South Village

by Rob Hart

  The two of them smile at me.

  I turn to Tibo and he’s smiling too. His eyes gone soft. I feel like an alien. So out of place, and worse, so vulnerable. And yet at the same time, welcome. It’s a feeling I haven’t had since I was home, and maybe not even then.

  “That’s what I’m thankful for,” Tibo says. “Who’s next?”

  He looks at me.

  I shake my head a little at him.

  Baby steps.

  He seems to understand.

  “Moony?” he asks.

  Once everyone has had their fill and I’m sure there’s enough food to go around, I fill up a bowl and see Tibo sitting off at the far end of the circle, on the last picnic bench before the forest drops off into shadow. That’s where I usually sit. I figure he’s waiting for me.

  As I approach, he scoots aside so there’s room for me to sit. I step onto the bench and sit on the tabletop, take a few bites. A little salty but not a bad effort for a rush job. It feels good to have some hot food. I look into the darkness around us and it feels like we’re in a bubble, the rest of the world dropped away.

  There are shapes out in the shadows. Things moving. Not as pronounced as yesterday. I really have to be looking to notice. That, at least, makes me feel like maybe I’m on the mend.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Tibo puts his empty bowl aside and folds his hands. “A few weeks ago Pete came to me with a proposition. He wanted to turn this into an outpost for the Soldiers of Gaia. He didn’t volunteer a lot of information. Enough for me to know it was bad news. What they want is completely contrary to what I want. We’re all here, each and every one of us, because we feel like the world has failed us in some way. But that doesn’t mean I want to destroy it.”

  “Skip to the good part.”

  He looks at me, raises an eyebrow. “You were right. Of course you were right. I cut the rope halfway. Figured he’d walk across the bridge and fall and break an ankle or an arm or something. Enough to slow him down. Make him look someplace else. I had no idea it was going to break his neck. It was… it was so stupid.”

  I remember what Tibo said as we stood there over Pete’s body.

  That it was his fault.

  “Why not go to the cops?”

  “And tell them what? I didn’t even really know what the Soldiers of Gaia were at that point. And having a bunch of cops crawling around here… that’s not ideal.”

  “And you’re okay with the fact that you killed someone?” I ask.

  Truthfully, I want to know. Because since Tibo told me I keep looking at him, expecting to see it. That stereogram image. Instead he looks like a person, living his life. No outward signs of rot.

  “Of course I’m not okay with it,” Tibo says. “I didn’t intend for that to happen. But at the end of the day, Pete wanted to hurt people. He wanted to burn the world down because of a philosophy. So yes, I feel terrible. But I won’t let it drag me down.”

  “I wish it were that easy.”

  “Why?”

  “I killed someone too.”

  Tibo pauses, laughs a little. “So now you admit it.”

  “Was it really that obvious?”

  “The way you’ve been acting. Trying harder to push people away. I knew it was something big. And it had to be real big, because after everything that happened with Chell, you still set yourself right. And with this, you just kept spiraling down and down and down. So what happened?”

  “Back in Portland, I met this girl,” I tell him. “Her ex-boyfriend took their daughter from daycare. We didn’t go to the cops. She didn’t want to. Thought maybe an ex-junkie stripper was going to have a hard time once child services got involved.”

  Tibo sticks his finger in the air. “Ex-junkie stripper? That is a fair and accurate point.”

  “Well, I tried to handle it myself. It’s a whole thing, but in the end… you know I found the guy who killed Chell, right?”

  “I figured as much.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “No one would have blamed you if you did.”

  “I wanted to break the cycle of violence,” I tell him. “The thing he did to Chell, it wasn’t going to get fixed by killing him. I had to believe that there was a path to redemption. Less for him and more for me. So I sicced the cops on him. And the whole time I was in Portland, falling into old habits, I swore to myself, I wasn’t going to be that guy. But when it came down to high noon, me and this guy, I hit him a little harder than I should have.”

  “Look at the two of us,” Tibo says, patting my shoulder. “Accidental killers.”

  “Well, yours was an accident,” I tell him. “I think a bad part of me got loose for a second. The vicious part of me. The part of me that likes to hurt people.” I look down at my hands. I can feel blood on them, thick and wet, even though they’re clean. “Maybe that’s the thing. Why it’s affecting me so hard and not you. You’re not a killer. You made a mistake.”

  The next words are hard to say, and as I’m saying them my vision goes blurry, hot tears forming in the corners of my eyes. “I think there’s something rotten at the core of me.”

  Tibo huffs. “You’re not a bad person. Because for all your bullshit, at the end of the day, you do the right thing. Even when it means putting yourself on the line. That’s a lot more than other people can say. And second, man, this whole thing, it’s not a contest. You are the sum of all your parts. You are the end result of a long line of decisions. But you can be whatever the hell you want.”

  “I want to be free of this feeling.”

  “Then be free. Accept what you did and move on. Make up for it if you have to. But there’s no trick or secret to this. I have to live with the fact that I killed Pete. I’ll manage. Because otherwise it means shutting down. And this place and these people—they rely on me. So I’m not going to do that to them.”

