Juvenile Crimes – Chapter 8
New Beginnings
The interview continued...
“Why did you choose to move to Oregon? Why here?” Bob asked.
“To tell you the truth, I fell in love with Oregon a while back. My parents were divorced when I was a second grader, and shortly thereafter my father moved to Eugene with the airline he worked for,” I said to Bob. “I would spend the summers out here and I really came to love it. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to move out here permanently after finishing school.”
“You don't have any desire to go back to North Dakota?” Peter asked.
“No way. There's nothing to go back to. North Dakota's number one export is its youth, and there are plenty of reasons for it. Ever since the oil bust of the mid-80's, there is simply not much opportunity unless you inherit a farm or something like that. Also, I've got a few aunts and uncles who've lived out here for decades, and my brother lives in Portland now, too, so I've already got family connections here.”
“Good to hear. I'm sure that'll help get settled,” Patty said.
“Absolutely. But I want you to know that I came out here a week after graduating on a one-way trip, and I only took the Oregon State Bar Exam, so I am locked into Oregon for good.”
“On a related note - and I don't want you to take this the wrong way or anything, this is not a formal interview question - do you have anybody in your life right now?” the D.A asked innocently. “Someone who might be inclined to move down here with you? The reason I ask is that Coos County can be a very lonely place for young adults. There's not much of a social scene around here, and it's pretty common for us to lose good prosecutors to the bigger cities, so I guess it's kind of a stability issue.”
“Well, I had a girlfriend who was supposed to move out here with me, but she got cold feet just before I left,” I replied without showing much emotion about it. “There's still some hope she'll change her mind and come out, but what is certain is that I am not going back. So what I'm saying is that if I get this job, I will be committed to it as long as it works for both the D.A.'s Office and for me, however long that turns out to be.”
“Well, that's good enough for me. I hope it works out for you either way,” Peter said.
***********************
August 1994, two weeks before DUI sentencing, Grand Forks, ND…
I saw Tami anxiously waiting just inside the doorway to the South Forks Mall. She rushed to jump inside my white Geo Prizm before anyone else could catch a glimpse of her. She crouched low in the seat, acting every bit as suspicious as her meeting me - her ex-boyfriend - actually was. Even though the current incarnation of our relationship was strictly platonic - at Tami's insistence, of course - and even though separation papers had been filed, her husband of three years had no idea that she was going to see me at all, and Tami did not want to get caught sneaking around with me. Her own neighborhood was only two blocks away, and you never know who might see us together.
She still looks stunning.
She always did. Tami was a complete knockout at 26 every bit as much as she was at 18, when we first started dating. Standing a very fit 5'6” with sandy-blonde hair and big green sparkling bedroom eyes, she grabbed the attention of most men she passed. And more than a few jealous women, too.
"Let's go for a drive in the country," Tami said with a smile as soon as the door closed.
From Grand Forks, finding “the country” was easy - just pick a direction and drive 10 minutes, and you've found it. Tami was on fire today, letting off steam from her most recent visit with her parents as I drove. She stayed low in her seat until we were safely out of town. We traveled around the dirt section-line roads until we spotted a quiet place between two amber wheat fields. It wasn't much more than a turn-around, just off the side of the road, with just enough tree and wheat-field cover to be out of sight.
Tami was a passionately expressive person, especially when riled up. She spoke with animated facial expressions and exaggerated hand gestures, sometimes to the point of being unintentionally comical. As I shut off the car, I turned to face her as she continued an angry rant about her mother's treatment of her 7-year-old foster daughter, Abby.
"She didn't even treat Abby as good as a neighbor kid, much less my foster-daughter! I couldn't fuckin' believe it!" Tami exclaimed. Tami had just explained to me on the road that she brought her foster daughter to a family reunion of sorts at a July 4th celebration, and the poor little girl had been utterly rejected by most of her family. Which was a very marginal improvement over how they had come to treat Tami.
"Your parents have never really supported you in anything, baby, so why are you so surprised now?"
"You'd think that they'd at least be good to my kid, even if they can't manage to be decent to me. I mean, come on! We're talking about a seven-year-old girl here who has already been all fucked-up by her own parents, then bounced around through the system.
"Yeah, I know. I'm working the child support case." I had been working for the Grand Forks Child Support Unit for the last year. Among the many cases we regularly handled was establishing child support orders for children taken away from abusive parents via Child Protective Services. I knew this poor girl's history well enough.
"Well, then you'd know how badly abused and mistreated this kid has been. The least my mom could do is be nice to her, ya' know? Not treat her like some friggin' juvenile delinquent, " Tami steamed.
"I'm sorry it was that bad," I said.
"Yeah, well I'm through with it! I feel full - just totally fuckin' full, and I've had enough. I don't give a shit what she thinks about my separation, or about anything else." Having vented some of her rage, Tami started simmering down. I felt an opening.
"Well, I'm here for you, Tami. And don't take this the wrong way, but I'm glad to hear you finally say that," I gently said.
"What do you mean?" Tami asked.
"What I mean is that you've lived too much of your life under your parents' cloud already. There comes a time when you have to start living your life for yourself, and to Hell with your parents' expectations, or opinions. Tami, you are far too good a person to let their pettiness bring you down. And I'm here for you - as much as you want me to be. Nothing matters as much to me as you, and no matter how bad things may seem, I don't want you to ever forget that."
Tami, who had lightened up considerably by this point, reached for my hand and held it in both of hers. I automatically took her hands into both of mine and caressed her hands against my cheek. "I love you, Baby. Things will probably get worse before they get better, but they will get better. And I'll be there for you."
We stared into each other's eyes for a while before I lowered her hands, holding them between us. "I don't want to sound pushy, or seem like I'm pressuring you, or anything, but...when's it actually going to happen?" I asked.
Tami broke her gaze from my eyes and looked down before saying, "He's looking for a place this week. If he doesn't find one by Friday, he's going to stay with a friend until he does."
"What are you going to do about Abby?"
"I'm going to keep her."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes before they find a permanent foster home, I hope. The poor kid has been bounced around so much already…I hate to be the reason she gets shuffled around again."
I absorbed what she was saying before asking, "How are you going to handle the Danny situation with her."
"A lot better than she's used too, that's for sure. Danny's been real good with her, you know, and we're going to try to handle this thing like adults. We plan on sitting her down and try to make it clear to her that our separation has nothing to do with her; that it's problems between Danny and I, and that he still loves her, and he will be there for her..."
"Do you think he'll be able to pull it off?" I inquired.
“I'm pretty sure. She listens to him, and we've been consistent with her..."
"Darling?"
"Yes?"
"Are you sure you should hold on to her at all during this? I mean, the kid's been through enough already. Are you sure she'll be able to handle going through another divorce?"
Tami started with her comical expressiveness again. "Oh, don't you worry your pretty little head about it.” Then she got more serious and continued, “She probably won't be with me for that long, anyway. But if she is, I'll make sure she understands."
"Divorce is never easy for anybody,” I said. “I was just thinking that maybe you'd both be better off if she was placed with someone else first. You know it's going to be that much harder for you, too, with a kid involved, even if it's not your own."
"I'll be okay - really...” Tami said, already shifting to a more upbeat attitude as she changed the subject. “So what's going on with you?" She asked glibly.
I clenched her hands tighter. It was not a story I wanted to tell her, and I'm sure she could see the anguish on my face.
"I just came as close as I ever want to get to fucking up my entire life, that's what."
Tami raised my hands to her lips and tenderly kissed and caressed them. Slowly. Comfortingly.
"It's okay, my Wesley. Just tell me." She could become insanely adorable instantaneously when she wanted to, and right now, she wanted to. She had that way of disarming me, of taking away my fears. She made me feel loved, not judged. She had been my best friend and complete confidant for so many years, and now, even with several years apart and her soon-to-be-ex-husband still lurking in her life, she was making me feel as though we had never really been apart. It was so easy to fall in love with her...
Tears well up in my eyes and started flowing freely as I finally began to speak.
"I've been so afraid of what you would think, or how you'd react...I've waited for so, so long, to have an opportunity with you again...to...to have a life with you again," I stammered.
As I started to wipe the tears that were streaming down my face, my hand was quickly replaced by Tami's hand on my face. She wiped my tears, then turned my face to meet her eyes.
"It's okay, Baby. I’m here, aren't I?" she gently said.
"Yeah...I just don't want you to walk away...” As my tears were wiped, I tried to regain some composure as I continued talking. “Like a total dumb-fuck, I got busted for a DUI last week...I quit drinking, completely, the day it happened, and I've already started an outpatient treatment program...Now I get to go in front of one of my favorite judges to plead guilty and get sentenced in two weeks, and I'll be fuckin' lucky if I get my license to practice law - assuming I pass the bar exam, of course. But what's worse has been chewing on it, wondering if I'm going to scare you off, just when what I've waited so long for is finally happening... with you, I mean. I know you've always worried about me becoming like my dad, and I've done enough stupid fucking things to give you that concern... I really need for you to understand that I'm not 19 years-old anymore - I'm not that immature, vindictive little jerk that frightened you. I am the guy that you first fell in love with...but so much better... 'Then I go out and show you just the opposite..."
My emotions got the best of me again as more tears started falling down my face.
"Easy there, cutie-pie...I'm still here, right?" Tami said with a big smile. She knew how to handle me.
"Yeah...but only because you're kidnapped out on the countryside," I joked.
"Hardly..." Tami replied with mock sarcasm. Tami moved casually over to me, sitting with her knees on the sides of my car seat, facing me on my lap. She looked into my eyes deeply. With the tenderness of the moment she said, "Don't move."
I sat still. Tami slowly ran her nose around the circumference of my nose without touching. She then gently licked the path of my tears, starting at the lowest point on one side of my face going to my eye. Then she started on the other side.
I was instantly hard as a rock, wanting more. I started to turn to meet her lips on the second side of my face, but she stopped me with her free hand.
In her sweetest, childlike voice she said, "I told you, don't move."
“Okay,” so I held still and allowed her to finish licking the tears from my face. I was both completely stunned and excited to the extreme.
"What happened to the rules?" I asked. She had laid down the law that we couldn't have a physical relationship again while she was still married. She “just didn't feel right about it” until the divorce was final. I didn't like it, but I wanted her forever, so I dealt with it. I wasn't allowed to touch, so I didn't, but I always made my feelings for her - and my desire for her - well known.
“I make them, I can break them."
I tried to kiss her again, but she gently stopped me.
"Ah! No. You just stay still..." Tami repeated.
Tami circled my nose with hers again, this time with her lips very lightly brushing against mine. As she moved up with the circle, she gently licked the bottom of my upper lip and lingered with her tongue almost probing my mouth. She then pulled back several inches from my face and looked at me seductively. I was spellbound.
"God, I love you!" I said.
"I love you more," Tami replied. It had been over four years since she had said “I love you” to me, in that way. To hear her say it again - now, after so much time and all that had happened in between - was exciting in every way imaginable. I wanted her, mind, body, and spirit. My heart ached almost as much as my engorged penis.
"No way. I love you more," I said again.
"No, I love you more," she said again playfully. I didn't want to lose the moment.
"Just kiss me before I wake..." I started to say, but she interrupted me with her full luscious lips pressed against mine. We started a deep, sweet tongue kiss that I never wanted to end…
*****************************
The interview continued…
“It seems like I’ve been asking most of the questions so far, so I think I’ll give Patty and Bob I chance to get in here a bit more,” Blanchett said. “Patty, do you have any specific questions for him?”
“Thanks Peter. Wes, our county tends to have quite a few child sex offenses – far too many. A lot of times it’s a juvenile perpetrator,” Patty said.
“You understand that pedophilia is a learned behavior, right?” Peter interjected.
“Oh, most definitely. Kids don’t just come up with that kind of stuff on their own,” I replied.
“That’s right. And there is no cure, either. Not counseling or psych treatment, not the fear of jail time, not real or chemical castration…nothing. Once it becomes ingrained in them, it becomes who they are. For example, you like women, right?” Peter asked.
“Of course!” I said.
“Well, if society told you that you could never be with a woman again, would that stop you? Of course not! Same thing with gay people – it’s not only how they are, it’s also who they are – and you can’t stop someone from being gay through any sort of conversion therapy or anything else,” he said.
“Oh, I get it. Both of my parents went through various types of abuse growing up, one of them sexual abuse, so I’m quite familiar with it,” I said.
“Well then, you’re ahead of the curve. We call it ‘getting bit by the vampire’ around here. Not everyone who gets abused turns into a pedophile but without exception, every pedophile was abused as a kid…Anyway, I kind of got you off track there Patty…” Peter pontificated.
“That’s fine,” Patty replied. I could tell my comment perked up her interest in me another level. “The question I was going to ask is, ‘how do you feel about putting a minor victim on the witness stand?’”
I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts. “Ooo, that’s a tricky one. I think it really comes down to the individual circumstances of the case. I mean, if I can get a conviction without having to put a child victim on the stand, then absolutely, that’s how I would proceed. But when the child’s testimony is critical to obtaining a conviction, then I think it depends on the age, stability, and overall mental health effects on the child. They all have to all be weighed and balanced out against the seriousness of the charge. If a child is capable and wouldn’t be overly traumatized by testifying, then I would go forward. But if we’re talking about a really young or emotionally delicate child, then I guess I would explore all the other options first. It just really depends on the case and the kid,” I replied.
September 1995, following the funeral…
After seeing my father for what would be the last time, on the way back to Coos Bay, I was diverted to Ashland, Oregon, for the promised conference on the implementation of Measure 11, particularly as it pertained to juvenile crimes. At that conference, I met up with several Coos County Juvenile Department counselors who were also on hand for the conference. To a person, the folks from the Juvenile Department treated me with grace, respect, and appreciation, as they had been desperate for a dedicated prosecutor for their office for some time. I quickly made a couple of friends there.
I wish I could say the same for my first encounter with the staff of the D.A.’s office proper.
Following the conferences, I arrived back in Coos Bay on a Saturday in mid-September. The D.A.’s Office happened to have an end-of-summer office picnic scheduled for the next day at Sunset Beach. I thought it would be a great chance to meet my new coworkers in a relaxed setting, so I accepted the invitation to participate.
Sunset Beach (in Coos County) is a beautiful little beach cove on a winding road leading southwest of the city of Coos Bay, on the way to another gorgeous area of the southern Oregon coast, a state park and Pacific Northwest garden called Shore Acres. Sunset Beach was perfect for a small office gathering, being relatively quiet and secluded, and having restrooms, multiple picnic tables and grill spaces available. I arrived a little late for burgers – they were mostly into the beer-only phase of the gathering.
I was a bit nervous about meeting everyone fresh out of my father’s funeral and wanted to take it easy, so I was relieved when Bev saw me coming, stood up, and gave me a warm greeting, followed by introductions to everyone around her table. One of those people was also new to the job thanks to Measure 11 and increased funding, the new administrator of the Victims’ Assistance Unit, whom I’ll call Ariel. She was around my age (mid-twenties), in relatively good shape, and I thought before she opened her mouth, was a bit attractive. I sat across from her.
Within seconds of sitting down, someone at the table asked me if I wanted a beer. I replied by simply saying, “No thanks, I don’t drink.”
Immediately, Ariel stood up and loudly declared in her best smart-ass tone, “Hi. I’m Wes, and I’m an alcoholic.”
I’m sure my face probably turned beet red as I tried to suppress my anger at having this moron who knew absolutely nothing about me go on to randomly embarrass me during my first opportunity to meet my co-workers. I was livid. I have never wanted to punch a women before then, but if she were a guy and it wasn’t a gathering of cops and prosecutors, I would have been very hard-pressed not to break a nose.
Lucky for us both, Bev was there to distract and diffuse. Ignoring Ariel entirely, Bev asked me how the conferences went. I did my best to make conversation, but my energy and desire to be there had been sapped in an instant. After staying long enough to not be rude, I made sure to introduce myself to everyone, and got out of there as soon as I could.
I wanted to make a good first impression on my first day on the job. I resolved to arrive early Monday morning. I didn’t have keys yet for the Juvenile Department, so I entered the courthouse via the D.A.’s Office. I wasn’t the first to arrive. Chuck, the elder of the young assistant district attorneys at about 30 years old, was holding on to his morning coffee and a couple sheets of paper when I found him coming out of the copy room. Chuck had a stellar reputation as being a hard-charging prosecutor with an alleged photographic memory. He had been with the D.A.’s Office for about three years at that point and had moved up through the ranks quickly to become the lead felony prosecutor after our chief deputy. He had been trying high level felonies and murder cases for some time. He had also obtained a degree of fame or notoriety as having had the Office’s recent “Hard Copy” case, which was an attempted murder at Shore Acres that occurred amongst a couple of tourists. (Hard Copy was a popular tabloid TV show in the 1990’s). Chuck was a tough prosecutor who took no bullshit from opposing counsel, as he was about to demonstrate to me.
“Hey Wes! Getting an early start?” Chuck asked.
“Not as early as you, apparently. How you doing, Chuck?”
“Oh, doing great. I like coming in early to clean up the files on my desk a bit before it gets hit with more,” Chuck said. I would come to find out quickly that the volume of cases coming through that office was enormous for its size and the population of the county. I would regularly find myself buried in eight inches or more of new police reports to evaluate and charge in the days, weeks, and months to come.
“The early morning – before court - is the best time for me to develop plea offers and just get caught up on the paperwork. At least when I don’t have a trial to prep for. You’ll find it’s a steep learning curve here, but once you get up to speed, you should do fine,” Chuck claimed.
I noticed that he was holding a photocopy of what looked like part of a hand. “What’s that all about?” I asked, nodding to the paper.
“This? Oh shit, man, this is great!” he laughed. Then he turned the page so I could see it fully.
“This is my response to a really fucking stupid counteroffer to a plea deal I got from one of the dumbest public defenders in town.” It was a photocopy of his hand giving the middle finger.
I chuckled, “I guess so much for proper decorum.”
“This isn’t going to court, it’s just part of the negotiation process,” he grinned. “This P.D. (public defender) is one of the worst. She always wants to go to trial over stupid shit, and she always loses when she does. On this one, she’s trying to get me to take a class B felony assault down to a misdemeanor. Fuck her…no fucking way. I’ve had enough crap from her, so I’m just stating a proper understanding of my position to her.” He smiled broadly, proud of himself. I appreciated his sense of humor…
September 1995, continued…
When I arrived in the Juvenile Department sometime later, I was enthusiastically greeted by everyone. Bob’s first task for me was to develop a wish list of things I might need for my office to work best. I was humble in my requests. That was followed by a train of juvenile probation officers coming in for their initial get-to-know you chats. They were a much more diverse and laid-back group than found amongst the D.A.’s Office, but they were also very professional and cared deeply about doing their jobs as best they could. None of them had any illusions about the dark side of the job, dealing on occasion with children who were rapists, pedophiles, even killers. I learned on that first day that many of them carried concealed weapons, and some were either volunteer or part-time police or sheriff’s deputies on the side. One guy I got to be friends with right away, I’ll call him Terry, explained to me the essential rule of self-defense, particularly in a law enforcement setting – “It is better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.” I took it to heart.
Another person I developed a quick friendship with was one of the full-time Victims’ Assistants, I’ll call her Sheryl. Like most of the people working in victims’ assistance, she had been a victim of sexual abuse herself. Also like Patty, Sheryl tended to be a bit flirty. Despite her past, she was energetic and enthusiastic to help those she could. She had four kids, and the job didn’t pay all that much, but the work for her was deeply satisfying even though often heartbreaking. Sheryl was a do-gooder and couldn’t help it.
One of the first cases Sheryl and I spent some time going over was a five-year-old possible arsonist (or worse) in the making. The little guy had a less than desirable home life, as far as we could tell, but no reported abuse of him to that point. One night, he lit his bedding on fire with a book of matches. They managed to get the fire out before too much damage was caused but the fire department and Sheriff’s Office had been called. The boy told the Sheriff’s deputy that he started the fire ‘because he was cold.’ But that was after wetting the bed,” Sheryl told me.
We had both been through the recent training, so I knew what she was getting at. “Are you thinking he might have two of the three of the Macdonald triad?” I asked. I was referring to an old research paper we were presented with that essentially stated a large number of serial killers exhibited three predictors of future violent behavior – fire setting, wetting the bed (particularly after age 12), and abusiveness toward or torturing of animals.
“Well, we don’t have any information on the kid hurting animals yet, but yes, it’s kind of concerning. Isn’t it?” Sheryl asked.
“Definitely worth paying attention to down the road. The thing is that we can’t do anything for him right now unless we can show an abuse case,” I said. “The kid is too young to hold accountable in court for anything. He simply lacks capacity at that age to form mental culpability to commit a crime.”
“Yeah, I know. I just wish there was something we could do,” Sheryl lamented.
“Sadly, not until he’s either old enough and gets in trouble, or if we find he’s being abused, then we could get jurisdiction over the kid,” I said. “As it stands, we just gotta wait and hope for the best.”
Sheryl paused for a second before changing subjects.
“Have you seen the latest child sex-abuser case?” She asked.
“Which one?” I was only partly sarcastic.
“The twelve-year-old who was abusing his five- and seven-year-old brothers.”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied.
“It just came in this morning. You probably don’t have a report on it yet.” As was frequently the case, the victims’ assistance unit was brought in right away to help the family. Prosecutors had to wait for police reports, which weren’t always so prompt.
I hadn’t. “What’s the gist of it?” I asked.
“Oh God, it’s another really awful one. The twelve-year-old has been sneaking down the hallway to his little brothers’ room late at night…” she said.
“Diddling them or worse?” I asked.
“Worse. A lot worse. He’s been raping them regularly for months, at least.”
My stomach turned.
“Do we have any idea about who’s been perping the twelve-year-old?” I asked. “Perping” was shorthand for “perpetrating”; also short for being a “perpetrator”, i.e., the villain.
“None at all. Obviously, it was somebody the kid knew, but the kid’s not talking to anyone. Not to the police, anyway.”
“How did this one come to us?”
“It was a doctor’s referral. The seven-year-old was having his annual physical and the doctor noticed a little bruising on his bottom, you know, by the really sensitive area?” Sheryl said with a smirk.
“I hope we have more than that. According to those doctors in Ashland, a child can pass a poop the size of a baked potato, and they’re always playing around and getting bruised up, especially young boys,” I offered as counterpoint.
“Yeah, but there’s more. His doctor started doing a more thorough exam. He wrote in his report that the boy didn’t have an ‘anal wink.’”
“Jesus,” I stammered.
“The doctor made a referral to social services to investigate and when they showed up, both the five-year-old and the seven-year-old started letting it all out. The parents are both pretty torn up about it…both claimed to have no idea anything wrong was even happening.”
The next morning at juvenile arraignments/plea hearings, I saw my first twelve-year-old in an orange jumpsuit and shackles. Jennifer was right – it was heartbreaking. On that day, he was just a sad pathetic looking chubby little sixth grader in jailhouse garb. Yet it was my job – my duty – to put his pathetic sad little ass in prison for as long as I could. It was tough but I could handle it because I knew, deeply and personally, the lifetime of horrific impact on his little brother victims if I didn’t do my job. Because of the ongoing threat of abuse and the potential for witness intimidation or tampering, I requested no bail, and got it. His brothers would be safe for the time being (at least from the brother).
About a week later, Sheryl had arranged a visit for me with the two brothers at their grade school. It was my first witness interview as a prosecutor, and my first child-witness interview ever. The school principal and teachers knew what was happening and were doing their best to be supportive of the kids. The school staff provided a meeting room for us off of the library, complete with grade school sized plastic chairs to cram my 5’10” frame onto. We were attempting to make the boys feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible – that’s why we were doing the interviews at school – so we were in a room that had several board games, puzzles, and other similar types of toys geared toward children. I felt a bit out of place in my suit and tie.
The boys were brought in and I was introduced to them as a “lawyer who works with the police.” I did my best to try to put them at ease by letting them know they were not in any trouble at all, I just needed to talk to them for a while about what happened. After asking them to sit down across from me, I told them I wanted to help keep them safe so no one hurt them anymore. The boys were silent, so I tried the game approach, offering to play them both in “Connect Four.” While playing, I tried to casually talk about what happened with their older brother, careful not to push or put any words in their mouths. It didn’t matter, nor did it matter how many games I would let them win, the boys were just not ready to talk to another stranger about it. After almost an hour, I decided it was time to take the pressure off them and end the interview.
I asked for the principal to come back in as we were finished. I thanked her for letting us use the school and for arranging to meet the boys, then I thanked each child individually and shook his hand. The five-year-old was last. Right after I said “See you later” to him, the five-year-old started following his brother and the principal out the door. Just after they all had rounded the corner, he came darting back into the room. He stared into my eyes and in a bold whisper said, “It’s all true!” before darting back out again.
My mouth went parchment dry as my heart sank to my stomach for that child, and his brother. I would not fail them.
“Orientation” for the juvenile prosecutor job was as informal (really, nonexistent), as one could imagine. I was given soft cover copies of the 1994 Oregon Criminal Code and the 1994 Oregon Motor Vehicle Code, shown how to fill out the charging paperwork, and… that’s about it! It was sink or swim all the way. I was introduced to my stack of cases that were currently before the court and my ever-growing stack of police reports, then left to sort through them. As Kevin had been handling all the juvenile cases to that point, I was heavily reliant on his input and advice, especially in the first couple of months.
On one of the weekends shortly after I started, I came into the office on Saturday morning to try to catch up on police reports. I saw Kevin outside the D.A.’s Office smoking a Camel, so I joined him and started puffing a Marlboro Light 100 (I had become a smoker during college and the stress of law school sealed the addiction). He was doing the same – trying to get caught up on police reports. I was about to find out that rather than an orientation, the deputy D.A.’s had more of an initiation, or test of sorts, to see how much of a stomach I had for the gory hell I would eventually witness and prosecute if I remained a prosecutor long enough.
Our conversation centered around a few of the cases he had charged that were coming to court in the next week. After a lull, he asked me if I had been to an autopsy before.
“No, not yet,” I replied.
“Well, it won’t be long until you do. They’re not much fun but you’ll learn a lot,” he continued. He took another puff before speaking again. “We had a really nasty murder just a couple blocks away from here that happened shortly before I started working here…Come into the office with me and I’ll see if I can find the file.” He was eager to try to gross me out.
The office was empty – we were the only people in the building. I followed Kevin inside to the file room, where he extracted two five-inch-thick case files. We went to his office, and he started thumbing through the autopsy photos while he explained what happened.
“Oh, this poor guy…He was a garbage man. He was at the bank on the other side of the courthouse with his truck and he was just going to pull out the garbage dumpster so he could dump it. Sadly for him, he got his brains blown out by this crazy guy sleeping in his car across the parking lot.” Kevin was going through the pictures looking for the best ones. “Yeah, here it is,” Kevin said. “This one is pretty bad, from the autopsy.”
The first color photo I was handed was of a man who had been essentially decapitated from above the eyeballs. The bullet that struck him was a perfect shot, landing about a quarter inch above and to the left of the top of his nose bridge, right between the eyes. Both eyes were still in their sockets, mostly covered by the eyelids but the left eye was partially visible through its barely cracked open eyelid. A top angle photo showed that the man’s brain pan was completely empty – the bottom half of the man’s brain was gone and I was looking at the detailed contours of the inside foundation of his bloody skull. I discovered why as Kevin laid more pictures out.
