Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

Jerry shook his head, said, “I’ll tell you all about it later,” and pushed Play on a cassette deck sized like a hardback novel.

And so it went: Show tunes. Oklahoma! and Cats and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Jerry singing in tandem but not in key. He had several five-gallon jugs of gas in the back, which meant they could go for hours without having to see anyone, which they did. Olgo was so clammy by the time they rolled into Blackstone, his skin was made of eel.

He did not know the area well, but he gathered they were close to Richmond, having drifted into Virginia a while ago and been headed east the whole time. Eventually, they pulled off the highway, and when they saw signs for Fort Pickett, Jerry said, “USS Pueblo, I was on that ship, you know.”

Olgo said nothing. So Jerry was a Helix-touting ex — navy man. Bad news. Also, the Pueblo? God knows what the North Koreans had done to the sailors off that boat; Manchurian candidate might be a step up. How’d Jerry lose his fingers, anyway?

“That should mean something to you,” Jerry said. “You’re almost my age, I bet. You lived through the war.”

Olgo’s mouth blew open. He flipped down the visor and evaluated what he could in the mirror. The skin about his lips was pinched. The whites of his eyes were not so white. He seemed to have grown lappets overnight. In general, the impression was of a man who’d lived in the sun and slept on sandpaper.

Jerry went on. “You and me have something in common now. Both kidnapped. I didn’t have to pick you up, you know.”

Olgo gathered his wits. Another way to hatch accord between parties was to get on record their differences and then to look for shared ground. He said, “Okay, I see you think you’re doing me a favor, whereas I think the opposite. Maybe we can come to terms. Because, frankly, taking me prisoner is not going to avenge whatever it is you want avenging. The Helix is finished. The place was surrounded when I left. The government is probably arresting Thurlow Dan as we speak”—though here he paused and smiled bitterly. Thurlow Dan, that wife-stealing shitfuck.

“Prisoner!” Jerry laughed. “I’m not taking you prisoner. You already been through that, and besides, it’s unAmerican. ”

“What?”

“Un-American,” Jerry said. And then, looking at Olgo with an appraiser’s eye, “Or aren’t you one of us? Whole country’s full of people who don’t look the part, so I never know who’s who anymore.”

“What?”

They pulled into a gravel driveway that ramped up to a single-car garage addition on a converted trailer home. Prongs of ice hung low from the gutters, and from sky to foot was a gray so ambient, it could blanch your heart in minutes. Olgo winced and waited and summoned the courage to run.

Jerry let the dogs out. He was gripping a carnation of fabric so that his sweatpants wouldn’t fall and wrestling with the rear door, which would not close. Hard to say which problem had him worse.

“Shit car,” Jerry said.

Olgo’s breath purled from his lips. A man across the street was shoveling snow, wearing orange camouflage gloves and a trapper hat. There was music in the air, guitar licks, and Olgo thought he saw a woman fat as a yak vacuuming inside. He surveilled their lawn and wished he hadn’t: hanging from a tree turned gibbet was a deer carcass with skin rolled down from the neck, over a brick that gave purchase to a rope, and at the end of this rope, two boys, seven or eight, heave-hoeing amid the steam still lifting from the animal’s flesh.

The man waved. “Eight o’clock,” he yelled, and Jerry nodded before plunging a key into the front door of his house.

Run, Olgo thought, and walked inside. The man was a twig. Did not seem to carry a firearm or have an incarcerating posse in the living room. Run, Olgo thought, and undid his scarf, noting that Jerry’s furniture was sealed in plastic. The place was overrun with cats and, in the bathroom, a litter of kittens not one week old.

“I rescue ’em,” Jerry said. “Else they just howl all winter long, and the sound is like people bawling for everything that’s unfixed.”

There were fifteen bags of cat food pushed up against the wall. Jerry toed a rubber ball that skidded across the floor. Four cats tore after it; the others couldn’t be bothered. Jerry said he’d be right back, and when he returned, he wore a terry-cloth bathrobe that exposed his skinny legs and gym socks tubed loosely around each calf. He popped a cube of gum in his mouth. “Hubba Bubba. Want one? I’m ’bout to shower.”

Olgo shook his head. He’d heard of abducted children who could escape at any time but never did. Whose minds had exiled the very idea of escape, so that when asked about it later, they regarded the concept the way a toddler might consider a new word — with wary enthusiasm because haven’t I heard this someplace before? Olgo had been here only five minutes and already he was stuck.

Jerry settled into an armchair. Olgo said, “So, do you want to tell me what’s going to happen to me now? That family across the street, are they Helix, too?”

“They was,” he said. “That’s how they met. My son never went to a dance in all his life, what’s it called, a RYLS, and next thing he’s married this woman — there wasn’t so much of her back then — and joined up.” He blew a bubble and went cross-eyed to watch it grow.

“That’s your son?” Olgo cursed under his breath. So Jerry did have people. Backup.

“And his wife. And them kids. I left the Helix easy enough, but for Buzzy, I got one of them exit counselors. Took us a year of planning. All nicey-nice, and for what? He’s all spaced out. Dissociation, they call it, from all them hours just telling on himself in a room.”

Olgo thought of Kay, her beautiful mind seized and plundered by these nuts. Why hadn’t he noticed the crossroads-of-life events that prep a person for cult induction? Had she been depressed? Menopausal?

Restless? Bored?

“You’re ex -Helix?” he said.

“Yep. An’ I still can barely make a decision on my own. We have this joke now: only thing scarier than Loch Ness is Together Ness, though maybe it’s not so funny.”

“Are we far from Richmond?” Olgo said. Though, really, what was he going to do? Pluck Kay from their midst? He couldn’t know how lost to them she was, but he’d heard stories. The power of group doctrine and how the person deputized to speak for the group was more worried about winning its approval than dealing with the enemy. Assuming he was the enemy — though how was this possible? His wife of thirty-five years would choose a cult over him, thanks to the five minutes she’d been among them?

Jerry produced a knife from his bathrobe pocket. He examined his hand and began to scrape at the dirt plastered to the underside of the thumbnail he had left. Kittens mewling. A car engine that would not catch.

“’Bout an hour,” he said. “Give or take. But not to worry. I know all the back roads.”

Olgo was about to ask what this meant when there was a knock at the door, then a pounding, and the sound of many people barreling into Jerry’s place.

Buzz had dundrearies like it was 1975. He was dragging a grill on wheels into the kitchen, except the wheels were missing and the legs grated the floor.

Olgo sat up as Sissy thrust a pail of charcoal briquettes at his chest, because him sitting around was not going to get this dinner on the table any faster. Her hair was buff, feathered to the chin. She was chopping sausage. Said, “You know, I was just sick at my stomach when I heard about you and the others. But when Dad said he was gonna help, well, we all gladdened up a little. He’s been on the road two days. Wouldn’t take a cooler, neither. You like a little blood in your meat? Barbecue’s almost heated up.”