.

“What so funny?” he asks.

“The John McClane Paradox of Bullshit. Why does the same stuff keep happening to the same guy?”

“I don’t get that reference.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?
Die Hard
.”

“Never saw it.”

“I don’t know why we’re friends,” I tell him.

Tibo picks his plate back up. Eats his radishes, then the sliced bell peppers. Katashi walks by with his plate, a big pile of macaroni salad on it. He looks at me and smiles and says, “
Arigato
.” I nod at him and he wanders off.

“So what’s this thing with the deed?” I ask Tibo.

“What do you mean?”

“The deed. The land. Aesop told me about the dispute. Pete was leading the charge and he ends up dead.”

“And you think I killed him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You thought it.”

“Look, man, I know you didn’t kill anyone. Takes a certain type to kill a person. You’re not it. So, tell me what the story is.”

Tibo sighs, puts the plate down, stretches his arms up over his head. “This is the problem when you encourage people to be part of a community. Sooner or later, the inmates want to run the asylum.”

“Community and power structures sound like opposite things,” I tell him.

“It can’t just be a free for all,” he says. “Someone needs to be in charge.”

“So why not do what they ask. Give communism a try.”

Tibo folds his hands and leans forward. “Communism always sounds better than it works. There needs to be a hand steering the ship. And I don’t care if it’s selfish, it was my money that bought this place. I want what everyone else wants. For this place to be sustainable and separate. I don’t have some nefarious plan to build hotels here. I’m not exploiting anything.”

“To ride out the end of the world.”

“C’mon. That was mostly drunken ranting.”

“No it wasn’t. Not completely, anyway.”

Tibo pauses, picking through his words. Wanting to choose what he says carefully. “Things aren’t going great, anywhere. The world is falling apart. People are making bad decisions, and those decisions are making things worse. Pick up any newspaper on any given day and it’s writ large. This…” He puts his hand up, gestures to the surrounding area. “This is the answer. Small, sustainable living. Rediscovering the meaning of community. Backing each other up. Making things.”

“Nice speech.” I point into the clearing. “You ought to be making it to them.”

He nods. “Tomorrow. The ship is listing a little. It hasn’t capsized. Tomorrow we’ll see if we can stabilize it. Right now I just want everyone to eat and relax and get a good night’s sleep.” He hops down to his feet and turns. “What kind of person does it take?”

“What kind of what now?” I ask.

“You said it takes a special kind of person to kill someone and I’m not that person. So, what kind of person does it take?”

I can barely see his face, the way he’s backlit by the fire. I can’t tell how he’s looking at me.

“A bad one,” I tell him.

He nods, heads back into the mix of people.

I sit for a little while and watch. People talking and laughing. Being friends. Being normal, even after what the camp went through today. It’s incredible how people can fall back into normal so quick. It makes me sad. Because there’s a part of me that knows I can’t be a part of normal.

Because of Wilson, and what I did.

And there it is.

The picnic table disappears out from under me as the wave hits.

Pushing me under. Roaring in my ears, threatening to pull me down into the dark. Filling my eyes and nose and throat. I’m tumbling, can’t tell up from down. I reach out, stumble into the dirt, then get to my feet and run to the kitchen, into the pantry, to my stash of whiskey.

The bottle is nearly empty now. If I take one big swig now and one at bed I might be able to make it through until the morning, when I can hit someone up for a ride and get into town.

This can work.

I suck down a big mouthful. The act of pressing the bottle to my lips calms me too, because I know what’s next. The bliss of numbness. I pour the rest of the bottle into my flask and jam it into my pocket. Head outside, grab a flashlight, step onto the boardwalk and follow the circle of blue-white light back to the bus. To sleep. With any luck, a deep, empty sleep.

When I’m far enough away from camp that I can’t see the fire, I click off the light and stand there in the dark. Feel those two pairs of eyes on me. Consider turning around and confronting them, but that’s the problem: The eyes are always behind me, no matter which direction I turn.

I click the light on and walk.

Okay, plan for tomorrow.

Step one, find someone with a car who can drive me to town to buy a shitload of whiskey. As much as I can manage so that I never run out again. Maybe Aesop. He has a car, and seems to have some kind of hard-on for getting me to be social.

Step two, figure out what exactly a book cipher is. That’s going to require a visit to Sunny and Moony, which, truthfully, is not such a bad prospect. As long as the feds didn’t get into their set-up. Because I’m not touching the group computer again.

Shit. My phone. Left it back in the kitchen. It’s plugged into an outlet on a high shelf, out of view, so probably no one’s going to find it. I consider going back for it, though, so I can play at figuring out the cipher, when there’s a shuffle behind me.

Some giant angry bug stalking me, no doubt.

Or else it’s the wave, sneaking back up.

I take out the flask, to help with the walk back. As I near the end of the boardwalk, there’s a creak and a rush behind me and something slams into my back, throwing me forward.

The flashlight and flask go flying from my hands into the brush as I slam into the ground and get a mouthful of dirt. I try to get up but someone climbs onto my back, straddling me and pressing me down, going for my pants.

I pull myself forward but I have no leverage. Whoever it is, he’s strong.

Something hard hits me in the back of the head. My forehead smashes into the ground. The world gets a little fuzzy and I feel something hot and wet on my face. The weight comes off and I get myself standing and I’m alone, footsteps receding in the dark.

No flashlight. That’s bad enough.

But my copy of
The Monkey Wrench Gang
is gone. So is the whiskey. The open bottle flung from my hand, the contents no doubt spilled into the earth.

I don’t know which of these things is worse.

T
he rope lights running along the roof of the bus cast everything in a sickly blue glow. Before my light option gets downgraded to candles, I need to make sure the cut on my head isn’t too bad, because blood is now dripping into my left eye. I pull out a shaving mirror and get close to the light. It’s small, near my hairline. Not so deep it’ll need stitches.

There’s a first aid kit on the dash, next to the steering wheel. I get that, open it up, pull out some medicated wipes to clean it out, then use adhesive strips to close it. A few minutes and a few stings later, I’ve got it situated.

I sit on my cot. Consider heading straight back for camp to confront Marx, who I’m going to assume jumped me and took the book. But if I do that I’m definitely going to beat him until his face looks like hamburger meat, and that’s not productive for anyone. I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold even though it’s warm and a little humid. I don’t have that security blanket of booze and it’s not a nice feeling. I try not to think too hard about it.

Focus on the task at hand. The things I know.

Pete dies. Pete has a secret code. I find the book that’s probably maybe the key to the secret code, and someone attacks me and takes it. Means whatever he’s planning, he wasn’t alone. Given Marx and his dumb fucking outburst, safe bet on at least him being a part of it.

Next: The FBI, or at least we think it’s the FBI, comes storming in here, fucks up our shit, takes a bunch of stuff, quizzes us on militant environmentalists. Maybe Pete was with said militant environmentalists. Marx too. Clearly Marx didn’t give up anything during the interrogation, though it’s a little weird they didn’t keep him, and that they sent us back like nothing happened.

Maybe they weren’t looking to do anything but scare us. It was all theatrics, meant to let us know they were on to the Soldiers of Gaia, and they were not fucking around. A little shock and awe to keep the hippies docile.

Okay. Next.

And…

Fuck, I need a drink.

There’s nothing outside but a huge swath of darkness, and questions I can’t answer, or don’t want to answer, so I pull my legs up onto the cot and yank the string to kill the rope lights. Close my eyes.

Vow to not let my guard down again.

And to pick up more alcohol tomorrow.