South Village

by Rob Hart

  We walk again for a little bit, until the footsteps behind me cease. This time I turn and Aesop has taken a knee, peering off to the side of our path. I come up next to him.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  Instead of answering he stalks off through the woods, staying low and quiet, like he’s hunting something. I try to see what he’s seeing. There’s a broken branch. I bend over for a closer look and see the outline of what could be a boot print, heading in the direction Aesop is walking. I go after him, keeping an eye out for spiders and other forest monsters.

  The terrain gets rougher, more uneven. The branches come out and brush against us, and then they impede us. The odd one looks broken, like maybe it was trampled. I try to differentiate between what’s here and what could have been changed or affected by someone else.

  One of the chores here at camp is machete duty. Which is pretty much what it sounds like. You take a machete and crash through the brush, clearing the footpaths. But only in the parts of camp that are commonly tread. This area hasn’t been touched, though we’re sort of close to the back road that runs behind camp.

  My foot swings out and hits something metal. I bend down and pick up a shovel. The wooden handle is a little worn and there are dots of rust on the blade, but otherwise it’s in pretty good shape. I hold it out to Aesop and he takes it.

  “Did you see all that fresh earth over by Cannabelle?” he asks.

  “You think someone was trying to bury her?”

  He looks around, thinking about it. Finally says, “There was no hole near her. I don’t know that she’s been dead so long. And she didn’t seem to have been touched.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “Could be nothing. People are sloppy. I’ve found the odd piece of equipment lying around in the woods. But all that earth… someone was digging something. Let’s use this spot at a starting point. Spread out in a circle, see if we find anything.”

  A half hour goes by and we don’t turn up anything.

  Empty forest. A weird looking bug I don’t know the name for that lands on my wrist and bites a little circle into my flesh. Some bones, which I think might be related to the disappearance of Malmon, the chicken who went missing a few weeks back.

  I stop when the land drops off into swamp. Nothing that way, I’m sure. The leeches and alligators make sure of that. The alligators never come up out of the water, and the deal seems to be that in return, no one ventures in.

  By the time Aesop and I get back to the clearing, Ford and Corey are already there with Tibo, the three of them standing around Cannabelle, looking down at her body.

  Ford does not look happy.

  He nods toward us. “These boys know what happened?”

  “Nothing beyond what I told you,” Tibo says. “Ash found her. He was out for a walk.”

  Tibo’s eyes hammer into me on that last bit.

  Ford turns toward me. “Well, Ashley, walk me through what you saw.”

  “Not much to say,” I tell him. “I was out, found her, went and got Tibo, here we find ourselves.”

  He takes his sheriff’s hat off to reveal that his short gray hair is soaked in sweat, like he dunked his head in a sink. He wipes his brow with the back of his sleeve and puts the hat back on. “This was the girl always climbing up in the trees, correct?”

  Tibo nods.

  “Why did she to do that?”

  “People are into a lot of different things,” Tibo says.

  Ford takes a knee next to her body, looking back and forth between her and the canopy. “Well, doesn’t look like she fell. I’ve seen people fall from that kind of height. The ground is kind of soft here, but I don’t think that happened.”

  So at least my suspicion is confirmed.

  Ford straightens up and turns to Tibo. “Now we got a real problem here, son. I got to send out a forensics team, again. They won’t be too happy. Found nothing worth finding around your friend the other day but one of them got bit up by fire ants pretty bad. I need to interview people. Guests and staffers. And you and I need to sit down and go over a few things. So, I hope you’re ready for a long day.”

  Tibo grimaces. “I want to help.”

  Ford takes the hat off and gestures toward camp. “After you, then.”

  Ford wants to set up shop in the office dome. I ask if he wants to sit down and talk with me, but he waves me off. “You think of anything else, you come and find me,” he says.

  And with that me and Aesop find ourselves outside Eatery.

  “What do you think?” I ask. “Should we let the horde fend for themselves?”

