South Village (Ash McKenna) (15 page)

“Yes and no. I was wondering if you have a storage room or something. Maybe some extra copies floating around? I’m looking for a particular edition of the book.”

“Which one?”

“Not sure. All I know is the cover. It’s a paperback, with a dead end sign and a winding road. The coloring is like a sepia tone.”

“Harper Perennial,” she says. “Published around 2000, I think.”

“You’ve got an incredible memory.”

She tilts her head. “It helps. And I just happen to really like the book. Sorry to say, what we’ve got out is what we’ve got. And this is used books only. We can’t order, we just get what comes in. If I find one, I’ll put it aside for you.”

“Thanks. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in town, but thanks.”

We head outside and climb into the car. Aesop turns it on and cranks the AC. We sit there for a minute before he asks, “So what does this have to do with Pete?”

“I found something in his tree house. A code, which that FBI asshole referred to as a book cipher. I also found out that Pete had been carrying around a copy of
The Monkey Wrench Gang
. I got the copy he’d been reading. The person who attacked me last night took it. The cipher is gone, too, but I took a picture of it first.” I pat my phone. “Still got that.”

“So whoever attacked you has one piece, the feds have the other piece, and neither side knows how those pieces fit together,” he says.

“Yup.”

“Well, we’ve got that much on them. I’ll tell you, this shit is really starting to line up nicely.”

“How so?”

“Look, I don’t know anything about these Soldiers of Gaia, but I do know a lot about the Earth Liberation Front. They use book ciphers to communicate. They’re easy to move around and nearly impossible to crack unless you have the right book. And books are generally easy to find.”

“Well, in this case, not so much.”

“It’ll be fine. We’ll call around to some bookstores. Someone is bound to have it.”

“What’s with all this ‘we’?”

“I’d like to help.”

“Not a great idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because… when people get involved in the stuff I get involved with, bad shit ends up happening to them. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. Just… curious.”

“Yeah, curiosity,” he says. “That’s it.”

The way he says it is like he doesn’t believe me.

T
he supermarket is frigid. I am angry at all the shiny happy people. The smiling families giving us side looks. In New York we’d look homeless, or like we were from Williamsburg. Here, though, in our dirty clothes, ragged hair, we may as well be space aliens. In the spice aisle a woman actually goes wide-eyed at the sight of us and hides her toddler behind her.

None of that touches Aesop. He’s floating through the aisles, grabbing the occasional thing we can’t grow. Boxes of cheap pasta. Turmeric. A few packages of bacon, which we’ll have to smuggle in, but will ensure I can fulfill my promise to Alex.

As the cart fills up my anxiety grows. We pass a beer case that’s empty. Beer would be okay. I don’t put it much higher than water, but enough of anything will do the job. I consider bribing one of the stock boys to meet me out back with a six of something, and then feel ashamed at the fact that I’m planning to buy beer like some junkie would buy heroin.

Once we’re done we head out, passing through the parking lot, and four assholes right out of a Hillbilly Identification Guide are lounging around a pickup truck. The second I see them, the way they look at us with leering smiles on their faces, I’m bracing for the comment.

A guy with a shaved head and a big gut and a flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off snickers as we walk by. “Fucking hippie faggots.”

He says it loud enough so he’s sure we’ll hear it.

I look over my shoulder but don’t stop walking. “Fuck you, you redneck fuck.”

Aesop groans.

He sticks the key into the trunk of his car, pops it open, and drops the bags inside. As he closes it he says, “You could have said nothing, you know?”

We turn, and the four guys are now coming at us, thrilled that some shit is about to go down. Clearly their idea of a fun Sunday is hanging out in a supermarket parking lot, looking for a fight, and given my mood, I am more than happy to oblige.

“The fuck did you say to me?” asks my new redneck friend.

“I was not in the mood for this today,” says Aesop, as he sticks out his thumb and forms a V with his thumb and pointer finger, and jams it into the guy’s throat.

T
he fat guy goes down hard, hands around his throat, choking. The other three pause. They’ve still got the advantage, but it suddenly doesn’t feel that way. It seems the guy writhing around on the ground was the alpha. The rest of the pack is rudderless without him.

Aesop nods toward the guy on the ground.

“Take him and get the fuck out of here. None of the rest of you need to get hurt.”

The way he says it is like he’s ordering coffee.

The three guys look between each other, waiting for someone else to make the first move. The guy on the ground makes the decision for them, scrambling forward to grab at Aesop’s legs. Aesop sidesteps and throws his knee into the guy’s head with an audible ‘klunk’.

Unfortunately, this is sufficient to spur the others into action.

A scrawny guy with long gray hair tied back in a bandana comes running at me, reaching around to throw a haymaker. Sloppy. I step to the side, use his momentum to toss him across the lot and onto the ground. Which leaves me free to confront his friend, a baby-faced guy in jeans and a black t-shirt and work boots.

This one looks like he can rumble. Thick shoulders, lots of padding. I set my feet and let him throw a few punches, put my arms up to block, let him wail until there’s an opening and jab him in the nose. It opens like a faucet, crimson blood spilling down his face. I follow by throwing my weight through my fist and into his gut. He doubles over, struggling to breathe as the air escapes and he gurgles on blood.

Aesop is standing over two prone figures now. The alpha, and the last of the bunch, a young guy with barbed wire tattoos on his thick arms. He clearly didn’t last long.

The August sun beats down on us as Aesop and I stand there looking at each other, seeing each other laid bare for the first time, as the four hillbilly idiots squirm at our feet.

“We should go,” I tell Aesop.

He nods. “Yes we should.”

