him, their wrinkled faces serious but their eyes mirthful.
It hadn't been distance or a trick of the light, he realized as he approached. Something about them did look peculiar. Liz was right.
Something was off.
'You must be Barry Welch,' the president said as he came closer.
Barry pointed a finger at him. 'Don't fuck with me!' he ordered.
Jasper Calhoun smiled slightly, nodded.
Someone bumped him, and he turned to look at the gathered residents and the milling volunteers, but he could not see who'd done it. He again faced the board.
They were gone.
Simultaneously, the lights of the guard shack winked off, and the strobing red and blue of the cruiser lights diminished as several deputies drove their vehicles and prisoners away. Around him, individual flashlights were turning down toward the pavement, moving up the road as homeowners started to disperse. The old men had faded into the woods, and he did not understand how they'd been able to disappear so quickly. Had they turned and run, dashing through the trees, their robes flapping behind them? He couldn't imagine such a retreat by those pompous old men, but the only alternatives were scenarios more appropriate for one of his novels, and those he didn't want to think about.
'They're watching you,' a woman said to him as he passed by, and Barry recognized the old lady who lived across from the tennis court. He didn't know if it was a friendly warning or an intimidating threat.
Barry strode angrily back toward where Maureen stood, now talking to Mike and Tina. The people before him moved sullenly aside, strangers casting suspicious and hostile glances in his direction.
'Is everything okay?' Mike asked worriedly.
Barry shook his head.
'What did you do?' Maureen asked. 'What did you say to them?'
'It's war,' he told her.
Maureen finished answering the five measly E-mails that her web page had generated over the past three days, knowing even as she typed them that their senders would not engage her services. It was disheartening to realize that something on which she had spent so much time and for which she'd had such high hopes was simply not panning out.
Thank God for her California clients.
She leaned back in her chair, postponing leaving the room. In here, she was cushioned from the realities of the outside world. She could pretend that she was not in Bonita Vista, that she was merely an accountant in an office, and that the things happening on the other side of these walls did not affect or concern her in any way.
Barry was still angry, still stubbornly defiant, but he was worried as well.
Maybe it was time to give up, she'd told him, maybe they should return to California.
That was the wrong thing to say.
'Who's going to fight them if not us?' he demanded. 'Would you just abandon Liz and all the other people terrorized by these murderous bastards? We're not just doing this for us! This is our chance to make a difference, to stand up and be counted!'
She'd nodded, raised her hands in acquiescence. She knew better than to press the issue and paint him into a corner If she left him an out, he might eventually take it, might: eventually see that it was the smartest of all possible options and that they could always continue their Quixotic battle from afar.
She shut off her computer, switched off the monitor. The strangest thing, the most unsettling thing, was their temporary alliance with the association. It felt wrong to her. And to Barry, too, she knew. The association had poisoned dogs in town and, intentionally or unintentionally, two children had been killed as well. The sheriff had refused to do anything about it, so families, friends, and neighbors had taken matters into their own hands and staged a rally to draw attention to the problem and intimidate the guilty into giving themselves up. It was a just cause, a moral purpose, and she and Barry and all of their neighbors had only opposed it because they were concerned for their own safety and for the condition of their houses.
They were practicing self-defense, went the rationalization, the most natural and legitimate reaction a human could have. But it did not feel that way to her. It felt as though they were shallow, self-absorbed assholes more concerned about their own real estate values than the lives of other people's children.
She and Barry had participated unwillingly, as a result of a threat, but they had participated nonetheless, and that made them morally culpable. She felt guilty about that, and she wished to Christ that they'd defied the association, that they'd at least attempted to stay neutral by remaining home and sitting it out--even if they'd had to pay a fine. They should not have lent their support or given their tacit approval to anything the association had done.
To her surprise, they were still able to shop at the market in Corban .
Even after all that had happened. It had been a nerve-racking trip for groceries yesterday when they'd made their first post-rally trek into town, and they'd invited Mike and Tina, and the Stewarts' friends Lou and Stacy, to go with them in case there was trouble, but neither the clerk at the checkout stand nor the store's two other customers had said a word. They'd bought enough groceries for the next two weeks with no problem.
Perhaps the sheriff's deputy stationed by the cash register had something to do with it.
Even if it was only Wally Addison.
They were already making contingency plans, though. Mule Park was the closest town to Corban , and while it was forty miles to the south, they could easily make the trip there and back in the space of a morning and stock up enough food and necessities for a month. The people of Corban had to be resentful of Bonita Vista residents and of the sheriff's obvious partiality, and it was only a matter of time before that resentment bubbled up and boiled over.
She stared at the blank monitor and found herself wondering if she and Barry weren't barking up the wrong tree by attributing everything to the homeowners' association. It seemed to her that Hitman was the real power behind the throne. He was the one straddling the two communities, enforcing the laws as he saw fit, allowing Bonita Vista to run roughshod over the town. He could have--and should have--sided with the families of the victims and investigated the poisonings and brought the perpetrators up on charges, but instead he'd ignored the situation, allowed it to fester, and when people had tried to take the law into their own hands, he'd reasserted his authority, allowing them to be beaten by the volunteers before he had them arrested. Now he'd stationed a deputy at the market to ensure that Bonita Vistans could purchase groceries and assigned another deputy to guard the gas station and make sure they were unmolested and able to buy gas.
It was as if the sheriff had declared martial law in Corban , and it occurred to her that he could have accomplished all of this without the association.
That was wishful thinking, though. The sheriff was just a pawn. He was the muscle. The association was the brains.
No, he was not even the muscle. Or not all of it. She remembered those shirtless volunteers with their missing fingers and hands and ears beating the hell out of local farmers and ranchers, using the Corbanites' own weapons against them, and she shivered.
Hitman might be keeping Corban safe for Bonita Vista residents, but Barry had not returned to his office. Not yet. For all they knew, it had been ransacked and vandalized, his computer smashed, but he was not ready to see for himself. His landlord and his old pals from the coffee shop had been in the forefront of the skirmish at the gate, and it did not seem prudent to provoke them.
He'd write on her computer for a while, Barry told her. He'd go back, pick up his equipment, and clear out his office after the furor died down a bit.
Mike was still working at the Cablevision office, and his friend Lou at the telephone company, but it was tense, they said. Several Bonita Vistans worked in town, and Maureen wondered how the rest of them were handling it. No doubt there'd be more than a few fights during breaks and lunches as tensions spilled over, and she just prayed that no one got seriously hurt.
She looked out the window, saw green pines against a clear blue sky.
