Torsade Literary Space Yoharie: Inside (part six)
Yoharie
Inside
(part six)
He hit the blinker. On impulse…prompted by a sign they’d passed, to stop for gas, to close himself for a few minutes in a restroom stall.
But lacking decision, he punched the signal up, moved left, accelerated. The truck in his lane sped on; the car at Hibbler’s rear zipped to its bumper. The three of them took a long curve. A horn was tapped.
“Get going, Jer. I don’t know why you’re driving like this.”
He reached eighty, finally edged right. He wished for construction, something to force a slowdown.
An affair she was having. He could live with that, Busby, any guy. Or something he didn’t know yet, about Savannah. Or…what did apart mean, anyway? Apart was not divorce.
Maybe, he told himself, it’s just the new business. She’s moving into the building, to oversee the…
He pictured haircutting chairs being bolted to floors.
“For the new salon?”
“Oh, god,” she said. “Make sense.”
“I thought… What, apart, you mean us?”
“Us. We. I bookmarked a few places. When we eat you can look at them.”
“But, the girls’re with Mom. What you’re saying is, you want me and you to…to not be together. I don’t see… We have four bedrooms, if Rae and Savannah…”
“Don’t misunderstand me. You are getting an apartment.”
He hadn’t really misunderstood.
“Jer,” she said. “You know what people in cults, how they get brainwashed to think? You know it’s about making them not trust their eyes, making them think people who disagree with the leader, the recruiter, are enemies. Or maybe I don’t want to say enemies. But not trusting your family and… And taught to doubt their motives. The recruit has to feel like there’s a special job to be done, like he’s the chosen one, singled out from everyone else. You see. The stuff that’s flattering is also the beginning of the isolation. The way you get cut off. Then you have one person controlling your information, your way of explaining things, the things you get to know about in the first place. So, isolation, and dependency.”
She gained confidence, hitting the points on her checklist, quoting phrases.
You are made to feel judged. The judgment is assigned to your abandoned family, or to the normal society, the people who, as the leader insists, don’t understand the truth. The relationship is of fear and reward; fears are directed outwards, couched as conspiracies against the important work. The conspirators will enslave you or destroy you. They are too powerful, too protected, for ordinary authority to stop. Rewards are directed inwards, towards the leader. Feedings, things you want and seek. Sessions with him; “trust” tasks, power you’re given, to be abusive to a lower member. The manipulations train you to accept not-criticism as praise; not-punishment as kindness. Not-telling as a kind of parental wisdom.
11
Now she was saying that a cult member was kept too busy to think, by a constant flow of directives, rumors, interruptions.
Hibbler’s thought was a shadowy one of irony. A minute ago, she had been about to say, “not trusting your family and friends”, and she hadn’t, the friend part. Another thing that begged exploration, that he had no time for. For days Kate had been approaching him with her printouts. He knew she had done this research.
He braked, moved left, buzzed past a trooper ticketing a blue headlight person, who sat by the road blaring them in broad daylight.
“But it’s key that the recruit has to be recruitable. You know, nobody likes Todwillow. You like him, for some reason. You became his customer, his client.”
Client. A customer purchases goods, a client purchases services.
“Jer.”
So. She knew about the spy cameras. She had money, she could hire people…
But…would she still speak to him if she knew? Would she ride in a car with him? It was possible she didn’t.
“You have to answer.”
“I wasn’t… No. I don’t mean I wasn’t listening. Just now. You saw the patrol back there.”
They zoomed around another long curve, a long descent. Then a rise.
Weary-voiced, Kate said: “You think sit-down for lunch, when we get near Pittsburgh? Or too slow? Maybe Wendy’s. Maybe…”
He had half-mouthed what you think.
“…it’s better if you get yourself settled. Only you have to pledge me. You have to be done with it, or I don’t know what…”
The rest, to Hibbler, was a mumble, into her hand. Something like, if you could just be you.
A triangle of orange popped on the dash. His blank mind was hijacked by phone habits, and he touched a finger to it. A nub of black, a twist knob, seemed for the first time to project from the plastic. He tried this.
Kate, bent, rummaging, sat up with a lip gloss and pulled down the flap.
A calm second. Then the vanity mirror reflected alarm.
Jeremiah heard his wife gasp.
He had been staring at the dashboard. He lifted his eyes and saw the median fling itself at him, felt the bottom drop from under his wheels.
12
Inside
See more on Yoharie page
Breaking Up Together (part one)
(2021, Stephanie Foster)