ANY MAJOR DUDE WILL TELL YOU
My parents left the cult and my dad worked in the construction industry selling home insulation. Apparently they were kicked out of the cult for not attending meetings as required, but they became less interested and attended less after the cult leader prophesied the end of the world in 1980 and the world continued to exist. My dad threw himself into his salesman role with cult-like commitment and was soon salesman of the year. While away on a business trip, he called my mom and told her he bought a house. I only heard her side of the conversation, but she was like “Are you kidding? Do you want us to move there? When do I get to see it?” and got off the phone looking perplexed.
It was more rustic cabin than house, about four hours away from home in the Adirondack mountains. A little too far for a casual trip, but whenever I had an extra day off of school we would go up there and rough it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were struggling to find their footing as a family since their whole relationship had happened in the context of the cult. Maybe they were play-acting a little in their family roles at this country house. For my mom it was Little House on the Prairie, for my dad it was somewhere between Pioneer Days and a testosterone playground. There was a country candy store in town where they bought me a cap gun and bullwhip so I could pretend to be Indiana Jones.
We had a Ford Econoline cargo van with no windows or seats in the back, and I would ride back there with our dog Zeph, sitting on the carpeted floor, listening to tapes my dad played on the van stereo. Mainly he played Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan and The Doors. While up in the Adirondacks for a full week, mom started getting bored and wanted to meet some other people in town. She ended up going to a crafts day with the town church ladies, and after dad dropped her off in the Econoline, I stayed in the back with Zeph and we headed back to the house. All of a sudden dad started to pull the van over into the emergency lane and kind of looked back at me and smiled. “You want company back there?” he said, and then started talking to somebody out the passenger window. “Hop in the back.” Just then the Econoline side panel door slid open and I was face-to-face with three teenage longhairs who didn’t know I was back there, all three of them drinking single-serving cartons of orange juice through straws. They kind of looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and got in. The girl was friendly and asked about my dog and the guys just sort of bugged out and stared into space. We drove them a few miles but one of the guys seemed distracted, asked my dad to pull over, and they were gone. The nice girl waved goodbye to me before they closed the side door and I went to sit up front.