“Check these out, of the crime scene,” Kevin said excitedly. The photo he showed me next was just as graphic. The garbage man’s body was limp and slumped to the left while the bottom half of his brain lay beside him, as if cleanly extracted, on the right side. The top half looked like it had been shaved off clean – but it was blown off. Most of the skin of his head had remained ripped but attached to his head, flopped to the ground next to him. The explosion created by the .30-.30 caliber round looked like a hand grenade had detonated inside of his head. The garbage dumpster was located in a partially enclosed area – three walls and a ceiling – that had been painted all white. Now it was showered in brain, blood and bone fragments, literally dripping down the walls and off the ceiling.
My throat tightened and my stomach churned a tiny bit. The only thing lacking from the pictures in terms of being disgusting was the smell (as I would find out soon enough). No way was I going to let it get me sick.
“So what the fuck happened?” I asked.
“The shooter was a full-blown schizophrenic who was off his meds for quite some time. He was homeless and sleeping in his car. The garbage truck woke him and he said he thought it was a monster from Hell, and the garbage man was some kind of demon. The shooter claimed he was afraid for his life so he grabbed his old hunting rifle and just went for it.”
“Jesus fucking Christ…”
“Poor guy never knew what happened…just ‘lights out.’”
“What happened to the shooter?” I asked.
“Oh, this guy was nuts. Genuinely. I believe they pled him out as ‘guilty but insane’ to a Murder One charge. That’s the Oregon version of an insanity plea. What’s different than a lot of States is that here, if they are found guilty or plead to being ‘guilty but insane,’ they are held under the custody of the State’s Psychiatric Security Review Board for the entire length of the sentence.” Kevin continued. “Usually, they end up in the state nut house for a long haul, but if they’re ever found to be sane again, they go to jail instead of being released.”
“So the insanity defense doesn’t…” I started when he cut me off in typical Kevin fashion.
“Doesn’t relieve the defendant of criminal liability. That’s right. Convicted killers don’t just go free here no matter how crazy they claim to be. Or actually are sometimes. Anyway, Oregon decided this was a more balanced approach that took into account the impact on victims to a greater extent,” Kevin finished.
“Makes more sense to me than a John Hinckley, Jr., situation.” Kevin understood what I meant - if ever declared “sane,” Hinckley could theoretically be released.
“Exactly.”
Later that same week, I got to experience my first autopsy, to full effect.
I was in the D.A.’s office mid-morning after court when I ran into Chuck. He was perked up.
“Hey Wes, have you been to an autopsy yet?” Chuck asked.
“Nope,’” I answered.
“Today might be your lucky day then,” Chuck grinned. “We had a case come in last night that might be a negligent homicide. Don’t have all the facts yet.”
“Who’s the victim?” I inquired.
“Pretty sad – a twelve-year-old girl who got banged up on the jetty and drowned.”
“Why is it coming to us?”
“Yeah, not a typical case, that’s for sure. It turns out her stepdad, who has a spotted criminal record – you know, a few drug offenses and DUII’s (in Oregon, it was ‘driving under the influence of intoxicants,’ expanding the definition of impairment), couple old assault charges, run of the mill asshole stuff – anyway, we have witnesses saying he was loaded and enticed her out on the rocks. Don’t know yet if he was feeding her any booze or drugs, but it sounds like he coerced her into taking an unreasonable risk. I don’t know if we’ll be able to make a case out of it or not, but the learning experience is invaluable. Did you know that Keutzer’s been to every crime scene and autopsy for every murder case he’s ever tried?”
“No shit?”
“Yup, no shit. He’s a big believer in trying to see the crime through the eyes of both the victim and the perp. ‘Picture is worth a thousand words’ and all that. I’ll tell you this – it worked for him. The man has tried more murder cases than anyone in this State and he’s never lost one,” Chuck said confidently.
“Guess I better follow his lead then…What time is it set for?”
“1:30. Sheryl from victims’ assistance wants to tag along, too. Tell you what, meet me here after lunch and you can follow me over to the hospital.”
A few hours later we arrived at the Bay Area Hospital where we went to a lower-level room containing six metal-finished refrigerated units (two rows stacked three high) designed to store a human body in each. In the middle of the room was a stainless-steel autopsy table complete with head rest, drain, and suspended hose and microphone for the doctor to give notes during the procedure. While we waited for the doctor, we were joined by one of our office’s full-time law enforcement investigators, Gus Morton. Gus was a veteran homicide detective with the Sheriff’s Office who had been attached to our office as an investigator and deputy medical examiner. Sheryl and Gus filled us in on what they knew about the case.
“Yesterday morning she was out at the beach with her mom, stepdad, and a couple of siblings. Witnesses say the stepdad was drunk at least, maybe on something else too, and he was cajoling his stepdaughter here out on the jetty,” Gus started explaining. “Taunting, like. Calling her a chicken, just generally pushing her to come out too far for her comfort. Then a sneaker wave came along and washed her into the surf. The waves were too much for her and she kept getting smacked against the rocks. Coast guard came to help but she had drowned by then.”
“I heard she had been totally gone but they revived her…for a while,” Sheryl added.
“Yep. She was alert and responsive by the time they transported her to the hospital. I was told the girl seemed okay for at least three hours and then went south again. Hard,” Gus finished.
“She lost consciousness again, like out of nowhere. They think she went into cardiac arrest and they just couldn’t revive her a second time,” Sheryl added.
“Weird…you’d think she would have been okay at that point,” I offered.
“These things happen sometimes after big traumas,” Gus explained. “Shock can last quite a while. And it’s a hell of a trauma to be clinically dead for a few minutes.”
“I guess so…What are we looking for here?” I asked Gus.
“Well, if we can make a criminal negligent homicide case, I think we should. I mean, doesn’t this offend you? That some drunk asshole drags his kids out on the rocks, does stupid stuff and gets her killed?” Gus railed. He had a profound sense of Justice that I respected.
“Yeah, it does,” I said.
“Me too, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to make anything out of it from the facts I’ve heard so far,” Chuck interjected. “No matter, it’ll be a good learning experience for Wes anyway.”
It didn’t take long before the doctor presented himself, and he made quite an impression…The doctor was a large man, standing well over six feet and a bit stout in his mid- to late fifties. He wore a white dress shirt that was covered in the front by a rubber apron. Introductions were made, then he rolled the table over to the refrigerators. Our victim was on the second row up, near table height. Sheryl helped the doctor move the body from the refrigerator to the table relatively easily by using the sheet underneath to lift and carry. Immediately upon opening the refrigerator door, the distinct pungent, rotting smell of death wafted through the room. After being moved, the doctor rolled the body from side to side, removing the sheet, and then pushed the autopsy table back under the suspended microphone and hose. He commenced to first conduct a thorough visual inspection of both sides of her body.
“See all those purple patches on her back and lower sides that look kind of like big bruises?” Sheryl asked me. “That’s just from the blood pooling.” Sheryl had been to a few of these events before and wanted to share some knowledge. The overall appearance of the body was like the girl had one huge bruise throughout her back side, all the way up and down her body.
“We’ll have to look closer to identify actual bruising,’ the doctor said. “We can tell a lot more once we get inside.”
Having grown up watching the TV show Quincy (about a L.A. pathologist who always solved the crime via quirky autopsy results and follow-up investigations), I had a few expectations. Every one of them was then shattered.
The doctor first brought out a large wooden cutting board that he placed on the deceased girl’s lap. Then he rolled up his sleeves, revealing a large “USMC” tattoo across his right forearm.
Surreality began its reign.
Next was watching the man sharpen two large steak knives up and down a standard cutting block sharpening steel. It was exactly like watching a butcher getting ready to carve a side of beef.
“Hey, are we going to get any of that stuff to put under your nose?” I asked.
“Like in Silence of the Lambs?” Chuck quipped. “That would be ‘no.’ Usually that stuff is just Vick’s VapoRub or something like that, but it doesn’t help much anyway. The smell tends to linger, sometimes until you get a shower.”
“Great,” I replied.
The doctor got started by making a “T” cut, first making a cut across the top of the girl’s chest. Then he cut down her body from the middle of the first incision to just below her belly button. The sound of the cutting resembled a fast zipper-pull. The child was a bit chunky so as the doctor cut, fat beads that resembled large tapioca beads with the color of chicken fat was our first view inside the body (no blood because no heartbeat to push the blood). The doctor continued cutting down to the chest cavity and then he pulled and cut beneath the skin flaps back to reveal the rib cage. Then he grabbed the thicker butcher knife and proceeded to easily cut through the bones on both sides of her rib cage. After lifting off the severed portion of the rib cage and doing a visual inspection, he proceeded to flop all of the girl’s internal organs onto the cutting board after severing the esophagus high near the throat.
“I like to do these from the back to the front,” the doctor said.
For the uninitiated, there is no odor as distinct and potent as the metallic coppery smell of large quantities of rotting blood. Now we got it all, full strength.
“Ewe…” Sheryl started.
“Yeah, hey, I think I want some Vicks anyway. You got any, doc?” I asked.
“Waste of effort. You’ll get used to it,” he smirked back to me.
With her organs and intestines laying on the cutting board, the inside of the body was hollow with two large pools of blood on either side of her spine (which I was a bit surprised to see how mid-body the spine actually was, creating an equal elevated divide down the center). The doctor proceeded to remove and dissect her organs, taking several cuttings from near the center of each. The remainder of each organ was tossed back into the body cavity. Leftovers put back but not in place.
It was fascinating – after getting past the revulsion.
When the doctor cut open the lungs and windpipe, there was some evidence of having regurgitated. I was told that was an indication of asphyxiation or drowning. Dissection of the heart showed it to be mostly normal with some indication of recent stress. Our pathologist continued working his way through the organs, sectioning each and putting the cuttings to be saved into the same large cup-like container with a clear fluid (I assume formaldehyde). It seemed to me like a possible contamination issue but being the new guy, I decided to tread lightly.
“Hey doc, you making a stew there?” I asked in jest while gesturing toward the container of organ parts.
Chuck and Sheryl both laughed. “’Stew’…nice one, Wes,” chuckled Chuck.
“I mean, does it matter that they’re all mixed in together?” I asked, finishing my question.
“Not at all,” replied the doctor. “The cellular structure from each organ is quite different and distinct. There’s no mixing them up. Besides, we look at the middle of all these samples anyway, so it doesn’t matter that they’re all soaking together.”
When he started cutting open sections of the intestines, the stink reached a crescendo. But we weren’t done yet. We were going to have to endure it a while longer. Next up was the head.
The doctor used his scalpel to cut across the top of her head from above one ear to just above the other. He then got his fingers under the layers of flesh down to the skull and pushed back the skin and muscle on both sides, down her face and the back of her head. He pushed it on the front down to eyelid-level. I watched as his hands probed under her skin further down to her neck and chin area, examining. Inspection complete, he reached for the bone saw.
In the afore-mentioned TV show Quincy, the opening credits sequence used to show Quincy, the medical examiner, getting ready with this type of bone saw in front of a group of rookie police officers. One of the officers comically passes out as Quincy turns on the saw. That didn’t happen – nobody passed out – but the gross out factor was about to go to another level.
Our medical examiner proceeded to use the saw, which was sort of a jagged corner-circle saw blade on a motor that moved the blade side-to-side very rapidly to cause the cutting action. The sound was horrific as expected. Worse was the smell – very much like burning hair but with a kind of sweet or pungent addition. He cut around the circumference of the skull and removed the top half, exposing the child’s brain. After cutting through the thin sack around the brain, he removed it with ease. The doctor was gracious in taking the time to explain various parts and functions as he went along. Then the brain got the cutting board treatment. Dissections of the brain were interesting, and the doctor showed us the areas that had been active and what they did. He also noted how much ‘white’ matter there was, mostly toward the interior of the brain. “You can tell this is a child’s brain,” the doc said. “All this white stuff is basically undeveloped brain matter.” (At least, that was his theory at the time. It’s actually far more complex and active).
Following dissection of the brain, I was expecting the doctor to put the remainder of the brain back into the skull. I couldn’t have been more wrong – or more surprised – when he took the remainder of the brain over to the commercial-grade stainless-steel sink, turned on the garbage disposal, and gggrrrrr…there it went down the fucking drain! Now, I’m no expert on municipal or hospital plumbing, but I’m pretty sure that the hospital didn’t have a separate drainage or sewer system from the City’s. Those remnants of flesh were indignantly bound for the same place as all human waste, the sewage plant. I was revolted but I kept my mouth closed.
With the autopsy over, it was time to tidy up the corpse. Not really, that was the job of the embalmer and funeral home. The pathologist’s job was just to put it back together enough to transport for final servicing and then final burial services. How is that done, you ask? With a big fucking needle and carpet thread, that’s how! The doctor replaced the skull cap onto the empty skull, pulled the skin back to its normal position on the head, and then roughly sowed together the skin in broad loops with the carpet thread. Finally came the body. After having flopped all the remaining organs back into the body cavity, the doctor pulled the skin flaps back to cover her torso, then again used the carpet needle in large, uneven loops to close the cadaver. The funeral home folks had arrived by that time, and they helped pack the body into first a regular black rubber body bag followed by a nicer velvet-exterior body bag. They took charge of her body and left with it.
And that, dear reader, is how a typical autopsy in the USA is performed.
The blood intoxicant screen came back a few days later negative for drugs or booze in the child. No case could be made and the stepfather was never charged.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 9
Ambition struck by the Thunderbolt
The interview continued…
“Here’s a question that I ask of all our potential candidates,” Blanchett said looking back up from the questionnaire on his desk. “Wes, why do you want to be a prosecutor?” Blanchett asked me.
“In large part because of my father. He’s worked the last eight years as a correctional officer in California, and he was a big push toward a career in law enforcement,” I started. “He is very adamant about me not becoming a criminal defense attorney, for whom he has nothing but contempt.”
They all smiled at that comment.
“But also, it comes from within. I’ve always wanted to do something meaningful and important with my life, not just end up in some corporate job helping a company sell soap or something boring like that. And I’ve always been very ambitious. Hell, by the time I was a freshman in high school, I thought I was going to be the President,” I quipped.
****************************
Dickinson, North Dakota, Spring of 1984…
Under the mentoring eye of Frank Lewis, I began to flourish intellectually in junior high. I got very involved in student council activities, as well as every other extracurricular activity I could. Part of the reason was that I wanted to avoid my awkward home life and the newly blended family in which I was still adjusting. My brother had found his various bands of miscreants to hang out and party with, and while we shared a bedroom, the rest of our lives were divergent. Where I found my escape in school and related activities, Greg did his utmost to avoid school and all to do with it as much as he could.
By the time I reached the eighth grade, I was elected student council president. Mr. Lewis was a detail-oriented fellow, always keeping himself organized with little notes or “to do” lists on the back of old unused talent show tickets that he carried around in his pocket. I soon adopted the habit as I found myself needing to after taking on the leadership position, which had me managing and MC’ing most of the after-school functions, such as the occasional sock-hop, fund raisers, and the annual junior high talent show. I was also one of two yearbook photographers, played trombone in band and jazz band, played football, did drama club…you name it, I was likely doing it. And I excelled – Mr. Lewis tracked ‘merit points” and “demerits” - more so than any previous student council president.
By the end of my eighth-grade year, I clearly stood out from most of my classmates. The administration and teachers had noticed, too, as I was selected as the sole “Citizen of the Year” (it was normally a prize split between two top students). No question, I had been competing for the award all year, but I still was not informed of the decision until the final awards ceremony on the last day of the year.
Also honored at that event was the retiring superintendent of the school district. This distinguished gentleman took notice of me, and my ambition. After the ceremony, he went out of his way to talk to me about my future plans. To that point in my life, being the “smartest kid in class,” I thought I should become a doctor. Student government had opened my mind already to the idea of potentially getting into politics someday, but my course was still hazy. The superintendent helped me clear my focus by suggesting that I consider an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy. With that idea, my entire future began to take shape.
My family and I went on vacation to Colorado that summer, and the Air Force Academy was at the top of the list (at least for me) of where to go. After enduring a very crowded and long car ride to Colorado Springs, we arrived at the first major stop along my Destiny. I fell in love with everything about the Academy as soon as I laid eyes upon it. I soon noticed the honor code motto hung in bold letters above one walkway stating, “We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” It resonated in me – I wanted to be that person, and I wanted to be surrounded with like-minded souls. I was a certified all-American true believer and I felt the Air Force Academy calling me toward my future Greatness.
I went on to speak with admissions officials there and found out the process by which to obtain an appointment to the Academy. It requires either a principal or alternate nomination by a sitting U.S. congressman or senator, plus passing physical and medical tests in addition to top scores on college entrance exams. A principal nomination meant you were admitted, as each congressman and Senator had one selection each year for all five military academies. An alternate nomination puts you in a national selection pool from which the best applicants are then picked, which constitutes over half of each incoming class. Excelling at extra-curricular activities, too, also helped in the applicant selection process. Those admissions criteria became the outline of my academic agenda from that day forward.
I quickly developed a plan starting with accelerating my academic schedule. I wanted to put myself head and shoulders above my potential competition, so I decided to go to summer school. At the time, Dickinson had just started offering summer school for students to either get caught up from failed classes (they actually did that back then) or for brainiac types to take classes they otherwise would not be able to fit into their schedules. My plan was simple – take all the classes I could to accelerate my schedule, then graduate in three years instead of the normal four years. It had never been done before in Dickinson and I was making myself the first to do so.
Don’t go on to make the assumption that I was just another nerdy student, however. I may have been chubby with Coke-bottle bottom glasses and looked the part, but there was still part of the wild child residing in me. It would be let out on occasion. While my academic drive and career was almost entirely on my own, I had plenty of help in exploring the other side. My brother and his buddies were constantly pushing the party envelope and usually getting away with it. My parents had maintained their involvement with the Beginning Experience support crowd, and they often went on weekend retreats, leaving my brother and I alone in the house. Greg was quick to have his party buddies fill the space. My extended family – cousins and uncles – were still the same hard partying people. Peer pressure started to pull me toward the party side, but I maintained my academic discipline.
While I was attending my first summer school between my eighth grade and freshman year, my friend Jim went to a private driving school. In North Dakota at the time, you could get a driver’s license, unrestricted, at the tender age of 14, after completing a certified driving instruction course. Not only did Jim pass and get his driver’s license, his parents also made the colossal mistake of buying him a car. Now we had wheels! Tear-assing around the small city and surrounding countryside in his Chevy Citation then became our new pastime. Jim was the only freshman to drive or have his own car, so his popularity took off and our group of buddies grew. It didn’t take long before we found a few spots outside of town to serve us as target shooting locations, which was another favorite pastime. We both grew up around guns and had a few of our own by that age (I had a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun), which was very common for the place and time. (We weren’t the type of assholes to go around shooting highway signs and the like – we brought our targets with us. Usually.)
My other best friend, Jack, introduced me to our high school’s equivalent of a debate team called student congress. As the name suggested, the speaking competition took place in a mock congress consisting of a House of Representatives (because of the large number of students each school brought, there were actually two Houses, an upper and lower, based on skill level), and a Senate consisting of the top two speakers from each school. The Rules of Parliamentary Procedure were followed to keep a structure and serve as a foundation for the rules of the competition. The speeches were judged by adult teachers and volunteers, points were kept, and individual and team prizes were awarded at the end of each session. We had a really good speaking team, too - our school had won the last year’s State Student Congress Championship before I started. I excelled at it immediately and we went on to win the State championship every year I was there.
My intention to also keep up on the athletic side got brutally sidetracked early. I started football practice in August (1984) and the weekend before the school year got under way, I suffered a nasty football career-ending injury. It happened on our first padded-up full-contact scrimmage game. I was playing defensive tackle, lined up across from the offensive center. The ball snapped and as I pushed between the center and the offensive guard, the quarterback handed off the ball to their running back. The running back charged right for me, spearing his helmet in my upper left chest/shoulder at the exact same time as the linebacker behind me came charging at the running back, nailing my left shoulder going the opposite direction. The result was a dislocated shoulder (but it popped back in right away) with a break along the growth line at the base of the ball joint.
The first two weeks of my freshman year were hazy from the Percocet pain killers I was on, but I could still feel the hostile looks and unwarranted animosity I received in the classes into which I had advanced. Particularly among the juniors for some odd reason. The seniors tended to look at the baby-faced freshman “me” as an interesting oddity, whereas a lot of the juniors showed outward disdain and hostility toward me as if I were some sort of threat. It was a reaction to me as being too young for the group or class, like I didn’t belong there, that I would feel again in a few years going to college at a looking-younger-than age of seventeen, and to a lesser extent starting law school at age twenty-two. It felt very much like being looked down upon, being judged inadequate, even though my mere presence demonstrated that I had earned my place.
A few weeks after I got out of the sling for my shoulder injury, I got my first job bussing tables for the minimum wage of $3.35 per hour at a low-end steakhouse. The job became my other reason to escape home life. My co-workers were mostly high school and college kids and they all liked to party. It didn’t take long before Jim and I had regular party buddies who generally knew where the party was on any particular weekend night. I made the money to buy our party supplies and Jim had the car, so all we ever needed to find was the buyer for our booze and the party was on! And that problem was easily solved, too. In addition to a couple of older (early twenties!) co-workers I sometimes hit up to buy booze for us, I also had an older cousin who I will call Mark who had just started college at Dickinson State. Mark had a fake ID, as well as older college buddies, making him a very reliable booze buyer as long as we could find him before he was off to some party or other adventure.
(“Mark” is an entirely fictional character intended to stand in as the figurative garbage dump for several real people who are related to me in a close enough capacity to warrant making this character a cousin. “Mark” will appear as a recurring character in my works as the words and acts represented by “Mark” had significant impacts at different points in my story. I have to have this character to properly tell my tales. I chose to invent this character in order to provide anonymity and privacy to the various people this character replaces, and for storytelling continuity. “Mark” is not intended to depict any actual individual or person, living or dead. If someone from my past wants to claim they are “Mark” for whatever reason, they do so at their own risk.)
A sort of routine developed during that first semester of high school. I worked hard at school and in the extracurriculars (“hard” is what other people considered it – for me school was easy, it just demanded time be put into it). I also worked several weeknights and at least one weekend night, partying on the weekends after work. Jim and I, and sometimes one of our other party buddies, would go cruising down Main Street in Dickinson, which was a very common pastime for young party animals looking for the place to go. We did a lot of stupid high school shit along the way, and mostly got away with it. On the family front, my brother was always pushing the envelope with my parents by skipping school or having various brushes with the law. Me? I was the academic superstar, so I managed to get by without much scrutiny. What could my folks say to me, that I was going to mess up my life? I was the example to follow for most people, and a little partying was mostly viewed as harmlessly blowing off some steam, a stress relief.
What kind of stupid shit did we do? The types of things that asshole high school kids did in North Dakota at the time. Like moving traffic barricades to the wrong side of a street under construction. Things like shooting inflatable balloons or a small advertising blimp hanging over a used car lot with a pellet gun (late at night, of course). Like playing a modified form of joust with shopping carts in a mall parking lot. It was more like just ramming a shopping cart into a concrete support base for a light pole at 45 or 50 miles-per-hours by me holding on to it out the passenger side window as Jim raced toward the concrete base, veering off at the last second as I released the cart (those damn things were tough, too – we could barely even dent them!). At Halloween, a favorite activity of many adventurous youths was the pumpkin roll, where we would go around stealing jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins off of people’s porches, take them to the top of the highest street hill in town (called water tower hill because of the huge water tower at the top), and then roll them all down the hill to try for the best splatter. During the very cold winter, we would go out on frozen Lake Paterson with Jim’s Chevy Citation, get up to 50 to 60 MPH, then spin the wheel and hit the parking brake, resulting in us “spinning shitties” several times on the ice.
The one time I got in any trouble was after a water balloon fight later that spring. We were tossing water balloons around with some other friends and had a few left in the car. On our way home, I lobbed one over the top of the car at an oncoming pickup. I honestly didn’t think it would hit but it turns out my timing was excellent as it smacked the front headlight and popped, spraying water on the pickup’s windshield. Well, the redneck driving the pickup wasn’t very amused (he later claimed he thought it was a booze bottle). He slammed on his brakes and spun his truck around in pursuit of us. Jim floored the gas to get away, and the chase was on! After a couple of miles and turns in the road, we came screeching around a 25 MPH corner at 45 MPH, with a police car sitting right there, clocking us on his radar gun. The pickup in pursuit had just cleared the corner when the cop’s lightbar and sirens flared to life, bringing both vehicles to a quick stop. After explaining everything to the cop, Jim was cited for violating the “basic rule of safety” and got a hefty fine. The cop missed the two full cans of beer when he searched the car or it would have been worse.
I was cited for disorderly conduct, which required my second appearance in a juvenile court. That appearance was even less formal than the vandalism episode. My mother and I met with the Juvenile Court Judge in a conference room setting. It was more like a meeting than a hearing. After I explained the circumstances, and my academic record, achievements, and goals, the Judge seemed almost amused with the situation. He asked me if I thought I could stay out of trouble, to which I of course said “Yes, absolutely!” And that was it. Not even a slap on the wrist. Nonetheless, I got the message to walk the line a bit tighter.
Life continued along in that same routine throughout my first semester of high school. It all started to change at the beginning of my second semester.
The moment I first saw Tami I was hit by the Thunderbolt! I fell in love with her, hard. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Standing at 5’6”, Tami had a perfectly carved 34-20-35 body. She had shoulder length blonde hair that complemented her olive toned skin. Her face had a quality that seemed noble to me, a look that belong to a Greek statue, despite her German heritage. And those eyes, those beautiful deep green eyes...Tami's eyes were like headlights on a Mercedes, they shined. More than that, her eyes smiled. Her eyes were green crystals that radiated love, hope, beauty. They were piercing and reflective. Tami's eyes were like a reflection of the best parts of my soul. Those eyes could turn the hardest man into a blubbering ball of tears. They were the most perfect bedroom eyes I had ever seen. I could lose myself forever in those eyes...
And if the eyes aren't enough, look at that ass! Tami was blessed by the most perfectly sexy beautiful butt that God, Darwin, or the Universe had ever deigned to sculpt upon a woman’s form. It was beyond perfect – it was Magnificent! She had an incredibly narrow twenty-inch waistline that accentuated her flawlessly curved thirty-five-inch hips (I measured her once for a wedding dress). All of her pants looked like they were custom fit to her ass, which held up her pants and left a gap of a few inches around her waist (later proving very fortuitous for two horny teenagers in love). All male heads followed her when she walked by, and contrary to her protestations, she knew it. But she didn't like it. She didn't appreciate over hearing comments like, “she's got two great legs that really make an ass of themselves,” or being called “N/A” by her male classmates, short for “nicest ass.” Or any other sexist comment. Tami was a fierce defender of equality of the sexes, fanatically anti-chauvinist. She was no piece of meat and would never tolerate being treated like one.
I first got to know Tami in a class we had together. She always introduced herself as “Tami with an ‘I.’” She was fiercely independent, and I liked that immediately. It fit with my own independent streak. Her personality was intriguing to me and every bit as interesting and enticing as her physical self was. I liked seeing how she didn't form up in any high school cliques, that she treated everyone with respect and courtesy, and she saw no one as below her. It didn’t matter to me that she was two years older than me or that she seemed completely out of my league. When I first saw her time stopped, and all I wanted was her. I had to have her, to be a part of her life and to have her in my life. I knew from the first that I would at least die trying.