  I look out into the clearing, at the people who are still here. Working through the pain and confusion of the last few days. Eating and smiling and laughing. I feel apart from them, and maybe I always will be.

  “People rely on you too, Ash,” Tibo says. “You do things other people can’t. The things you do… they’re not rotten. They’re special.”

  “Killing someone isn’t special.”

  “Protecting people is,” he says. “That’s what you do. It’s what you gravitate toward. You knew something was wrong. You couldn’t help yourself. You needed to fix it. Not everyone can do that. But you have the capacity for it.”

  Capacity. Temperament. It makes me think about Bill and his horses. The job that may not sound glamorous but needs to get done.

  Everything we have is so fragile.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Tibo asks.

  “Get the cipher, figure it out, and then get Ford,” I tell him. “I think we’ve both learned a couple of times now that boxing out the authorities isn’t the best way to handle these things. I think we can trust Ford.”

  “We can,” he says. “I trust him.”

  “Okay. We do that then.”

  We walk in silence, twin beams of light slicing the dark, showing us the safe paths to take. We climb through the woods and it’s quiet all around us. Every few hundred feet I stop and put my hand on Tibo’s chest to get him to stay still.

  The third time I do it, he asks, “Why?”

  “Listen. In case someone is following us. Do you hear anything?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I need him to listen. I can still hear whispers out in the dark.

  We get to the bus and check around it, make sure Katashi or Marx isn’t lying in wait. After we’re sure the area is clear I search for the tree. It takes a little while to find in the darkness, but finally I do. Run my finger through the gouge I made in the bark.

  I dig a little.

  Then a little more.

  Come up with nothing but dirt.

  Tibo asks, “What?”

  “It’s gone.”

&
nbsp; “Are you sure this is the right tree?”

  I touch my finger to the mark again. “Positive.”

  “That’s not good,” Tibo says.

  I fall back into the dirt and sit, staring up at the canopy. “No, it’s not.”

  Maybe Katashi poked around after I left. Maybe someone else was following me. Regardless, it’s gone. The cipher is still safely tucked in my e-mail and my phone, but I’ve got nothing to pair it with. The code is useless without the book. The last I checked my phone, none of the other bookstores had gotten back to me in the affirmative.

  We are back to zero.

  I shine the flashlight on the boardwalk, regret not asking Tibo to come with me, because the whispers are freaking me, even though I know they’re not real. I stop a few times and try to listen but can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s a jumble. And if I stand for too long I get that feeling of climbing up the basement steps as I turn out the lights, and something is coming up behind me so I have to outrace it.

  First, I stop in the library dome. After making sure it’s empty I grab the first book in arm’s reach. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. There’s my fake cipher. Let Katashi have fun with that. Then it’s off to the kitchen, which is clean and spotless. Zorg does good work. I put on the kettle and prep an extra strong dose of valerian root. Something to get me through the night. I can’t say this for sure, but I feel like if I make it through tonight, I’m going to be in the clear. I have this feeling, like dawn breaking over the horizon.

  I won’t be cheesy enough to call it hope. But it definitely feels optimistic.

  Once the tea is done I dump it in a thermos, head back to the bus, which is empty. I give it a quick sweep with the flashlight, turn on the rope light and have a look around. I’m so tired, and within moments, I feel the drag, pulling me under the surface of the water, but this time, it’s far less terrifying.

  If anything, it feels comforting.

  The dream is different.

  It’s not raining, which is the first big difference. The sun is out. A rare sight in Portland. I’m still digging the hole, still covered in mud. But Wilson isn’t here. I turn and Chell and my dad are standing over me, arms crossed. They’re soaking wet but the sun behind them is bright and shining strong.

  We stand there like that, them looking at me.

  Something about their demeanor has softened. It used to be, when they looked at me like this, it was an emotion somewhere on the scale from anger to frustration. Now, I can’t put my finger on it, exactly, but I would say it’s more like pity.

  Which is better, actually.

  They both open their mouths to speak and I wake up.

  I phase in and out of sleep. Sometimes I hear a crack outside the bus and it could be something or nothing. Real or imagined. Voices drift in through the windows. I’m getting used to the feeling now. It’s less terror-inducing.

  I think maybe I’ve been asleep for eight or nine hours but it’s still dark, so I click on my phone and the blinding white light tells me it’s 2 a.m., which does not bode well. I see someone in the corner of the bus, but when I hold up the phone to illuminate the area, there’s no one there.

  The phone goes off and plunges us back into darkness and I think I see someone sitting in the corner again. Scratch at my arms to get the bugs off but don’t feel any bugs. What I would give to be in a hotel. Around people. With a television I could leave on. Just the electric hum, making me feel like I’m not alone. Out here, it’s alone alone. I consider going to Tibo’s bunk, or checking in with the cam girls, to have someone to spend the night with.

  Truthfully, I wish Aesop were here.

  The sun is out. I lift my head off the cot, look around. Katashi is sitting at the wheel of the bus, facing me. He’s flipping through the copy of I Am Legend.

  “I’m glad to see you came around,” he says.

