A Fate Worse than Death, or
Whatever Happened to Len and Brenda Hubbard's Kids?
by Nancy Kaminski
(c) February 1998


It was a dark and stormy night when Len finally returned home to Black Harbour from Toronto. Flakes of snow blew in the door as he hurried to get over the threshold into the warmth and safety of his house. He stomped the snow off his shoes and began peeling off his anorak.

Brenda rushed to his side. "Oh, Len!" she exclaimed, embracing him. "Oh God, I was so worried about you. Did he give you any trouble?" The 'he,' of course, referred to Dan Christos, the sinister fence who had entangled Len in his shady affairs and now refused to let him go.

"Nah, although it took some convincing him to let me go to Toronto," Len replied, as he headed for the Scotch bottle. "I think he sent some goon to follow me, though. Suspicious bastard." He poured a healthy slug in a tumbler and sat heavily on the sofa. He heaved a deep sigh. "Brenda, I found them."

Apprehensive, Brenda sat beside him and, taking the glass out of his hand, downed a mouthful of the fiery liquor herself. She steeled herself for the news—where had their two teenage daughters gone? "Tell me."

"Well," he started, "You know how they went to that youth conference that Andy pushed, right? Meeting in that swank hotel on Queen Street? Seems they met up with some preacher guy in that plaza in front of City Hall—the place with the big fountain, eh?—and well, joined up with him."

"Oh, no, Len, not a cult?" She was horrified. Visions of her two sweet girls, just seventeen and eighteen years old, turned into fundamentalist zombies waiting for flying saucers filled her head. That was the sort of thing that could happen to Kathy and Nick's girls—after all, they had been born and raised in LA, where cults were an everyday thing—but not here, not to girls from Black Harbour. Never.

Len was nodding his head slowly. "Yeah, a cult. Those Hare Krishna guys, that wear the orange robes, shave their heads, and go around selling flowers at the airport and in shopping malls. There's a big temple there up on Avenue Road or thereabouts, used to be a church, you know, but now it's some kind of a Krishna temple."

Brenda wiped her eyes and tried to think clearly. "Well, that's not so bad, is it? I hear they're good, gentle people who don't do any harm. It's just different, is all. Right?"

Len said sadly, "They changed their names. Now it's Aruna and Chakri. No more Francine and Elizabeth."

They clung together for comfort. It was unbelievable, that it could happen to their little family. Finally Brenda drew back and examined Len's face. He had that set look, the withdrawn eyes, that meant he was hiding something. Brenda had become all too familiar with it in recent months.

"Len, there's more, isn't there?"

He didn't answer.

"Len, tell me!" She shook him. "You agreed, no more secrets! Tell me—are they into drugs? Are they selling themselves? What? How can it be more horrible than this?"

Moments passed in silence. Len got up, refilled his glass with more Scotch, and downed most of it in one swallow. Brenda followed him with her eyes, silently pleading for the truth, no matter how hard it would be to take. The things that had happened to their entire family—Kathy and Nick's breakup, Frances' death, Len's infidelity, the whole deal with the struggle over the boatyard, and getting the wharf out of the clutches of that SOB Walter Veinot, and scraping together funds to run the Grill—had toughened her. She could take it.

Finally, Len sat down again and took her hand. "I saw them. On Yonge Street, outside the Eaton Centre, you know, where the buskers perform?"

"What, were they selling flowers?"

Len started crying, tears sliding silently down his face. "No, they weren't selling flowers. There they were, in those stupid orange robes, their heads shaved…" He stopped, his breath coming in sobs.

"WHAT?" Brenda screamed in an agony of suspense. "What were they doing?!?"

He hid his face in his hands.

"They're mimes."

Finis


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