Get caught up with the first part of this story…
All caught up? Now read on for the concluding part of Blue Canary…
Back at home, after a failure of a weekend in which neither Hengist nor Michael even once picked up the microphone or felt the joy of music beneath their skin, there is an emergency family summit called by Michael. The boy spent the week after their trip squirreled away in his room running up a monstrous bill on the dial-up internet. He’s been researching and has printed out a fat sheaf of documents, cranking out paper till the dot-matrix printer gave up.
Hengist and Michael spent some time talking in Michael’s room, where Michael gave his father the lay of the land, explaining the crucial matter at hand which Hengist finds himself agreeing with as no other reasoning has made a lick of sense, and now they come back down to the lounge to confront their lost soul.
“Mom, you’ve fallen in with a bunch of cultists,” says Michael, waving the printouts at her like a white flag of battle. “Look, says here that karaoke can alter the mind.”
Hengist had retreated to the couch with a beer bottle, but now springs into the attack. He stands up and he takes her left elbow. The squeeze is definite and quite painful. “I think Mikey is right, darling,” he says. “Even I felt their influence back then. I got dazed and confused there for a moment.”
Kiriko needs to scream but she doesn’t. “Michael, everything you do can alter your mind. Even peeling potatoes alters your mind. Your seekings mean nothing bad, but they’re all wrong, honey.”
“Research, mom. It’s research.”
“And Hengy, I think you just got a little bit tired back at the Budget Travel Lodge. You’ve been taking your medications for…” She looks over at Michael and holds her tongue. “Well, your new medications. I think they made you a bit woozy, baby.”
“I wasn’t woozy, Kiri, I was hypnotized!” he yells. He takes a breath and a sip of beer and speaks again more calmly. “Listen, my darling, we can help you. Turns out Mikey’s been in touch with some people…”
“What people?” wails Kiriko. “What are you talking, cult? They’re just a nice club of nice folks who’ve been real nice to me!”
“Mom, I have a group, we can deprogram you if we–”
“I’m not a machine, Michael! I don’t be programmed and deprogrammed like your stupid personal desktop computer!” She says it in her own language: konpyuutaa. Surprises herself with this outbursting past fragment of home.
“Look, why don’t you come with us and we can…”
“I’m not going to anywhere to get my program changed–by you or by any anybody!” She’s never, never ever, screamed like this at her family. She finds she’s walking out the door, the two faces staring at her dumb with amazement.
She runs outside before they have a chance to think, gets into her tiny Micra and roars away in reverse, her bald tires smoking on the bloodless driveway.
There’s a number she could reach Bryan at, in case of need. This is need. She places the call from a grimy diner down the road and waits for him to come.
When he enters through the dirty glass door of the roadside diner, he seems to know exactly where she’s seated and approaches with a perfectly grave demeanor. He removes the felt hat from his round dome and holds it at his waist before sitting. She hasn’t eaten anything and he insists on paying for a plate of greasy eggs and bacon, coffee for the both of them.
Bryan closes his eyes while sipping, handsome in the plainest way. “Tell me,” he says.
Kiriko tells him–everything.
She hadn’t meant to, but her memory commands her all the way back to Japan: meeting Hengist while he was visiting on business, his charming attempts at speaking her language, the things he bought her that her own impoverished upbringing insisted she’d never get to touch, let alone own, the quickness with which he invited her to leave with him. He’d never understood all that she left behind to be with him. Her ailing parents, a tight knit, if off-kilter community, the only place she’d ever known. She was just another thing for him to acquire, a souvenir with too much upkeep.
Now that she’s off trying to cement a life of her own again, he thinks she’s too stupid to know she doesn’t deserve something like that. As if a boring woman like Kiriko could really be loved.
Bryan listens politely, grimacing occasionally but never judging. He’s sipped his coffee down to the dregs by the time she finishes. “It’s happened before,” Bryan says sadly. “Roz’s family called the police on our group a few times all because they didn’t understand Roz’s name change, the clothes they started wearing, the change in their demeanor. Roz only did these things because they were comfortable with us in a way they’d never been with their family. It’s difficult to discover that your loved one was imprisoned in their own body by you and could only feel free once they escaped.” He sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Of course they’ll call it a cult. It does change people. The music frees people and a free person is a scary thing.”
The breakfast food sits comfortably in Kiriko’s stomach. Outside, the sky is gray and rippling. “My boys…” she starts. “They’re the only people I’ve known since being brought here to…suburb hell. But they know me not at all. They don’t like me even if I love them.”
Bryan nods. She can see a history of understanding in the lines around his mouth. “What do you want to do, Kiriko?”
She blinks at him. “What do I want to do?”
“This is your life, not theirs. No matter how they try to hold you in place.” Bryan folds his hands across the table and leans forward, intently holding her gaze. “What do you want to do, Kiriko?”
Hengist has given over operational control to Michael and his boys, who’ve come in by bicycle and in a staggered series of lifts from their moms. Now there’s briefing ongoing in the living room, and Hengist has set out snacks and turned down the volume on the TV, though he wouldn’t want to miss the latest score on the big game.
