by Lauren Groff
I think—Ike’s breath is humid in Bit’s ear—I’m gonna get lucky tonight, and he laughs and staggers back inside.
Bit only wants to be alone. He pushes off into the dark of the forest to find a warm spot of dirt under a tree to curl up in. He wants the hold of the woods on him, the animals to crawl over him, he wants to sink into the roots of the trees and become the earth.
In this little hole at the base of the hill, the old stories fill him up again, the forest thick with magic, witches sitting in the cruxes of trees. This happens whenever he’s not protecting himself; the dark bad fairies are dancing endlessly below him in halls filled with rush light, in fur coats made of squirrel tails, in little shoes whittled from bear claws. They are planning their tricks, the beasties. If they saw him, they would blow poison nettles at him and make him fall asleep there, to awaken a century later, Bit van Winkle, his life gone by in sleep. He is so terrified he starts to cry, then forgets his fear in the beauty of his fingernails shining in the moonlight.
He walks. He touches the bark as he passes each hulking dark tree, and each bulges and sucks itself in. When the sound of the Quonset dims and blends into the more distant sound of the concert and there rises the rushing of the stream somewhere ahead, he realizes he must piss.
It has to be the right place: he touches tree after tree, and none gives him permission.
A new sound arises out of the forest, a low groan that, at first, he thinks is the music of the spheres, the great cold stars singing, not at all as lovely as he’d imagined. But it is too close, and Bit freezes, waits to see where the sound is coming from.
There, he sees a pool of darkness, an oil slick that grows upward, becomes a black lump on the ground, lit in some places by unshadowed moon. Even in his off-kilter brain, he knows it is a couple of people having fun. Something isn’t quite right, though, with the way the bodies are. Bit squints through the pulsing fog in his eyes. There is a person on top of another, yet the head of the second is in the wrong place, yards away, as if the body is both enormous and bent. A quickening, a rattle in the chest, a raw bear growl, and then a belt buckle tingles, the fucker stands over the fuckee’s legs.
Thanks, baby, comes a man’s voice quietly. You were amazing.
A voice rises, a girl’s. Sure, she says, it was fun.
Now the man says, Hey, you think you have a little sugar for my buddy here? What do you think? Share a little? If not, it’s totally cool, but he really digs you. Be a favor for me.
You’re just a gorgeous thing, says another voice, higher-pitched, male. Prettiest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time.
There is a long pause, then the girl says, hesitant, I don’t . . .
Come on, says the first man. It’s no big deal. He kneels and begins to whisper, and at last, the girl’s voice emerges from the darkness. Okay, she says, with bravado.
The second man rises, belt jingles, crouches down, merges with the girl’s body on the ground.
Bit can’t move. He can’t breathe. The man finishes, and both men stand up, looking at the lump on the ground, struggling to sit. Let’s take her back, one says, and they pick the girl up between them and dust her off. One of them, it seems, picks something tenderly out of her hair.
Bit shrinks behind the tree beside him as they crash past over the sticks and leaves. They come straight at him, so close he can smell the musk of sex, clove cigarettes, blood, alcohol. Even closer, and he wills himself into the tree. They pass, and Bit sees a sprinkle of black under one man’s eye, the shimmer off a leather jacket, and Helle’s face gleaming like its own moon, a comet tail of white in the air where she’d been.
When he can no longer hear them, Bit returns to his body. The stars are still out, the sky endlessly black. The stream gurgles. On the wind, there is the distant sound of cheering from the Sheep’s Meadow, the end of a song. He doesn’t think he saw what he saw. There is no way. It was, like everything else tonight, an alchemical reaction: desire poured from a great height into a beaker of fear.
And yet, he begins to run. He doesn’t believe; but he still has to find Hannah or Abe or Titus, someone who can do something, Handy, Astrid, a midwife, an adult, someone. Branches rake his cheeks. He trips and feels rips in his palms, warm blood spilling out of the bag of his skin. At last, out to the Pond, Arcadia House still very far. He has a stitch in his side, has to stop to breathe out his lungs.