Tami also had a sparkly, feisty personality, and she wasn’t afraid to let it show. She was playful and joked around with her classmates on occasion, but she would get easily offended (or play up “being offended”) whenever someone made any sort of sexist joke. Her reactions were often funny to her antagonists, which usually led to more jokes and more comical reactions from Tami. She wasn’t above slugging a guy in the arm when teased but she also had a vast assortment of goofy looks she could distort her face into that often just provoked more laughs. Instead of swearing or otherwise cursing in response to an offensive comment or hearing a swear word, she would reply, “Oh, garbage,” or just “nonsense.” Tami portrayed herself always as a “good Catholic girl” who was “better than that,” but she did not come off as condescending or with an air of superiority. Instead, she came off as sure of herself and where she stood.
To me, Tami was absolutely perfect…even with her scars. Tami had two pronounced scars just above and below her right eye that were partially obscured by her eyebrow and the natural lines of her face, particularly when she smiled or laughed. I quickly realized that it was her scars that had really separated her from the crowd, in all the best ways.
On one of the first days of the class, a senior (I’ll call him “Henry”) was messing with Tami and said, “Hey Tami, do you know why a man can never really trust a woman? How can we trust anything that bleeds for a week and doesn’t fucking DIE!” Tami gave him a good-natured wack in the gut with a “nonsense” response and walked away. Henry and I had several classes and extracurriculars together, including student congress and as school newspaper photographers, and we had already become friends. It didn’t take long for me to gather more information about Tami as she had been loose friends with Henry since beginning grade school.
Henry was a good source of information because he didn’t realize my intentions toward Tami. And to the extent he did, Henry wouldn’t take my intention to date Tami seriously because of the age difference. While older guys dated younger girls in high school all the time, it was just unheard of for a younger guy to date an older girl. He didn’t know how determined I was to break that stereotype.
Henry happened to be a keyboard player in a pretty good local band. After seeing him perform one weekend, I complemented Henry on his “smokin’ the keys” on their cover of Bon Jovi’s “Runaway.”
“You think I’m good? Thanks. Yeah, I’m okay. But if you want to hear someone really talented, you should hear Tami play,” Henry told me. “She took lessons for twelve years, until she got better than her teacher. No kidding, Tami is a concert-level piano player. She’s a damn virtuosa.”
“Naw, really?” I replied. “I never would have guessed.”
“Yeah, man, she’s for real. Probably the best pianist in town, maybe even the whole State.”
I couldn’t wait to see and hear her play. More than that, I wanted to get to know HER, all of her, in every way possible.
Although now lusted after by many, Tami had no interest in dating any of her peers. Henry told me the reason but it became obvious to me anyway – Tami had suffered years of cruelty, real meanness, as a child growing up with most of them because of her scars. Tami had endured being called “ugly” and “scar face” and other loathsome things in grade school and beyond, and while she tried as a “good Catholic girl” to forgive them, she could never forget. Even though such taunts hurt her deeply, she channeled that pain into empathy for others and an openness to people who were not perceived as “regular” -type people. She had developed a huge but unseen soft spot for misfits and strays. And there was my opening…
Before I could ask her out and have any hope of getting a positive response, she had to first get to know me, like me and be comfortable around me. That all came together naturally through time spent with her in class, and soon thereafter, outside of class. Her soft spot for misfits helped me as I was the obvious misfit among my peers. I was the young guy, the ambitious one who jumped ahead in classes, and that was interesting to her. I had also been getting myself into better shape, both in preparation for the rigors of the Air Force Academy and to be more attractive to her (fat-shaming from extended family members played its part but nothing motivates a man to lose weight more than the desire to get a girl). I always put my best face on around her – she had no clue about the party side of my life - and within the first month or so, Tami and I had become friends. We bonded over our mutual dislike of “plastic” people, the fakes who go through life wearing frosting faces and designer clothes while looking down their noses at their lessers, or the meat-headed jocks expecting cheerleader-type fealty for their fleeting accomplishments in sportsball whatever. Tami was all about real people being real, actually caring about others and doing the right thing.
The more I learned about her, the deeper I fell. My biggest fear became the notion of Tami getting a boyfriend before I could properly woo her to me. My next biggest fear was that she would find out about the party side of me and be turned off completely. All it would have taken at that point would have been to see me at a party drinking and smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar and I would have been tossed into the gutter in her mind. But that never happened.
What developed happened part by chance and part by design. After the school year came to a close, I again enrolled in summer school after getting my driver’s license via private driving school (as Jim had done the year before). As luck would have it, Tami was leading a girls’ basketball camp at the high school that took place at about the same time. We ran into each other every morning and again at noon, so our conversations continued on a daily basis. We had fun around each other, and she took a genuine, albeit “non-sexual,” interest in me. It wasn’t long until I “caught” her “spying” on me. Dickinson was a small town and got boring easily. Tami and her best friend (I’ll call her “Sandy”) liked to drive around town when they were bored. They started incidentally running into me away from the school setting. After the third time I saw them in Tami’s car, I followed them until they pulled over in a parking lot. I pulled up alongside her car.
“I got you! You’re busted,” I said.
“For what?” Tami replied.
“For following me around town, that’s what,” I said.
“You wish. I’m not following you. We’re just driving around and saw you is all,” she claimed.
“Yeah, maybe the first time. Since then, you’ve been tracking me,” I teased.
“Yeah, right! You wish!” she laughed.
“Whatever. I’m sure I’ll see you again a little later...”
“Ahh, garbage. You were following me,” she accused.
“Sure I did, to right here…see you soon!” I smiled and waived as I drove off.
What followed became a game of sorts – we played cat and mouse games around town through the end of that summer. She would try to “spy” on me without getting caught but I would usually catch her right away. We played it the opposite way, too, where I would be sniffing around for her car without getting seen - but I made sure to always get caught! Along the way, we ended up hanging out with each other more and got to know each other as “just friends.”
After I returned from my annual summer visit to my father’s house (he was now living outside Sacramento in Woodland, California), our game of cat and mouse picked back up. After running into her one night, we went for a walk. She told me about one of my fears almost happening. After a lot of pressure, she went on a date with one of the seniors who had just graduated and happened to be one of our mutual friends from class. Luckily, he overplayed his hand.
“Oh God, he was like an octopus! He kissed me and immediately started groping me all over,” she explained.
“So what’d you do?” I asked.
“I pushed him off of me and smacked him in the face, that’s what!” she said with her characteristic feistiness.
I beamed inwardly. So much for the competition. That was not a mistake I would ever make…
Fall 1985
The more I saw Tami, the more I wanted her. I couldn't bury the overwhelming attraction I had for Tami, I had to decide how to approach her. I didn't want to screw up, the stakes are too high. I had to do it right, I had to have her. The problem was, I had no womanizing experience – at least not yet. I had had several minor crushes and bumbled attempts at dating several girls simply by not being assertive enough. One longtime would-be conquest kept slipping through my fingers because I wasn't direct about my interest when the opportunity presented itself. I didn't want that to happen again, not with Tami. I was obsessed with the idea of her relationship with her. So, I decided I would be direct, totally honest with her about my intentions and my feelings, and all while being the perfect gentleman. It was a huge risk – I might scare her off or intimidate her. But if I were to have any chance at all, I had to take the risk and trust my instincts to find out her weak spots, find a way to get my foot in the door. I was confident that if she gave me an honest chance, I would get her to fall in love with me as I had fallen in love with her.
The problem was that every time I saw Tami and tried to work up the nerve to ask her out, I got nervous as a whore in church. It took me over six months after meeting her and getting to be friends to finally get up the nerve to ask her out on a date. I finally took the plunge - I asked her to “go for a Coke” with me. I met her at the Dairy Queen and after we found a booth, I asked her to go to the homecoming dance with me. During the whole encounter, my pulse raced, my heart pounded, my limbs shook (though I covered it up as best I could), and my brain was totally numb. I was so nervous that I hadn't even heard my own words flowing out of my mouth, but I knew that I said them. Tami acted very surprised. She said she had thought of me as a nice guy, smart, and very ambitious. Until now, she had never considered the prospect of dating me. Or so she claimed.
Tami tried to dance around my question at first, saying she couldn't go because of basketball camp (she was a manager of the boys team and the number one girls player), but she did not give me a flat no. In fact, she didn't act any colder or give me any signs of rejection (I knew what to look for, I was used to it). I took this as a good sign, so I pressed. I let her know that I was interested in becoming more than friends. I told her what I found so interesting in her, except the part about the nice butt of course. I didn't get too mushy and make an ass of myself, but I did convey what I felt toward her and that I would like to get to know her far better, to see what would happen. I put her on her heels and knocked the ball into her court, quite deliberately, in the hope that I had read her character correctly. She wasn't the type to just shit on anybody or crush a guy’s spirit, she cared too much about how people felt toward her. My plan was to back her into a corner and be persistent until either she dropped the ax on me or gave in and went out with me. And if she went out with me, she was putty in my hands - because I was already head over heels in love with her and not afraid to show it to her.
Tami was more than flattered, and a bit embarrassed, by what I said to her. She liked me, obviously, and said she thought I was a really nice guy. I could tell she couldn't hurt me with a simple flat-out refusal. She needed an easier escape. Tami then came up with the “I’m kind of interested in somebody right now,” line. I pressed her on it and “Mr. Anonymous” was the only name she would give me. That wasn't good enough for me, however. I had committed myself to winning her over and nobody else would get in my way. I saw her line for exactly what it was, a diversion. “Mr. Anonymous,” if he was ever real, wouldn’t stand a chance against me – I wouldn’t allow it.
Over the next couple weeks, I pushed the homecoming thing with Tami whenever I could. I let her know that it would be the best date of her life. She let me know that the age difference was a problem – she was a senior, I was a sophomore. “It just wouldn't work,” Tami would say, “the age difference would get in the way.” In reality, she was somewhat worried. She was becoming more attracted to me but she was fighting it hard. I could tell. When she thought about how her classmates would react to her dating a sophomore, she thought she had enough ammunition to reinforce her resolve. She was wrong, I was always ready with a defense and a non-threatening counterattack for every maneuver she came up with. The only way she could say no would be to say, “No, I'm not interested in you, so leave me alone,” or something to that effect. But she couldn't do that, I was too nice of a guy for her to hurt.
So that's how it went, for over six weeks. Tami didn't go to homecoming with me, she went to the basketball camp. But we did spend a lot of time together. I found every excuse I could to see her. I was getting much better at manipulating her, in an innocent way, more like outmaneuvering her. As I got to know her, I got much better at reading what she was thinking and turning it to my advantage. I played my cards right, never letting up. I made myself as irresistible to her as I could and she was breaking down. I opened myself up to her (with the exception of my criminal record). I worked hard to establish the lines of intimacy with her, to create a bond of mutual knowledge of sensitive areas in each other's lives, thus establishing trust. It worked. Although I was very conscious of what I was doing, it felt right, not manipulative. She was just letting me in to really get to know her and her to know me.
Another event had occurred back in mid-Spring that helped kick the door open for me to having a relationship with Tami – my brother went to live, permanently, with my father. How this came to be was pretty simple. Greg kept getting into trouble, especially at school, and he kept pushing to be able to live with our dad. It got to the point that he was about to get expelled from school. My mom was basically given the choice of watching Greg get kicked out of school as a junior or watch Greg go away to live with Gary. It was a hugely bitter pill for my mom to swallow, but she did, and Greg happily left our abode. Greg finally got his wish.
This mattered to me and my prospects with Tami in no small way. First off, Tami and Greg vaguely knew each other as classmates and the stigma for both of them would probably have been insurmountable for me. Greg had the reputation of hanging with the lowlifes, and he was the complete opposite of Tami in every way one could count. Also, Greg would have been a total douchebag about it and he would have fucked up my prospects with her at any opportunity. Even if he were to be cool about it, he would have been competing for use of the family car and our bedroom, making it more difficult for me to be with Tami (in several meanings of the phrase). Put simply, Greg’s departure from our household helped smooth the path to a relationship with Tami.
My pursuit continued and Tami and I were fast becoming best friends. Even though we weren’t yet “dating,” we had been spending much of our free time together – so much that it started to become an issue with her best (and really close) girlfriend (I’ll call her “Nancy”) and my friend Jim. Both of them were feeling shut out and both of them had been letting their feelings show in their own ways. Tami and I were both aware of it and a little sensitive to it, not wanting to hurt either person. I tried to include the two of them with Tami and me on occasion, but they were too different to ever find common ground. It was just awkward so I didn’t push too hard.
On the one occasion we did have fun with the two of them was on Halloween night, just two nights before Tami and I would go on our first official “date.” We were all part of the school’s jazz band and there had been a Halloween costume party that evening. Tami had refused to tell me beforehand what she was going to wear – it was another game of hers, I had to figure out who she was behind the outfit. That took all of an instant. She came wearing a black form-fitting harem-girl outfit complete with a full veil. Her eyes and her Magnificent ass gave her away instantly, she was blazin’ hot!
After the party, Nancy and Tami agreed to come out with Jim and me and meet up with a few other people at a party spot just outside of town for a little bonfire party. They both had a couple of wine coolers and were loosening up when someone brought up the idea of doing the pumpkin roll down water tower hill. The girls had never heard of it – they were just too innocent – but everyone else had. We explained what we were going to do and it seemed harmless enough that Tami and Nancy were onboard to go with us! The larger group agreed to split up and meet at midnight at the top of the hill with our assortment of pumpkins ready to go. Tami and Nancy followed Jim and me back into town, where we all climbed into Jim’s car. From there, we scoured a few neighborhoods hunting for jack-o-lanterns to steal. It didn’t take long. Jim and I did most of the work, but the girls both took a turn grabbing pumpkins off porches and running off with them. After the hatchback was filled, we met back up with the others at midnight. Everybody exchanged their stories of ripping off used pumpkins from various people’s porches, a few almost getting caught, but all of us reveling in the rush of illicit (and relatively harmless) fun.
We all had another beer or wine cooler at the top of the hill as we piled the pumpkins at the top of the hill in preparation for launch. Lookouts gave the all clear for no cops, and we shoved those pumpkins downhill as fast as we could. Yeah, it left a mess. But it was a biodegradable mess that was easily scraped up or hosed into the gutter (that was my excuse to Tami for it being “littering” and it was good enough at the time). We all had fun that night, and nobody got into any trouble. Tami had enough fun that the evening had finally brought her barriers down - her resistance to dating me finally crumbled. She took me aside for a short walk just before leaving for the night and told me she would go on a date with me.
Whoo-hoo! Victory at last…
We set the date for Saturday, two days from then. I played it perfectly and the evening went flawlessly. I stood in awe of her and treated her that way, not pushing for anything any more. Even though I had never dated seriously before, everything I did with her came to me as natural as walking. After dinner and a movie, we found ourselves driving out to a quiet part of town and we found a place to park. We went for a walk and ended up on a spillway for the Little Missouri River. It was cold and as I sat behind her; I wrapped my arms around hers to put my hands in her front coat jacket with hers. My nerves started to melt away as I saw the door to physical contact with Tami start to swing open.
To my relief, Tami leaned back into me; her neck exposed. Her scent was absolutely intoxicating and the heat that radiated from her was magnetic. We kept talking quietly about nothing special while I gradually moved my mouth closer, inching ever closer, until my breath grew hot as I gently brushed her skin. Finally, when I could stand it no more, I gently kissed her neck. Slowly, I kissed my way up to her ear lobe and gently nibbled it. That was all Tami could take. Earlier that evening, she had accepted, and admitted, her attraction for me. Now her barriers were down by her own accord. I was careful, I didn't want to offend her or push her too far, so I slowly pulled myself away from her flesh. As I did, Tami turned her head and proceeded to give me the deepest, wettest, sweetest kiss I had ever hoped for. Our kissing soon got very deep and passionate. Her soft full lips and sweet pink tongue tasted every bit as good as I had ever dreamt. We were both very intense and passionate people, and those traits came out strongly in our exchanges. The love I felt yearning inside me for Tami was starting to be returned.
We eventually got too cold at the spillway and drove back to my house. What followed was five hours of the most incredibly intense spit swapping, neck nibbling, and tongue-sucking in the history of dating. Electricity flowed through our bodies. I could tell that Tami's feelings for me quadrupled by the time she left for home that night. For me, the weeks of nervousness and frustration were replaced by an inner warmth and adrenaline high like nothing I'd ever experienced.
I was still careful though. Throughout those hours of face sucking, I resisted the compelling urge to grope and grind. I knew she was a virgin and she intended to stay that way until marriage. She made it very clear right up front that she was a “good Catholic girl” who was saving her chastity until her wedding night. That was made clear many, many times over. And I didn't have a problem with that. I knew instinctively that if things kept going the way they were, she might just change her mind. Let her make all the moves, I thought. Take it at her pace. That was a difficult thing to do because I had an aching hard-on from before the first kiss until after Tami left. I wonder what she thought about that?!
Several days later was Tami's eighteenth birthday (I was still fifteen with almost two months to go until my birthday). I saw the opportunity to secure my position with her and I did just that. The dozen red roses I sent to Tami hit the mark perfectly and further melted her heart. She was now mine, I was hers, and our relationship went into full bloom. The intensity of our feelings grew each day and the bounds of the physical relationship grew right along with them.
Tami started to really open herself up to me. She had previously invited me over to her house a few times before we were dating but I hadn’t learned much about her family yet. That changed fast, too. The first night she invited me over to her house following her birthday, she sat me down to go through her family photo albums. I got the whole story.
Tami was the youngest of five children. She had two sisters and two brothers, born in the order of boy-girl-boy-girl. Then five years later, girl – Tami. Her parents were of the type that liked to give all their kids the same initials, so their names in order of birth were Tim, Theresa, Tom, and Thelma. Tami loved her siblings even though she was separated by a significant age gap. She almost idolized them as they had all been superstars in their own ways in high school and college. All but her youngest sister were married, and Thelma’s wedding day was set for that December during Christmas break.
As Tami showed me the various pictures of them growing up, she explained to me the dynamics of family. Her parents were staunch Republican conservative Catholics who were definitely a product of the 1950’s. They owned a family farm about two hundred miles north of Dickinson that they worked every summer for grain (they did not also ranch cattle as all of my farmer/rancher relatives did). Her parents wanted to have a social life for themselves and their children so during the winter months, they lived in Dickinson where he worked as an insurance salesman, and she worked as a substitute teacher.
“My dad is the head of the household,” Tami told me. “It’s his role to work and provide for the family. My mother’s role is the housekeeper and cook. And they DO NOT stray from their roles in the family. My dad has never washed the dishes or done the laundry, and my mom does not touch the checkbook. It’s like that…”
I listened attentively as I kissed her hand.
“Oh, and if we are ever out to eat with my family, don’t ever try to pay for anything. My father would take it as a personal insult. He’s the man of the house, you’re just a kid, so he always expects to pick up the check.”
“You gotta be kidding, right?”
“Not at all. I’m totally serious. It would offend him and piss him off to the point he probably wouldn’t allow you around anymore.”
“Wow. Glad you mentioned it.” I was starting to grasp why Tami was so fiercely independent and a feminist. She had no intention of being anything like her parents. “What about your mom? Anything I should know about her?” I asked. I had been holding on to that question since I knew her mother was a substitute teacher with the worst reputation amongst students as being a completely vapid and over-controlling bitch. I had bumped heads with her once or twice in grade school but nothing too serious or memorable. I hoped.
“The thing about her is that you NEVER, I mean EVER, make a joke about her or anything she does, especially her cooking. She has no ability to take a joke. My sister’s fiancé made a small wisecrack at her expense once and he was almost thrown out of the house,” Tami stated emphatically. “Seriously. No jokes directed anywhere near her. Just be nice and always courteous around her and you’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Note taken,” I said with a grin.
Tami went on to explain how each of their parents had their favorite children, each born less than two years apart from each other (except for Tami). “Tim was first and he was really doted over by my mother, so he was called ‘Mom’s boy’. Theresa came along and she really took to my dad, so she was ‘Daddy’s girl.’ Tom was next and he just loved the farm and the tractors and all that stuff, so he became ‘Daddy’s boy.’ And when Thelma was born, my mom really took to dolling her up and doting over what they thought would be their last little girl, so she was ‘Momma’s girl.’”
“So, what does that make you then?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s a funny one. When I was four and they told me all that stuff, my dad asked me, ‘Whose girl are you?’ and I looked at them all and said, ‘I’m Nuthin’s girl!’” Tami said with a big gleam in her eyes. She had meant to show me a big clue as to how her independent streak was born, but I saw more than that. I saw the pain it caused her early in her life to being a sort of outcast, of being set apart and not being entirely the same as everyone else in her family. I felt like I identified with her even more than before.
The next picture she showed me was an average looking farm dog, a blue heeler. “That’s Spot. He gave me my scars,” Tami said.
I was stunned. I guessed that she would tell me what happened to her face in her own way and time, I just didn’t expect it so casually. Or so soon.
“What happened?” I asked tenderly.
“He attacked me one day out of the blue. I was three years old. Spot was about the same age, and always full of energy. I was playing fetch with him in the yard and he wouldn’t give the stick back. I tugged on it, playing with him, and Spot just went crazy. He lunged for my face and almost took out my eye,” she said softly.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Baby,” I said as I gently rubbed her hand. “What happened to the dog?” I asked after a moment.
“Oh, Spot died a few times over. My dad was the one who stopped the attack as fast as he could, and he got bit pretty bad on his arm. But as soon as my oldest brother saw what happened, he went after that dog like nobody’s business. It was his dog, so he felt responsible.”
“What did he do?”
“I didn’t see any of it because I was on the way to the hospital. I was told when I got a lot older that first, Tim shot the dog with his .22 until the gun was empty. Then he stomped on the dog’s body about a dozen times. Then he drove over the carcass before hauling it to the trash.”
“Wow…guess he was kinda pissed, huh?”
“I’ll say…glad I didn’t see it. All they told me at the time was that Spot was too mean and had to be put to sleep.”
“Did it bother you, that they put him down?”
“I didn’t really think about it much, I had been so scared at the time. Then I was in the hospital, and I don’t remember much about it.”
I took a second to absorb all she had told me. “Is that why you have a cat?” I asked gently.
“Yeah, but mostly because of my parents. They would never let a dog be around after that.”
“They don’t scare you? Dogs, I mean,” I said with a grin.
She nudged me and said, “Nah, they don’t scare me at all. I can’t wait to have one someday. I don’t like the idea of living in fear of them.”
How she had handled one of the worst experiences of her life (at least to that point) impressed me and endeared her to me even more.
When we were finished with the photo albums, Tami took me back to her bedroom, which was directly across the hallway from her parents’ bedroom. She was going to dig up more memorabilia. I watched as she pulled an old-fashioned black metal footlocker out of her closet. Tami went through all of her very adorable grade school pictures, giving a few extra copies to me at my insistent begging for them. She showed me her old yearbooks and when we got to junior high, she got serious on me. Because of John Huber.
Where I had been an acolyte of Frank Lewis, she had been an acolyte of John Huber. They were very close during her time at Hagen Junior High. Huber was a friend and mentor to her much the way Mr. Lewis had been a friend and mentor to me.
“I was at his trial every day,” she told me. “I just couldn’t understand how that man I loved and respected so much could do something so totally evil.”
“Yeah, I know. I worked with him in the lunchroom. I’ll never forget the day it happened, or how it tore everyone up afterward,” I offered.
“I wrote him a letter while he was in jail waiting for his trial,” Tami said.
“Really? Did he write you back?”
“Yes. I have it right here,” she said quietly.
“Can I see it?”
“Yes, but not tonight. I’m not ready to go there, not right now.”
I was curious what the mass murderer had to say, but I gladly waited for her to be comfortable with showing me.
“Okay. I can wait. Show me when you’re ready.” And I changed the subject. Then we got back to the yearbooks.
By the time we’d gotten through the old photos, we were back to making out on her bed. Her parents were home – her dad was asleep watching CNN from his lounge chair and her mom was dithering about the house doing whatever. As 9 o’clock started to roll around, her parents started prepping for bed. Instead of leading me out the front door, Tami pushed me off the side of her bed where I couldn’t be seen from the hallway. She put her fingers to her lips in the classic “shushing” motion and whispered to me, “Stay quiet. They’ll be in bed soon.” And she was right. Her parents just assumed I had already left, so they went to bed within about fifteen minutes. All the while, Tami went through her regular bedtime preps of brushing her teeth, washing her face and putting on an oversized T-shirt as pajamas, then saying “Goodnight” to her folks through their door.
Back to making out. I was amazed that Tami was so bold as to “sneak” me there just to keep making out with me, but I was not going to object. We learned to be very quiet. After about a half hour or so of necking, Tami very quietly guided me out of her room, down to the opposite end of the house to the staircase leading to their finished basement. The basement had a pool table with a full wet bar, her dad’s den, a bathroom with a shower and two of her older siblings’ former bedrooms. Her dad’s den/office had a couch in it, and that location became our regular spot for romance. We made out for about three hours after her parents went to bed before I was finally sneaked out a sliding door off their living room upstairs.
That night set the standard from then on. Tami regularly arranged for me to sneak into her house via the sliding door, usually around 11 o’clock to midnight. Four or five nights every week, depending on our schedules of various school events or trips, with her parents sound asleep upstairs, Tami would sneak me downstairs to the den. I generally didn't leave until around 4:30 AM just before her early-rising father got up for his morning shower, which he always took downstairs. We both got a rush out of the danger of being caught but I have no doubt Tami's rush was bigger. The late hours made for long, tired days of classes, but the late nights were worth it. We took every romance session slowly, savoring each other's bodies, exploring new feelings, and learning every inch of each other.
Our make out sessions were overwhelming. Within the first month, the most dangerous word of all came into play – love. It happened one night when we were frantically making out and getting very hot and bothered. After pulling back from me just the tiniest bit to catch her breath, as Tami exhaled a big breath out her lips, I mouthed the words, “I love you.” To my surprise, she heard it almost as if I had whispered it aloud myself!
“Whoa, did you just say something?” she quietly whispered. “That was pretty cool. Let’s try it again.” Then she gently blew a breath into my lips, and I mouthed “I love you” again. She definitely heard it.
“That is so cool.”
“Yes. It is. Because I do. I absolutely am totally in love with you,” I whispered back. My heart was pounding like a bass drum.
She kissed me deeply before pulling back a moment and saying, “Let me try…blow your breath toward me,” she whispered. I complied and gently pushed my breath toward her lips. I heard a very clear reverse-whisper back to me, saying, “I love you, too.”
“You do?” I asked in all innocence and anxious hope.
“Yes, Wesley, I do. I am completely in love with you, too.”
My heart and spirit soared. We kept making out until just before her dad’s alarm clock was to go off…
Fall 1985 continued…
On my next visit to her house after a date – we went to a movie - she broke out the John Huber letter and let me read it. He had written sixteen handwritten pages back to her from his jail cell. Tears silently welled in her eyes as I read.
It was actually NOT very interesting. Most of the first half was a combination of bullshit, nostalgia, and questions about how Tami’s life was going. When Huber finally addressed the big issue, he played innocent and rambled on about how he completely blacked out and didn’t remember anything about the killings. I saw it as Huber assuming the letter might get out or find itself in front of the jury, so he was just peddling his defense.
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I said to Tami. “How do you feel about all of it now?”
“I hope that sick bastard rots in Hell,” Tami replied flatly.
“Me, too, Baby,” I softly said while leaning in to kiss her. “Me too.”
A few minutes later we were downstairs making out in the den.
