THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 56 : Saturday, the second part

    It's nearing nine when we make it to the town park.

Most of the vendors are already set up, their tarps flapping violently in the gusts, fighting against the pegs that have been stomped extra hard into the ground today. We've had the lot at the Southeast corner for as long as I've been here. It's tucked away from the other farmers, and mixed in with the craftspeople. On one side of us there's a woman who sells paintings exclusively of storms. Nothing else. She has her easel out under her tent today, painting the glowing face of the clock tower under the brewing skies; charcoal trees, smudged out with her fingers, bend on the horizon behind it.

On the other side of us, an older white-haired couple sells knitted accessories and jam. They always bring with them an old FM radio. Most of the time it's set to a music station playing the classics, but every so often it'll switch to news and we'll get to hear a few seconds of something going on in the larger world. But it never lasts long; Heath usually asks them to change it back, and they always do.

In the centre of the park the smaller vendors set up camp. There's the guy who sells gemstones out of a briefcase, and the lady who climbs up into the big oak tree with her ladder to hang her handmade faeries and wind chimes from the branches. All her pieces are made from items she finds on her hikes; it says so on her chalkboard sign. Today her chimes and faeries are making lots of noise as they clash against each other in the wind, like angels fighting in the heavens. Their wires are getting all tangled up, but this doesn't deter her from hanging every last one.

Near her, a fire is glowing within a shallow rings of bricks. Incense sticks are stuck in the ground around it, filling the air with their musky ashram scent. For three dollars, you can buy a small bundle of sage and cedar from the boy tending it. Included is a slip of paper and a pencil. You're supposed to write down a prayer, then drop it in the flames.

There's a woman in a shall there now, clenching her paper to her chest, saying quiet words. She's there every Saturday. She buys from us sometimes. She says Heath and Addison remind her of her boys. Hers are overseas. The older one is in the Army; the younger in the Navy. How nice it would have been, she often says, if they had stayed here and taken over their father's business after he passed. Heath and Addison tell her what her sons are doing is noble, and that business around here isn't what it used to be. All the right things.

At our table, Noah is balancing on his crutches, unloading the cucumbers from their crate. He's stacking their bumpy bodies, one by one, to build a pyramid. He's moving slowly compared to Addison and Brandon who are scrambling to get the tent up before the rain. Anna is rushing, too, kneeling at the trailer, scribbling down new prices on ripped panels of cardboard with permanent marker.

I'm not sure where Heath went. He's the only one allowed to wander off. The rest of us aren't even allowed to go to the bathroom in the library by ourselves. He makes us go on the side of the road when we pass the sign for Petersburg, so we won't have to go once we're here. I suppose he thinks if he lets us wander off it'll get harder to draw a line. How far is too far? How long is too long?

He's paranoid about people finding out that 'Little Valley Farm', the name written on our sign, isn't a real place, nor is it where we say it is.

I can see him now. He's walking back across the park with a pastel box under his arm. He makes room, between the green onions and pints of gooseberries, to set it down, and opens it up like a jewellery box. Inside, there's an assortment of donuts.

"You're serious?" asks Brandon, already reaching in. He hasn't had any real sweets for months. None of us have because it's one of the rules. According to Heath, Kent wants us in perfect health. And perfect health, as outlined by The Vision, requires a diet of foods grown from the ground, in the same climate as one lives. No refined sugars or processed foods, and only products from animals of which we've respectfully shared a habitat with beforehand.