  “It’d be anarchy,” Aesop says. “I won’t stand for that in my kitchen. C’mon. We have a responsibility to keep these people fed.”

  “The timing just sucks. I mean… it’d be nice to take a minute.”

  “Our job is to make sure the wheels keep turning, because all of them out there,” Aesop gestures toward the rest of camp, “they’re going to need that minute. Now c’mon. Let’s get to work.”

  We settle on some raw pizza dough we’ve got stashed in the chest fridge. We’ll roll out a few pies, douse them with some sauce and vegan mozzarella—much to my chagrin because it’s got the consistency of sawdust and I’d rather leave it off, but some people are sticklers for appearance. We can toss them in the bread oven, put a salad on the side, and call it dinner.

  Aesop pulls little plastic bottles of spices off the rack over the sink, popping the tops and giving them a sniff. The labels have long since worn and washed off. Once he’s sorted out which ones he wants to use he says, “It’ll be nice to get back to cooking for real at some point. I’m getting tired of half-assing this.”

  “Only so much you can do when shit like this is happening.”

  “Yeah.”

  I put an onion on the cutting board and pull out a long chef’s knife. Go to cut it but my hand feels funny and it slips, sliding off the onion and just missing the thumb on my left hand before clunking on the board. I put down the knife, hold my hand out. It shakes a little. I must be tired. Anxious. Over stimulated. My heart races again. I take a deep breath to calm down.

  Footsteps at the front. Zorg comes in, wearing a tank top and a red floral swimsuit, and says, “Hello Aesop. It is I, Z…”

  He sees me and stops himself. I wave my hand. “You want to play your make-believe fucking name game, go ahead. Though, you ought to think about whether you want people to take you seriously. Because you sound fucking ridiculous.”

  The gravity of the room changes. I turn and Zorg’s face has dropped, like he’s gotten some very bad news. Aesop, meanwhile, is furious. His ears are red, and the breeze is actually cutting through the kitchen so I know it’s not from the heat. He looks about to say something when there are more footsteps and Tibo comes inside.

  “What’s up?” I ask, very thankful for the distraction.

  “Need you all to grab whatever identification you’ve got and come on by the dome.”

  “I have my ID on me,” Zorg says in a quiet voice. He puts his head down and goes to leave, but Aesop gently puts his hand on his shoulder.

  “Zorg, you can give your ID later,” Aesop says. He points toward a bowl of vegetables. “Can you do some chopping? Side salad.”

  Zorg nods slowly, looking at me with an abundance of caution. He pulls an apron off the wall and slips it overhead, moving like he’s trying to not wake a sleeping animal.

  Aesop goes to the knife rack. Tibo turns to leave and I catch him outside, out of earshot of the others. “Anything on Marx?”

  “Nothing. People are going to bring him up. I can’t control the message on this. I have to figure out how to handle it.”

  Gideon comes up to us, wearing a torn t-shirt and jeans and no shoes. He says, “Everyone needs to get to the dome with their ID.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I tell him.

  “Okay. Get a move on then.”

  “Fuck off, you twat.”

  He blusters at me as Tibo d
rops his head into his hands and walks off toward the dome.

  “What exactly is your fucking problem?” Gideon asks.

  “You are my problem, you lanky fuck,” I tell him. “Walk away right now, or I am going to take your fucking teeth out.”

  He doesn’t move, but given the look on his face, that seems to be more out of fear than defiance. I’m wondering if maybe I should give him a quick slap when Aesop comes out of the kitchen. “Ash, I have to grab my license. I’m guessing you need yours too. Want to take a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  Gideon opens his mouth to speak. “Bu…”

  “What did I fucking tell you?” I ask. “Don’t fucking talk to me.”

  Aesop nods to Gideon. “You’d do well to listen.”

  We leave him there with his mouth hanging open, make it a little bit away from camp, onto the boardwalk. I pass over a board that says: Go where the peace is.