Tami's blossoming feelings for me tore down her naïve attitudes toward sexual activity in a hurry, but she always insisted on maintaining her virginity “until marriage.” We both got a little bolder each time she sneaked me down into the basement of her house. After about the first six weeks of our relationship, Tami and I would end up totally naked in each other's arms during our make-out sessions. Tami started getting very familiar with the male anatomy, as she got bolder and gently stroked me to an unbelievable level of sexual frustration. I was the personification of self-restraint, never pushing her for more or acting like I had any expectation beyond the moment. After about the fourth experiment in this area, she finally finished the job, to my great relief, and my eruption left a huge mess on my chest and stomach. Tami smiled warmly as I came, happy with her accomplishment. As soon as I finished throbbing, she said, “I thought that would happen one of these times!”
To which I replied, “God that was intense!...That was a lot, like a pint…you got any Kleenex?” We both laughed quietly as we held each other close.
As she helped wipe me up with the Kleenex – there was a lot - she noticed the smell. This was all very new to her. She was innately curious, so she sniffed hard. “HHmmm. Smells kinda pungent and kinda bleachy. Very distinct. Not like anything else. See for yourself,” Tami said as she put the wad under my nose. I smelled it.
“Yeah, you nailed it. Kinda pungent, kinda bleachy. Very distinct. Nothing else like it,” I repeated.
“Goober-gee-gee,” she said in a silly little girl voice before going to the bathroom to dispose of it.
I wasn't just on the receiving end of pleasure during our times together, however. Quite to the contrary, my pleasure was secondary to hers, always. I truly loved her and I wanted to show that, to give her the most pleasure possible from our time together. In my mind, and I believe in hers, too, we were building a bond that could never be broken. None-the-less, it took a while for Tami to get comfortable with herself. Tami was a very self-conscious person and she got especially so when it came to the female anatomy. But after countless reassurances from me, she learned to relax and accept the gift of pleasure I was giving her. About a week after the need for Kleenex started, I finally made the diving team - the muff diving team (that’s how I thought of it at the time), and it was incredible for both of us. I received more satisfaction from slowly teasing her, building her up, and making her orgasm than I did from my own. Incredibly, she felt the same way. We both got off on getting each other off, and as a result our sex life overflowed with excitement, anticipation, and intensity, even though actual intercourse was off limits. We were truly making love anyway.
Tami was right about the age difference being an issue, at least at first. For the first few weeks, whenever I was in her car driving around with Tami, she would make me duck down so her classmates wouldn’t see me. Although I didn’t like it, I indulged her because I would do anything she wanted at that point in time. It was ridiculous of her to think it mattered, as everyone figured out we were together just by seeing us around each other all the time and how we were with each other. She gave up on her faux “embarrassment” of dating a younger guy at about the same period of time that we confessed our love for each other. At that point, I earned full open-to-the-world “boyfriend” status. Public displays of affection followed spontaneously from there. I gladly made the naysayers eat shit on the sidelines.
Because I was spending almost all of my free time with Tami, the backlash from my party friends, particularly Jim, grew and got more mean-spirited. Previously Jim and I had been spending most of our free time together partying or otherwise screwing around town. Now that Tami was in my life, Jim was shoved aside. As a result, he started acting bitter and prickish toward me at first, leading to hostility in short order. Jim and several other old party buddies (not including Jack) decided to take on the project of fucking with me at every opportunity, and in such ways as to possibly damage my relationship with Tami. My big fear was that they would rat me out as a party animal to her and try to make me look “unworthy” of her. I guess that never occurred to them. Instead, they took to just dissing me in school at every opportunity and messing with my car when I was at her house.
The first time, they pushed my car onto the snowbank in front of Tami’s house. It happened on the night Tami first brought me to orgasm. Tami’s parents were at a Christmas party and weren’t expected home until late. While Tami and I were making out downstairs after cleaning up the mess we’d made, we heard some commotion outside and what sounded like a couple guys yelling back and forth and laughing. Tami and I got dressed quickly and we put ourselves together to go check it out. What we found was my Toyota TC3 (actually, my parents’ TC3) had been pushed to being high centered on the snowbank directly outside Tami’s house. The old TC3’s were small cars with a light backend, so it was easy for the four or five guys (led by Jim) to pick up the rear of the car, pull it perpendicular to the sidewalk, and then push it as far as the group could onto the 2 ½ feet of snow (in North Dakota back then, it was common to not even lock your car doors, so they had put it in neutral and just pushed it). The boys knew that if Tami’s mom, the old bitch substitute, found my car on her lawn, snow or no snow, there would be judgment of me and likely undesirable consequences for Tami and me both. The fellas would probably have been right, too, except Tami and I didn’t let it happen. We scrambled and shoveled enough snow from under the car to get a little traction, and then I pushed hard, while Tami got behind the wheel. We got it cleared, and got me out of there, with about ten minutes to spare before her parents got home (luckily, they had had a later night).
Instead of scaring Tami off or making her leery of me in any way, the actions of my old friends drove her further into my arms. Our relationship was already unconventional and viewed with derision by many of our peers, now the old party crew was adding an element of danger and a different type of excitement. Like, “what do you think they’ll try next?” kind of excitement. Similar to our previous cat and mouse car games, Tami wanted to catch them in the act. Instead of doubting me at all, she sided with me and became naturally defensive of me. The “forbidden-ness” of our relationship made it all the more exciting and interesting for Tami. Our relationship continued to thrive and our clandestine rendezvous’ grew in intensity.
When Christmas break (1985) came around, we were apart for the first time since becoming a couple. It was agonizing for both of us but worse for her. I went to visit my father where he was stationed with Frontier Airlines at the time, Salt Lake City. My biggest problem was missing Tami and being bored. Tami, on the other hand, had to endure her nightmare of a mother while in the run up to, and then all throughout, her sister’s wedding. She was either crying or near tears every night when we talked on the phone because of it.
“Honey, when we get married, we’re gonna have to elope,” she said seriously and with exasperation when we were together again. “I mean it. My mom was just the absolute worst, the whole time! My poor sister couldn’t do anything right. Not the colors, the cake, the flowers…not even her own friggin’ wedding dress!” Tami exclaimed with her characteristic animated spirit. “She bitched about EVERVYTHING. But everything was great, or would have been if she would’ve just let it be. My sister was in tears the while time, she couldn’t even have fun on her own wedding day…”
Message received loud and clear about mom. I would proceed with caution.
The next time Jim and the boys messed with my car was the night I had made the “diving team.” I thought I would outsmart the fellas if they came around looking for my car again by parking it a few blocks away from Tami’s house. That didn’t work out. They went hunting for it and found it that night. After hours and hours of intimacy with Tami, and after finally going down on her for the first time, I left her house at the crack of dawn to find my car …MISSING! It had been properly parallel parked along a quiet residential street, and now, it was gone.
I figured out what happened right away – the assholes picked up the backend of the car and pulled it into the middle of the street, then sometime after that the cops came by and towed it. I was pissed off and had no choice but to walk across town back home. The anger faded as I walked home with my face still feeling like a glazed donut, the sweet scent of Tami’s sex permeating my nostrils. I walked on clouds the whole way home.
As expected, my folks weren’t too happy about it (of course I obscured the details and timing to them). I called Jim and put the squeeze on him, and the others involved, to cough up the money for the towing fee to get the car released. They did, and quickly too, because I let it be known that the next step would be his parents, then the cops, if they didn’t. After that, the harassment stopped and I went about my business, mostly ignoring my old crew of party buddies and in turn, I was mostly ignored by them.
Eventually Jim and I made amends, about two months later, after I heard that he had gotten arrested for (his first) DUI. I called him and expressed my sympathy for his plight. We both knew that had I not been with Tami, I would most likely have been with him, gotten arrested for minor in possession at the least, and thereby fucked up all my future goals in the process. With the ice broken between us, we kept talking to each other and got over the rift.
The physical relationship between Tami and me was more than the horny exploits of teenagers – it was a manifestation of the mental and emotional relationship the two of us shared. Tami and I were best friends in every sense of the phrase. We were open books with each other, completely intimate and sharing of everything with each other (except my criminal record, thus far). More than that, we were completely supportive of each other. While my ambition intrigued Tami, she was also my biggest fan, as I was hers. When I won my state championship for “After-dinner Speaking” with the Muammar Ghaddafi speech, Tami was there for me, having driven half-way across the State just to watch me. And I was there for her, watching her excel in every basketball game she played.
While showing my support for Tami, I got a taste of Tami’s deep sadness that came from her own family strife. Both of Tami’s older brothers had been basketball stars in high school, and their parents never missed a game. Idolizing them as she did, Tami wanted to be a great basketball player, too. And that’s what she worked herself into being, a great basketball player, clearly number one in our high school and considered by many to be the best female guard in the State. The problem was that her parents didn’t seem to care in the least. They barely acknowledged that she played, much less that she was good at it. Being the chauvinists they were, girls’ sports were not taken seriously, just tolerated. So, when Tami led her team to the State basketball championship game, they didn’t even bother to show up.
Like Tami had for me, I traveled half-way across the State to watch her clean up at the championship tournament. Her dear old grandmother of eighty-five let us stay with her at her apartment, and she was kind enough to come to the championship game. Tami did great up to that point in the tournament, leading her team to the finals. Sadly, grandma was the only member of Tami’s entire family to bother to come that night (or any night). No brothers or sisters, even though it was an easy enough drive for most of them. But even worse, her parents had completely disregarded her accomplishment. I could see it broke her heart on the court. She played the worst game I’d ever seen her play. Her normal speediness was sluggish, her shots got rejected or frequently missed, and she couldn’t buy a free throw. Instead of being her crowning athletic achievement, it was her lowest scoring and most humiliating game in her high school career.
She never played another organized team game again.
After the loss, it was a long evening of tears and angry outbursts of frustration and disappointment with herself and her parents. She didn’t blame them for her game – she was too personally competitive to pass the blame onto anyone else (even with some justification). She did blame them for hurting her. With this non-action, they had convinced her that they simply didn’t care much for her, like she was reluctantly accepted rather than cherished and loved by them. It made her feel like an outsider in her own family, a reject. I related easily.
As would become a common pattern in our relationship, her intense emotions (and mine, too) eventually redirected toward me, in a positive way. It didn’t take much of a spark to ignite the blast furnace of heat between us, and the thrill of “getting away with it” always took her flames up a notch. We ended the evening sixty-nining in grandma’s living room while grandma was fast asleep in her bedroom with her TV blaring.
My physical romance with Tami was accidentally helped by her parents as they were frequently traveling on ski trips with friends or off to visit one of their older children and their grandchildren, giving us even more time and space on those weekends. On the first trip away, I put on the full romantic show for Tami. First, I cooked her a candlelight dinner, followed by a long, sensual full body massage. I literally massaged every inch of her, slowly, working from the fingers and toes her down outer limbs and inward toward her core. Slow, tender, loving. Teasing. Erotic…When I finally got to removing her soaking wet panties, as I slowly pulled them down, thick tendrils of her wetness tried in vain to cling to her panties to her body. Underwear now off, I kept building her excitement until focusing on making her orgasm, which she finally did for the first time. At last she was relaxed enough to get over her self-consciousness enough to let it happen. I was so excited to make her climax that I actually came, too, without her (or me) even touching me. The next morning, after having fooled around most of the night in her parents’ bed, I gave Tami a luxurious bath for the first time of many. That, too, would become an ongoing thing in our relationship (later on it would be shower sex - every time we showered!).
One weekend when her parents were visiting one of her brothers in Fargo, Tami and I were making out in the den. We were buck-naked and just getting started with our adventures when we heard the unmistakable sound of the garage door opening. Her parents were home early! They would be entering the door at the top of the steps (the bottom was only ten feet away from us), so there was NO TIME! Tami quickly grabbed my clothes and my shoes, shoving them in my hands, and then shoved me in the den’s sliding door closet. “Be quiet, I’ll come back for you as soon as I can,” she said in a rush. Then she closed the door and within a second, I heard the door to the garage opening.
Tami called up to her parents as they walked in from the garage. “Oh, hi mom! I’ll be up in a minute. I was just about to hop in the shower,” she lied brilliantly.
“Okay,” was all I heard as a response.
As I stood naked in the darkness holding my clothes, I could hear Tami rustling about grabbing her things and then starting the shower. My heart was racing. I could hear my pulse in my ears as I started having nightmare visions of how the next few minutes would go. First, I envisioned the closet door whipped open by her mother, who then shrieks bloody murder, the cops are called, my relationship with Tami is ruined, and so on. Then I thought of the door ripped open by her father, followed by his massive fist slamming into my face. But the scariest was thinking her dad would rip open the door, level a magnum revolver in my face, and blow my fucking head off!
After the longest half hour of my life, Tami finally slowly slid the closet door open. “You OK, honey?” she whispered.
“Barely…can I come out now?”
Her parents were tired from the trip and had gone straight to bed. We went back to making out for a few more hours before I was sneaked out for the night.
As Tami and I got more sexual intimacy experience with one another, we got more experimental. Actual penetration still wasn't allowed – Tami still wanted to be a virgin until she got married (or at least engaged) – but we discovered a variety of ways to enjoy ourselves. Dry-humping got old real fast, so Tami figured out what I’ll call wet-humping. One night she told me to, “Just stop moving and let me do something here.” Then with her naked and on top, Tami slid her drenching wet pussy up the length of my cock and back down again, rubbing her clit against the head of my penis while keeping the entrance to her vagina low enough to avoid penetration. It was amazing. So amazing that I instantly became content to wait until marriage for full penetration. We both came like crazy every time she did this. We didn’t even talk about it – it just became another regular form of love making between us. In doing so, we avoided the need for contraception while officially maintaining her chastity, at least in her mind. It was “good Catholic girl” hypocrisy at its best!
It was on one of these occasions, Tami's graduation night about seven months after we started going out, that the last barrier was broken. Tami was lying on top of me, aggressively sliding her vital areas over mine, when suddenly it accidentally happened. Tami had moved her hips a little bit too far up. As she slid back, I partially entered her. We froze.
“What should I do?” Tami whispered with the utmost uncertainty.
“I don't know… It feels so good…but I don't want you to do anything you’re not ready for,” I lied. I was already on the brink, ready to explode. The feeling, even just the thought, of actually being inside of her was too much for me. I wanted this barrier to finally be crossed – I knew once it was that we could never go back. Our bond would be unbreakable.
“No, we better not. I'd rather wait ‘til we’re engaged,” Tami whispered before sliding forward. She adjusted her position to continue our modified lovemaking, but after only five thrusts of her hips, it happened again. We froze again.
“What you want to do, Tami?” I asked, hopeful of her reply.
“I'm not sure. I love you… And it feels soooo good. What do you think?”
The idea of us getting married had been very much on the table for months by then. We both knew we were too young to be officially engaged, but I made no secret of the fact that I wanted to spend my whole life with her. We even had a fantasy wedding date picked for after I graduated from the Air Force Academy. The only thing holding us back from actual intercourse was her stand as a “Good Catholic girl” to maintain her virginity until her wedding night.
“Tami, I love you, I want you now, and I’ll always want you.” I was feeling every heartbeat pulsing my cock inside of her hot wetness. I wasn’t going to last long regardless. “You know I want to marry you. There's nothing more that I want then to be with you, and to make love with you. But it's your call. I'll accept whatever you decide. I just want you to be sure… I don't want you to have any regrets,” I whispered. I was totally sincere, and it was still the exact right thing to say at that moment.
Tami had not moved off of my cock. The electricity between our bodies was incredible, numbing her mind as well as my own. All of the feelings were so powerful…her decision was already made. Tami gently whispered, “I love you,” then she kissed me deeply and pushed her hips down, bringing my full length into her. It didn't take long. I was so excited that I came in less than a minute. I had discipline enough to pull out, and she finished me in the wet-humping fashion.
The funniest thing about the experience was that it happened with one of Tami's best friends sleeping only 5 feet away. The evening came together as a result of another of Tami's friends inviting the girls over for girls-only graduation party. That lasted all of two hours before the boyfriends crashed the party, me included. Tami and her temporary roommate had rented a hotel room for the night, and both double beds were occupied with the respective boyfriends. After her friend and that boyfriend fell asleep, Tami and I got busy. We were used to being quiet while getting frisky so the bed sheet was all the shield we needed for cover. Adventure had become a part of our sex life together.
Immediately after the act, Tami rapidly and quietly went through the cycle of reactions that may be common among many freshly deflowered Catholic women. First, she felt sick, nauseous and unable to breathe. She was actually sticking her face at the bottom of the doorframe to “get air” at her worst panicky moments. Then guilt hit her, and she felt dirty. Then she hated me and didn't want anything to do with me. Finally, she came to terms with what happened and how she felt. She told me that she loved me, she wanted to be with me, but that we couldn't do that again until we're at least engaged, it just wasn't right.
Yeah right.
Despite all the activity and drama, her friend and the other boyfriend never woke up.
Tami had to leave for the family farm two days after graduation. She was expected to help work the farm during summer breaks, at least when she was needed. Usually, Tami’s mother would go to the farm around the end of April and begin spring cleaning. By the time Tami was out of school in May, the farm work was mostly yard work, garden planting and weeding, and various field work (plowing, rock-picking, helping with planting, etc.). Her father paid her for her time instead of Tami getting a regular high school type of job and so he didn’t have to hire someone else.
In those days before the Internet when long distance telephone charges quickly got expensive, Tami and I engaged in the historic practice of writing letters to each other. Every day. Usually the letters were only two to four handwritten pages as we were both pressed for time. Sometimes they droned on longer. Every one of the letters, whether from her or from me, dripped with sappy affection and longing to be together again. It became our routine when we were apart from each other, with maybe a brief phone call every now and then.
About three weeks after her graduation, I was allowed to go visit her at their farm. Tami had a surprise for me. After showing me around the main farmyard and outbuildings, Tami said she wanted to take me on a drive around the countryside on their four-wheeled ATV. She drove me around for a mile or two before stopping at an empty old farm shack (or storage building). There she had already laid out a blanket, out of sight and far enough away from any road or other sources of prying eyes. A small cooler holding four wine coolers was placed on one end of the blanket and a picnic basket on the other. Tami then grabbed my hands and pulled me down onto the blanket with her.
“Do you really want to marry me…I mean, eventually?” she asked with eyes beaming.
“Absolutely, with all my heart and soul,” I said.
With that, she started kissing me passionately. Then she pulled back a bit and said, “I decided it was okay for us to make love, but only because we are going to be engaged."
"Really? You're okay with it now?” It was difficult to temper my excitement.
“Not all the time…I don’t want it to just become routine or anything. I want it to always be special, as a way we can express our feelings for one another, a way to cherish our extraordinary relationship. Do you know what I mean?”
“Everything is special with you, baby, but yes, I hear you. I always want it to feel right for both of us,” I claimed.
“I couldn’t wait to see you so I set this up for us,” Tami exclaimed, gesturing to the blanket and goodies. “I wanted it to be special the first time we were together again.”
“God, I love you,” I said before we stripped each other naked and made love for the second time. Later that night, she would sneak out to the couch where I was to sleep, and it was very special again. Then special again after that.
A new world had been opened to us and we had a lot to explore. We did, and often, too. Our overall relationship continued to soar to new heights as well. A full sexual relationship completed our bonds to each other, and we became as close to each other as two people have ever been. We totally understood each other and the quality of communication that existed between us would have made most married people take notes. We accepted each other for who and what we were – faults and flaws were irrelevant. Tami and I seemed destined to be together and we knew it with all our heart and souls.
Now I felt like I had it all and knew with certainty where I was going. Greatness awaited.
I was all of sixteen years old.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 10
Destiny Déjà vu
Grand Forks, ND, September 1994
“OK. So, guy goes into a bar and says to the bartender, ‘give me two shots of whiskey,’” Flannigan said. He liked to start his group sessions with a joke. “The barkeep lays them out in front of the guy. He takes the first one and dumps it over his shoulder. Then he picks up the second shot and slams it down the hatch. The bartender was curious, so he asks the guy, ‘Why did you do throw away a shot of whiskey?’” James grinned widely and finished with, “The guy says, ‘Because they told me in rehab to never take the first drink!’”
All five of us around his conference table laughed. He was good at delivering drinking jokes, he had lots of practice. The group was a mix of two other men and two women, all of them in their late twenties to early forties. I stood out as the babyface of the crowd, as usual. After the laughs, James went right to business conducting his meeting.
“Tonight, I want to talk a bit about taking personal responsibility and making amends with those you’ve harmed – but only when and if you can do so without harming them or anyone else in the process,” James began with increasing seriousness. “Part of the 12-step process requires that you take a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. A major part of that process is making a list of all the people we’ve harmed through our addictive behaviors, and you must be willing to make amends to them. Now, if you were anything like I was, that can be a pretty damn long list!” he offered lightly. “And I’m sure you all did some things you wish you didn’t when you were using. Right?”
We all nodded along.
“Wes, how about you? Did you ever do anything really dumb or reckless that didn’t involve alcohol?” James asked me.
I had to think about that one. Damn, he was right! All the way back to my arrest in the third grade, I couldn’t think of an incident where I completely embarrassed myself or got into trouble that didn’t have booze in the equation somewhere. He continued to make persuasive points.
“No, I can’t,” I said.
“Ah, didn’t think so. I’d bet the same can be said for everyone in here, right?” James said as everyone around the table nodded along. “Now here we are…we can take the alcohol out of the picture but the wreckage of our previous actions while using remains. To the extent we can fix the damage we’ve done, it is our obligation as responsible adults to do so. Taking personal responsibility for your actions is vital to the recovery process, for each of us. Personally. For some of us, that may involve the legal process. Accountability before the law is not what we’re here to deal with - all of that stuff is between you and your attorney to figure out. What I am talking about is trying to heal wounds you’ve created in other people…to the extent you don’t further harm them or anyone else in the effort.”
I liked what I heard from James. He seemed very sincere and authentic, like a man who lived the talk. It was a good topic for me because I was already ahead of the game…I had already taken legal accountability and I made my amends with the only person I thought my drinking behaviors had ever hurt, Tami. When it was my turn to speak, I relayed my experience in seeking her out for that purpose after the DUI and my instant embrace of the Program. I expressed to the group how relieved I was at her receptiveness to my effort, and how it had helped re-open the door to a relationship with her. For Tami, I was addressing the one big concern that she had judged from her knowledge of my family’s past, and it was a relief to her. Contrary to the concerns I expressed to my buddy Tim McCann, Tami was encouraging to the point of enthusiasm about me going through outpatient addiction counseling.
After chewing up a large part of the meeting, I was feeling pretty good about myself, certain I had figured it all out and finally had my life back on the track I had wanted for so long.
In the month since making out with Tami in the countryside, I was busy. Before I lost my driver’s license, I moved from my 1969 barely on-campus 12’ x 65’ trailer house to an apartment that was about mid-way between the University and downtown along a main bus route. I knew I had a lot of walking and bus riding in my immediate future and planned accordingly. I also needed the cash infusion from selling my shitty old trailer house to pay the out-of-pocket cost of my outpatient program. Coincidentally it was exactly enough - $3,000 came in and $3,000 went out.
The next time I saw Tami, she came over to see my new apartment and meet my cat, Beelzebub (“Beezy” for short). He was called that because he was a little fucker right from the start. Very smart and fun, but devilish at his pleasure, too. He would do cool things, such as play fetch with plastic bottle caps. But he also did stupid things, like attack my arm from the counter through the shower curtain while I would be washing my hair. After a couple of times, I pulled back the curtain and sprayed the little bastard – it worked, he stopped!
Beezy was actually my sister’s cat that I was left to take care of after Tia had decided to quit college the year prior so she could try to spend time with our father while she still could. Beezy was a beautiful Bengal cat, grey with distinct black stripes and spots. I always thought he looked like a jungle cat, he had perfect natural camouflage. Being an animal lover, I knew Tami would love him right away, and if we were to be together, might as well get to know each other. That was to be my pitch to Tami, but it wasn’t needed, she had called me wanting to come over.
Tami had the day off and her foster child was in school, so she was able to make time to see me. I had just gotten back from my last class of the day and had a few hours before a child support hearing at 3 o’clock. The separation had happened with her husband, and he had moved out of her place, but she wasn’t comfortable having me over – she didn’t want me to be seen or become an issue in the divorce. I sure as hell didn’t want to become one, either.
When I answered the door to my one-bedroom second story apartment, Tami’s smile was beaming. As it was the end of summer, she was dressed in a light blue top and a faded denim skirt. She gave me a quick kiss and anxiously pushed us both inside.
“Hey Baby! Welcome to my humble abode,” I said as I closed the door behind her.
“Hey yourself,” she replied playfully. “So where’s this kitty cat at?”
“I think he’s sleeping on my bed. Beezy!” I called. He came trotting out a couple seconds later.
“Wow, he is so pretty!” Tami exclaimed as she went for the cat. Beezy was an affectionate cat and took to her right away. “I love his stripes,” she said as she got down on the floor with Beezy.
“Yeah, he’s my little jungle kitty.” The cat rolled on his back as she continued petting him, stretching out. “He’s looking for a belly rub, better get in there,” I said. She did. Then I got down on the floor with them. We pet the cat while talking.
“So, is he just staying with his friend for a while or are they roommates, or what?” I asked.
“I’m not sure yet. Hasn’t quite figured it out, but he’s not living with me anymore,” Tami replied.
“Have you decided when you’re going to file?” I asked gently.
“Not for a while yet, at least a couple of months,” Tami said.
“How come? I mean, why wait?”
“Abby, silly,” Tami said in her goofy little girl voice.
“Oh, right. They’ll take her back after you file…”
“Yup,” she said in her normal voice. “And I’m just not ready to give her up yet.”
“I get it, baby. You gotta do it the best you can for everybody. I’m not going anywhere…I’m not pushing,” I said sincerely. I didn’t need to push anything – her soon-to-be ex-husband had fucked it up all on his own. The details of their relationship were never shared by Tami beyond him being overbearing and their lack of a sex life (which I was grateful to hear). And that was fine because I didn’t want to think about his relationship with Tami, I wanted to think about my relationship with Tami.
She reached over and grabbed my hand. “I appreciate that,” she said as she kissed my hand. “Hey, where you going?” she asked as the cat got up slowly and started walking down the hall. Tami slowly followed Beezy on her hands and knees. Her Magnificence perfectly swaying got my attention. As I approached behind her on my knees, Tami stopped moving forward. Then she surprised me by pushing her heart-shaped Magnificence back into me. I grabbed her hips and pressed hardness against her.
“God damn, you’re sexy!” I said with some heat.
“Then why don’t you come here and do something about it?” she said looking back at me with a big grin. I pulled her up to me and turned her around, kissing her deeply.
Tami started stroking me through my jeans. “How’s Howie been doing?” she asked. I didn’t track what she was talking about as I almost forgot that she, like many young women, had named her boyfriend’s anatomy (my anatomy).
“Howie? That’s kinda lame,” I mock protested.
“No honey, it’s not ‘Howie,’ like Howard. No, it’s ‘How WEEE,’” she squealed in delight. “Now, just lay back.”
I did as I was told. Tami kissed her way down my neck for a moment, then she moved her mouth over my still-clothed cock. She exhaled her breath slowly, deliberately, through my jeans, teasing me with a sudden rush of warmth and the pressure of her mouth. I pulsed as she slowly unbuttoned my pants…
“Should I get a device?” I asked, using our old term for a rubber.