  I get up, walk past him and off the bus. The sky is washed gray and it’s raining softly. Still hot, but nice nonetheless. I piss against a tree and get back on the bus, open the thermos, take a sniff. Christ this stuff is nasty cold, but I take a little sip, something to even me out. I will be happy to leave this behind. No more treating problems with substances. After this, it’s clean living.

  “Did you decode it?” Katashi asks. “Do you want to save me the trouble?”

  “Nah, that’s the beginning and end of the favors I’ll be doing for you,” I tell him.

  “You think because you handed this over, this makes you square?”

  “Nope. But, and I would like to point this out again for posterity, I do not like you. I do not like your organization. I do not like how you handled things here. So go, do what you have to do. I gave you what you wanted. I don’t want to be involved anymore.”

  He gets up and offers me his hand.

  “You saved a lot of lives,” he tells me.

  I look down at his hand until he retracts it and gives me a withering look.

  “Have fun,” I tell him. “Tell Marx I said hi.”

  “Oh we’re going to nail that motherfucker,” he says, smiling.

  “He is a dick, but part of me doesn’t blame him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With his parents. The way they died. The fire.”

  Katashi laughs. “You bought that shit?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Marx’s name is Bryon Turner. He’s some trust fund kid from LA. His parents are alive. Who do you think pays for him to travel around the country and live like a hippie? Don’t get me wrong, he’s dangerous, but no, his whole backstory is a myth. Honestly, I think he uses it to get laid.”

  Huh. That certainly changes things. And now I dislike him even more.

  “And, look, one last thing,” he says. “I’m sorry for jumping you in the woods. That was bad form. But I had to get the book and didn’t want to blow my cover.”

  “Wait… that was you?”

  Oh shit.

  That doesn’t make sense. I thought it was Marx or Gideon.

  Katashi gets a funny look on his face and for a second I think he’s piecing together that there’s something wrong, but after a moment he says, “Like I said, I’m sorry. I thought you had the book on you. I didn’t realize it was the wrong book.”

  He thinks I’m really angry. That’s good. I mean, I am. But this means I was wrong about the book. He had The Monkey Wrench Gang. And they got the cipher at the black site.

  “You are an asshole,” I tell him.

  “Well, here’s a little payback. I would get far away from this place if I were you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It means you’re about to have some company.”

  He smiles his snake smile at me and leaves the bus, disappearing into the woods.

  I don’t like the way that sounds. I step out into the morning air. The rain seems to be picking up, but besides the sound of it tapping the leaves, the forest is quiet. The air is stagnant. Like all the animals up and left, anticipating something was about to go down.

  I step into the bus, put all my belongings into a backpack, and cinch it tight to my back. Leave behind a few items of clothing that I feel like I can live without because I don’t want to be weighed down. Go outside and count off the paces to my coffee can stuffed with cash. It takes a minute of digging to get down to it, and that, at least, is untouched. I take the money and stuff it in my bag. Wonder if I’ll be coming back.

  I run back to the main part of camp, get to the clearing as the rain is picking up and people are diving for cover. Tibo steps out of the kitchen and says, “I was looking for you. I called Ford…”

  “It was the wrong book.”

  “What?”

  “Katashi. He jumped me. They had the book and the cipher, but they still couldn’t translate it, which means I had the wrong book.”

  “So… how do we find the right book?”

  I nod toward the library, figuring that’s as good a place as any to start. We step insi
de, the rain now nearly torrential outside. It’s empty, so I pull off my backpack, stash it in a dark corner where it can’t be easily seen—better that than it getting soaked—and walk the spiral stack reaching up to the ceiling.

  “Let’s work this out,” I tell him. “First thing first. Why use a book cipher in the first place?”

  “Easy to move around,” Tibo says. “You can send it over e-mail or by the mail, and even if the wrong person sees it, it doesn’t matter. You can’t translate it unless you have the right book.”

  “Correct. Now, the Soldiers of Gaia are a terrorist group, right? Cells that aren’t connected to each other. Clearly, because Pete was the only one here connected to them. Marx wasn’t able to contact them, or else why need the cipher? So, think about that for a second. You’ve got a lot of people spread out like that…”

  It hits me. Something I should have realized sooner. And maybe I would have, if I wasn’t either drunk or withdrawing.

  “What’s the point of picking a book that’s so damn hard to find?” I ask.

  “So you think it’s something easier to track down,” Tibo says.

  “Maybe.”

  “How did you even settle on The Monkey Wrench Gang in the first place?”

  “Cannabelle. She said she saw Pete carrying it around. I figured that was the book he had before he died. I found it in the library. I thought…”

  “That’s not precise at all. That’s required reading for environmental activists.”

  I think back. The scene of Pete’s death. There’s something there. Something scratching at me. Something I saw that stood out as weird.

  And then I remember.

  Whoever searched my bus seems to have searched Pete’s tree house, too. Everything is put back in its place but still feels slightly off. Sitting out, like before, is The Kiss of the Rose. Seems I’m not the only person stupid enough to overlook it.

  “That’s it?” Tibo asks as I pick it up.

  The cover says it’s a New York Times best-seller. I flip through to the copyright page, and find it came out last year. “This is new. And popular. Way easier to find.”