  There’s something heavy in the air between us. Aesop is extremely unhappy right now, and I’ve never seen him like this. After a little bit of walking in silence he says, “You shouldn’t be such a dick to Zorg.”

  “What’s the problem?” I ask. “Goofy kid wants to live in his little goofy hippie world, doesn’t mean everyone else has to play along.”

  “You really are an idiot,” he says. “So much more of your bullshit makes sense to me now.”

  I stop, turn to face him, the two of us close on the boardwalk, standing so near each other I can smell his sweat. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “You think that kid’s doing it for a laugh? You can’t see that he’s carrying something? Not everyone handles shit by drinking themselves stupid. I don’t know what it is he’s carrying, but it’s what he needs to do. It’s a defense mechanism. And it’s way less shitty than yours. Who the fuck are you to say otherwise?”

  The words splash and burn my skin. The realization makes me feel a few inches shorter.

  I was being a bully.

  The hollow in my chest aches.

  “I’ll apologize to him,” I say.

  Aesop nods, face still downcast but accepting that I understand. “C’mon. My home is up first.”

  He leads me off the boardwalk, through a bundle of brush, down a path I’ve never walked before. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t showing me the way. The dirt path under us is smooth and narrow and we’re on it for a little while, until we reach another boardwalk, older than the main artery that connects the various parts of the camp. The wood is darker, the shape different. It leads over a small green pond where the sun bounces off the water, through a clearing in the canopy. Insects flit through the air and a duck drifts across the glass surface of the water.

  Across the way is an open-air dwelling. A roof and posts but no walls, like a gazebo. It’s screened in and raised off the ground, the area underneath it blocked by wooden lattice. There’s a long line of Tibetan prayer flags—dozens, maybe a hundred—strung around and around the roof, hanging down and gently swaying in the wind.

  At the foot of the bridge over the creek Aesop pauses.

  “Can you stay here?” he asks.

  He’s not being unkind. He looks genuinely uncomfortable at me being this close. Which, given the nature of the place, hidden away like a secret, that makes sense. I nod at him, take a step back for good measure.

  He crosses the bridge, goes inside the gazebo, the door slamming shut behind him on a strong spring. Once he’s inside it’s too dim for me to see what he’s doing. I look around, kick the dirt, step off to the side and take a quick piss against a tree, which is long enough for a bunch of fire ants to climb up my ankle, so I finish up and brush them away and Aesop is coming back across the boardwalk, slipping something into his pocket with one hand, carrying something in the other hand.

  It’s a bottle of wine.

  He steps off the boardwalk and holds it up to me, sunlight reflecting off the bottle. I want to take it even though I think maybe it’s not as simple as a straight offering.

  “I get it,” he says. “You’ve seen some shit. You’re having a hard time with it. But that doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole to other people. If anything, you should be sympathetic. You were a prick when you were drinking and I was hoping that not having booze would mellow you out, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. So how about this? Take this and keep on medicating.”

  His hand drops an inch.

  “Or make the decision to be better,” he says.

  He holds up the bottle of wine to me again. Closer this time. It’s a white. I hate white. White is boring. But right now anything with ethanol looks good to me. I can feel a tug, somewhere on the inside of me. Someplace primal. I want it, very very bad.

  Which is a compelling reason to choose the second option.

  I take the bottle from his hand, and his face gets soft and sad. I heft it, feel the weight of it. Close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Think about the comfort it would provide.

  Think about the empty black hole this will bring, instead of that wet, muddy hole I’m destined to spend tonight in, burying Wilson while Chell and my dad stare at me.

  Think about having to do that every night for the rest of my life.

  And I hurl the bottle into the pond. It flips through the air and splashes down, sending up a spray of water that glitters in the sun, scaring the shit out of the duck, which is now flapping its wings and puttering to shore.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” Aesop asks.

  “I… thought the point of this was you wanted me to reject the bottle.”

