The Association

by Bentley Little

  Some of her panic seemed to have transferred to Liz. "What is it?

  What's wrong?"

  Maureen held a hand up, shaking her head, trying to catch her breath, then moved over to the window, looking out. The man was there, on the road, standing at the edge of the driveway, and she pointed. "That guy," she managed to get out. "He's following me."

  "Who is her "I don't know."

  Liz frowned, peeking out. "Ray's at the store. Check that door and make sure it's locked. I'm calling the sheriff."

  "Wait!" Maureen said. "Look!"

  Outside, on the road, a car had pulled up next to the man, and two other men were getting out, one approaching her pursuer from the left side, the other from the right.

  Liz moved away from the window. "That's Chuck Shea and Terry Abbey."

  She quickly unlocked and opened the door. "Chuck! Terry!"

  They looked over, saw Liz, and waved. "Hey there!" the taller man called out.

  "That guy's been chasing my friend Maureen here! I was just about to call the sheriff."

  "Call!" the tall man said. "We'll hold him!" He turned to his friend. "Told you this joker was up to no good."

  Liz retreated to the kitchen, where Maureen heard her dialing the phone and giving the person on the opposite end of the line a quick rundown.

  Outside, Chuck and Terry were making sure the bearded man wasn't going to go anywhere. Their car was behind him, and they stood on both sides, effectively blocking off all escape routes.

  "Fuck you!" the man yelled. He looked toward the house, toward Maureen. "Fuck you!"

  "They're on their way," Liz said, returning.

  They didn't have long to wait. Five minutes later, they heard a siren in the distance, and two minutes after that, a sheriff's car was pulling to a stop in front of the Dysons’ driveway. She and Liz had remained inside, just in case, but with the arrival of the law, they walked out.

  This time, the sheriff himself showed up. An older fellow with the hard, sinewy look of a reptile and the improbable name of Hitman , he brought with him another deputy, this one young but seriously overweight, and the two of them forced the bearded man into the back of the car. They didn't even try to talk to him, apparently intending to ask questions later.

  Maureen was the one who had been chased, and she described her encounter, telling the sheriff how she'd run past the man, how he'd yelled out an obscenity, and how he'd followed her up the road.

  "I don't know if he was chasing me. I mean, I don't know if that would technically be considered chasing, but I felt--"

  "Don't worry about it," the sheriff told her. He nodded to the deputy, who'd been writing everything down. "Johnson. You get all that?"

  "Yes, sir." The deputy looked around at the gathered group. "I just need your names, addresses, and daytime phone numbers."

  He took down the necessary information, and Terry, after giving his stats, took the sheriff off to the side for a moment and peeled off a business card, handing it to him. The two of them conferred quietly.

  A few moments later, with the man in the back seat yelling "Fuck you!

  Fuck you!" the sheriff and his deputy got in the car and drove back down the road toward town.

  Maureen watched the car head down the hill. She shook her head.

  "Sheriff Hit man!" she said incredulously.

  They all laughed.

  Chuck moved next to her. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You want a ride home or something?"

  She shook her head. "No. But thanks for asking."

  "All in a day's work," he said with an exaggerated southwestern drawl.

  "Ma'am."

  Liz smiled. "Thanks, Chuck. Thanks, Terry. You're good guys--no matter what anyone says."

  "Yes. Thank you," Maureen said gratefullyT

  "No problem. That what homeowners' associations are for."

  "I--" She reddened, caught off guard. "What--"

  "You don't have to say it." He laughed and looked over at Liz. "I

  know our reputation around these parts."

  "Don't blame me."

  Terry chuckled. "Conics with the territory."

  "A lot of people bristle at the restrictions," Chuck admitted. "But in an unincorporated area like this, an association is the only means we have of taking care of basic needs. You want to be hard-nosed and cynical about it? It helps maintain order. And things like the gate keep out most of the riffraff. But the other side of the coin is that it also fosters a sense of community. You've seen the courts, right?

