South Village

by Rob Hart

  “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.

  The 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.

  The 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 evacu
ate. 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.

  Once 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.

  “Hey,” he asks. “Have you seen Marx?”

  “No. That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to beat his ass.”

  “Well, no one has seen him since last night.”

  Marx’s tree house is on stilts, twenty feet up in the air, a long staircase leading to the door. Tibo and I stand outside, looking up. There’s no way to tell from down here whether he’s in.

  “What do you think?” Tibo asks.

  “Let’s go up and knock.”

  “And if he’s there?”

  “I’m probably going to knock him the fuck out.”

  “Okay,” Tibo says. “I’ll go first.”

  He climbs the steps, which are narrow enough I can’t follow next to him, so I go up behind. The wood creaks under our combined weight. Tibo stops at the top and looks in and says, “Huh.”

  “What?”

  He doesn’t answer, pushes the screen door and steps inside. I follow and it’s empty.

  The layout isn’t too different from Crusty Pete’s tree house. There’s a platform for a mattress or a sleeping bag, and a makeshift desk. This one has a bookshelf. But otherwise it’s the same naked wood, same sloppy construction, random nails sticking out in stray corners. There’s not much to see, but I check under the desk, move the bookcase. Tibo asks, “What are you doing?”

  “Searching.”

  “For what?”

  “Won’t know unless I find something.”

  “Should we be doing this?”

  I put the bookcase back and stand up. “The dude’s a ghost.”

  “Right, but…”

  “You own this tree house. Not him.”

  “Fair point.”

  I check along the walls and under the surfaces, to be thorough, but there’s nothing. Not even a stray piece of trash. It’s like walking into a hotel room before you put your bags down. Untouched. I hop up onto the platform and sit.

  “Okay,” Tibo says. “He’s gone. So where did he go?”

  “We should ask around,” I tell him. “See if anyone knows anything.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure out…”

  “No, I mean, all this,” Tibo says, waving a hand toward the outside. “You came here and put your head down like the rest of the world didn’t exist. You were clearly hiding from something, and it’s something you haven’t wanted to talk about, and I respected that. Now you’re playing detective again. What is it you want? To go sit alone on your bus? Or do you want to be a part of this community?”

  “I never said I wanted to be a part of anything.”

  “Except you’re acting like it. And on top of it, you’ve reached incredible new levels of dick. You live on a hippie commune, dude. You’re going to get hit with stray hacky sacks. It’s an environmental hazard. You can’t throw them into the woods like you did. Because then those people come to me and complain and wonder why my buddy from back home gets a pass on behavior that would get someone else kicked out.”

  I shrug at him.

  “What happened in Portland?” Tibo asks.

  I shrug again.

  “Where were you with Aesop all day?” he asks.

  I shrug a third time.

  “Why do you have so little respect for me?”

  “I have plenty of respect for you.”

  “Then be honest.”

  “No.”

  He narrows his eyes, stares at me hard. “You did something bad, didn’t you?”

  I don’t answer him.

  “You’re hiding. That’s why you’re here. Is that why you’re leaving the country?”

  I don’t answer that, either.

  I’m kind of hoping my tactic of not answering him will work out in my favor. But it doesn’t, because the longer he stares at me, th
e more he can see. The stereogram image comes into focus, until his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open.

  “You killed someone, didn’t you?”

  I don’t need to answer that one. It’s rhetorical. Instead I get up, push past him. Head down the steps and by the time I make it to the boardwalk I’m running, trying to outrace the waves. I’m running and running and then I trip, and I’m in the air and come down hard on my hands and knees.

  The plank under me says: The past can’t be changed, but the future is still in my power.

  Fucking fuck. I hit it with the flat of my fist and a jolt shoots through my arm. I grab the corner and pull. It’s nailed down good. I brace myself, putting one foot on the forest floor, and put all my weight into prying it up. It tears free of the base and I pick it up over my head and slam it down once, twice, three times. On the fourth it breaks and splinters. I drop it and there’s a splinter of wood embedded in my hand. I pull it out and a thin stream of blood follows.

  I sit there for a little bit to get my bearings.

  Try not to think about whiskey.

  I should go see the girls. I need to see them anyway. Maybe they have some booze. Maybe I can kill a few birds with less stones than there are birds.

  Sunny and Moony live in the most remote tree house in camp. I know I’m within a hundred yards when I pass a wooden sign with words carefully carved into it. “If you don’t have an invitation, please turn back.”

  I’ve never seen their place before, and I almost miss it. It sits close to the ground, and looks more like one of the domes at the front of camp. It’s nearly covered in a creep of ivy so it blends into the surrounding forest. Psychedelic curtains hang in the windows, blocking the view. I climb up the steps and knock on the door jamb.

  “Who goes there?” calls a voice from inside.

  “Ash.”

  “Two minutes.”

  I sit down on the step, look out at the green expanse of the woods. Run through the stuff I need to do if I successfully talk my way inside, because I’m sure I won’t have long. The door opens and Moony steps out wearing a robe she’s not doing a great job of holding shut, so I can still see most of her pale, awkward body.