“No need, honey. I’m on the pill,” she asserted. “I found one that works for me.” We had always used condoms before because when Tami had tried going on the pill, she had a bad hormonal response that messed with her physically and mentally. Now, as a child support enforcer, if this were any other woman, I would have used protection anyway. But this was my wife-to-be and I trusted her. Besides, even if we had an “accident”, we would just have to put our family plans into overdrive. I quickly dismissed my concern and embraced my desire for her…
And then it was on! For the first time in four years, we made mad, passionate love in all the ways and with all the heat we always had. After two hours and several rounds of sex, as we cuddled, I gently said, “There is absolutely nothing better than making love with someone you are completely in love with...”
“I missed you too, honey,” she replied with a kiss.
“What I mean is, I dated my share while we were apart, and obviously you were with someone else. But there is no comparison in the amount of intensity and just how much better uninhibited sex is with the person you adore,” I said.
“Especially when they adore each other,” she said seductively as she started to move to go down on me again and get me prepped for more. She was making the most of our limited time together.
Then I finally noticed the clock. I had about an hour before court – just enough time to shower and get dressed. Shit!
“I gotta get ready for court,” I said.
“No. I want more,” she said in her sexy little girl voice. “More” was pronounce like “mow-wa.”
I smiled. “Ooo, baby, me, too…but I really gotta take a shower and get to court,” I said as I got up, smelling of sex.
“Mow-wa,” she said again as she turned her Magnificence toward me and pushed up a bit a couple times. “Mow-wa…”
I was a slave to my dick, and both of us were slaves to her and her Magnificence. We were back at it for round four.
After, I had just enough time to take a quick whore’s bath and throw on a shirt, tie, and sports jacket. Tami dropped me off at the courthouse with two minutes to spare.
************************
Coos Bay, late September 1995
In terms of court training, I attended Juvenile Court arraignments and plea hearings with Kevin for a few days and sat second chair for one bench trial of a dependency case. Then I was let loose to handle the juvenile court cases on my own. By the last week of September, Kevin went to full time adult court felony prosecutions and had become our office’s designated sex crimes prosecutor (for adult perps). I had the full spectrum of cases, from the lowest shoplifting cases to serious adult felonies, including all of the child-defendant sex cases. I had a mountain of case files to digest and decide the appropriate actions to take on each, plus daily court appearances for arraignments, plea hearings and motion hearings, as well as a previously established trial calendar.
It was a busy schedule that required a lot of learning on the fly. My office being in the Juvenile Department, across the parking lot from the D.A.’s office, made it inconvenient to interact with my senior colleagues. Oregon law was new to me, and I wanted (and needed) to absorb every bit of information and advice from my colleagues that I could, but I had to go seek them out instead of just going down the hall. As a result, I had a few stumbles at first.
Nothing teaches as quickly or effectively as falling flat on your face. Which is what happened in my first scheduled trial.
The case was a low-level shoplifting trial that had been put on the calendar before I came onboard. It was a simple Juvenile Court bench trial, just the Judge, the defendant and his attorney, and me.
I met the police officer outside of the courtroom. “Hi, I’m Wes,” I said as I shook his hand. “I’m the new prosecutor.”
“Glad to meet you. Officer Tanner Gibson,” he said with a smile.
“I haven’t met the shopkeeper yet. Have you seen him around here?” I asked.
“No, sir.”
“Shit!” I exclaimed. I had a problem – he was my only witness that mattered! The cop was there because it was his arrest, and he was getting court pay for being there. Having not actually witnessed the act of the taking, the officer could only testify about the circumstances of the arrest if that somehow became an issue. Anything else about the alleged crime (short of a confession, which we did not have) would be inadmissible hearsay. I absolutely needed the only eyewitness to the crime – the shopkeeper! I fucked up - as the victim of the crime, it never occurred to me that he might not show up for the trial, therefore I didn’t think to subpoena him and require his appearance.
We went into the courtroom and the case was called. As I looked around the empty courtroom for the shopkeeper, King Henry, the Juvenile Court Judge (and Chief Judge of the County), got impatient quick.
“Mr. Miller, we have an alleged shoplifting trial today, right? I don’t see anyone else in the courtroom. Do we have a victim coming in today?” the Judge asked.
“He was expected, your Honor, but I have not been able to locate him this morning,” I replied.
“I don’t see any subpoenas on file here…did you serve one on him?” King Henry asked.
“I apologize, your Honor, no.”
“Well then - no victim, no case. Dismissed with prejudice,” the Judge said as he slammed down his gavel. Then he referred to the defendant, “It’s your lucky day, son. You’re free to go. I don’t want to see you come back,” King Henry pronounced before exiting to his chambers.
A few minutes later, I was in Kevin’s office explaining my mistake. He laughed and said, “Sorry, I probably should have reminded you about that. Don’t worry about it, it was a nothing case anyway. Good lesson though - always subpoena everybody you might need to call as a witness, even the cops.”
“You’d think the cops…” I said as he cut me off.
“Would want to show up for their own cases, right?” Kevin finished for me. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes they get busy and forget, or sometimes they schedule a vacation for the same dates. You just never know, so the subpoena gives them something they have to calendar around, including their regular shifts.”
“Okay. Thanks for the tip,” I grumbled sardonically. “A fucking practice guide or job manual would be kinda useful around here, huh?”
“Yeah, no doubt,” he quipped back. “Just try finding a budget for one,” he smirked.
It wasn’t his responsibility to create one, either. I wasn’t taking out my frustration on him and he knew it. Kevin had experienced what I was going through and I had already heard a bit of his job chafes. We weren’t provided much to work with and we had no choice but to learn fast. I just took the embarrassment hit and moved on. “I’ve got a couple other things coming up that I wanted to ask you about.”
“Yeah, sure. What ya got?” Kevin replied.
“Well, I’ve got strange one here. Trial’s set for next week. The defendant is this huge 16- year-old gangbanger from Portland who beat the shit out of a local guy. I’m talking 6 foot 9 and 350 pounds, easy. Anyway, he kicked the guy in the head with his size-16 foot. It was charged originally as just an assault 4, but some of the folks in the juvy department think we might be able to bump it up into a felony if we allege his shoe as a weapon.”
“Interesting…yeah, I remember charging that when it came in. The victim had a few cuts and bruises but no serious injuries, right?” Kevin asked.
“Nothing broken or anything, no,” I replied. “He’s big, too, about 6’2”, and an adult.”
“Well, if you did that, it would be a Measure 11 case, kinda like we talked about when I first met you. If the shoe is a weapon and the defendant intentionally caused a physical injury with it, you have an Assault 2. I don’t know if that’s ever been argued before, but it’s an interesting take…” Kevin pondered for a moment, then asked, “So when is the trial date?”
“Next week. Why?”
“Oh, this is very important. If you’re going to go after the felony charge, you need to dismiss the misdemeanor charges immediately. Like, today. Because if you don’t, he could walk in tomorrow and plead guilty to the misdemeanor, and that cuts off any shot at the felony charges,” Kevin rattled out quickly. “Jeopardy attaches if he pleads guilty. You can’t later come back and up-charge him based on the same set of facts. So, whatever you’re going to charge someone with, you need to bring the top charges based on all the facts you have available and work your way down to the smaller charges. That way you also have more leverage to work out satisfactory plea deals. More chips on the table, you know?”
“Glad you pointed that out. So, what do you think? Should I go for it?” I asked.
“What’s the guy’s record?” Kevin asked in reply.
“Couple minor things, shoplifting and minor in possession. One prior assault last year. Suspected gang affiliations in Portland.”
“Yeah, I don’t know…” Kevin slowly droned. “Might not be worth the resources on that one. That is a legitimate concern, in every case – how much time and money does the State put in to obtain a just result. You gotta consider the court’s time, jury’s, your time, staff time…it adds up quick in a felony case. But in the end, it’s all about doing the right thing. I told you before that we’re the only lawyers charged to ‘do justice’, and what that always boils down to is doing the right thing in each case.”
“Do you think I could get some jail time for him on the assault 4?” I asked.
“With his prior assault, yeah, probably. And you can always argue that the shoe was a weapon at sentencing. That ought to do it,” Kevin said helpfully. “King Henry is open to new arguments, as long as you can back up your argument legally. Chuck had a menacing case a few months back where the defendant was surrounded by people and he was holding out a knife, thrusting it at different people around him. Chuck got the judge to buy his argument that each individual thrust of the knife at a different person was a separate act of menacing. I think the guy got convicted of like 10 or 12 counts just off that one course of action. The judge gave him consecutive sentences on them, too.”
“Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate the advice,” I said as I left his office for my own.
I had attempted to get a guilty plea on the Assault 4 because it seemed like a slam-dunk case, but his defense attorney was cocky, thought she’d test out the new guy and take her chances at trial. This was the same notoriously stupid public defender to whom Chuck had sent the copy of his middle finger. I had since also learned that she had a reputation of coming to court sometimes smelling like a screwdriver (vodka and orange juice). She tried presenting a self-defense claim. It failed miserably when one of the witnesses described the defendant as saying, “This is how it’s done in Portland, bitch!” as he kicked the victim in the face. I scored one of my first bench trial wins. King Henry liked the weapon argument and gave the punk 30 days in the juvy jail (which looked exactly the same as a regular jail, just usually smaller occupants).
This P.D., I’ll call her Vera, was also the public defender assigned to defend the 12-year- old child rapist whose 5-year-old brother told me, “It’s all true!” After the trial showed her I wasn’t a pushover, I thought it was a good time to see if we could work out a plea deal. I approached her outside of court.
“Vera, can I talk to you a minute to talk about your other case with me?” I asked.
“Plea date is coming up next week. What’s your offer?” she asked without emotion.
“He pleads to one count of Sodomy 1 for each of the boys. Two counts total, both Class ‘A’ felonies, serves juvenile detention at the State Juvenile Detention facility until he’s an adult, sex offender registration, all the usual stuff, of course.”
“That’s a lot for a first offender,” she claimed.
“That’s a gift, and you know it,” I said firmly. I desperately wanted her to take this plea offer because I did not want to put those two kids through the trauma of having to testify and relive in public the horrors of their abuse. So I pushed. “We could go for that as well as Rape 1 and Sex Abuse 1, with multiple counts on each. We have strong medical evidence that shows significant ongoing abuse, prior consistent statements from several credible witnesses and the testimony of both victims.” Please don’t make me go there…
To my surprise, she didn’t take long to say, “Yeah, okay. It won’t really matter much for sentencing on this case anyway. King Henry will give him the max sentence regardless and the parents are expecting the worst, so yeah, I think I can sell that.”
And so it went.
Sunday afternoon following my shoplifting trial mishap, I was watching an NFL game alone in my one-bedroom house when my phone rang. I thought it would be my mother checking up on me after getting settled. Instead, I was shocked – it was her. Tami.
“Hey, you,” Tami said as she had taken to doing.
“Hi, Tami?! How’d you get my number?” I asked in surprise.
“Diane gave it to me. I made your mom promise that she would call me after it happened,” she said, referring to my father’s death. Tami and my mother had been close during my relationship with her – too close. I had no idea Tami had been in contact with my mother recently. I was shocked that my mom hadn’t told me about it, but I was not going to get hung up on it. “How are you?” she asked.
My head was spinning. I had no expectation that she would ever reach out to me again. It had been four months since I had sent her a last pleading letter asking her what happened and laying out again my desire for a life with her.
“I’m doing okay,” I said. “It’s been hard but I’m getting through it. How about you? How are you?”
There was a pregnant pause before she blurted out, “I’m ready, Wes.”
Imagine a record needle screeching across an album because that was the sound that went through my head. “Umm…say what?” I asked after another pregnant pause.
“I’m ready, baby…ready to finally be with you. To move out there with you.”
The impacts to my psyche kept coming. “Are you serious? Is this for real?” I asked excitedly. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“Yes, it does,” she said with assurance.
“Everything we had planned? Living together, marriage, kids…all of it?” I quizzed.
“Yes. All of it. I love you and I want my life with you,” Tami said sweetly.
“Jesus Christ!…I mean…holy shit! Absolutely! I love you, too! That’s all I ever wanted, honey, you’re all I need!” Adrenaline slammed through my body. I was back on a love-rush high. Then all the details started plowing through my brain. My head was swimming in emotions and problems to solve.
“There’s just one thing, though…I want to wait six months until we have sex,” she said, again out of nowhere.
“Ahh…why? That’s always been a great part of our relationship, the best part. I don’t know why that would be a problem,” I pleaded. “It’s not like you can reclaim your virginity.”
“I know that, silly,” in her little girl voice. Then she went back to speaking plainly. “I just want it…to be special again,” she stated.
“It’s always special with you, baby, and always will be,” I was quick to respond. It was a strange thing for her to say but I wasn’t overly concerned. A year before, she made it clear that she made the rules for sex and she could break them, too. “But hey, whatever, I’ve waited this long for you, I’ll do whatever it takes. I just want you here, with me…forever,” I said sincerely.
She paused a second and then went into her little girl voice again and said, “But we have to get married under a waterfall,” she teased.
“No problem, baby, they’re all over the place around here. I’ll find it for us,” I promised. (Within two weeks, I did, too – it was a beautiful semi-secluded waterfall along a State-maintained hiking trail.)
“Since we’re talking about expectations, baby, there is one thing I just thought of that would be good,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, Keith and Rachel (she knew them) have a house rule about not having any booze around the house. I think that’s a good idea,” I said as a matter of fact.
“What, you sayin’ I can’t drink just because you can’t?” she asked with a hint of defensiveness but still being playful.
“Not at all, darlin’ – if you want to go out with friends or have a few drinks when we’re out, that’s fine. I just don’t want it around the house. That way I won’t ever be tempted and it’ll just never be an issue.”
She paused a second before saying, “Okay. I don’t mind.” Then she slipped into that sweetest voice of hers as she kept playing, “You’re going to take me to see Oprah, right?” Tami was a huge Oprah Winfrey fan and was emphatic about seeing her show live someday, maybe even meeting her.
“Just as soon as we can, darling,” I replied sincerely.
She kept going, asking “And when we’re rich, you’re still going to buy me a Mercedes convertible?” She had a rich dentist uncle in Seattle who had one that she fell in love with as a child. It was her dream car.
“Anything you want, baby. All I want is you,” I said with conviction.
This was IT! At long, miserable last, after all the soul-crushing misery of losing her and missing her in my life, the one part of my life that I feared and had hated to lose the most was back! Our dreams, all of our wonderful hopes and dreams of being married and having a family, ALL OF IT was back on the table, back as the foundation of my life. I paused a second before asking, “When can you come, baby? I mean, how soon are you thinking?”
“Soon. As soon as I can get it all planned and give my notice at work,” she said plainly.
There were so many questions I had, but more important was figuring out a solid plan. She had a two-bedroom duplex worth of furniture to bring, and that required me to find a bigger place that was unfurnished. I had to act immediately if I was going to move again. It was the end of my first month in the one-bedroom furnished house and I had to give notice about moving at the end of October, so I did, even though I had yet to find a new home. We continued speaking every night and got to work on the rest of the plan over the course of the week. By the next Sunday night it was determined – she would give her two-week notice on November 1, then pack up and move the week before Thanksgiving. We both got busy making our arrangements.
Finding a new house was made more difficult because in addition to the two of us, we had two animals - Beezy and her 11-year-old cat, Tigger. We almost had three animals - I had to spend a bit of effort convincing her that bringing her dog would not work very well. While married, she got this tiny yorkie terrier. It was her first dog since the childhood attack and she adored it. I had only met the animal once and was unimpressed. In addition to being a problem with my cat, I correctly told her that a dog would make it harder to find a suitable rental, especially in the short time we had. Tami relented and agreed to let the dog live with her ex- husband.
About a week later, I found half of a duplex in Coquille that was one block over and one block down from my office in the courthouse. No more commute! It was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom with a single garage and wood fireplace. It had a small yard and back porch, perfect for a grill and a huge stack of firewood (I had a cord of hardwood delivered before she arrived). Although the interior style was straight out of the 1970’s, it was just big enough and very Oregon cozy. The only problem was the cost of rent – it was half my monthly take home pay at $900 per month. Tami would have to get a job pretty quick after she got settled, but I had confidence we would make it. She was coming to live with me, she’s going to be my wife, she wants to have kids with me…this is the life I always wanted… fuck, we’ll MAKE it work! So, using up the last of my meager cash reserves and taking another cash advance from a credit card, I laid down the money for first month’s rent and the security deposit. I had no financial wiggle room left after that – I was “all in” in every sense, especially emotionally and financially.
On Tami’s part, she was concerned about getting stuck at some schmuck job flipping burgers, but I told her not to worry. She had spent the last three years working at a juvenile halfway house in Grand Forks, and with my connections in the Juvenile Department, she would be a shoe-in to get hired at the Juvenile Detention Center. “I don’t know if we should work together,” she objected after I explained the simplicity of getting her a suitable job.
“Darling, we wouldn’t actually be working together. I would be putting them in jail while your job would be to babysit them while they’re in jail,” I countered. “We’d only see each other if we wanted to go catch lunch together. That’s it. I have no direction or control what-so-ever on handling the detention side of things.”
“Still…I just don’t want to end up at McDonald’s or Wendy’s,” she said.
“You won’t, baby. You’ve got a degree, and experience. You’re very hirable,” I assured her.
That was followed by a new pregnant pause before she said, “If you say so.” She didn’t sound very confident about the juvenile department prospect. It confused me a bit, but my head was too full of all the things I needed to do to push back. Besides, I didn’t want ANYTHING to discourage her from coming to live with me.
“It’ll be tight, but we’ll make it, baby,” I assured her again. “You just can’t wait too long before you start looking, whatever jobs you look for. Don’t sell yourself short, they’ll love you here.”
There was another huge load I was carrying that I couldn’t talk to Tami about. It greatly added to my stress during this time, and it was a real bitch – I had to quit smoking cigarettes before Tami got there. She was not accepting of the smoking habit and wasn’t shy about letting me know it. That was a hell of a project for me because I was addicted to nicotine. I had become a regular smoker only after losing Tami and averaged between a half-pack to a full pack of Marlboro Light 100’s daily. I tried quitting many times, and always had the same reactions. Mentally, I became very spacy. It was extremely hard to concentrate and think clearly, plus the nicotine withdrawals made me very irritable and anxious. Physically, the first symptom would be constipation (which always helps a person’s mood, right?). Within a week of “quitting,” I would always break out with extreme canker sores all around the inside of my mouth. I’m talking huge, dime-sized sores on the inside of my lips, my gums, the back of the throat…all painful and constantly irritating. All of which would go away either instantly, as with the mental elements and constipation, and within a day or so the canker sores would start to heal, after commencing to smoke again. Being successful at quitting smoking was a very difficult, all-consuming project for me at that time. I gave it the best effort I could, but the results were always failed attempts ended by relapse. Those fucking cancer sticks had me and although I hated it, I was not entirely in control of myself. I was a nicotine addict, a cigarette junky, plain and simple. But now I had to quit. For her.
The daily court grind continued apace as I worked in the time to arrange my move. I was also stressed to the max in terms of time and lack of money, so I was very appreciative when my old friend Keith volunteered to come down from Portland and help me move. He loaded up his truck with furniture that my sister was sending to me since she was moving into the dorms in Corvallis to start school at Oregon State University. It wasn’t much – an old futon, some kitchenware, a wooden footlocker/trunk, some chairs and bedding. But every little bit helped so that I didn’t have to spend any more money than necessary. It was like living in college again, at least until Tami arrived with all her furniture.
Keith showed up eager to help, and then eager to go play – at the local Indian casino. Moving from a furnished house was quick and easy, as was unloading Keith’s pickup. It worked out even though November 1 was the middle of the week and I was working all day - we only needed an hour that evening to complete my move. After that, Keith took me out for another steak dinner, and we caught up with each other.
“You know what’s even weirder than Tami deciding out of the blue to move out here?” I asked Keith rhetorically. “Her fucking parents are helping her!”
“What? I thought she didn’t get along with her folks?” Keith asked.
“She doesn’t, they don’t. And they sure as fuck don’t have any love in their skeevy little hearts for me. So, I don’t really get it,” I exclaimed.
“Maybe they’re tired of her shit, too,” Keith laughed. I understood that he was riffing on her divorce. “They driving all this way just to drop her off?”
“Not exactly. Tami says they were planning to visit her uncle up in Seattle for Thanksgiving anyway. They decided to leave early and take a detour down here to help her move,” I explained.
“Hey, maybe they are trying to get rid of her,” he joked.
“That would be fine by me. I’m just glad they don’t live anywhere close,” I said. It really was a mystery to me why her parents would help her move cross-country, half-way across the continent, to live, unmarried, with her ex-boyfriend for whom they had absolutely no love. It definitely did not fit their traditional 1950’s mentality Catholic Republican North Dakota values. Not one fucking bit. But again, I was grateful for the help and for just having Tami finally come to live with me.
After dinner, Keith went out to fight the one-armed bandits at the Mill Casino in Coos Bay. I tried to stay up for him, but I had to work the next morning, so I went to bed around 10 o’clock. It was a fitful sleep at first – I kept waking up at the slightest noise thinking Keith had come back. But he hadn’t, so I’d try to go back to bed. After bouncing in and out of sleep several times, I finally fell into a deep, deep sleep...
…I was flying slowly, descending from a low altitude, approaching the beach. Bandon Beach, by the rocks outside of the hotel Keith and I had stayed at the morning my father died. It was just me, as if my body were floating. The light outside was strange – it felt like morning and the sky was mostly covered by active thunderstorm clouds with light breaks coming from the wrong direction for morning. It was beautiful but…off. As I got to the sand, I noticed an object ahead of me. As I slowly got closer, I could see it was a shiny metallic sphere that was covered with several pronounced black knobs having metal prongs sticking out of their centers. It looked like a modern spin on old fashioned navy mines. It was partially submerged about a quarter from its bottom, with small waves gently lapping while lightning strikes bounced amongst the clouds.
I kept slowly getting closer even though I was terrified for some unknown reason. I could feel extreme danger drawing me in, closer, closer…but there was no turning or going back.
When I got about ten yards away, I heard an unknown voice say to me, “Careful, that’s dangerous.” I slowly started reaching out to touch it and two of the nearest metal prongs sparked, then an arcing electric current looped between them. I felt a rush of urgent panic to retreat, and just as I started backing up,
BOOOM!
It exploded in a huge nuclear fireball! I was inside and as-yet unfazed, watching in horror as it quickly mushroomed for a second. Then darkness, followed by the presence of a gigantic wormhole that was sucking EVERYTHING into it. I watched everyone I knew, all my family and friends, quickly swirl, screaming, as they got pulled into the wormhole. I fought hard to resist but I could not overcome the gravity as I was also sucked into it. As I descended, I felt as if the entirety of space and time were being pulled apart. I felt myself being painfully ripped apart at the atomic level and I was trying to scream but couldn’t, and then:
BLACKNESS. Total void, as if EVERYTHING had ceased to exist, including me.
I popped wide awake, panting and sweating. I used to have fun, vivid, lucid dreams that I could alter sometimes and play with. Flying dreams. Never nightmares, even through all the things I had experienced to this point in my life.
This one scared the shit out of me. I had never had a nightmare so frightening. It was frightening because it felt so real. And it made no sense to me – my life was finally coming together in the way I wanted – or the best I could salvage of what I had wanted.
It was 3:35 in the morning, and there was no going back to sleep after that blast of unwanted adrenaline. I got up for a glass of water and to shake it off when I noticed Keith hadn’t come back yet. It concerned me a little bit but he was a big boy and could handle himself. I made a pot of coffee and forgot about trying to quit smoking for a few hours while I pondered my nightmare. It rocked me.
I eventually shook it off, got ready for work, and went in early. I stopped by the D.A.’s office to check in with Kevin. It was Thursday, his day to conduct Grand Jury, and he had a very full slate that day with a several big felony cases that had lots of witnesses. I had a couple of case-related questions for him, but they were going to have to wait. Shortly after saying good morning to Kevin, Keith showed up to the office. Since it wasn’t business hours yet, I brought him in and introduced him to Kevin. Keith was on a gambler’s high after winning a few thousand bucks playing the slots. Keith was giddy and cocky to the point of getting embarrassing – Kevin said enough without saying anything to indicate he needed to get back to work - so I asked Keith if he wanted to go to my place and get some sleep.
“Nope, no way, man, I’m too wound up for sleep,” Keith said. “I’m so wired from coffee and Swishers, I couldn’t go to sleep if I tried. Besides, I’ll probably have to stop to pee every half-hour or so, so that oughtta keep me awake!”
Keith and I said our goodbyes and he went home. Kevin excused himself to go meet his first witness for the day.
I had no way of knowing that would be the last pleasant interaction between Kevin and me for many months to come.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 11
Achieving My Destiny
The interview continued…
“…I’m not entirely joking when I say that,” I continued. “My ambition was boundless, and I was grooming myself for big politics someday, kind of like what Bill Clinton did, although I had no idea who he was back then.”
********************
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be waited for, it is something to be achieved.”
William Jennings Bryan – used as Dickinson High School class of 1987 motto.
August 10, 1986
My father accompanied me to departure gate D5 at Sacramento International Airport. Gary Miller was working that morning, but he had a few minutes to spare before the DC-9 Super 80 left the gate. Gary had worked for the airline for just over 22 years so he wasn't rushed. He knew he would get the bird off on time, but first he had to say goodbye to me. My dad wasn't particularly good at goodbyes - they occurred much too often since the divorce - but he grew used to them. So did his three kids.
This was actually my second “goodbye” of that summer as I had taken a quick trip back to North Dakota to see Tami. She was back in Dickinson until harvest time, and she was lonely. Her last letter to me was especially downbeat and sad, questioning whether I would have time to “be there” for her as I got busier in college and beyond. It gave me the idea to make a short surprise visit back to North Dakota the next day just to see her. I wanted to show her how much she meant to me, and that I would always be there when she needed me. The surprise wasn’t kept as my mother told her and brought her with to pick me up in Bismarck. The move had the desired effect, though. Tami was both flattered and reassured.
“You didn’t have to fly all the way back just to see me for a few days,” she said humbly.
“I’m just doing what you tell me to do in all of your letters…I’m ‘stopping to smell the roses’,” I replied as I pulled her to me for a kiss.
It was a brief trip, but I also had another motive, and that was to get myself on the next school board agenda. I didn’t want to risk being put off if I tried to do everything by long distance and I had some paperwork and transcripts to gather for my presentation. I knew it was necessary for me to be there in person in order to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. I went into my high school and talked directly with the principal about my request to be put on the Dickinson school board meeting agenda for the next meeting, on August 11. I was going to request that the school board allow me to graduate in three years instead of the normal four. The principal didn't like the idea – he thought that it would create a flood of such requests – but with a little help from a friendly Board member, he had agreed to get me a slot on the agenda.
After my business was settled, I traveled with Tami back to her family’s farm. It was the week before harvest started and that meant it was almost time for her to get back to work. After spending several wonderful days with her and further building her confidence in our relationship, I decided it was time to tell her about my juvenile crime record. Being the upright perfect citizen that she was, I knew instinctually that she would judge me as lesser for it. And I was right, her reaction was not good. I tearfully explained as much of the whole situation as I could, wearing down her attitude a bit. Her reaction told me that if she had known about my background earlier, we probably would not be together at all. I fully expected that the influence of her hyper-judgmental mother had a resounding impact upon Tami, and I was correct again. It was the right move to hold off in telling her about it until this point because by now our relationship was too far advanced and Tami’s love for me was too strong to be overcome by petty past problems. By my actions, I overcame any misgivings she had…but only after she saw how regretful and ashamed I was of that entire period of my life.