  The tennis courts?"

  Maureen nodded. "We haven't used them yet, but, yeah, I've seen them."

  "There you go. We're also going to be building a community pool, maybe a clubhouse. We have our own little world here, a world that's better than the one surrounding it, and if that means that our standards need to be a little higher, that our rules need to be a little more strict, that we need to put out a little extra effort... well, that's a price that most of our residents are more than happy to pay." He smiled at Liz. "Most of our residents."

  "Some of the townies--" Terry gestured down the street, where the sheriff's car had disappeared. "--resent us for that. Chuck and I are on the security committee, which means that it's our responsibility to keep an eye out for unfamiliar faces or suspicious behavior. We don't get too many outside disruptions here, but when we do, it's usually some local yokel who's ticked off at us about something. We have better houses or better cars or better jobs or better retirement plans. I don't know what this particular guy's story is, but nine times out of ten it's something like that."

  "This has happened before?" Maureen asked.

  "Oh no," Chuck said quickly. "Nothing like this. But there've been...

  breaches in security, let's say. And like Terry explained, it's usually some teed-off townie."

  "Teed off or drunk."

  "Teed off or drunk," Chuck amended.

  "You know," Maureen said, "someone vandalized our house a couple weeks ago. Well, not our house really. Our yard. And they killed our cat.

  Although it wasn't really our cat. It was just a stray and we were feeding it. We'd sort of adopted it."

  Terry frowned. "Did you file a complaint with the association? I

  don't remember hearing about this."

  "Oh no. We just called the sheriff."

  "You should've filed a complaint. In fact, not to be too much of a stickler, you're required to file one according to the C, C, and Rs ."

  He held up a hand. "I'm not blaming you. You're new and you didn't know. But we like to keep up with what's happening here. Particularly if it's something like vandalism, something that could happen to any of us. It helps us know what to keep an eye out for."

  Chuck nodded. "I wouldn't even be surprised if this guy was involved.

  He seems to have been targeting you, and maybe he picked you out as a symbol or something. You're young, good looking, and, probably to him, you're rich. In his eyes, you're probably the perfect candidate for harassment." I "Don't worry," Terry said. "The sheriff's going to phone me once he has a chance to interview this loser. I'll call and let you know as soon as I hear anything." He opened the passenger door of the car and Chuck walked around to the driver's side. "You sure you don't need a ride home?"

  Maureen shook her head. "Thanks, but I'm going to stay and talk to Liz for a while."

  The two men got into the car, waving as they drove down the hill, and Maureen turned to Liz. "They don't seem that bad," she said.

  "No," her friend admitted. "Sometimes they're not."

  Barry was on the couch when she returned, reading over the pages he'd written that morning, and though the immediacy of what happened to her had faded during the half-hour visit with Liz, seeing him comfortably ensconced in the living room, knowing that he'd been sitting here alone and happily self-absorbed while she'd been running up the road in fear for her life, irritated her somehow.

  He looked up. "Hey, what took you so long?"

 
; "I was chased down the street by a psycho and the police --I mean the sheriff--had to arrest him and take him away."

  Barry stood quickly, dropping his papers, and rushed over to her.

  "What?"

  She explained it all, from the beginning, going into more detail than she had with Hitman , emphasizing the way she felt, the menacing feeling she'd gotten from her hairy pursuer. Barry kept interrupting with exclamations of "Jesus!" and his genuine expressions of worry and concern softened the resentment she'd felt. They ended up hugging, and she found herself reassuring him that it wasn't really that bad, that she was never in any real danger, that it sounded a lot worse than it was. His first impulse was to drive down to the sheriff's office and confront this guy, make sure that charges were pressed, but she convinced him to wait, to let law enforcement authorities do their jobs.

  They walked upstairs together to the kitchen. He poured himself some orange juice, while she had the last of the coffee.

  "Kind of ironic that it was two homeowners' association guys who helped you out."

  She shrugged. "Maybe we've been a little too hard on them."

