“Jeremy, come in here, would ya?” Jerry Kolat sits at the head of the long, Oak-made table that has occupied the barn since the family moved in ten years ago. Scanning through a letter, he rhythmically taps his pencil eraser against the hard wood. Setting the letter down, his gaze shifts to the towering set of shelves on the far wall that rise to the ceiling. “Hurry it up, son.”
“I’m here,” says Jeremy as he rushes through the swinging door, the creaking hinges filling the silent country air. At six feet, three inches, Jeremy stands a bit taller than his father. His blue-jeans are tattered and faded and his checkered flannel is missing the top two buttons. The pair share the lengthy, messy hairstyle of men with more important things to worry about than their appearance, except Jerry’s has begun to pepper with grey. Pointing with the pencil tip, Jerry directs his son to the corner chair. Jeremy sits.
“Okay, son. We just got another shipment in from the DiBiase’s.” As Jerry looks over the letter once more, Jeremy rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
“More ammo?” He sighs.
“7mm rounds. Five thousand of em’. There’s two crates in Lynn Gleason’s old house down by the river. Just crack ‘em open and take a backpack with you. A big one.”
“Fine,” Jeremy sighs, “Didn’t she go crazy, though? Burnt it down last year, I thought.” Jeremy says, narrowing his eyes inquisitively.
“Still standin’, ain’t it?” Jerry replies as he pulls out his inventory sheet and notes the future changes.
“Don’t mean it’s safe,” Jeremy says as he runs his fingers through the length of his hair and tucks his bangs behind his right ear.
“Put em on those bottom two shelves, at the end there,” says Jerry, pointing again with his pencil, completely ignoring his sons’ concern. He sets a pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose and studies the sheet more closely. There are twenty-four hours in a day, and for Jerry Kolat, several of those hours are spent obsessing over supplies that, to this point, have remained unnecessary.
Frustrated, Jeremy stands and walks slowly to the door. He stops, presses his open hand into the wall, and lets out a deep breath before turning to face his father. “We almost done with this?” Jerry takes his time and finishes his notes silently. He first sets down the pencil, then removes his glasses, folds them, and places them in the breast pocket of his t-shirt. “I mean, we got enough shit to last a couple years,” his voice becoming less audible with each word.
Jerry cracks his knuckles, looks his son over, and shakes his head in disappointment. For the past ten years, the Kolat family has been living in isolation. Jeremy was pulled from his old school in the middle of the semester and forced to the rustic outskirts of Avora, Pennsylvania. His mother took charge of his studies, which became focused strictly on survival skills, marksmanship, and environmental science, while his father dictated the arrangement with the help of a local, Franco DiBiase.
“Why don’t you get it?” asks Jerry, quietly, “Why don’t you understand the significance of the work I’m doing here?” His voice climbs in volume and intensity; specks of spit stick to Jeremy’s chin. “I’m doing this for you, you know? YOUR future, YOUR wife, YOUR children.” Jeremy’s cheeks fill with pink as he looks to the floor. He closes his eyes, uses his thumb and index finger to massage his eyeballs.
For a moment, Jerry looks at him with tenderness and understanding, the way a father should. Jerry’s teenage years were spent between his mother’s trailer and his uncle Chet’s farm. Both of them were lunatics, addicts of heroin, and any ol’ thing they could get their hands on, but it wasn’t just them. Addiction had killed his father, his brother Jim.
The neighbor, Mrs. Montgomery, found his father dead in the front seat of a 1976 Camaro, foaming at the lips, all the blood vessels in his eyes popped and bled. He was given a funeral, a burial.
