Mira Corpora. Jeff Jackson

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      The truckers come with guns. They’re drunk. Beefy red faces. Shallow pinprick eyes. They march into the center of camp and cock their rifles. All of them wear camouflage sweatsuits and orange flap jackets. It’s hunting season. They say they’ll give the kids a five-minute head start. To make things sporting. Maybe their original idea is only to scare the kids off the land. Watch them flee into the woods never to return. But the kids don’t budge. One of the truckers fires a shot in the air and someone screams. A rock is hurled. Another shot. The kids turn around to find a pregnant girl lying on the ground with a bloody blown-out stomach. Then things get ugly.

      The hunters’ guns seem to fire at once. They explode throughout camp in a kaleidoscope of colors. Gleaming knives are drawn and brandished. The kids are in trouble and know it. They scatter in all directions. Kids running into the forest. Kids cowering behind trees. Kids with contorted mouths, red tongues lolling, screaming for help. Not that it makes any difference. They’re target practice. Bullets in the leg. Bullets in the chest. Bullets in the head. Crimson fountains of blood cascading into the air. The truckers are ruthless. Their thick black mustaches mask inscrutable emotions.

      The kids beg for mercy. But the laws of decency are flouted. The truckers pour gasoline on the bushes and fan the day-glow orange flames. They saw off a boy’s limbs. There are faces without eyeballs, slick gray organs tumbling loose from chests, a human head planted on a makeshift spike. The truckers fuck girls in the ass. They fuck girls in the nose. They fuck a boy in his detached arm socket. One trucker pisses shimmering yellow streams on the corpses nestled in somber hues of grass. It’s a backwater holocaust. A bucolic apocalypse. A total extinction.

      At least that’s the story the painting tells. It’s an enormous work that stretches across several canvases and it takes me a long time to absorb the details. The title: The Ballad of Liberia. Lydia created it over several months, hidden away in the woods, veiling her efforts under waterproof tarps. She unshrouds her masterwork in the meadow. Muted gasps are followed by an ecstatic round of applause. The thing is so over the top that everyone can’t help but love it.

      It isn’t finished. Lydia has left some blank spots so people can express themselves, enter into the communal spirit, et cetera. We choose brushes and congregate around the long canvases. There’s a hushed air of reverence as we confront the lurid and savage details of the painting. People move between the cans of paint and start applying respectful dabs of color. Some outline the carcasses in majestic shades of purple. Others plop shiny pink dollops on the cheeks of the living. A few jokers apply their strokes to the backside of the canvas.

      Daniel throws the first handful of paint. A red splotch that hits Nycette square in the chest. Isaac retaliates by hurling a fistful of yellow at Daniel’s face. Nycette pours purple paint on Isaac’s head for being presumptive. The mohawked girl takes Isaac’s side and flicks paint at Nycette, but ends up splattering my pants instead. Then Daniel empties an entire can of blue down the mohawked girl’s back. Just for the hell of it. And that’s when pandemonium really breaks loose.

      Soon everyone is coated with paint. Some kids take refuge behind the hammocks, retreat into the woods, launch counteroffensives near the river. Laughter and shouting echo throughout the camp. Lydia and I are the only ones left by the painting. She sits beside the canvas, arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knees, sulking. Her white tank top is a fresco of smeared pigments. Her frizzy red afro looks more unruly than usual. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to drag that much paint out here?” she says.

      She asks if I’m an art lover. I say not exactly. She says nobody else seems to be one either. I ask if she thinks the truckers might really attack the camp someday. She shrugs. “People are capable of anything,” she says. While she adjusts the strip of silver duct tape that holds the bridge of her glasses together, her darting eyes give me a once-over. “You want to see my inspiration for the painting?” she says.

      We hike through the forest to the abandoned theme park. She scouts to ensure nobody is lurking, then leads us past the empty cages toward the cement office buildings. They seem so boring I’ve never given them a second glance. In the back courtyard stands a narrow shed. A janitor’s storage room of some kind. “I haven’t shown this to anyone,” she says. “It gives me nightmares.”

      The hinges of the shed are rusted shut, so she forces the door with her shoulder. It’s a small concrete room with dingy gray walls. Cobwebs in every crevice. Dust motes choke the air. The light is so dim that at first the place looks empty. Lydia digs her nails into my arm and gestures at the corner. “People are bastards,” she hisses. Then I see it. Against the back wall, pocked with scabby patches of gray mold, the mummified skeleton of a dog hangs from a noose.