  Barry looked at her incredulously. "Too hard? They tore up our yard and killed our cat!"

  "I don't think they did."

  "Really? What proof did you suddenly discover that--"

  "What proof do you have that it was them?" She shook her head. "Jesus, Barry, for someone who prides himself on being fair and open-minded and willing to think outside the lines, you sure can be a rigid, linear son of a bitch."

  "I'm sorry. I don't mean to dismiss what happened--"

  "Even though that's exactly what you're doing."

  "--but don't go giving credit where credit isn't due. These two guys are part of the association. Fine. They helped you out. Fine. But that's it. They didn't do anything anyone else wouldn't do. Liz is the one who let you in her house, she's the one who called the sheriff."

  "Would you have stopped to help someone you didn't even know?"

  "The way you described it, I got the impression that they didn't stop to help you, that you were in Ray's house and they just stopped to check on this guy because he looked suspicious."

  "That's true. It was like a neighborhood watch. Which is even better.

  They weren't just looking out for me, they were concerned about what this character might do to anyone in the neighborhood. Would you do that?"

  Barry smiled. "No. But I'm an egotistical, self-obsessed writer focused only on my own career."

  "You're only half joking."

  "Half? I'm not joking at all."

  The phone rang, and Barry quickly moved to pick it up. "I'll get it,"

  he said. They'd left the cordless on the dining room table, and he grabbed the handset and pressed the Talk button. "Hello?"

  He handed her the phone. "It's for you."

  It was Chuck Shea. He'd heard back from the sheriff, and the man who'd been harassing her had confessed to the killing of their cat and the destruction of their plants. He had apparently vandalized several other homes within Bonita Vista, vacation homes whose owners had not yet been by to discover the damage, and the sheriff was in the process of compiling a list of acts and addresses.

  The man, Deke Meldrum , had some sort of grudge against the neighborhood, although the reasons for that remained vague. "Probably a disgruntled handyman or something," Chuck opined. "Last year, the association contracted with a local maintenance company to provide all grounds keeping services for the green belts and communal property, and it ticked off some of the freelancers when we did that. I think this guy was one of them. There's something vaguely familiar under all that hair."

  "So what's going to happen? Has he been arrested?"

  "Oh yeah."

  "He's not just going to turn around and get out..."

  "Don't worry," Chuck assured her. "The association will press charges and make sure that he is prosecuted. He'll be in jail for quite a while."

  "Is there anything I need to do?"

  "We'll take care of everything. You probably won't even have to testify. With so many Bonita Vista properties involved, the association will be the complainant, and the most we'll need from you will be a statement. Terry and I are going down to the sheriff's office right now, and we'll let you know if anything else comes up."

  "Keep us informed,"

  "Don't worry. We will."

  Maureen thanked him for the information, said goodbye, and put the phone back down on the table, breathing an audible sigh of relief.

  "Thank God."

  "What?"

  "That was Chuck. He said the sheriff called and the guy who chased me is the guy who killed Barney and trashed our plants. His name's Deke Meldrum, and he's some kind of gardener or handyman. Apparently, he vandalized several other houses, too--vacation houses--and they're going to get him for all of them."

  "Do we have to go down and swear out a complaint or something?"

  "No. The homeowners' association is pressing charges."

  Barry was silent.

  "Come on. You can't have a problem with that. What, you think there's some sort of vast conspiracy and now that you and Ray are on to them they're trying to pin everything on a psycho gardener? That doesn't sound ridiculous even to you?"

  He said nothing, but she saw the look of embarrassment on his face and pressed forward. "The association is not the bad guy here. They're the ones going after the bad guy. Whatever else they do, however much they cramp your style, they're on our side in this case."

  "I just don't like them."

  "You can't admit that maybe you've been a little harsh and unyielding, that there's a slight possibility you might be wrong?"

  He looked at her, took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "I might be wrong." She nodded. "Okay." "I might be." "You are," she told him. And she found that she believed it.