We jump into his car and Aesop peels out, swinging us onto the road with a little more tire-crunching zeal than he displayed on the way here. Neither of us speak for the first few blocks. Some sweet 60s Jamaican ska blares out of the speakers, completely counter to the animal energy in the car.

We cross the outskirts of town, onto the lonely road guarded on either side by tall trees. The tension eases now that we’ve got a little distance, and the adrenaline has some time to wear off.

The pieces come together. The precision with which he attacked those guys, and his loose-bodied confidence around violence. Aesop is trained, not some sloppy brawler. That, plus the general cleanliness, and the level of order he maintains in the kitchen, means I can make at least one educated guess about him.

“You were in the military,” I tell him.

“United States Marines Corps, First Lieutenant.”

“Where’d you serve?”

“A little Iraq. A little Afghanistan. A little stuff I can’t talk about. I know it’s probably a little funny, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Gay hippie in the military.”

“You’re gay?”

He looks at me and furrows an eyebrow. “I don’t hide it.”

“You don’t advertise it. It’s a little surprising to hear.”

“Because I can handle myself? Or do you think all gays should be flaming queens?”

“I don’t mean it like that. It’s just…”

“This,” Aesop says, “is why it’s nice to sometimes talk to people. You learn things about them. You can have conversations with them. Make a play at being part of a community. I promise you, it’s not so bad.”

“Whatever you say. Good on ya though, with the service.”

His voice frosts over. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“I know that’s what you’re supposed to say, thanking people for their service.” He shakes his head. Like he’s staring into an abyss, contemplating whether he should leap, and ultimately deciding not to. “I’m not looking for sympathy, and I’m not going to pretend to be unique, but that whole thing ended on bad terms. And I’d rather leave it at that.”

“Don’t worry. I know all about not wanting to talk about shit.”

“You mean like with your dad?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Tibo mentioned it. I forget how it came up. Sort of slipped out, so don’t think he was volunteering that. He was a firefighter? Went down with the towers?”

I watch the trees go by for a bit, staring into my own abyss.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s fine,” I tell him. “He was off duty. Got inside to help evacuate. Never found him.”

“You must have been just a little kid then.”

“I was.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Aesop doesn’t immediately follow that with a question. I turn and he’s looking at me, trying to catch my eye while not missing too much of the road. A few minutes ago his eyes looked cast out of iron. Now they’re gentle. Almost sad.

“What do you think about what we did?” he asks. “Going over there. Fighting that war. That whole thing was supposed to be about you and what you lost. I’m sorry if it’s a weird question. I’m just… wondering.”

I go back to watching the trees. Unsure of what to say. Not sure if I even want to engage with this. But there’s a part of him that needs to hear something. The need is so thick it’s palpable.

And he did give me a ride.

So finally I settle on something. Not the whole truth, but enough. “Bunch of rich men sending poor kids to die, I don’t see how that solves anything. No offense to you and what you did. I do believe it’s a noble thing. But my dad didn’t stop being dead.”

Aesop looks away when I’m done. He seems satisfied with the answer.

After we’ve parked the car and unloaded the bags and we’re walking down the worn dirt path toward the kitchen, Aesop clears his throat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t take you to get your booze,” he says. “But I promise you, whatever you’re using it to cover up is going to come to the surface. Maybe not soon, but it will. Best to confront it. It won’t be easy. But I know where you are right now. If you ever want to talk about things, you let me know.”

“Okay.”

We walk in silence the rest of the way to the kitchen.

O
nce the groceries are away and we’ve hidden the bacon, Aesop leaves to do something else, and I go over the place like I’m looking for forensic evidence. Or, more appropriately, like a boozehound who suddenly finds himself sober.

I figure maybe there’s something that got stashed away and forgotten about. A can of beer. A half-finished bottle of wine. Something to chip away at how I feel right now.

I come up empty. Walk to the doorway and sit on the staircase leading into the kitchen with a mason jar full of water. Sit and watch the courtyard. Job is sitting on the far picnic bench strumming an acoustic guitar, Alex sitting next to him and singing, but so low I can’t make out the words. Katashi is lying on a picnic table, reading a book that he’s holding over his face. Sunlight spills through the leaves, casting shards of gold on the ground. There’s a nice breeze drifting through the trees.

Aesop isn’t wrong. I think I knew it myself. Keeping afloat on a sea of whiskey isn’t healthy. Sooner or later there was going to be a reckoning.

Maybe talking would help. I put up a wall when I first got to Portland. Crystal helped take it down. Far enough I could see myself making a life with her, so in a sense, it was great.

But in another sense it was terrible. Because after I found her kidnapped daughter, after I traced the plot back to her absentee congressman-in-waiting dad, after I accidently killed the guy who did all the heavy lifting—I’d made such a mess of things I had no choice but to leave. To protect the two of them.

That’s what I tell myself.

In the few weeks after leaving Portland, I got twelve missed calls from Crystal. Two voicemails where she didn’t say anything. Just hovered over the speaker, breathing, and hung up. No texts.

I think a lot about where Crystal and Rose are. What they’re doing. If they’re safe. I feel like an asshole for not knowing, and an asshole for leaving, and an asshole for so many other reasons. It’s hard to keep track anymore.

All of these things happened because I thought I was smarter than I really am. Tougher, faster, stronger. More capable. I have made so many decisions that have made things worse. I did them because they felt right at the time.

The last thing in the world I want to do is talk about what happened with me and Wilson. About the wave that laps at my feet in moments of weakness.

So that means I should probably talk about it.

I look up and Tibo is wearing an open button-down shirt and green khakis, crossing the courtyard.