Jimmy, though, was found by his mother. Not wanting to brighten the already cast light, she had to act. On a warm, cloudless day, she wrapped her dead son in a blanket specked with blood from the occasions when one of them would miss the vein. She stuffed him into the trunk of her Cavalier and drove around for an hour before taking him to Uncle Chet’s farm. Just before she threw him over the gate to the pigpen, she stopped. Gently, she laid his bundled body onto the ground and unwrapped him from the blanket. Without the slightest desire to stare into his eyes one last time, she reached into his back pocket and snatched his wallet. She picked him up, leaned his chest against the fence, grabbed his feet, and flipped him over. She ripped open the Velcro of Jimmy’s Volcom wallet, pocketed the twenty-three dollars inside, and threw the wallet in with him. As her first-born son was devoured by the pigs, their gleeful “oinks,” breaking a once silent night, she walked towards Chet’s house to buy a few bags. The next day, with all the shame the dope would afford her, she sent Jerry to North Carolina to live with his grandfather.
Jeremy has begun to cry. Jerry lays his hands flat on the table, then curls his fingertips and digs into the wood as his sorrow is replaced once more with an unrelenting ferocity.
“You know what needs to be done, Jeremy. I don’t know why you’re still sitting here.” Jeremy looks at his father and shakes his head as he stands and leaves the room without another word.
“Bullshit,” Jeremy whispers to himself as he throws his backpack over his shoulder and slams closed the bedroom door.
“Nothin’butabunchagoddamnbullshit.” He walks through the kitchen and out the back door, which he leaves unlocked. There’s no reason to lock the doors where nobody knows you exist. Most of the family’s valuable possessions are stowed away in the barn anyways, counted and marked on a page like the rest of Jerry’s supplies. Jerry is meticulous, almost obsessed, when it comes to his supplies, but he has been known to have a bit of a softer side. On those long days spent sorting new inventory, when he thinks no one else can hear him, he sings. During these occasions you can find Jeremy hiding in the loft, listening to his father’s horrible voice with a smile reminiscent of a better time.
Before the move, the Kolat’s lived in a small, but crowded little town in North Carolina. Jeremy liked the neighborhood. The people were friendly enough, and there was a little ice cream shop on the corner of Cheswick Street that his mother would take him to every Friday after school, provided he was making his marks. Back then, Jerry was different. He was a father giving guidance, rather than a dictator giving orders. At the time, he worked for Keller’s Fencing, a family-operated business that, as the name implies, installed fences (the company also performed other varied tasks, from plumbing jobs to stump removal). He’d worked there since he was a teenager, and by the time he met Claire, the woman who would become his wife, he was a minor partner in the company.
When Jerry wasn’t working, he was praying. He was a regular at Church on Sunday mornings, and depending on his schedule, he would volunteer for various church-sponsored events throughout the year. Claire, a recent graduate of the University of Ohio, moved into town to teach third grade at Donovan Elementary School. From a religious background, she became a member of the Church soon after she arrived. She joined the choir in order to become more acquainted with the town and the people.
Jerry doesn’t believe in love at first sight. There was a time, however, that he might say he believed in love at first sound. He might tell you that somehow, Claire’s voice was the only one he could hear, singing “Blessed Assurance,” at the top of her lungs. No matter how impossible or improbable it may have been, there was a time when he would have accepted the sentiment brought on by a little white lie. That time, however, has passed.
Jeremy walks east through his yard towards the old corn field with a bottle of water in one hand and a loaded Glock 17 in the other. When he reaches the edge of the field, he holsters his weapon, takes a long drink from his bottle, and tucks it into the side pouch on his backpack. He steps over the waist-high fence, takes a deep breath, and eases into a steady jog towards the river.
About a half mile into his run, Jeremy veers from his eastward path and pushes into a patch of woods. Wooded areas are sporadic on the western side of the river, and Jeremy appreciates the shade from the scorching mid-June sunlight. He grabs his bottle and takes a quick swig, ducks under a low-hanging branch. When he reaches the shades’ end, he begins to run again, and after about another quarter mile, he spots what’s left of Mrs. Gleason’s house.
After her husband passed away, Mrs. Gleason began to unravel. At first, it was sort of stereotypical—she took in cats that had been abandoned in the country and treated them like the children she’d always dreamed of.