  The Gordon Light foot album ended and Barry continued typing. He didn't like to write without music, but he was on a roll, and for once the silence didn't seem to affect his concentration. Ten minutes later, however, he hit a creative brick wall, and though he tried to keep going, leaving increasingly longer spaces between words with the intention of filling them in later, it was obvious that he was stuck, and he finally gave up, wheeled his chair back from the desk, and walked over to the stereo.

  He sorted through his pile of vinyl and put on an old Joni Mitchell record, staring out at the view. There was something about those folkies of the late sixties early seventies that complemented nature, that understood the rural lifestyle. There was a wistfulness in the music as well, a tinge of melancholy that somehow bridged the hopes of that era with the reality of today and subtly pointed out the disparity.

  This was music that spoke to him.

  Of course, Joni Mitchell herself was no longer the Joni Mitchell of those early albums. The last time he'd seen her, on VH1 at one of those charity concerts, she'd been droning on in a cigarette-ravaged voice, stopping in mid song to lecture the crowd for not paying close enough attention to her lyrics. She'd seemed angry and bitter, a far cry from the open, giggly young woman captured on the live Miles of Aisles, and it had been depressing and dispiriting to realize how much times and people changed.

  With the music on, his creative energy returned, and he quickly got back to work. He wrote for another hour or so, then stood and stretched. Maureen was gone, meeting with the manager of the only bank in town, trying to drum up some business locally and get to know some of Corban’s financial movers and shakers, and he was alone in the house. He walked upstairs to the kitchen and got out a can of Coke.

  He'd been cooped up in here almost all week, and he felt more than a little restless. The writing had been going well, but being indoors so much was stifling, and Barry walked downstairs and outside, grateful for the fresh air.

  He headed out to the end of the driveway and looked across the street at the forested lot next to the greenbelt. He glanced up and down the road, thought for a moment, the
n on an impulse went back inside, wrote a quick note to Maureen, and carefully shut the front door behind him.

  Walking down the hill, he turned on the first street to the right and slowed down, looking for the wooden post that marked the entrance to the east bridle trail.

  Even without the post, Barry would have seen the wide swath of open dirt that wound between the trees and away from the road, and he stepped happily from pavement to ground, feeling the delicious crunch of pine needles beneath his tennis shoes.

  It was one of the things he liked about Bonita Vista, the fact that it had green belts and bridle trails, though he hadn't availed himself of their use until now. He should come here every day, he thought, an hour or so to get some exercise and stop the spread of middle-age paunch that had materialized since he'd become a full-time writer.

  Maureen had been after him to walk with her, particularly after her run in with that lunatic, but she wasn't a hiker, she only liked to stroll up and down streets, and he found it boring and pointless to simply traverse their neighborhood. After a few obligatory efforts, she'd given up on him and had started going out with Liz and one of Liz's other friends each morning, leaving him to veg on the couch and watch The Today Show.

  But he liked hiking, liked walking on trails and being surrounded by trees and brush and the earthy smell of nature. Hell, maybe if he could convince Maureen to come with him, they could walk together.

  The trail curved down into what looked like a natural gully, following the contours of the land, winding between heavy copses of manzanita and a spread of wild holly bushes. The trees here were tall, much bigger than the ones on then- lot or next to the road, and since no homes were visible from this vantage point, he had no trouble feeling as though he were in the middle of some dense, unexplored woodland.

  There was a sudden noise in the bushes off to his right, and though it was morning and a bright sunny day, a bolt of instinctive fear shot through him. He wasn't an outdoorsy guy, a nature guy, and unexpected sounds in unexpected places never failed to unnerve him. One of the hazards of 11 his profession. As a horror writer, he always thought of the || worst possible scenario: a mountain lion that would rip his lungs out, a bear that would tear him limb from limb. He wasn't the kind to ascribe benign causes or motivations to situations he encountered, and he stopped and looked around, listening, trying to determine where the noise had come from.