The Association

by Bentley Little

  "I'm going to call, let her know about this." Maureen ran upstairs, picked up the phone from the dining room table where they'd left it, and punched in Liz's number as she walked back down the steps. It obviously took several rings for Liz to answer because Maureen was at the bottom of the steps before she started talking, and Barry imagined the old woman pulling herself together, wiping the tears from her face, breathing deeply before picking up the phone.

  And doing it all on camera for the amusement of her neighbors.

  "You're on BVTV right now," Maureen said. "There's some kind of hidden camera in your house. We turned on the TV and saw you sitting on the couch ... crying. There's no sound, so we can talk, but get away from the couch, get away from the living room, they can see you."

  There was a long pause as Maureen listened to her friend. "Uh-huh ...

  Yeah ... No ... No ... I understand ... Yes we are ... Same to you.

  Bye." Maureen hung up the phone, looking stunned. "She says she knows."

  "She knows?"

  "She saw herself on TV last night." Maureen's jaw tightened. "Going to the bathroom."

  "But how--"

  "It's not live. It's edited, on tape. She wasn't crying just ] now, she said that was probably taken last week sometime, I She was in the kitchen, cleaning. She was up half the night j trying to find where the camera in the bathroom was hidden, but couldn't find a thing. Now she thinks her whole house is probably under surveillance."

  "What's she going to do?"

  "File a complaint."

  "That's it?"

  "Keep looking for the cameras, I guess. And try to ignore them until she does."

  "Jesus."

  "Let's get out of here," Maureen said. "Let's go to Cedar City."

  Ten minutes later, their bags were in the Suburban and they were ready to go. Maureen looked back at the house. "Do you think we should boa id up the windows first, just in case?"

  Barry shook his head. "I don't want to show fear. I don't want the association to think we scare easily. As far as they're concerned, we just decided to take a little trip for a few days because we wanted to see the country."

  "Okay."

  "Besides, we'd have to go down to the lumber yard, buy some plywood, nail it up. I don't know how I'd reach those top windows--"

  "I said okay."

  "Okay."

  They got into the SUV and Barry pulled out of the driveway onto the road.

  They were stopped at the gate. "I'm sorry," the guard said, walking out of the kiosk. "No one is allowed to enter or leave Bonita Vista."

  He was wearing an expression of grim determination. The olive garb was gone, replaced by a crisp black uniform, the shirt adorned with silver epaulets and insignias, feet, clad in knee-high black boots. His usual clipboard was nowhere in evidence, and his right hand rested on the bolstered pistol at his side.

  "What?" Barry said.

  "You may not leave Bonita Vista. It's been deemed a security risk, and I'm afraid that for your own safety, you are not allowed to depart the premises."

  "What the fuck is this? The association's declaring martial law?"

  The guard met his gaze. "Exactly."

  He'd meant it as a joke. Well, not a joke exactly, but a cutting barb, an exaggeration intended to embarrass the guard and draw attention to the absurdity of such a situation. Instead, he was confronted with a flat acknowledgment that his sarcastic overstatement was the truth.

  He looked over at Maureen in the passenger seat. Her face was red, livid with anger, and she leaned around him to address the guard.

  "Listen, you! We are the homeowners' association and you work for us!

  Our dues pay your salary! Now open that goddamn gate and let us through!"

  The guard looked at her coldly, then turned his attention to Barry. "I

  suggest you back up and turn this vehicle around."

  "What is your name?" Maureen demanded. "I'll have your job, you insolent son of a bitch!"

  "My name is Curtis. And as you know, I also live in Bonita Vista." He leaned forward, resting an arm on the open window frame of the Suburban, letting the tip of his face cross over the invisible boundary that separated the inside of the vehicle from the outside. "And I'd appreciate a little respect from you, you insolent cunt ."

  He smiled, pulled away, tipped the black cap that covered his blond brush cut. "Good day, ma'am, sir."

  Barry put the transmission into reverse and backed up the way they'd come. At the tennis court, he swung into the small parking lot, turned around, and headed up the hill.

  "We're trapped," Maureen said incredulously. "We're trapped here and we can't escape."

  "Let me think," Barry told her. "We'll go back home for J a minute and try to figure something out."

  "There's nothing to figure out. I suppose we could walk out of here, but it's a half-hour hike to town and that's the only place we could get to. Besides, that would be going into the lion's den."

  He smiled. "We could pull a C.W. McCall."

  "Huh?"

  "Crash the gate doing ninety-eight."

  "Don't think it's not tempting."

  Barry pulled into the driveway, turned off the ignition. "He had a gun. Did you notice that?"

  "Yes," she said quietly.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  "So what do we do?" Barry asked. "Do you have any ideas?"

  "No." She sighed. "God, I can't believe this is happening."

  "Let's go inside. Maybe we'll think of something."

  They got out of the Suburban, walked around the Toyota, but even before they'd started up the porch steps they saw a notice on the screen door.

  They'd been gone five minutes, eight at the most, but somehow someone had managed to come onto their property and leave a message from the homeowners' association.

  "Are we under surveillance?" Maureen asked. "Do they spy on us and wait until we leave so they can rush in and put this crap on our door?