After a long weekend with Tami, I was set to fly back to Sacramento for another three weeks with my dad before coming home for the school board meeting. This time, Tami drove me to leave from Minot, North Dakota, as it was closer to their farm than Bismarck. Following a long, sad “goodbye,” I hopped on a Frontier Airlines 737 heading to Denver with a stop in Rapid City, South Dakota.
This would turn out to be my first air emergency.
As we came down in descent to Rapid City, the pilot came on the intercom to inform us that the right rear landing gear light had not come on, therefore we would have to have a visual inspection. That meant we had to have a low altitude fly-by or “buzz the tower” to verify the position of the landing gear. To most of the passengers, there was a big pucker moment as they didn’t know what was going to happen. To me, I knew I was in for a long, miserable day as I was flying standby, I had five bucks in my pocket, and we were in freaking RAPID CITY, meaning I might be stuck there for a long time before being able to get out again on a standby ticket.
On the first pass of the tower (which was pretty cool), we were told that the landing gear was stuck in its bay and that we would have to go to altitude and “do some aerobatic maneuvers to try to bring the gear down.” That was fun, too! On the second pass by the tower, still no gear, so up to altitude we went again with more aerobatics. More fun! Seriously, I enjoyed it, and it wasn’t rough enough to induce any air sickness around me, either.
On the third tower buzz, we were told the gear was down and appeared locked. Dramatic instructions from the crew were issued and we all assumed crash positions on landing (well, I didn’t – I watched out the window). My dad had spent plenty of time bragging up the wonders of modern air travel and as a result, I had great confidence in airline travel back then. I just braced myself for constant uncomfortable boredom and hunger at a shit-hole airport. It was a safe landing, and everybody except me clapped and cheered when we slowed down enough to know we were okay. Then the day turned out to be every bit as miserable as I thought it would be.
All the paying passengers were given seats on other airlines and were re-routed to their final destinations. I waited and watched them all go. Finally, on the last flight out, I got a seat and made it to Sacramento on their last arriving flight of the night.
I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous getting back on a plane three weeks later to go back to North Dakota. Overall, my annual summer visit was only cut short by two weeks. Fun time was up and I had to get back immediately to go before the school board. But it was okay – both my dad and I realized the importance of what I was trying to accomplish.
Having a father who was a ground supervisor has its advantages, I thought. By working for Frontier, Gary and his family received the privilege of flying anywhere the airline flew for virtually no cost (it was a $5.00 service fee). Moreover, the old man was able to snag me a seat in first class because the flight wasn't fully booked. Hell of a deal. After the final boarding call was made, my father bid me farewell.
“I hope the school board gives you the go ahead. It would be a damn good accomplishment,” my dad said.
“It sure would. I'm pretty confident they'll give me the green light. I’ll go in there loaded for bear…by the time I’m done, they'll be eating out of my hands,” I asserted confidently.
“Well, take care, son. We’ll miss you.” We hugged each other briefly and he said, “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Take care,” I replied. I turned around and walked down the jetway and boarded the plane.
I had no way to know that would be my last flight on the old Frontier Airlines.
The flight lasted just over two hours. I had to switch planes in Denver. The layover time was minimal, as the flight to Bismarck had just started pre-boarding when I reached the gate. Again I was lucky – the flight was only half full so I was once again put in first class. When I got to my first class seat, the man in the aisle seat packed up his briefcase and stowed it under the seat in front of him. My fortysomething-ish neighbor was dressed in tennis shorts and a polo shirt, a bit informal for first-class. I was dressed a bit more appropriately, wearing a sports jacket and slacks. But then I wasn't a paying passenger…
The tennis player/executive was a friendly talkative fellow. I soon learned that he was the president of one North Dakota's largest banks. Our conversation went smoothly throughout the flight and, of course, I told the bank president who I was and what my future plans were. The bank president was impressed, very impressed. In fact, the man was so impressed by my plans and my obvious intelligence and competence that he volunteered to help me out. It just so happened that he was good friends with North Dakota's senior United States Senator. And he would be happy to write a letter of recommendation for me for the Air Force Academy nomination.
I was inwardly beaming, impressing myself once again. Within an hour, I got a total stranger, one with a little clout, to go out of his way to help me. It also covered making inroads with the third and only remaining man (the Senator) who could help me fulfill my destiny, so I was quite pleased. If handling the school board is this easy, I’ll be skipping my junior year.
As the plane came into its final descent, the bank president even offered me a ride from Bismarck to Dickinson. He was going that way for a business meeting anyway. “No thanks,” I told him, “there should be a ride waiting for me at the airport.” I was too impressed with my glad-handing skills that it only occurred to me later that he might've been a pervert cruising for young tail. He was legit, though, and wrote a great recommendation letter a week later.
I was greeted at the airport by my mother, Diane, and the most important person in my life – beautiful, sweet Tami. I gave my mother a hug and Tami a long, deep kiss. She started to get embarrassed so she withdrew, her face somewhat reddened. I had to settle for holding her hand as we walked to the baggage claim area.
The 100-mile drive gave the three of us a chance to catch up on what had happened in my absence. Tami and I sat together in the backseat as my mom drove, which gave us a chance to sneak in a grope and a squeeze here and there. We were playful with each other a lot, happy to be together. We were in love, head over heels, deep burning young love and it showed.
This would be my second attempt at lobbying politicians in pursuit of the Air Force Academy appointment. Earlier that March, my friend Jack and I went to Washington, D.C., for a school trip under the banner of the Future Business Leaders of America. It was a week-long visit with a schedule that allowed for plenty of free time to explore the city. Our timing was perfect, with the cherry blossoms coming into full bloom while we were there. We also had perfect weather, making Washington as beautiful as it can ever be. We got to see all the best tourist attractions except the White House, and there was still free time left over.
I put that free time to use by first visiting North Dakota’s then Congressman Byron Dorgan (real name). In the mid-1980’s, a couple of middle class kids from North Dakota with no connections could walk into a congressman’s office, or senator’s office, and actually get face time with him or her. In fact, the Congressman spent about forty-five minutes with us. A portion of that time was spent on small talk and politics, but I filled the rest with promoting my Air Force Academy dream. I laid out my vision for Congressman Dorgan, and he was very receptive to my plea.
After we rapped up with Dorgan, we paid a visit to North Dakota’s then newly elected freshman Senator Kent Conrad (real name). He was low man in the Senate in terms of seniority, so he got stuck with the shittiest office accommodations, much smaller than Congressman Dorgan’s suite (we know because he joked about it). Fortunately, Senator Conrad was every bit as affable and receptive to Jack and me as Dorgan had been, spending about an hour chatting with us just like my conversation with the Congressman. Coincidentally, we were scheduled to take a group photo with the Senator and Congressman right after our meeting with him, so he generously took the two of us with him through the underground Senate rail transport from his office building to underground at the Capitol building. He walked us through Capitol out to the front steps, where we posed for the photos. Along the way, we bumped into several well-known big shot Senators who all greeted Senator Conrad warmly, Republicans and Democrats alike.
It was all very impressive for a couple of sixteen-year-olds tag-alongs. It was the kind of experience that makes a person actually believe in their government and trust in the honorability of its servants. My spirit of patriotism and desire to serve was in full drive. I was a one-hundred percent red, white and blue true believer. I could tell that Jack was a bit star struck by the politicians, and I think I made quite an impression on him with my bold self-advocacy, too. I know the trip had a huge impact on him and helped put some motivation and direction to his future, too. But most of all, it was a good start for me on my Academy quest – these men who held my destiny at their fingertips now knew my name, face, and obvious drive. It would pay off later, I trusted.
The School Board meeting room was plain, with bare white walls, beige carpet, and a large table surrounded by eight cushy blue chairs. The room had 20 standard brown folding chairs for the public, of which three quarters were filled by observers and interested parties. Among these people sat Tami, my mother, my stepfather, and me. We waited quietly as the five-member school board called the meeting to order, read the minutes of the last meeting, were briefed on the status of all old business, and then finally moved on to new business.
I quietly assessed the members of the board. There was a 30-ish local businessman, a 50-ish farmer who had been on the board for over 10 years; a local lawyer who had lost his last bid for reelection to the state legislature; a 40-ish professor from the nearby community college; and the Chairman of the Board was a 35-year-old woman, a former teacher who just happened to be an acquaintance of my parents. That was a bit of good luck. Also sitting with the board was the 48-year-old superintendent of the school district. He was a dire looking fellow with a reputation for being a complete prick. Ronald Wagner (as I will call him) had stepped on a few toes to get into his current position and I saw him as my most difficult opponent.
“Next on the agenda,” declared the chairperson (I’ll call) Mary Nelson, “is a request from Wesley Miller, a student at Dickinson high school, to be allowed to graduate a year early. I believe Mr. Stockert would like to say a few words before we hear from Mr. Miller.” Stockert was the vice principal, in charge of all student affairs, and he was sent to be the hatchet man for my request.
“Mdm. Chairman, thank you,” Stockert said as he sat at the end of the table, the testimony chair. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Board, tonight you are being asked to consider an early graduation for one of Dickinson High’s best students, Wesley Miller,” Stockert began. “There is no question that Wes is a model student. He is in the top of his class, he has been involved in a variety of extracurricular activities, and he is a very pleasant student to work with. The faculty and staff all have high regards for Wes and his goals are quite admirable. However, we would prefer that the board denies his request for early graduation. It is our position that a four-year program of study is essential to fully prepare students, like Wes, for college. The fourth year of high school provides greater enrichments to students and they are allowed to mature into adulthood easier, more gradually. I'm sure you all remember your senior years as a time that was fun, easy-going, a time period that builds memories that you will always be able to look back at fondly. If Wes graduates early, he'll miss out on all those times that most people cherish, and you'll probably regret it later in life,” he implored, looking at me.
“We feel that it would be in his best interest to finish his senior year,” Stockert said as he wrapped up his case. “We are aware that Wes has accelerated his class schedule and if he would like to further advance academically, we will help him arrange to take classes at Dickinson State College as a senior…”
John Larson (alias), the attorney on the board, put forth the question to Stockert, “Are there any other considerations or concerns that you feel we should hear?”
Stockert paused briefly and stated, “Well, there is a concern amongst the school administration that if you allow Mr. Miller to graduate early, we may be flooded with similar requests from students who seek an easy way out of school. You'll be opening the door for less qualified students who simply are tired of school but need the education and experience the most. We would like to avoid these potential problems with students and the possible legal difficulties that may result. We would prefer that the school board not deviate from our long-standing graduation policies.”
Standard bullshit bureaucratic response, I thought. Make yourselves look like caring thoughtful individuals while all the time trying to save yourself some paperwork. Assholes...
Stockert was finished. He got up and took the chair two away from me. The board looked convinced. Why break tradition? Who needs the hassles, right?
Fuck them. It was my turn. I got up, folder in hand, and took the chair Stockert had warmed up for me.
Showtime.
“Members of the board, good evening,” I began. “I want to first thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my request in person.” I started handing out copies of my academic record, class schedule for the upcoming year, and other supporting documents to the board. “In the next few minutes, I will first explain to you my motivations and rationale for my request, then I will explain what I have done to prepare myself for accomplishing my goals.
“For the past two years, I've been preparing myself to compete for an appointment to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Ever since I can remember, my two primary goals in life have been to receive the best education possible and to serve my country. In attending the Air Force Academy, I feel that both of these goals can be accomplished,” I said as I started my pitch.
“I first learned about the wonderful opportunity presented by the Academy from the former superintendent of the school district, Mr. Donovan Brady, in May of 1984. Mr. Brady knew my desire for the best education possible and he recommended that I pursue a future at the Air Force Academy. After having done extensive research on the Academy, my family and I visited the campus later that summer. I fell in love with the place. The Academy offers a competitive, high-quality education – they’ve produced 26 Rhodes Scholars to date. They also offer excellent career opportunities in service to our country. Both of these facts motivated me tremendously. When I was there, I talked to the cadets and admissions officers, and I became convinced that an Air Force Academy education would be one of the best experiences that a young man or woman could ever have. It was from that point on that I decided to do everything possible to be granted an appointment to the Academy.
“Having set that as my goal, I quickly started to set a series of sub-goals that would lead me to an appointment. I attended summer school classes to advance my schedule. I participated in every extracurricular activity that I could, and I was quite successful. I’ve been on the state championship student congress team, the student council, Future Business Leaders of America, concert band, jazz band, and I'm the features and photography editor for the school newspaper. I was on the football team until I broke my shoulder and I recently won a state speech championship. I think that I'm already a pretty well-developed, well-rounded individual,” I continued.
“In discussions with Academy admissions officers, I was told about how candidates are evaluated. Candidates are given a whole person score, which is calculated from academic qualifications, participation and excellence in extracurricular activities, and physical qualifications. In advancing my class schedule, I have increased my competitiveness in the nominations process. But I don't want to leave anything to chance. I am not satisfied with just having a shot at it. I am committed to receiving an appointment. By graduating in three years, my competitiveness for the nomination from one of our congressional delegation will be greatly increased. But that fact is not my sole justification.
“It is my intention to complete at least a double major at the Academy, which is very difficult because of the stringent constraints on the time of cadets. Doing so would be virtually impossible without prior college credits. Therefore, it is my intention, if you grant my request, to attend the University of North Dakota, in what would be my senior year, and take as many first-year courses that are transferable to the Academy as possible.” Coincidently, Tami was leaving for UND in two weeks.
“Furthermore,” I went on, “Academy officials informed me that the college students received a slightly different evaluation in the admissions process. The reviews of their files are more personal. The vast majority of candidates are high school seniors and the information used to calculate the whole person’s score is generally fed into a computer. College student applicants also receive a whole person score; however, they also have an individual review of their files by the head of the admissions office. If they did well in their college classes, they're more likely to receive the appointment because they have less of a risk of dropping out or failing. In other words, they have proven their ability to handle college-level work, and if their other qualifications are good, they have a better chance of being appointed. I want that advantage.”
The looks on the faces of the board members had changed radically. They realized that this kid was serious. But I was no kid and they knew that, too. I was going places. Should they stand in my way?
Tim Wiggins, the college professor, put forth his first question. “Wes, you sound like you know what you're doing, but I've got to ask you – isn't prelaw and astronautical engineering a strange combination?
“Well, it may appear so at first, let me explain. We’re already living in a very high-tech society and that trend will only increase. What I'd eventually like to do is earn at least a master’s degree in astronautical engineering, or physics, and earn a law degree. That still seems strange but think about it. As we further explore space and develop its potential, there will undoubtedly be complications. For example, the plans to develop a permanent space station or a manned colony on the moon, Mars, or wherever, will undoubtedly involve complicated legal work, whether it's developing contracts, negotiating international agreements, or what have you. Or what if there is some sort of accident? The potential for legal problems for any type of accident is enormous. And I don't think there are very many lawyers qualified to work on those types of questions. Beyond that, regardless of whether or not I could combine the two fields, I like the idea of obtaining a broader education. More doors would open up to me and I would have a much wider variety of career choices. I think that such a degree combination, despite its strange appearance, would make me an asset to either the Air Force or in private industry and I would have a great deal of flexibility in my career path.”
What I was not saying is that I want to be an expert on space, energy, nuclear weapons and all things related thereto AND the law, politics, and international relations. I was really trying to be ALL THAT…and then be a serious leader of our country. I had no doubt at all about doing it.
By the expression on Wigan's face, he got that I could also make a damn good living as a consultant to defense contractors too.
“Where does your motivation for these goals come from?” asked Ronald Wagner.
“My parents have always tried to instill in me the value of education, but in all honesty, my motivation has been pretty much self-generated. Frankly, I think the world is going to hell fast. I look at the world around us and where it's heading, and it scares me. I truly believe that my generation is going to be faced with more critical problems than ever before. If we do not rise to the occasion, if we do not make ourselves stronger and smart enough to solve the problems we’re going to face, I don't think there'll be much left of anything to hand down to the next generation. Personally, I believe that because I have a great deal of potential, it is my responsibility, my duty in a way, to fully develop it and put my skills to their best uses. Anything less, I feel, would be negligent, a disservice to myself and to the people around me.”
From the look on Larson's face, he thought I was a goddamn crusader. It looked like his ego was chafing. “Mr. Miller, I realize how competitive the Academy is, both physically and mentally. Don't you think you would be better prepared to compete on both levels if you finished your senior year and went in at the same age as all of the other cadets?” Larson asked.
“Mr. Larson, I’ve thought about that,” I replied. I wasn't going to be baited and hooked. “That is why I want to attend UND for a year, to better prepare myself academically and allow myself to further mature physically. I know that it would be difficult for me to compete physically if I were to enter the Academy a year early, therefore I will work out and wait. If I go to UND, I'll be more than competitive academically and I'll be on equal footing physically.”
Larson was pissed. I had caught him sleeping, made him look like he wasn't paying attention. Little jerk.
“I've got a question for your mother,” Larson spat out. “Mrs. Miller, do you really want your son to be out on his own after just turning 17?”
Diane did not like being called “Mrs. Miller.” She was still bitter from her divorce ten years earlier and she had been remarried for seven of those. It was the wrong way for the lawyer to start out.
“We have always supported Wes and everything he's done. He's had this goal for a long time, and he knows what he's doing. I think he is mature and intelligent enough to be on his own now, if he had to be, so I'm not worried how he'll do in a year from now. We’re fully supportive of him and we’re behind him and everything he wants to do,” Diane finished.
Way to go mom! I smiled inwardly. This was just about a done deal.
Larson continued questioning me about my background, my sincerity, looking for a hole someplace. There weren't any. After about 25 minutes of back-and-forth, the chairperson cut him off with her own question.
Mary Nelson asked tentatively, “Wes, are you sure you want to miss out on your senior year? Some of the most memorable experiences a lot of people have take place then. You'll be leaving all your friends behind and you'll be missing a lot of good times.”
“I’ve thought about all that and realize that I might miss out on some good times. But I have also realized a long time ago that to get to where I want to go, sacrifices have to be made. Sure, I'll miss my friends, but what lies ahead for me is too important to me to let a few good potential memories get in the way. The life I am building for myself and the benefits of graduating early far outweigh the few costs,” I said confidently. What I didn't say is that the most important person in my life would be with me in Grand Forks – Tami. “To be totally blunt, there simply won't be anything left for me at Dickinson High School after this year. I will have completed every challenging class, participated in every extracurricular activity that interests me, and accomplished every goal at DHS that I can think of setting. There won’t be any more hills to climb – no more challenges. And I certainly don't want to sit around for a year taking underwater basket weaving classes and letting myself get sloppy. I want to stay focused and keep advancing.”
What I also did not say to the board was that my entire Academy plan was merely the first major step toward grooming myself to run for President of the United States someday. Somehow, I think they got the drift anyway.
To my surprise, Ronald Wagner, the dire looking superintendent, threw up his hands as if to surrender, smiled and he said, “Let him do it. It sounds like he's got all his bases covered and ours too. I move the question.”
“Seconded,” said Mr. Wiggins.
“The question has been moved and seconded,” Mary Nelson stated with a grin. “Is there any discussion remaining? No? All in favor signify by raising your hand.” All hands rose, but Larson's was last, of course. “Very well. Motion carries. Mr. Miller, you are now a senior in high school. The board wishes you the best of luck on your plans. I'm sure you'll make us very proud.”
“Thank you all so very much,” I replied. My grin felt like it wrapped around my entire head. I walked over to my mother, stepfather, and Tami, alternating hugs and handshakes. They were all proud of me. I had just successfully bucked the local system, broken tradition, and was to become my school's first-ever three-year high school graduate.
I was going places, and now my trip had begun in earnest. No one in the room now doubted that I was destined for greatness, especially me.
Of those that felt happy for me, none were happier than Tami. She was now assured of having an entire year alone, almost, with me at UND. The year in which we both wanted to solidify our relationship to the fullest. A year of building real memories, on which we would both have to feed in order to survive the loneliness and separation that awaited us when I actually left for the Academy. I felt confident that after that year, just under two years from then, nothing would or could ever get in our way.
******************************
Fall 1986 continued…
They called me a “Sunior” after that. I was officially disenrolled as a junior and re-enrolled as a senior. There was a bit of animosity and flat-out jealousy from some of my new classmates, and from some of my former classmates. Plenty of sneers and snide comments. It had no impact on me. I made the jump from the class of ’88 into the class of ’87 and never looked back. My focus was on where I was going, and I had a lot to do to get there.
Just as the school year kicked off, I got a stressed-out phone call from my dad. At 3:30 AM the night before, he got a call from the airline telling him to come in and close down the Sacramento station. He was told that Frontier Airlines was shutting down operations immediately, with corporate bankruptcy to follow.
My father was devastated. That company had been his life for over 22 years, and he had absolutely loved his job as a ground station supervisor. He was extremely pissed that the only offer of employment from the parent company, Continental, was doing the same job at one-third the pay, with no carry-over of seniority. It was just another way of being told “fuck off and pound sand.” Even worse, the bankruptcy would lock up his retirement funds indefinitely, so he had no access to them at all (and never did). Those funds just disappeared on him, destroying his retirement plans. It hurt profoundly. My dad was an average middle-class guy with not much in savings and with all the regular family bills to pay on top of his mortgage. He was scrambling.
It had been a middle-class job with good pay and benefits, but those had been slowly eroded over the years since Ronald Reagan’s firing of the striking air traffic controllers in 1981, which broke the power of their union, PATCO. My father had seen that, correctly, as the green light for deregulation of the airlines and straight-up union busting by the corporations. Over the following years, Frontier employees endured several rounds of pay cuts following corporate gamesmanship with the sale and re-selling of the company to various entities. It was said amongst the employees for years that some of the corporate board members thought the airline was worth more if liquidated and sold off than it was to them being operational.
My dad was a person who tried hard to execute a bit of foresight in his life. He tried his best to prepare for what he saw as the coming union crackdown by trying to put himself in the best economic environment should the airline fail. He had tried Illinois, outside of Rockford, but that hadn’t been very favorable to his wife’s job prospects. It was short-lived. This was after about five years in Eugene, Oregon, which had been suffering economic malaise for many years. After Rockford, my dad went to Salt Lake City, which was even worse for my stepmother’s job prospects. The reason was simple and revolting – non-Mormons were actively disfavored in the community and by potential employers. If you were not part of the Church (LDS), you were unworthy. Margaret had been rejected for every job she applied for, even waitress jobs, experience be damned.
Finally, my father set his sights on northern California. Sacramento was the station, and he found a home in a smaller city that he was more comfortable with than Sacramento itself, in nearby Woodland. The economy was diverse and stronger than most other regions at the time he chose it, and more importantly, housing had yet to start the massive explosion in California prices. Still, my father was in a tough spot in terms of his job search outside of the airline industry. He had been with Frontier his entire adult life and had no other experience to offer. Gary was 42 years old, only a high school graduate, and he had one job on his resume. His stress level was in the stratosphere.
For me, his job loss had implications, too. Most obvious was the loss of free travel privileges - if Frontier had stayed in business, I could have been flying free until I turned 23 years old. That also meant it would be more difficult to see my dad in the future, since it now would be an out-of-pocket expense. It further meant my father was not going to be a resource I could tap into financially, if need be, at least in the near term. He and I were both fortunate that I was pursuing a route through college that did not cost us any money, but rather, would be paying me to be there (you draw a small salary as a member of the military at the Academy). If that were to fall through…?
I was very concerned for him. The loss of his career was like a death in the family to him, that’s how hard of an impact it had. But he wasn’t a crybaby about it – he picked up the pieces and moved on. A few weeks later, he started as a manager at a used car dealership, which wasn’t a good fit. That was followed by a more tenable position, albeit at less pay than he needed, working as a teller-manager at a local credit union. I did my best to be there for him throughout this whole ordeal, and we bonded over long distance in the months to come more than ever before. While he was struggling, I was achieving my dreams, and I think that helped keep him going through some of his darker days (he had a few more to come).
As my Sunior year got under way, I was as busy as I have ever been in my entire life. I had added taking the Russian language via a correspondence course in addition to taking all of the remaining top-level classes available in the senior year. Student congress kicked off early in the year, we had a championship to defend again, and I was one of the two top speakers, a “Senator,” so it was a primary focus of my extracurricular time. Each competition was a long weekend trip to another city, usually requiring two missed school days per contest. And I was constantly being summoned to events of all sorts as one of two school photographers for the school newspaper and yearbook. All of this meant that I missed a lot of classes that I would then have to make up for the work or tests, which meant more homework, frequently into the early morning hours. Sleeping only four to five hours a night became common for me - I called it “murdering sleep.”
With Tami in the far corner of the State at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, we worked out a plan to see each other every other weekend (which was worked opposite of other school-related trips I had). I would go to Grand Forks for a long weekend (missing school to add a day or two to the visit), then two weeks later, she would come back to Dickinson for a long weekend. It was a 350-mile trip, a solid five-and-a-half-hour drive for those folks driving the speed limit. School and the extracurricular activities kept me running and made time very precious. I had to stay organized and on top of things while taking care of Tami’s needs from afar when we were apart and then giving her my full attention when we were together.
My primary concern with Tami was, of course, other guys trying to scam on her. I trusted her completely, but I still knew the fact that she had a boyfriend “back home” would do all of jack-diddly-shit to stop any guys from pursuing her. She was far too attractive to not be sought after by every being with a dick, and some without! And I wouldn’t be there to occupy her time and/or fend them off. Tami would always downplay any attention she received from other guys, and always reassure me that I was her one and only, forever. Still, my radar for potential interlopers was on and strong, always.
To allay my fears, we both made sure we talked to each other every night, very openly and honestly about everything. Both of us were too busy to write letters anymore. Since this was back when long-distance phone charges were a thing and a potentially huge extra expense, our phone time had to be limited. We both pushed it too far and got ourselves into trouble with our respective parents more than once for racking up expensive phone bills. The only other thing we could do was to make the most of the time we had when we were together. And did we ever…
My first trip to Grand Forks was over the long Labor Day weekend. My parents, especially my mom, were a little nervous about letting me travel across the State on my own. I tried to put them at ease by arranging to stay with a female older cousin (I’ll call her Sally) who was in a master’s program at UND. At least, that was the story. It also helped that both my mom and stepfather really liked Tami and were very welcoming of her into our family. She developed a particularly strong bond with my mother, as they were both fanatics of the pathetic soap opera “Days of Our Lives.”
That stupid daytime TV show was a big deal back then to women in North Dakota. I have no idea why – the program is a complete fucking shitshow with no logic, reason, consistency, or rational sense whatsoever. Nonetheless, growing up I witnessed my mom and virtually all of my mother’s sisters watching that video bile every fucking day. Worse, they would frequently call each other and end up spending a ridiculous amount of long-distance phone time talking about the dumb-ass character that’s just back from the dead, or this guy’s cheating with this evil bitch again, or whatever the fucking stupid repetitive plot was. And as luck would have it, Tami turned out to be just as big a fan of that drivel as my mom. Tami was such a fan she would rush home at lunchtime just to catch a half-hour of “Days” every school day while she was in high school. Once my mom and Tami got synced through their love of that show, they became friends as if Tami were already related.
The rest of my family loved Tami as well. She was easy to like, always fun and innocently playful. The first time I brought Tami over as my girlfriend, my sister, Tia, who was ten years old at the time, came running downstairs to Tami and me and just blurts out, “Wes, what does ‘masturbation mean?’” Tami busted out laughing while my cheeks flushed.