  “I didn’t want you to fucking throw it!”

  “I thought it was symbolic.”

  “No, it’s my bottle of wine. I was still going to drink it!”

  The bottle bobs in the water not too far from us. I have no idea how deep the pond is and I’m not entirely excited to find out. But Aesop is now even more annoyed, so I go looking for a long stick.

  Once we’re back on the pathway to the bus, I tell Aesop, “I’m sorry. And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Maybe next time try not to be so dramatic.”

  “Relying on props to make a point is pretty dramatic.”

  He doesn’t say anything to that.

  We get to the bus and Aesop asks, “Can I come in? Can we sit and talk for a minute?”

  I lead him inside and shut the door behind us. I dig my ID out of my bag so I don’t forget it. Sit on the platform bed and he pulls up the chair, says, “I overheard something.”

  I lean forward. “Okay.”

  “There’s a meeting tomorrow night. Magda was talking to Gideon about it. Like she was feeling him out. It was over by the showers. I don’t think they knew I was there. But, you know, I was in the Marines. I know what recruiting sounds like.”

  “Okay. Why has no one recruited us?”

  “I don’t have a taste for Kool-Aid, and I think most people know that,” he says. “You’re just an asshole.”

  “Hey.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “… No.”

  He smiles. “Plus you’ve got a tenuous connection to Tibo, so that puts you on the other side of the debate.”

  “So where’s the meeting?” I ask.

  “No idea.”

  “We could follow Gideon and Magda.”

  “Risky. I’m betting it’s off site. Far off site. Especially if Marx is involved.”

  “How do we find out where it is without arousing suspicion?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Aesop says. “Thinking about how the people here break down. Who might be Team Tibo and who might be Team Marx. And the problem is, I can’t figure out who might be loyal enough to one side that they wouldn’t go tell the other.”

  “Maybe Katashi?”

  Aesop runs his hands through his hair, undoes the elastic band holding his hair in a ponytail, shakes it out, and puts the ponytail back together. “I’ve tried to talk to him a couple of times. H
e knows a few basic words in English and doesn’t seem interested in learning any more. They might not have tried. Even if they did, we might not be able to get it out of him. Unless you know some Japanese.”

  “I do not. What about some of the new guests?”

  “Too hard to call where they might land on it.”

  “We need someone who hasn’t been swayed yet,” I tell him. “Someone who’s new enough to the camp but doesn’t seem interested in the team aspect of it. Who’s the newest arrival?”

  Aesop smiles.

  Zorg is washing the knives and laying them out on a tea towel as we get into the kitchen. The vegetables we gave him to chop are in small, neat piles, everything diced to nearly identical proportions. He looks up at us with wide eyes, looking for approval, but also a little worried about what I might say.

  I stand at the counter next to him. He eyes me like a small animal would eye a predator, which just about breaks my heart.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “That wasn’t cool, the way I acted before. There was no reason to be unkind.”

  He seems at peace with me now. “I understand.”

  “No, say it like you want to say it.”

  He smiles. “Zorg understands.”

  “Good.” I pat him on the back, send his slight frame nearly flying into the counter. I pat him again, softer.

  Aesop walks to the kitchen and hangs himself out the door, looking around, and pulls himself back in. I check the pantry, because you never know. Once we’re in the clear Aesop turns on the radio. Rage Against the Machine plays, which seems oddly fitting.

  “Do we need a soundtrack for this?” I ask him.

  He spins a finger in the air. “Bugs.”

  That’s a fair point. I didn’t think the feds might have left behind some listening devices. It makes me suddenly very nervous about what I might have said up until this point.

  “We need to ask you something,” Aesop says to Zorg.

  Zorg nods, very cautious.

  “There’s some stuff going down,” Aesop says. “Stuff that might be bad. We’re not sure what yet. But we think there’s a meeting tomorrow night. We’re trying to find out where that meeting is. Has anyone approached you? Tried to feel you out for something?”