Though he’s the adult in the room, he is to some extent the client, since he’s paid for their equipment and brought in the chalkboard from the garage. It’s the one Kiriko used to teach Mikey his ABCs and it has little fairies and froggies stamped around the edges of the black surface. Maybe that was an early indication that all wasn’t right with his wife.
The word ‘compound’ comes up quite a lot.
“We’ve located the compound over on Marshall Street, next to the city park,” says Augie Thewers, who is big for his age, a star athlete in Mikey’s school, and already a squad leader in Eagle Scout Venture Team. He’s affixed a polaroid photo to the chalkboard along with a hand-sketched street map. Various red arrows surround the compound. Plan calls for a diversionary group (bike-mounted) along the street and the extraction team circling in from the park side.
There’s a large thick red arrow that strikes deep into the heart of the compound. Hengist wouldn’t really feel comfortable being part of that audacious arrow, and is relieved to learn that only the boldest and best of the High School contingent would be required to scale the compound fence, under Augie’s leadership.
Hengist sips his beer and considers that, if the photo and the map seem to show a normal suburban house rather than a compound, it would be bad for morale to go changing the terminology at this late stage. He passes round the chips as they set zero hour for 2100 hours local. Several of them need to be home by ten pm, and this seems to allow sufficient margin for error.
An arm is raised: Michael. “What if they’re armed, the cult members, and they try something with my mom?” he asks Augie.
“Good question,” says Augie and his lips stretch in a fierce grin, revealing a set of braces. “That’s where this comes in”. He reaches from his back and pulls out an automatic pistol from his jeans.
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” exclaims Hengist. “I’m not sure if it’s really wise to go packin’ into an assembly of desperate cultists like that. Remember the Branch Dravidians, man. They were armed to the fu- to the darned teeth!”
“Don’t worry, Mr Knutsen,” says Augie. “It’s probably not even loaded. I think my dad just keeps it for a deterrent effect. Not sure it’s actually real, anyway. Prob’ly just a replica. You know, shoots blanks…”
He waves it around a little bit to assure Hengist of its harmlessness. That seems to settle that matter. Hengist is uncertain if he should intervene again. These young men seem so sure of themselves, so certain. Was he like that, their age?
“I don’t think any of that will be necessary, boys,” says a new voice from the doorway. All of them look round. It’s Kiriko, just walked in from the street.
The atmosphere has changed appreciably. No longer precision military-style briefing, it’s become suddenly a gaggle of embarrassed teenage boys and a wide-eyed middle-aged man.
“Your dangerous mission to penetrate the cult compound won’t be needed,” she says. “I’ve come back.” They all exchange confused glances, Hengist stays in place, Michael gets up as if to embrace her but then sits back down again.
“Back to stay, if you like. But I tell you one thing,” says Kiriko, taking off her overcoat. “You will not be fucking deprogramming me!”
A tense hush devours the room. Augie fiddles with the gun in his hand, as though suddenly afraid he might not get to use it, real or not.
Hengist clears his throat and stands. “Kiriko, darling,” he says, “we were worried about you. That cult–I thought they’d stolen you away, desecrated your body, filthied your mind–”
“Shut up!” Kiriko exclaims, stepping inside with something boxy wheeled behind her. She closes the door to the bloodless suburb outside. “Shut the fuck up. Everyone. Quiet. Please.”
To her surprise, the boys listen. Hengist sits back down and cradles his Heineken for comfort. Michael is demured and embarrassed to be mothered before his comrades, allowing his unruly hair to obscure the flush in his cheeks.
“Good,” Kiriko says. She takes her time removing her jacket, her boots, placing them neatly by the front door. All eyes follow her, unblinkingly, as she wheels her contraption to the front of the room. When she unplugs the television to free up an outlet, Hengist gasps as the big game is squandered to darkness.
Her box, taken from the trunk of Bryan’s Corolla, is no bigger than a microwave but it should do the trick. The tiny screen on its face blinks to life. The feel of the machine beneath her fingers is natural and real, more tangible than anything in this life she crossed an ocean for. This is purpose.
Kiriko takes the microphone in her small hand. She wields it sharp, like a knife. She’s going to cut a gash in the neighborhood's throat and set them all free. Or, at least these boys.
She stands as tall as she can with her lips pressed lightly to the microphone. Every mouth hangs open in anticipation. Michael watches her through the shorn fringe of his bangs and Hengist anxiously strokes his beer.
“Acceptance is not a cult,” she says, and the crowd quivers. “Anger is not action. Kindness is not submissive.” She hits play on the song. “Joy is the bridge to everything.”
The first note of the song strikes a grin across Kiriko’s face. Home is not a place, but a feeling. Belonging is something offered. A squad of dishevelled teen boys with stained clothes and fearful hearts, and one disconnected, apathetic man, all lean forward as Kiriko opens her mouth and unleashes her offering:
I'm going back someday Come what may, to Blue Bayou Where you sleep all day and the catfish play On Blue Bayou I'm going back some day Gonna stay… on Blue Bayou Where the folks are fine and the world is mine On Blue Bayou
ALL TOGETHER now…
======== [BLUE CANARY / END ] ========
Ah, the ending was a twist of a different kind - and most welcome in these days of pain. A lovely bit of work, you two!