“This is my sister, Tia,” I said, laughing it off. “Tia likes to mess with me and now she has new ways to do it.”
Tami saw that Tia was totally fucking with me and she got a kick out of it. The two of them also bonded quickly.
The same thing happened with my extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Everybody loved her immediately, accepted her immediately, and went on the assumption that she would be my wife and part of the family.
All that love and acceptance of our relationship helped when on that first trip to Grand Forks, the transmission went out on the TC3 about thirty-five miles southwest of Grand Forks. The car still moved - slowly, 15 MPH tops - all while grinding metal. I was already nervous about my first time calling out of school on a Friday to go see her, and I was traveling with only enough money to get through the weekend, so this was the last thing I needed to happen. When I finally limped it into the first transmission shop in Grand Forks and they took a look, the underpan was filled with metal shavings. The old Plymouth Horizon TC3 was toast, and I was stranded in Grand Forks. But I was stranded with Tami!
She picked me up and we drove to my cousin’s apartment. Sally was in her early twenties and had two female roommates, both of whom were not home at the time. Sally was already cool with using her phone as my point of contact while I actually stayed with Tami in Tami’s dorm room, but now we had a big wrinkle with the car situation. I had to call my folks and work out the details, and I didn’t know if I was in fact going to have to stay at Sally’s place. Sally had to go to work, and I needed to get my head together before calling my parents, so I told her to go to work, I’d call them collect and we’d figure it out. If we weren’t spending the night, I’d leave a note.
“Okay, cool,” Sally said. “My roommates both know you are coming to visit so just introduce yourselves when they get home."
"Okay. Thanks for letting us stay here," I said.
"No problem," Sally replied. Then with a big smirk, she said, "And no sex on my bed, either!"
Tami blushed and I said, “Oh, what, us? Come on, we wouldn’t do that,” I smiled back.
“I’m serious, no sex on my bed, you two!” She grabbed her keys and went to the door. “I’ll see you later, I guess.”
“Thanks again,” I said. Then Tami and I both said, “Bye.”
Sally had a nice king-size bed, and five minutes later, we were on it. We were buck naked, with Tami on all fours and me face-down in her Magnificence…when I caught a glimmer out of the corner of my right eye. Then I heard keys hit the floor. I spun my head to the right, and there stood, mouth agape, a blond-haired twenty-something young lady. After making eye contact with me and then Tami, all in an instant, we all scrambled – her for her keys, and Tami and me for our clothes. The young woman quickly took the keys and bolted down the hallway as I reached the door to close it.
This was the first time we’d actually been caught in the act. Undeniably inflagrante delicto!!
Even before she was dressed, Tami was laying the blame on me and acting pissed off, like it was my fault. That didn’t last long – after we got ourselves composed and she gave me one of her friendly gut slugs, she looked me in the eye with fire and delight. “Now we have to wait for my place and hope my roommate’s already gone,” she said with a sexy smile and nudge.
Meeting Sally’s roommate was the most awkward first meeting I had ever had. The woman had seen ALL of me, turgid and ready, and all of Tami - doing some nasty - before we even said “Hello” to each other! But we did say “Hello” – after a few moments of gathering ourselves and taking deep breaths, Tami and I walked out to find her at the kitchen table. We greeted her as if nothing happened, and she responded the same. Like it was a normal first-time introduction, just with a lot of natural blushes going on around the table. (To this day, I have no idea whether the roommate ever told Sally about it as Sally has never mentioned a thing.)
After I explained the situation with my car, I decided to call my folks to figure out what to do. They were not pleased but they knew it wasn’t my fault the car died. As it was a holiday weekend, the transmission shop was closed until Tuesday. My stepfather, Mel, wanted to bring the car back to Dickinson to either fix or trade it. The plan became for them to drive our other car (a pickup) to Grand Forks on Monday, rent a tow unit from U-haul on Tuesday, and drive the TC3 back with me on Tuesday. FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC! That gave me three nights alone with Tami. In her dorm. With her roommate gone for the holiday weekend…
It was the start of a pattern of what seemed like mini honeymoons when I came to Grand Forks. When Tami came home to Dickinson, we had to share our spaces with our families. That meant going back to the sneak-in routine at night and sneaking in “quickies” at every opportunity. If we had ten minutes of relative assured privacy, we were gettin’ it done one way or another depending on the handy availability of latex! We were both constantly groping each other on the sly when around other people when they weren’t looking, keeping the heat between us simmering. For example, when we would be going upstairs and no one was looking, I would carry her up by following below her with my right hand raised and cupped by my shoulder to perfectly push her Magnificence up the stairs. Her feet would barely touch the floor on the way up. I was like her secret escalator. For her part, she would grab my crouch or butt every bit as often as I did to her. Car sex? We became masters of the steamed-up car parked in a quiet spot. But without question, long weekends with her alone in her dorm were better – they were magical marathons of intimacy and uninhibited teenage sex!
My next visit in October really set the model we were game to try to repeat on all my visits to follow.
I left after school on Thursday planning to miss school Friday – my mom was cool enough to call in for me. The excuse was that I was going to go see Ronald Reagan make his first and only speech in North Dakota, which was to take place at UND that Sunday. I still used the cover story of staying at Sally’s but that was a thin canard, giving into a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation with my parents. We didn’t have cell phones back then, and my mom generally didn’t try to call me when I was away unless it was an emergency. There weren’t any.
It was a girls-only dormitory and male guests weren’t allowed to spend the night, so I first had to be brought up to her room after calling up to her from the security door. Her roommate, who was a party-girl slut on the prowl, had already moved out to wherever the hell would have her. That gave Tami and me a double room to ourselves. “I missed you” sex followed – a few times before going to sleep. Then “wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-horny sex! Then morning sex! Followed of course by a shower…and shower sex! We were pretty hungry by then and went out for brunch, then came back, and had afternoon sex! That was followed later on by dinner and a movie, then we went for a drive somewhere quiet and had car sex! Finally, we went back to her dorm, freshened up and got ready for bed, and then had more sex! Each day followed the other following a similar pattern. We skipped Reagan’s speech because we were busy…having sex! We did manage to see his motorcade drive by as he left for the airport. Then we went back to Tami’s dorm and had sex!
Some of you dear readers may be doubting my veracity, and if that is you, I feel sorry that you’ve never had that kind of experience in life. But I tell it true, dear reader. I was sixteen and just working on my way to my prime – hell, I was so naturally horny back that I would get excited just thinking about her on the drive and have to rub one out before I even got there! Both of us were head over heals in mad-passionate love with each other, we were both young and in perfect shape, and our bodies TALKED to each other. Our mutual deep feelings for each other were magnified in our sexual relationship, making it incredibly intense and always satisfying for both of us. It became necessary because we needed each other.
When it finally came time to leave, Tami was almost shaking with dread that I’d be gone. She felt tremendous loneliness when we were apart, especially since leaving for college, and she was desperate to get me to stay another day. So much so, she started doing an impromptu striptease for me, enticing me to stay. I couldn’t, not this time…but those eyes… As she did her sexy dis-robing, she first teased by exposing her flat stomach with the beautiful natural vertical line of abdominal definition…then as she turned and slowly lowered her top and dropped it, the amazing arch of her back focused my attention and I could see that with the slightest tilt forward, I could balance a shot glass on her tailbone…and then my eyes moved further south to her Magnificence…damn...but I had a student congress trip the following weekend and a mountain of work to do as a result! I just couldn’t stay…but I couldn’t just yet leave, either. Although we were both sore from all the fun we’d already had, she had to settle for one last round of sex! Then I finally drove back to Dickinson, arriving late that night.
When I got to school on Monday and saw one of my other high school friends, I’ll call him Rob, he asked me how my trip went. He had his own serious girlfriend who he was also shagging rotten. We often joked with each other about it as young male sex-pigs tend to do. “Dude, on the last round, it was like trying to shove a marshmallow into a keyhole,” I quipped.
“You’re full of shit,” he laughed.
“Serious. She almost fucked me out,” I retorted. “I got tired of buying those small packs of rubbers, right? So, I bought the big 36-pack on Thursday on my way to Grand Forks. I only got 15 left!”
“You dirty bastard,” Rob said with a friendly backhand to my shoulder.
Indeed, I was living the Great All-American High School Fuck Fantasy…and life away from Tami was great, too. The schoolwork was easy – it just required the time to be put in. I walked the school halls between classes in a partial daze that week, as I did most weeks after coming home from Grand Forks, listening to corny ‘80’s rock ballads over the intercom while floating on a love-high and feeling absolutely confident in my future in every way. I was friendly with everyone and admired by many, no longer looked down upon as “just Wes.” The girls were noticing, too, and my options opened widely. Being a former “lard-ass” nobody, I relished the attention. I noticed the ladies, too, of course, but I had zero desire to date or fuck any of them at that point in time. I was committed heart and soul to Tami, meaning none of them stood a chance.
Life continued along that pattern throughout the fall and into Christmas break. By mid-November, I led our student congress to our fourth State Championship. I can say that because they voted me “Most Valuable Member” after we won. I also beat out my top competition in the State for the Senate top speaker award. That top competitor happened to be my teammate and the superstar student of the class I had jumped into, Vachel Miller (real name and no relation). My victory was close, and he was visibly disappointed in his personal loss even. Nonetheless, we celebrated our mutual victory together looking over the State Senate Chambers as if we belonged there. You see, the State Championship was hosted in the actual North Dakota Capitol Building, where they allowed us to use the actual House and Senate Chambers of the State Legislature during the competition. Many politicians, including the Governor and other top State officials, came through to wish us well during the event. Altogether, it was another experience that gave me faith in honest government while fueling my desire to serve in high office.
My unshakeable confidence in myself grew to the point of being almost arrogant at times. The sin of hubris awaited, and I started to find it after the turn of the year.
Hubris first came to find me in the form of a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter, I’ll call him Sergeant Bates. Out of the blue one night in late November 1986, I received a surprise call from him. I had previously taken the military aptitude test called the ASVAB as it was offered for free to all seniors that fall. I raced through that thing like it was nothing, acing every section of it. I scored in the 99th percentile on everything. That’s what sparked his phone call, and damn it if he didn’t manage to get me personally answering the phone when it rang. Had it been anyone else answering, I would have just dodged the call. “Hello?” I answered.
“Am I speaking to Mr. Wesley Miller?” he asked.
“Yes, this is him,” I replied.
“This is Sergeant Bates of the United States Marine Corps. I understand you want to become one of the Best,” Bates started. “I’m reaching out to you to make that happen. I’m sure you’ve heard that we’re looking for a few good men and I think you might be one of them.”
“Thank you, sir, I appreciate your call, but I’ve already made other plans to serve my country by going to the Air Force Academy,” I said as a matter of fact.
“Young man, I thought you wanted to be one of the best, not just one of the rest,” he said with absolute confidence. “The Air Force is fine for those who just want some time in a branch of the service, but if you truly want to maximize your potential and be the best you can possibly be, there is nothing to match the elite training and discipline of the Unites States Marine Corps. Ooh-rah.”
His talk about being the best got my attention. I had previously given zero thought to serving in any other branch of the armed forces. It would have been wise for me to just hang up on him, but I kept listening. Then I agreed to go meet with him in person the next evening.
Sergeant Bates stood about 6’4” with a strong, fit build but not out of proportion in any way. Never-the-less, that man had the fiercest handshake I have ever experienced, and I’m a guy who values a firm handshake. This was different - he damn near broke my hand when he shook it. Every time.
“So, what’s this Air Force Academy business all about then?” he asked right away after our greeting and pointing me to a chair. I briefly explained my grand plan for getting the best education possible while also serving my country, and maybe going into politics after that, without being too specific about any further ambitions.
“For a young man with such big goals, why aren’t you looking to go into the best branch of the military?” Bates inquired.
“Well, for one, the Marines don’t have an academy to apply to,” I stated.
“Oh, yes, we do. The Marine Corp is actually the little brother to the U.S. Navy, and there are plenty of Navy Academy graduates who choose to be commissioned as officers in the Marines Corps when they graduate,” he informed me. “Did you know that you can choose which branch of the military to be commissioned in when you graduate from any of the military academies? Even the Air Force Academy.”
“Are you sure? I’ve never heard that before,” I said.
“Absolutely. You could go through the Air Force Academy, graduate, and be commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Marines. No problem what-so-ever,” Bates said with the confidence of God. It presented a new appeal I hadn’t considered – as a person with horrible natural eyesight, I couldn’t be a pilot, meaning my Air Force career might consist of manning a missile silo for years on end, or some other less-than-glamorous duty. The idea of leading Marines in combat brought on thoughts a glory hound would have about achieving great victories in future battles…and the honor and fame to follow... He then proceeded to give me the full blast pitch on the wonders of becoming one of the few and the proud. Sgt. Bates went through a litany of the famous and powerful who had once been Marines to further his success arguments. My patriotic side was fully receptive, even sold, but I had no plans to sidetrack my Academy plans and I told him as much. I loved the campus and really wanted to go to college there. That’s when he threw out two points of bait that hooked me all the way.
“Do you realize that having prior enlisted experience will actually help you get the nomination you’re after?” Bates quizzed.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, being already enlisted in the military – doesn’t matter what branch – shows that you have a prior commitment to serving your country. If two applicants are equally qualified, who do you think they’ll pick? The civilian? Or the guy who has already demonstrated his commitment to serving his country?”
Damn, he was convincing. “Okay, I see your point,” I said. “What if I am already serving as a Marine and then get the appointment – won’t I be stuck as an enlisted man and lose out on the Academy?”
“No way, if that happens, they’ll pluck you right out of whatever unit you’re in and send you to the Academy. It’s a higher service commitment, so they’ll cut your orders without a doubt.”
My resistance was fading. He kept overcoming all of my objections.
“There’s something else you should consider, too, and that’s the effect being a ‘mustang’ will have on your career,” Sgt. Bates went on. “A ‘mustang’ is an officer with prior enlisted experience. They generally make better officers since they know what it’s like on the working side of things. They’re usually better liked and respected by the men they lead, and they tend to have better career advancement.”
He had me thinking hard about my entire big plan for my life. A bit more daydreaming crept into my head as he continued.
“You say you want to get into politics someday, right? Well, what better preparation to serve your country in politics would there be after serving your country as both an enlisted man and an Academy-grad officer? Hell, son, you might even be able to run for President some day!”
From his lips to God’s ear, right? He didn’t know that was exactly my plan. But he knew he had me sold on becoming a Marine. We kept talking and worked out what I would have to do. Since I was still only 16, we would have to wait until the new year for me to sign up under the deferred enlistment program, which in turn would require the permission of my mother. I still wanted to get some undergraduate college credits under my belt to be able to go for a double major and I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Tami before leaving to make my future. We resolved those concerns by planning for the delayed enlistment to last until the end of the following calendar year, which would give me a full semester at UND, then Marine Corps boot camp, followed by my appointment and matriculation to the Academy at the end of June 1988.
I thought I had it all figured out again, even better this time. Everybody else was skeptical of my decision. I took it upon myself to convince them, and myself, that it was the right decision. Tami laughed at first at my taking on of Marine Corps ego-puffs, like referring to myself as being “a piece of twisted steel and sex appeal,” and other similar self-aggrandizing bullshit. (It didn’t take long to become a bit tiresome for her.) I further justified it to everyone I could as an opportunity to get the best, toughest training (13 weeks of boot camp and beyond) prior to going into the Air Force Academy, which should make the Academy’s eight-week boot camp a joke by comparison.
My friend’s father, I’ll call him Big Jim, was a Vietnam veteran Marine. He had been severely wounded at Da Nang during the Tet offensive in 1968. Big Jim was very blunt: “Don’t do it. You’re just a piece of meat to them. They don’t give a fuck about your future; they just want killers and cannon fodder.”
I tried to laugh it off and say that the Corps had changed since his day. My recruiter assured me that the abuses of the past had been addressed and fixed. The drill instructors were no longer allowed to even touch a recruit, he claimed. The modern Marines were no longer filled with racists idiots, it was an organization of the best and most professional elite soldiers on the planet. I was a true believer with reinforced self-righteousness, an unstoppable force with destiny awaiting.
The two very important things I didn’t know or understand yet were: 1) how completely and totally full of shit military recruiters are in their relentless pursuit of enlistment numbers; and 2) the depth of my own naivety.
When Tami came back to Dickinson for Christmas break, we worked out a plan to spend Christmas with each other’s families, at least as much as was allowed by hers and time available for mine.
My mother’s family had a Christmas Eve tradition of everybody getting together to celebrate at the old farm they grew up on (and was still owned by one of the younger sons). Part of the tradition was to have someone they knew come to the house dressed as Santa Claus and hand out gifts to all the little kids, and then the big kids. It was a packed house each year and usually pretty fun. Tami came and met most of my aunts, uncles and cousins that were still in North Dakota, and they loved her. They took to her – she was another “Days” fan – and she liked and got along with all of them, so it was a good time. The only problem is that Tami’s mother expected her to be home that night so she would be home on Christmas morning. That required us to leave early for the 100-mile drive back to Dickinson. It also meant that I couldn’t sneak in that night since her brothers and sisters were home, too. We had to settle for stopping and parking along the countryside for a quicky. Twice.
Along the way, Tami briefed me about what to expect and how to act. Her parents weren’t thrilled about having me over for such a big holiday – usually it was required to officially be a fiancé. Tami’s brothers and sisters were more relaxed, she claimed, and she thought it would be good to start playing board games or some game of cards with them (but NOT Bridge – that was her mom’s game with her girlfriends). That way we’d be occupied away from her folks, mostly, and it would give us all a chance to get to know each other.
“Oh, and when we’re opening gifts, do not tear the wrapping paper or my mom will freak out!” Tami said, feisty but serious.
“Say what? That’s what it’s for, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Not in our house, it isn’t,” Tami went on. “We have always, and I mean since before I was born, used scissors to gently cut the tape on the wrapping paper so we could save it to use again next year.”
“You gotta be shitting me,” I said dramatically in an effort to joke.
“I’m dead serious. We’ve had the same old wrapping paper ever since I can remember. I think I’ve seen her buy one new role in my whole life.”
I was stunned. “That’s some seriously uptight shit right there,” I said with Marine Corps swagger. “What gives with that? Wrapping paper is cheap.”
“It’s just the way it is with them. They’re very conservative and don’t like wasting things,” Tami explained. “Their ways are set in stone. Don’t rock the boat and everything will be just fine.”
I had never used scissors to open a present before. It was awkward because it felt like I was being watched. I made a few extra unintentional cuts here and there - they were small and tapeable so no fuss. Fucking weird. Everyone was pleasant and seemed happy, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was on a 1950’s sitcom set. Each person had their specific role to play, and they worked diligently at playing them.
I started to see the idea of “plastic people” from a very different perspective. I started having some internal questions…some things just didn’t add up. They had a pool table room with a full and very wet bar with many different types of full or partial bottles of booze, but the family didn’t touch any it. All of them drank a glass of wine or had a beer or two, all very casual, with no one drinking enough to get tipsy. They were all conservative-stiff, yet the wallpaper in the room was 1970’s hipster, with jokes like: “Roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, and so am I.” Definitely not what I thought that grumpy old badger of a mother would allow in her house, on her walls. They still had protective plastic on two of the recliners in their living room, for fuck’s sake! And on the sofa!
It was a very different world than I was accustomed to, or even realized still existed.
Tami’s brothers and sisters generally viewed me as a likeable oddity. We had nice conversations, nothing too deep beyond my Air Force Academy goals. One of her brothers took a slight interest, the rest didn’t go far beyond being polite. I looked very young to them but that was nothing new to me. We played a few games and had casual unserious conversations.
After the new year and school started back up, the former routine largely continued. The only change was that I had a little bit more free time to party with my friends on the weekends I stayed in Dickinson. Party we did. The main drag in Dickinson was the perfect place to go cruising on Friday and Saturday nights to look for parties. It went from the east end of town to the edge of the west part of town, with a convenience store anchoring the east and a Hardee’s on the west, both great turnaround and quick gathering spots to make plans. I had taken on some partying up until then whenever I could. Now, with less pressure, I had time to make some of those special memories the school administration was so concerned about.
My two best guy friends, Jim and Jack, had become good friends with each other by then. The three of us had been to our first rock concert together and been through many high school antics. They were like brothers to me. As time went on and our circle of friends and party buddies grew, we always remained close. We had each other’s backs and covered for each other as needed. All of the guys in our circle were horny teenagers on the loose looking to score. Even so, I remained faithful and loyal to Tami.
Then Tami made me go out with another girl…
The mini honeymoons went mostly as they had gone before through both January and February. In March, everything changed…forever.
Sometime after my February trip to Grand Forks, in one of our phone calls Tami said that she believed, “like everybody else,” that I didn’t have enough “dating experience” to really be know what I wanted, and that I should date other girls “just to know for sure.”
I was shocked. Why in the hell would my fiancé-to-be, the love of my life, my “one and only,” want me to go out on dates with other girls? “Where in the fuck is this coming from?” I pressed (my language was already farmer-bad, now it was taking on Marine Corps-bad, with many varieties and uses for the “F” word).
“Oh, come on, I’m the only girlfriend you’ve ever had, and everybody thinks you need to date a few times just to know, you know…that I’m the One,” she claimed innocently.
“First off, I already know you’re the One. How many times have I said as much to you? And second, you haven’t had any other serious boyfriends, so why is it any different for you?” I asked. As the words came out of my mouth, I realized the answer. “That’s it, isn’t it? YOU want to date other guys, right?” I started to get angry fast. “Who the fuck is scamming on you?”
She immediately took on a tone like she was offended that I would even suggest such a thing. “Of course not! That’s not it at all,” she claimed. “Everybody just thinks you’re just too young…”
I cut her off. “And just who in the fuck is this ‘everybody’ bullshit, anyway?” I said with some heat. “Your family? Your friends? I thought we were through with all that fucking crap.”
The argument went on for some time as she either downplayed the significance of what she had said, or she got angrily defensive at the implication of her wanting to date someone else. I was extremely skeptical and did not fully believe her story or motives for broaching the idea. We argued intensely.
“Just what the fuck is the purpose of going out with someone else if I’m ‘with’ you?” I pressed. “You do know that the purpose of dating is to find a mate, right? That means finding the person you want to fuck, possibly for the rest of your life!”
“It does not! That’s not what I was talking about!”
“Oh, really? What is dating all about, then? It’s about BEING with somebody; somebody you want to FUCK!” I started yelling. “And I sure as fucking hell do NOT want you going on a date, holding hands with, making out with, or FUCKING any other guys! Is that what you want me to do?”
“No, of course not, don’t be ridiculous! You can go on a casual date and not have any physical contact at all!” she yelled back at me.
“Yeah, and for what purpose? For how long? You’re describing people who are friends, not people who are dating. People who on a date are looking FOR A MATE, someone to have a relationship with AND FUCK! Or at the very least, someone to mate with for the night and FUCK RIGHT NOW!”
We continued to fight and did not reach any resolution on anything to do with the topic. Earlier in the year, after she had first started college, she made a ‘guy’ friend who I was extremely cautious about. She also met several other weirdo guy friends who I could tell were no competition for me. But this one guy – I’ll call him Lars because he was from a Scandinavian country - could have been. We had gotten into our first big fight about it and the general idea that men and women (I meant straight men and women), especially if they are single, cannot be friends without sex being an issue at some point. We both got heated in our arguments over it. The one thing that helped ease my concerns was that Lars had a fiancé of his own and they had their own long-distance relationship to deal with. Still, I watched that situation with microscopic scrutiny to be sure they weren’t filling each other’s lonely times by cheating on their significant others.
After the call ended, the tension remained for the next several weeks. For whatever reason, she continued to say I should go on a date with another girl. I told her with absolute conviction that I did not want her dating anyone else, and she maintained that she had no interest in doing so.
Then I met a woman worth dating…
I was on another long weekend school-related trip to Bismarck and heard that there was a girl my age from a town near to Dickinson who was interested in me. I think the actual words were “crushing on you.” She had been watching me from afar and had built up a bit of an infatuation with me. I didn’t have a clue who she even was up until then, but I was flattered by the news. The girl in question was beautiful – she was taller and with a completely different look than Tami – and smart. I liked that. For all her qualities, Tami was not an intellectual (Tami was intelligent, for sure, but not very interested in academic pursuits.) I sent word around to her that I was interested, too.
We met in the hot tub at the Holiday Inn. It was a perfect neutral place to meet as we both had several other high school classmates around, going in and out of the tub, providing a casual environment to start talking. Charlotte (I’ll call her) and I had a wide array of mutual interests that led to many hours of conversation. We bonded quickly. It helped that I downplayed my relationship with Tami to the extreme and tried leaving our status as opaque to Charlotte as I could. Charlotte was easy to convince as it was clear that she was into me.
I wasn’t used to being pursued so this was exciting. My ego loved the notion that I would be appreciated and showed off instead of having to duck down and not be seen. Before the weekend was over, I had asked her Charlotte out for a date. We arranged to go out to dinner and a movie on the first Friday of UND’s spring break. For her part, Tami said she approved. Then Tami asked me to come over to her house after the date. Our usual time to sneak me in was around 11:00 as that guaranteed her parents would be asleep, ensuring our privacy. I told her it would be very late, but she insisted I come over anyway. She missed me.
The date went very well. Charlotte was clearly into me and not afraid to show her admiration of me. I liked her despite her similar family characteristics as Tami – she was the youngest child of a large traditional Catholic farm family. Luckily, that was about the only similarity they shared. I was becoming more interested as the night went on and I learned more about her. Charlotte was very smart, a fellow high achiever with lofty goals. Our talks were interesting and often thought provoking. We fast solidified our friendship.
She was also cute. As a horny teenage male, I noticed her attributes were just fine. This could go somewhere…
Our mutual interest in each other kept the date going long after the movie. We drove around for a while, then I decided to take her to my house for a bit before I drove the 15 miles to her home. We hadn’t had any physical contact yet, but the attraction was getting stronger. At about midnight, Charlotte was sitting on my bed and I was standing across from her, just talking, when in marches a red-faced Tami, fuming with rage! She immediately looked at Charlotte, then back at me.
“You motherfucker!” Tami screamed at me. “You god-damn son-of-a-bitch!” she continued as she turned and started back out of my bedroom, stomping to the stairs.
I couldn’t believe Tami would just storm into my house like that. I was temporarily dumbfounded, not having been prepared to handle any of this kind of mess. I ran after Tami and called to her, “Wait! Tami, stop!” I pleaded.
Tami stopped at the top of the stairs ever so briefly to sneer down to me, “Nobody stands me up, you fucker,” and she left, slamming the door behind her.
I was again caught in a temporary daze before returning to my room. Charlotte was still sitting on my bed. “I take it that was your sort-of girlfriend?” Charlotte said with a slight grin.
“No, my very ex-girlfriend,” I tried to joke. My head was still swimming. “Unbelievable, really. I never thought she’d just barge into my house like that.”
“Yeah, a bit bold, I’d say,” Charlotte agreed. “I don’t want you to take this wrong, but I should probably be getting home soon.”
We kept talking and growing closer over the drive home. Charlotte wasn’t too freaked out about what happened because she also had a guy who was in her life but not an official “boyfriend.” He had already asked her to their school’s prom and she said yes, and she didn’t want to hurt him, so she kept the date – with my blessing because it took pressure off of the Tami situation. By the time we got to her family farm, physical contact had been broken, by her, when she grabbed my hand and started pouring her heart out even more about how much she liked me. I returned the heart-felt interest in her. We spent a couple hours making out on a couch in the foyer.