When he stands, he is so tired that his limbs are made of stone. It is all he can do to keep trudging, step after step. He tries to focus, but he can’t remember now what he was afraid of. There were woods and people fucking, or the woods fucking itself. Stars and fucking and woods. He can’t quite figure it out. There was Helle, possibly. Or Pooh. Helle and the trees, Pooh and men? There was a yes? He wants to weep for the overwhelm that sucks him in, a quicksand. The word rape surfaces in his brain, hot and glowing, and he pushes it down again. It wasn’t. Still: not right. There is something wrong, and if he could ask Hannah, she would make it clear for him, make him understand what he doesn’t understand; he doesn’t believe his own nose, here, his hands, the hunger a purple spike in his belly. It vagues in and out, and he knows only that he has to find Hannah somewhere, Helle somewhere, Hannah, Helle, Hannah.
Bit passes an ember burning in the dark, which develops as he nears into Kaptain Amerika. The old Trippie singsongs as Bit passes,
Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their heart’s desire.
The ember vanishes. Kaptain Amerika is moored in the shadows eddying behind Bit.
Almost to Arcadia House. Bit’s blood is weary. The air seems so heavy upon him. He is almost to his own bed. What if he dealt with everything tomorrow? His legs buckle, and he crawls through the apple terraces. The moon silvering the branches soothes him, and he lies and sleeps. He wakes to a hard green apple banging his temple, a misty dawn, and sits up, wracked with pain. The dew has crept into his joints. Somewhere he hears a strange sound, a clip-clop, and thinks of the choppers and stands to warn the rest of Arcadia, then falls again, dizzied. But there is nothing on the horizon save the sinking moon, and when he looks down he finds the source of the sound: an Amish buggy clipping around the gravel drive. He ekes his tender way down and stands where the horse comes to a halt. The beast’s sensitive nostrils dilate and prod at the air, smelling something strange in it: the bonfire, the wasted bodies, the chemicals coursing through thousands of bloodstreams, Bit’s own confusion.
Amos the Amish slides off the bench, face blank. Bit looks for irritation, but the man gives nothing away. He opens the buggy’s door, and out spill three Trippies: a man who wears a wedding dress; a plump woman whose brain has snailed into itself; Henry, who tried once to yank Midge’s tongue from her mouth because he believed it had turned into a rattlesnake. Of the fried ones, the man in the wedding dress is clearest.
What happened? Bit asks him, and the man shrugs. We tried to go, he says and shuffles off, his hem gliding gray in the dirt.
Where were you trying to go? he asks the woman, and she grunts and twists her face this way and that and says Kalamazooooooooooo, ending up with a hoot like an owl.
Henry says to his knees, No, no, no, no! Xanadu. And when Bit doesn’t understand, he says, Honeydew! Paradise of milk. Of paradise!
Bit says, Were you hungry? and both Trippies nod and look at him hopefully.
Where are your Minders? Bit says, and Henry shrugs.
Amos climbs back onto the bench and takes up the reins.
Thank you for bringing them back, sir, Bit says. I’m sorry if they bothered you.
But he will get nothing from the Amish man. Amos only clicks his tongue against his teeth, and the horse moves off. The plump woman strokes Bit’s cheek. Honey, she croons, stroking, smiling her brown teeth at him. Little little little little little honeydew.
Bit wakes, groggy, in the morning, to the sound of yelling and fa
st footsteps all over Arcadia House. His brain is very slow. He shuffles into the bright day, then cringes across the lawn and into the shadow of the Octagonal Barn. Ten thousand people, it seems, are milling about, shouting. Bit stumbles toward Sweetie, who is sobbing so hard Bit can barely make out what she’s telling Abe. Apparently, Bit gathers, an hour ago, when the Kid Herd went to the tomato patch to pluck tomatoes for dinner, one girl stepped on a hand. It seemed to be growing from the mud, a zombie claw. She touched it with a finger and called to Saucy Sally. Sally tracked the arm through the mud until she found a shoulder, a face, a pair of eyes, unblinking. She sent the kidlets screaming toward Arcadia House. When the AmbUnit went to collect the young man (corduroy jacket, hair shagged into his face, tanzanite class ring, purple lips), their attempts to revive him were hopeless. As soon as the ambulance reached the hospital, the police descended on Arcadia.