  This can't be coincidence."

  "Nothing's coincidence." He remembered the note they'd found in the closet.

  They're doing it. They're keeping track of it. Don't think they aren 't.

  Barry freed the paper from the grating and read it. "It's an order for all residents to attend the Bonita Vista anti- rally at eight o'clock tonight."

  "Order?"

  "That's what it says." He handed her the notice, then used his key to unlock the door. They walked inside.

  "According to this, they'll fine us if we don't show up. Is that legal?"

  "I don't know. I have a feeling that it is, though. That's one thing they don't seem to screw up on. However outrageous their actions, they always seem to come down on this side of the law."

  "According to Sheriff Hitman . Not exactly an unimpeachable source in my mind."

  "I'll call Jeremy. He'll be able to tell us." He locked the door behind them, threw the deadbolt.

  Barry went downstairs and dialed Jeremy's number, but midway through the first ring, a robotic female voice came on the line and said, "I'm sorry. Due to a heavy call volume, all circuits are busy. Please try again."

  The call was cut off, leaving only a dial tone.

  He tried again.

  And again.

  And again and again and again. Over an hour period, he must have dialed Jeremy's number thirty times, but in each instance he received the same recorded message. He finally gave up, throwing the phone across the room in frustration. It bounced harmlessly on the carpet.

  Not only couldn't they leave, but they could not contact the outside world. They were cut off here, effectively isolated, and he could not help thinking that it was entirely intentional, that it was part of the association's goal. He would not be surprised to learn that Bonita Vista had its own switchboard and that all incoming and outgoing calls were routed through there, giving the association the power to censor and monitor all of its residents' phone messages.

  Neither he nor Maureen could think of a
ny way to get past the armed guard save the Convoy option, and they so tired of staring at each other across the living room as they fruitlessly tried to brainstorm.

  Maureen finally went down-1 stairs to work on her web page while Barry headed upstairsf to make himself an early lunch.

  Mike called just after noon. "Did you get the notice?"

  "You're the one who left that for me?"

  "No. I got one, too. I was just wondering what your plans are."

  "I don't know yet."

  "They can level a fine against you. And if you don't pay it, they can put a lien on your house."

  "I'm so glad we live in a democracy."

  "We live in a gated community," Mike corrected him. "The two are mutually exclusive."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Go."

  "Me, too, I suppose."

  "I've got an extra baseball bat if you want one," Mike said.

  Baseball bat? Barry felt an unfamiliar shudder pass through him as he thought of wielding a weapon against another person. "You really think there's going to be trouble?"

  "I have no idea, but I want to be prepared. Better safe than sorry, as they say."

  Barry hung up and told Maureen that he was going to attend the anti-rally, explaining that if there was any hope of preventing violence it would be through a show of strength, a display of numbers.

  He'd expected an argument, but she was defeated and resigned and said that she'd go, too, that since they'd been forced into this situation and there was no way they could avoid it, they might as well face it head on.

  They spent the afternoon restlessly, trying to find tasks with which to occupy their minds and take up time, but the hours crept by slowly as they shifted desultorily from one unfinished household chore to another. Maureen finally ended up reading a magazine on the couch, while Barry watched Court TV and then a political talk show on CNBC.

  Neither of them was hungry, but they forced themselves to eat an early dinner and then wash the dishes together.

  They watched the local news, the national news, Entertainment Tonight.

  And then it was time to go.

  There'd been only a half hour of rain in the late afternoon, but the temperature had not returned to the high heat of midday and the evening was unusually cool. Maureen put on a jacket, Barry changed into a long-sleeved shirt. They locked up the house and started walking.

  The sun had gone down only recently and they'd been able to see from the house before they left that the western sky still carried a tinge of orange, but it was dark down here among the pines. Night arrived early on the forest floor.

  There were others on the road ahead of them: two couples and a family of four. Barry could see their silhouetted forms in the occasional swatches of porch light that spread out from the driveways of the dispersed houses. Neither he nor Maureen spoke, but there was a low-grade murmur audible through the trees and bushes at the bottom of the hill. The sounds of a crowd.

  The noise grew louder as they rounded the curve in the road. From a side street, another couple emerged, carrying flashlights trained on the pavement before them. Barry was tempted to say hello, to try and talk with them, find out if they knew anything more about what was happening than he did, but they were not people he recognized and for all he knew they could be association supporters.

  He and Maureen were walking hand in hand, and he squeezed her fingers and slowed the pace, holding back until the other couple moved far enough ahead.

  She understood without him having to say a word.

  "You can't tell who's on which side," she said quietly"I after the couple pulled away.

  He nodded. "It's best to be careful."

  The trees on the left disappeared, the land flattening out as they came to the cleared site of communal property. The pool was done, Barry saw, and filled, the water reflecting back the blackness of the sky above. To the right of the pool, a rough wood frame and cement foundation were already in place for the community center.

  The volunteers had been busy.

  They walked quickly past the site. In horror fiction, even his own, evil was usually ascribed to locations that were old, that had troubled histories, not to places that were not even finished, that had only a future and not a past or present. But everything was bassackwards here, and the newly completed pool and partially constructed community center seemed imbued with malevolence and engendered within him a shivery sense of revulsion.