Abe puts his arms around Sweetie, and though she has to bend awkwardly, she sinks her face into his neck and blubbers there.
Bit looks out into the hubbub, a new panic surging in him. He sees the police beyond, so thick that, even with his muzzy head, Bit understands they had been waiting all weekend for exactly this. Some are state troopers. Most are town police. But there are so many. Some must have been borrowed from the bigger cities, Syracuse and Rochester, and maybe even Buffalo. He sees glee in their fleshy faces. They are a tornado, a mob. They tear down tents where people are sleeping, cut down hammocks, turn over everything in Ersatz Arcadia, looking for drugs. Men and women are shoved to the ground, cuffed. The six midwives have locked arms and so far have been successful at keeping the Pigs out of the Henhouse but are now being arrested for resisting arrest. The men go in, drag some of the pregnant girls out. Astrid stands alone, a rigid statue, daring them to look her in the face. None do.
The Pigs go into Arcadia House and come out with Harrison, bellowing, icy Midge. They come out with Hank and Horse, who are clean-living, who don’t do drugs.
Planted, someone mutters nearby.
Bit spins, squinting for Hannah; in a wave of despair, he remembers the pounds of weed she’d been holding. He closes his eyes and prays that she had given it all to the others to sell last night, that she is somewhere calm, on a hike in the woods. That, at the very least, Bit and his parents can find some way to escape together. There is a pressure on his shoulders, Helle grabbing him from behind, her arms around his neck and her smell of vanilla, her dreadlocks slithering over his shoulder. He sees Hannah beside the Bakery, shouting in the face of a boy-cop. He dissolves with relief and feels Helle’s warm breath in his ear, saying, Oh, God, Oh, God.
He is glad Helle can’t see his face. He is crying. Not because of the police, not for the dead boy, not for all the people he loves being yanked, bewildered, away. For Helle, for her thievery of Arcadia’s future, for what he remembers of the night before, the men in the leather jackets.
He can’t stand for her to touch him; he can’t shrug her off. He stands suffering her arms around him, unable, just yet, to comfort her. He watches Cole and Dylan holding hands, until he can bear to look at the scene again.
The rest of the Pregnant Ladies are running as fast as they can up to the Octagonal Barn. All together, shouting, they strip themselves naked, veiny and rashy and swollen, silvery with stretchmarks, each one with the most gorgeous breasts he has ever seen. Now everyone is shedding clothes. Helle’s arms cross as she lifts the hem of her shirt. Bit looks away, sick to death of it all.
Come on, Bit, Helle says, removing her arms from the buds on her chest, and he takes off his clothes, slowly, covering himself, afraid both of smallness and of sudden expansion. Ike runs up, grinning, and swings his dick so it flap-flap-flaps against his thighs.
None of this bothers the police at all. The ones who usually take photos of bodies are now snapping photos of the naked hippies. From afar, Bit can see the police in the Circenses Singers shed take out the papier-mâché puppets and slit them, looking for a stash, and Leif falls on his knees and rips at his white hair.
The crowd hushes: the police emerge from the Eatery with Handy, in a holey army shirt. His face is pillow-creased, drowsy as a koala’s, his hands are bunched at the wrist and cuffed. He is murmuring instructions to Fiona, who is walking beside him, her chestnut hair so filled with light it seems like it’s on fire.
Bit looks at Ike and Helle, frozen in the naked moil. Dad, screams Helle, and when Handy doesn’t look up, she screams, Handy!, and Handy hears and searches for her. When he sees them, he gives both of his younger children a broad smile, that poor gray eyetooth flashing. I’ll be back, kids, don’t worry, he shouts. Handy is barefoot, in boxer shorts. The officer hits his head hard on the edge of the doorframe when he pushes him into the squad car.
One last pale wave in the window. Then the lead car pulls off, followed by the vans and buses they brought in to cart the people away. All that is left is a ring of yellow tape in the tomato patch, detectives still stomping the plants, Saucy Sally leaning against Titus, telling her story again, her newest baby as wide-eyed as a lemur in her sling.
Bit touches Helle’s thin arm, but now she shies away.