  They passed Frank and Audrey's house, passed the lighted tennis courts.

  The street straightened out.

  Here was the crowd.

  There must have been close to a hundred people milling around. Powerful halogens atop the guard shack illuminated a large section of road and gave the surrounding trees a flat, painted look. Although most of the residents had walked down, there were quite a few cars and trucks--the people who lived on the other side of the hills, no doubt. They were parked in rows in front of the gate, as though to buttress the defenses. The sheriff's cruiser was behind the kiosk, by itself.

  It looked like a block party. People were laughing, talking, drinking beer. The only indication that anything was out of the ordinary was the strict line of demarcation, the gate, beyond which was dark, empty silence. And the fact that nearly everyone was armed. He saw no guns, other than those being examined by the sheriff and the guard inside the kiosk, but people were carrying hammers and bats and tire irons. He saw a woman with a carving knife talking to a man wielding a pool cue.

  "I don't like this," Maureen whispered.

  Barry didn't either. There was something unsettling about seeing ordinary people, upscale neighbors and casual acquaintances, gathered together for the purpose of fighting an opposition mob from the wrong side of the tracks.

  "Here they come!" someone yelled.

  Barry looked south, over the vehicles, through the interstices of the gate. There was a line of headlights visible through the trees, snaking up the road toward Bonita Vista. He was reminded of Universal's Frankenstein films and the hoary cliche ' of angry villagers storming the mad scientist's castle, pitchforks and torches held aloft.

  There'd be no pitchforks or torches this time, though.

  Flashlights, maybe.

  Possibly guns.

  The crowd grew momentarily silent, as though the gravity of the situation had suddenly and simultaneously sunk in with all of them, as though they realized that there was a very realistic possibility of violence. Barry felt a knot of dread forming in the pit of his stomach.

  Pickups and old Chevys, boat like Buicks and battered Jeeps began parking along the dirt shoulder abutting the ditch outside Bonita Vista and quickly became so numerous that succeeding vehicles were forced to spread out into the middle of the street.

  He looked over at Hitman standing next to the guard, the two of them loading their weapons, and he wondered again why the sheriff was so pro-Bonita Vista, why he would sacrifice the integrity of his job to do the bidding of the home-1 owners' association. It didn't make any sense. He didn't| even live here.

  Did he?

  The thought had never occurred to him before, and Barry was surprised at himself for overlooking so obvious a connection. Greg Davidson was a local boy made good who'd moved up into the environs of Bonita Vista.

  Maybe die same was true for Hitman . It would account for a lot, and he thought it was more than possible that Hitman had been lured to Bonita Vista, that the sheriff had been actively solicited by the association's board and perhaps given a deal on financing and annual dues in order to recruit him to their side.

  Beyond the gate, car doors were being slammed, engines were shutting off, though no one was stepping forward. A buzz passed through the crowd of Bonita Vistans , a repeated phrase that did not quite make it to where Barry and Maureen stood.

  Moments later, the Corbanites started marching en masse, a ragtag group of angry ranchers, construction workers, mechanics, and business owners who appeared ready to storm the gate
s. Barry recognized some of the people in the crowd. Hank. Joe. Lyle. Bert. He felt sick to his stomach, but self preservation trumped loyalty and social conscience any day of the week, and he was prepared to help fend off an assault.

  Mike was right. He couldn't stand idly by while his home was under attack.

  He just hoped there wouldn't be any injuries.

  Or dead is He took Maureen's hand, squeezed it. Her fingers were cold, her body shivering. To his right was the ruddy-faced redneck who'd harassed the Mexican handyman. The fat bastard was in his element, grinning from ear to ear as he pulled a crossbow from the back of his pickup.

  "My old buddies," Maureen said, nodding to her left, and Barry saw Chuck Shea and Terry Abbey walking purposefully forward, swinging bats.

  In his mind, he'd considered the Bonita Vista people soft compared to the townies, rich, pampered, slumming city folk as opposed to rough, tough, hard scrabble manual laborers, but he saw now that that was an incorrect generalization. If anything, the Corbanites , despite their very visible and understandable anger, seemed awkward and amateurish, unorganized in their opposition, while the Bonita Vistans seemed prepared, methodical, and capable.

  Was it the association's influence?

  Barry thought not, and that was the frightening thing. They were this way on their own.

  The sheriff and the guard aligned themselves near the stone pillars at each end of the gate, many of the more gung ho and enthusiastic residents filling the space in between.

  All of a sudden, the crowd grew completely silent, individuals stopping in place, their attention drawn to someone or something in the pines behind him. Barry turned and saw a line of six old men in black robes standing at the edge of the lighted area, next to the trees. Odd gold stripes and insignia decorated the formal garb, and for some reason he thought of that jackass William Rehnquist during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, decked out in the robes of a Supreme Court Justice that were desecrated by ridiculous homemade gold stripes supposedly inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan. There was the same sort of absurdity here, only there was also an element of menace, a hint of something dark, dangerous, and fundamentally wrong.