One hundred fifty-three were arrested for drug charges. Five for outstanding warrants. Twenty-six for resisting arrest. Fifteen minors, all runaways, sent back to their parents or juvenile court. Handy charged with fifteen counts of unlawfully harboring a minor. Twenty-four counts of aiding and abetting drug transactions. Five counts of possession. For the boy’s death, a count of criminally negligent manslaughter: Handy, at least nominally, owns Arcadia’s land. He allowed a party to happen at which drugs were freely available. Astrid goes to the courthouse and comes back at night, her face raw. She heads to the Biz Unit and makes a call on their telephone, and when she comes down to the Eatery, Leif and Helle and Ike are waiting for her. Around them, a protective shield has gathered: Hannah and Abe, Midge and Marilyn and Eden, Lila and Hiero, Sweetie and Cole and Dylan. Fiona, far from Astrid. Bit, of course.
Well, Astrid says. I have money for the bail. Handy’s, that’s all I could get. My mother, Margrete, in Norway. Old witch.
Helle says, Conditions?
There are always conditions with Margrete, Astrid sighs. One, I must divorce Handy, as she has always wished. And, two, you children go to her in Trondheim.
I’m not going, says Leif, his strange elfin face tight against its bones. I’d kill myself.
You are eighteen. You are not a child. It is your choice, Astrid snaps.
Me neither, Helle says, and Ike repeats.
Oh, yes, you are, Astrid says. Margrete always gets her way.
But what about Handy? says Ike, trying not to cry. It’s not fair.
Astrid strokes Ike’s fuzzy cropped head. She touches Helle’s face with both cupped hands. Handy wouldn’t want you to see the trial, all that. Norway will be good for you. There will be nobody to care for you here when Handy goes to jail.
The Eatery seems to grow so small it presses against their skin. In the weak light, every single one of them looks wan.
The visitors ebb away. Some of the Runaways leave with them, some of the Newbies. A number of Wolfs have encountered a number of Meadows and vanish into the sunset. Dorotka shocks them all. She finds a mate among the revelers at the concert, the dead boy in her garden proves the tipping point, and she packs a bag and, weeping in Polish, goes. As soon as she does, the aphids move in and coat the soy yellow.
Some of the charges are dropped. Most people make bail from outside Arcadia, but many are furious that the community to which they’d dedicated their lives wouldn’t bail them out. Whole families disappear into the night. There are beds open in the Ado Unit. Among the Old Arcadians who leave are Pooh and her mother, who vanish in the early morning after Cockaigne Day. Cole and Ike both look guilty when they hear the girl is gone.
Bit comes in from his Photography Tutorial with Mikele. He finds Hannah alone at a table in the Eatery, head in her hands. Hannah? Bit says. What’s wrong?
She stands, wordless, and leads him by the hand to the pantry. The shelves, which are usually stocked full, now shine, mostly bare. There is vegetable oil, white sugar, some spice.
We have no more food, Hannah says. We have tofu. And bread. And a few preserves from last season. We’re going to starve to death unless we come up with something. Nobody has sent back money from the Plot, and I don’t even know how much of it was confiscated.
Her voice, serrated, hits Bit in the gut. What about the Motor Pool? Bit says. Can’t they sell an extra car or something?
Extra? Hannah says. Have we ever had extra anything?
Pregnant Ladies and Trippies and mud, Bit says to make her laugh. He can’t help it: he thinks of Hannah’s secret cache, the miniatures in their frames, the Belgian lace, the tea set. As if she knows what he’s about to say, she says, There is only so much you can sell before you start to sell yourself.
What about sending Monkeypower out? he says, and she says, Bit, take a look at the fields. This morning we sent out a hundred of our best workers. That will feed all six hundred of us for a few days. Then, nothing.
Even when she walks back up to her room, Bit wants to call after her, Let me talk to Helle. Let me get back whatever weed she has left, or the money she made.
But he can’t: he can’t approach Helle without seeing the men in the trees, Helle’s face cometing off into the dark. He can’t go near. Helle first looks wounded at his coldness, then she too stays away.
Handy comes home on bail. Bit watches with Abe and Hannah from their bedroom window as he steps from the Chevrolet. He seems shrunken, and when Helle and Leif and Ike run to him at the bottom of the hill, they are all taller than their father.