I quickly found out that she, like Tami before her, was a “good Catholic girl” who was saving her virginity for marriage. Although not surprising at all, it was NOT information I wanted to hear – and I really did not want to have to go through the “good Catholic” virgin games all over again. I had to make a quick decision on how to handle my past with Tami. This could really be a serious relationship, I thought. She’s going to want it to be ‘special,’ just like Tami had. If she knew about my sexual history with Tami, I might not be so great a pick to her, or worse, she’ll always have the comparison between Tami and her in the back of her head. And I really don’t want to hurt her unnecessarily, especially if this becomes a long-term relationship…
That’s how I justified lying to Charlotte about it and my relationship with Tami. I claimed we never went that far, and that I was still a virgin, too. I bought into a new relationship built upon (at least partially) a lie. No matter how well-intentioned, that is a disastrous way to begin.
The next day, Tami came over - in a rage again – wanting her things back from me, such as her senior photograph portfolio and alarm clock. If there was anyone else home when she arrived, they quickly left because it got heated, fast. Tami went into a full-on raging fit on me in the basement of our house after taking back her alarm clock (she had given it to me so I would think of her the first thing when I woke up every day).
“Nobody stands me up, motherfucker!” she screamed again.
“I didn’t stand you up, I was just late,” I retorted,
“Bullshit, you fucking asshole, you stood me up! And what the fuck was that girl doing in your room, sitting on your bed? That’s my place to be, not hers!” Tami yelled as she threw the alarm/radio to the ground, shattering its white plastic frame.
“You were the one who wanted me to date other girls!”
“I said date, not take some bitch to your bedroom while standing me up!”
“We weren’t doing anything.”
“Fuck you! I don’t care, you stood me up!” she screamed again.
“I told you you wouldn’t like it if I dated someone else. I fuckin’ knew it!”
“And I told you that you can go out on a date with someone and just be friends.”
“Yeah, that’s not dating, that’s called just being ‘friends’” I quipped sarcastically.
“You were on an actual date!” she hissed.
“Ah, I knew it! You’re finally admitting that men and women going on a date is a courtship, looking for your mate, LOOKING FOR A SEX PARTNER!” I yelled back at her.
“I am not! You don’t know anything! And fuck you, you motherfucking asshole!” she yelled. Her vocabulary had radically and noticeably changed fast.
We fought for about ten or fifteen minutes before she stormed off, officially breaking up with me - the first time. She had been screaming at me so loudly that I learned later that our neighbors across the street could hear her (some of me, too).
That argument was the basis of virtually all the fights to follow, or at least, what those fights would boil into, without fail. Tami pushing me to date with her not liking the consequences and me standing her up were two sticking points for years. The real fight was about whether men and women could “date” and not have sex become an issue, or whether men and women could truly be platonic friends without sex ever becoming a problem or issue between them.
Charlotte and I dated each other for several weeks. While I hadn’t been struck by the Thunderbolt, there were sparks in the air. We had a few intense make-out sessions, but her Catholic virtue held strong. I didn’t push, thinking things would probably evolve as they had with Tami, and the sex part would come along in due time. In the end, I broke her heart like a cad. Happily, I was but a speed bump on the way to her destiny, however, as she later married and had a family with the man who went to prom with her.
As graduation neared, my free time opened up and I went on the party prowl. The last week of the school year was called “senior skip week” because that’s what happened for the seniors – no class and no finals. We were free to roam wild, and we did. I was angry about the breakup with Tami and acted out accordingly. I took it upon myself to see if I could uphold my father’s legacy and “date” as many girls as I could. I was hot shit and knew it, so I tried. Although I got personal and physical with several young ladies that week, I didn’t conquer any of them.
When my father came back for graduation, it was with a heavy heart and more bad news. His second wife, Margaret, had thrown my brother and my father out of their house. She was going to file for a divorce, too. My brother Greg and Margaret had never been friendly with each other – to the contrary, the friction had always been present and there had been fights every yearly visit. He wasn’t alone in that regard as I had a few bouts with Margaret, too. This time, however, Greg had gone too far. He had done some bad shit that pushed her over the limit (the substance of “what?” doesn’t matter – this is my story, not his), and my father apparently hadn’t been handling it as she needed. Margaret made the choice to rid herself of both of them at once.
Having lost his career and his second wife in less than a year brought him low. Very low. I could see I on his face and how he handled himself with a lack of his regular vigor and energy. He had one hope that he was reaching for, and that was becoming a correctional officer for the State of California. It was a longshot and a tough road if he got it. At 40-years-old, he was almost double the average age of police academy trainees. He would have to go through eight weeks of police academy boot camp before going on the job, which meant he needed to get into shape, fast.
I could see he was drinking pretty hard, too, but since I had been in a near-constant state of partying the last week, I wasn’t in a position to preach. I was supportive of him, though. And gently confrontational about a few things that needed to be said.
At our first dinner together after he arrived in Dickinson, after catching up with each other and getting a couple drinks into him, he asked me if I would give him back his old 12-gauge shotgun. The gun was an unusual Mossberg bolt-action shotgun with a long full-choke barrel. He used to use it for goose hunting. I had borrowed it some years before for pheasant hunting as he hadn’t been hunting for anything in decades.
“Sure, it’s yours…but I gotta ask why you want it?” I gently pressed. “I mean, California’s not exactly known for goose hunting… A lot of guys who’ve been through half of what you’ve lived this last year might think about hurting themselves. I sure as hell hope that’s not you.”
“It’s not, son,” Gary replied. I think I surprised him with my bluntness.
We talked about the things that were weighing on him. It was a heavy mix of career and family disappointment to the point of failure. He admitted he was depressed but denied being suicidal. I made him promise that he would NOT use that shotgun or anything else to try to harm himself, and he made the promise. I was pleasantly surprised by his new openness with me. This was the most personal of any conversation I had ever had with my father, so I decided it was time – I decided to finally ask him about what his older brother Otto had done to him when he was a child.
“Oh, he tried putting his hands in my knickers a few times,” he downplayed to the extreme. “You know I took care of that right? He tried that shit again right after he got kicked out of the military. I was 13 years old, and do you know what happened? I broke three of his ribs and slammed his head through a plaster wall. Fucker’s lucky I missed any two-by-fours.”
I didn’t press him on the details of the assault upon his younger self because I intuited he wouldn’t give any. “Why didn’t your parents stop that piece of shit?” I asked.
“They’re old Germans with the old country attitude. And superstitious Catholics. They just don’t talk about such things,” he pondered.
“Doesn’t it, or didn’t it, make you mad at them?” I pressed on.
“Oh, hell yes. I hated them for years…it took a long time to forgive them. But I’ve made my peace with it,” he said in a way suggesting he wanted to change the topic.
“What about your sisters? Did they know?”
“Yep, the older ones did. They’d get a whippin’ if they said anything against Otto.”
“Damn, it makes me mad as hell at them for it. I’m surprised you can forgive them at all,” I said.
“Holding on to all that anger just gives you ulcers. No, I put that to rest a while ago, and that’s how I like it. No sense kicking a dead horse,” he wrapped up with.
I took the hint and let it go. Our conversation moved on and managed to get more upbeat and positive.
Graduation was the typical cap and gown, pomp and circumstances affair. There was no special recognition of my achievement beyond being another Honors student tassel-wearing graduate to separate us from the underachievers. I looked as best I could to see if Tami was in the audience, but I never found her. Her absence and my father’s sad situation weighed on me, dampening my ability to fully celebrate my accomplishment. My dad was in a great mood, however, proudly coming up front to the stage to get a snapshot of me going through the diploma-granting line. We said “goodbye” and he left after the ceremony to stay with his sister and family in another town, so I was free to go to the unofficial graduation party.
It was known as “Green River” because it was by an old highway rest stop along a little stream bearing that name. The party, as always in this location, was a huge outdoor bonfire with a stereo system set up to blast the popular hard rock and heavy metal of the day. No country music amongst our party crowd – rockers only! And there were a lot of us, probably 300 people or more at its peak, with cars parked in arranged lines in the prairie grass field as guided by lot attendants when entering. Everybody brought their own booze, and the trunks of the cars were frequently filled with ever-shrinking coolers of beer (I know mine was).
Everybody who liked to party was there, and even some folks who didn’t. Bonfire parties like these were common in the summer months, but graduation was by far the biggest turnout. Drinking to get intoxicated was the purpose. Copious amounts of beer was swilled. I was feeling fine and having fun. Then I saw her.
Tami’s eyes locked with mine from about ten feet away. Neither of us were talking to anyone at the moment, so she walked closer to me, wine cooler in hand, and said, “Hey you,” with a sweet smile.
“Hi,” I said pleasantly back to her. “Didn’t see you at graduation,” I said loudly over the music.
“I didn’t go,” she replied. We tried to make small talk, but it was difficult with the loud rock n’ roll blasting. After a moment, she leaned over and asked me, “You want to go talk for a bit?” she asked. “So we can hear each other?”
“Sure,” I said.
The night sky was pitch black. Away from the light coming from the fire, it was almost completely dark. We walked around a big tree at the edge of the crowd. On the other side was the start of an embankment toward the creek where an occasional dude would stroll by to look for a place to pee. Otherwise, we were alone with enough ambient light to see each other’s face.
“How are you?” I asked sincerely.
“I miss my friend,” she said just as sincerely.
I looked deep into her eyes…those eyes…and she stared back into mine. “I miss you, too,” I said.
We talked. We drank. And we talked some more. And drank some more, getting ourselves thoroughly impaired, taking occasional time outs to pee and get refills. At one point, during one of her heavily animated expressions, she twisted her foot and fell down the embankment. I went after her and tended to her injury. Her foot had swelled and hurt to walk upon, so I had to help her. Now that the ice was completely broken and physical contact made, all the old feelings rushed back to full force. I apologized profusely for the incident with Charlotte and expressed my undying love for Tami once again. She expressed her loneliness without me and longing to be with me again.
Yeah, it went all sappy like that. Within an hour or so, we were naked in a very dark field having sex again. Nobody could see us because it was so dark outside, and we were far enough away from the fire.
We were officially back together.
To help heal the wounds and bring us closer together again, I suggested a trip to Colorado so she could see my other love, the United States Air Force Academy. Tami was all for it. As fortune had it, her newlywed sister had moved with her husband to a small town about a hundred miles from Colorado Springs. Her sister provided a great excuse for Tami to travel with me to Colorado and it was an acceptable place to stay in her parents’ eyes.
On our way to her sister’s, we took a detour to go see the nearby Royal Gorge Bridge. Tami had never seen it before, and it took her breath away. As we stood at the opposite end of the bridge overlooking the Gorge, she started crying intensely. I thought something was wrong and I tried to comfort her and find out what was the matter. “Nothing,” she managed through her tears. “It’s just…I’ve never seen anyplace so beautiful before…Thank you for bringing me here.”
“My pleasure, baby,” I said. “I’m going to show you the world,” I sincerely promised. She responded affectionately and I tasted her tears as we kissed.
Tami understood immediately why I was so impressed with the Academy when we arrived on our chosen day to visit. The setting for the campus is gorgeous, nestled right at the base of the Rocky Mountains. She could finally visualize me going there and what our lives might be like while I was attending. The Academy’s amazingly beautiful A-framed Chapel became our planned wedding location. We even set the tentative wedding date for immediately after I would be graduating from the Academy (June 6, 1992, was the date selected). I even managed to capture a great photograph of my two great loves together when I got a perfect shot of Tami overlooking the Academy campus with the picturesque mountains in the background. It was a near-perfect day.
Our adventurous sex life picked right back up where it had left off when we broke up, too. Almost like we had never been apart from each other. We were frequently fooling around with each other, groping, teasing, building up sexual tension until we could finally take care of the release. Car sex was back in a big way, as in, while on the road! Don’t try this at home, folks. We were lucky to not get in a wreck and get hurt. But I did come close to getting a ticket on our way home…
I was driving 85 MPH on U.S. Highway 85 on a very lonely stretch of road between Buffalo and Ludwig, South Dakota, when the only other car on the road passed me. And turned on his flashing overhead lights. I hadn’t noticed the cop from a distance because I was on the verge of orgasm – Tami was busy going down on me making my driving quite distracted! I was so concentrated on staying in my lane that I didn’t notice my speed or the cop’s lightbar until too late. I stopped as fast as I possible – just as I was coming! - but he was already behind me before I stopped all the way. Tami sat up as I tried to get my shorts back up and zipped. We quickly tried to clean up and look innocent.
The cop was a young man no older than thirty. He approached my car with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on a cop’s face. Why not? He saw one head in the vehicle going one way, then hers popped up, too. He got the drift. Hell, it was probably the highlight of his day.
“Would you please step out of the car, sir,” the sheriff’s deputy asked me with a huge smile that barely contained his laughter. I complied and he directed me to sit in the front left seat of his car. Then he joined me in the front seat and called in my driver’s license. All the while, he was grinning away. After I came back with a clean record, he laid out the situation for me.
“You see that paper taped on the dashboard in front of you?” he asked. “That’s the fine chart for various speeds. Since I got you clocked at 85 in a 55 zone, you’d be looking at almost a four hundred dollar fine. You’re lucky – at 86, it goes up to almost a thousand.”
I didn’t have money for a fine. Definitely not four hundred bucks. I was nervous.
“But I can understand how a guy can lose track of his speed out here on a lonely road like this,” he continued, again barely suppressing laughter as he gestured to the empty highway. “Since you got a clear record and all, I’ll tell you what: if you promise you can be more careful and slow it down to the speed limit, I’ll let you go today with just a verbal warning.”
“Oh, absolutely, no problem, sir. Thank you so much, Deputy,” I said with total sincerity. “I really appreciate it.”
“You just be safe out there, alright? Have a nice day,” he concluded, chuckling slightly as I left his patrol car.
Glad he didn’t catch us an hour before, when Tami was driving and I was getting her off! Yeah, that was dangerous and stupid. Not to be attempted by anyone, ever…not while driving. (Seriously. We could have gotten hurt or hurt someone else.)
We made it home safe and had a mostly great summer. The roller coaster ride of fighting and fucking got started in earnest after we both went back to Grand Forks, and I began college.
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 12
Striving For Success, Destined for Disappointment
Grand Forks, Fall 1994…
After listening to several sad sob stories from addicts with messed up lives, it was my turn to speak. This was my last outpatient group session with James Flanigan, Licensed Addiction Counselor, and our topic for the evening was “gratitude.” Everyone there was grateful for not being in jail and for being relatively healthy. Beyond that, everyone had their own personal areas of appreciation in their lives.
It was a good topic for me. It helped remind me that my situation was nothing compared to the difficulties many people live with every day. Being forced to ride the city bus, I would daily see several people with severe physical handicaps making their way to work, or home, or to the grocery store. Folks who had twisted bodies even with braces on various body parts, who looked like they were in severe pain just getting on and off the bus. Some folks in wheelchairs, of course. And a few really unlucky souls who suffered from both physical and mental handicaps. All of these people made me feel tremendously humbled for ever bitching about any of my problems at all.
“I’m really grateful to have my life back on track, or at least, back on the track it was on before I got sidetracked with booze and getting busted,” I started. “I’ve lost so much of what I had worked for…I’m glad I didn’t lose it all. Most importantly, I’m grateful to have the love of my life back in the picture again, and to have a shot at the life I always wanted with her. I realize now that I needed to deal with all of the things from my past that were weighing on me in order to get right with myself again, and while I’m not thrilled about how I got here, I am glad to have gone through this program. It really helped me learn some better coping mechanisms and how to manage my emotions better. And I’m not drinking anymore. So, for that, thank you, James,” I said in closing.
“You’re very welcome. That’s what we’re here for,” James replied with an air of righteousness. “You know what we say about the past, right? It’s the perfect place for it,” he said with authority and a smile. “With that, folks, it’s time to wrap up. Since it’s your last night, Wes, why don’t you lead us off in the Serenity Prayer?”
As a person with deep skepticism of religion, if it were under any other circumstances or any other prayer, I might have told him to fuck off. But this little prayer had become my own personal mantra and would remain so at least through my father’s death. It was simple, direct, and personally powerful if made with the contemplation and sincerity it implies. Many nights when I was stressed out to the extreme about my father’s fast fading condition and studying for the bar exam, this simple hopeful notion brought me a measure of calm and internal peace.
As was the practice, we all stood up and joined hands around the table as I began, and my sober compatriots joined: “God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things that I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.”
Courage was never an issue for me, but that Serenity part was a complete bitch. I did NOT accept losing the life I had wanted to build for myself, and I definitely did NOT accept losing Tami. I had to keep trying, which is why I came back to Grand Forks and went to law school in the first place. Now that Tami was back in my life, I could focus more on rebuilding our life together, and that idea helped me accept the other tremendous losses I had previously suffered. The anger and disappointment I had to endure after losing my desired future took their time in working through me but now I had reached a state of calm acceptance about my past…because I still had her, coming back into my life all the way…finally.
There was an expression about law school amongst the students: the first year they scare you to death, the second year they work you to death, and the third year they bore you to death. What they don’t do is teach you any practical skills as a lawyer. For instance, you are not taught how to write a contract in the year-long Contracts class; you are not taught how to draft a Will in Trusts & Estates class; and you are not taught how to buy or sell a house in Property class. That’s why law students seek out clerking jobs with law firms or with the government (as I had) to start acquiring practical skills. With the exception of one legal writing class in the first year that taught students how to write briefs and memos as a junior associate in a law firm or as a judicial clerk, ALL of law school was the study and analysis of case law. By the third year, most students have figured out how to streamline their reading and analysis of case law through the use of commercially available course outlines that would condense an entire class subject, such as Contracts, down to the essential legal points under each topic onto one double-sided page. I was a master of using such study guides (some were more in depth) because I was scrambling for time.
In addition to classes, I worked 20-25 hours a week at the Child Support Enforcement Unit, attended my mandatory out-patient sessions with Flanigan until early November, and I had community service hours to work into my schedule as part of my probation. The easiest location for me to perform my required 80 hours of time was at the UND campus library, which had a huge rearrangement project requiring all the rows of books to be moved while keeping them in order. (The downside was that I risked being seen by other law students doing grunt work in the main college library, which would lead to questions, then ridicule and embarrassment from my DUI arrest.) Over the summer, I also picked up my first State Supreme Court appeal, and that required heavy research and drafting hours as well. My second Supreme Court case developed after the school year started, putting even more pressure on me. I missed quite a few classes as a result.
Then there was Tami. I didn’t have much time for her, but she didn’t have much time for me yet, either, as she still had custody of her foster child. The next time I was able to see her was on her birthday in early November. She arranged a sitter, and I made her dinner. Money was tight and she worried about having enough for the divorce since her parents would not be of any help (to put it mildly). Fortunately, my friend and boss, Tim McCann, had a former co-worker from his time as a law student working in the child support unit, and she just happened to be starting her own practice focused on family law. I knew her and arranged for them to meet a few days later. Tami filed for divorce before the month was out. Because of our professional relationship, Tami’s attorney only charged her $250 – the cheapest divorce attorney possible.
As we both thought that Tami’s foster-daughter would be moved before Christmas, and because Tami had never met my father, she agreed to come out to Sacramento for a few days over the holidays. I stretched my abilities to spend on plastic and bought her a ticket after we agreed on the dates.
I was very excited that they would finally meet because my father’s time was running out. My biggest source of angst about my father’s impending death – not having to do with his suffering and the fear of losing him – was the notion that he would never know my wife and children, or even get to meet them. Well, this was finally my chance to make something good happen for all of us.
I would have been better off recalling one of my dad’s old standby sayings: “Shit in one hand, wish in the other, then see which one comes up full!”
When Thanksgiving came around, I was in full prep mode for my first State Supreme Court arguments to be held right after my law school semester finals got under way. I had a final test the day before oral arguments were scheduled (second Friday in December) followed by three finals in a row the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. My holiday weekend was all work…and that was okay since Tami couldn’t spend any time with me, anyway. Abby, her foster-daughter, had not been placed with a new family yet, and Tami happily kept her. Tami and I were so busy that we didn’t see each other after her birthday and wouldn’t be able to until she came out to Sacramento. It was a long stretch to be apart when we were living in the same town.
When the day of oral arguments arrived, my supervising attorney and friend, Tim McCann, drove me 250 miles to Bismarck early in the morning in his new Ford Explorer. I was grateful to have him along and behind the wheel because I had more prep work to do along the way (and my driver’s license was suspended at the time). I was also the sickest I have ever been in my life. I had a 103-degree fever, body aches and chills, and my lungs were filled with yuck. What had started as strep throat and the flu had turned into walking pneumonia. I could barely walk or talk, and I had a fucking Supreme Court case to argue!
“Thanks for talking me into that fucking flu shot,” I grumbled through a phlegmy throat. Just over a week earlier, Tim talked me into getting a free county-provided flu shot, claiming it would help prevent anything - like the flu - from getting in the way of arguing my case. “You said it would keep me from getting sick, but all it’s done is kick my ass.”
“Hey, it’s a new thing, thought it was a good idea,” he replied. “You’re not soundin’ so good, ya’ know. Save your breath for the Court.”
“Sure,” I croaked as I went back to organizing and taping a flip-card system of condensed case holdings into a file folder to have for quick reference as necessary before the Court.
“Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you about my hearing yesterday and our old mutual friend,” Tim said with a touch of sarcasm. “Unbelievable…”
“Who? What hearing? I had a trusts and estates final yesterday.”
“Our buddy Mr. James Flanigan, that’s who,” Tim stated.
“That old fart knocked someone up?” I asked.
“No, his son did. And geez, I’ve never seen a worse family toward the mother,” Tim explained. “The son’s attorney did everything he could to try to make her sound like a whore, but she’s a pretty nice girl, ya’ know? And the guy’s family, the Flanigan’s…what a bunch of fucking jerks. They were so cold and mean to her, including James. I mean, the kid’s over a year old and we got a 99.997% DNA match – the fuckin’ guy is the father, ya’ know it – and they act like the kid isn’t real or something.”
“What the fuck?” I asked rhetorically.
“Yeah, dude, what the fuck is up with that?” Tim said reflectively, drawing out the last three words. “You’d think they’d want to at least know their own freaking grandchild, for fuck’s sake. Now, I don’t care what the mother is like, the kid didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
I was stunned and sad by what Tim told me. Good old James Flanigan, mister “take personal responsibility” himself, was trying to help his son dodge personal responsibility for his own grandchild. There was no question of paternity anymore - the results were in - which means there was no question as to what the right thing was to do. With his father’s assistance, Junior Flanigan had done everything he and his lawyer could to deny paternity and drag out the court process, with the apparent goal of wearing down the mother until she got tired and quit the process. (Too bad - it’s not up to an AFDC recipient, it’s up to the State as assignee of child support rights, i.e., we could force her compliance to seek the support order). My respect for Flanigan was instantly shattered. Over the months to follow, the incident made me start to question other ideas and principles he espoused and claimed to hold dear. What I didn’t know then was that within a year, I would be seeing and learning a lot more about the workings of his type of business that further challenged my thinking of him, and of “the program,” putting it all in a very changed light.
When we got to the State Capitol Building, which housed all three branches of the North Dakota State government, I was pleased to see my mother, stepfather, and my elderly maternal grandmother, Carol. They had come to watch me argue this complicated case even though my grandmother was almost totally blind from macular degeneration. It was flattering and helped lift my sick-dampened spirits. I slammed down a few hot coffees to help clear my throat and get an energy boast, then it was off to the State Supreme Court.
The case was a complex jurisdiction case dealing with both personal and subject matter jurisdiction of the State over an Indian who lives on a reservation but conceived the child off the reservation. The North Dakota Supreme Court had, just a few years prior, gotten their asses handed to them by the United States Supreme Court over an Indian jurisdiction case (complete reversal of their opinion with a judicial finger-wag), so I had to go in super-prepared and ready for rough treatment by the five Justices. All while I was awfully damn sick, too. I only managed to get through it via the help of copious amounts of nicotine, caffeine, Sudafed, and adrenaline.
I was pleasantly surprised by the Court’s treatment of both me and my case. I don’t know if it was because I was only a third-year law student, or that I was sick, or that my case was so damn well-prepared and well-made that I had already won them over with my brief, but every one of the Justices was respectful and considerate. As it was a complex case, I expected many tough questions. There were a few, but not too off point or demeaning in how the question is asked as can often be the case with dumb or ill-prepared lawyers (or just because they’re grumpy). Based on how the Court treated me, I thought I had clearly won the case.
Two months later, when the decision came down, I found out I had lost. The decision appeared to me to be a cop-out. I thought the Supremes simply didn’t want to risk being overturned on another Indian jurisdiction case by the U.S. Supreme Court. But my opinion didn’t count, only the Court’s.
After getting back to Grand Forks late that night, I had one day to rest and heal a bit before getting back into the finals groove. I slept for a solid 16 hours after getting home and shifting focus. Since the beginning of finals as a first year, I fell into a study and test-taking routine that held pretty consistent to the end (though I don’t recommend it). My routine was simply to pull all-night study sessions, cramming outline materials into my head all night long, focused specifically only on the test subject (like “Criminal Procedure” or “Evidence” or whatever the class was). Then I would jam out with some kick-ass metal for a while just before the test to clear my head and purge some stress. The last song I listened to before every single final test I took was Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train. It seemed appropriate every time and was always a head banger.
As had always been the case, my birthday fell in the thick of winter finals, through college and law school both. Having a birthday near Christmas is a drag as a kid because nobody remembers it and if they do, they usually give a combination gift that is really just a Christmas gift or card with “Happy Birthday, too” written on it somewhere. But as a student, it might as well not have existed at all because it was never really celebrated and barely even acknowledged beyond my parents. By the time school was out, everybody had left town for Christmas, including me, and by the time I would be home, it was Christmas that everybody celebrated. My birthday became just another finals test date on the calendar, once again. In this last year, I had a final test on each of the two days before, and then the day of, my 25th birthday, and the only birthday cards I received were (of course) from my parents. That’s right, nothing but a brief phone call from Tami. Then back to studying for my last test of the semester.
I left two days later for Sacramento to see my father. Tami was supposed to fly out the next day, but I got a gut-wrenching phone call instead.
“I don’t think I can make it,” Tami said meekly.
“What? What do you mean? How come?” I asked in rapid succession.
“I still have Abby, and it’s our last chance to have a Christmas together as a family,” she said.
“Say what? I thought she was going to a new home?” I asked.
“They’re letting her stay with me through Christmas,” Tami replied. That meant it was Tami’s choice to hold onto Abby for the holidays. That fact burned as it sunk into my head.
“And what family? What are you talking about?” I was quickly getting anxious and upset. I didn’t like where else this might be going.
“Look, Abby’s been through a lot, ya know? And we just wanted to have a nice family Christmas with her while we still can.”
“Yeah, and I wanted you to have a nice Christmas with my family. You’ve never even met my dad, and you might not ever have another chance to,” I pleaded. “And what ‘family’ are you talking about? Adam?” I pressed. (“Adam” is a pseudonym).
“Yes,” Tami answered sheepishly. Then with more assertiveness, she said, “But I already told you that they had gotten close. This will be the last time we’ll all be together before she gets moved on to the next family.”
“How is that doing her any good?” I asked. “You’re already separated and on your way to getting divorced, so how does having a fake Christmas do her any good?”
“She’s been through so much stuff already…we just wanted to give her a normal Christmas,” Tami claimed again.
“What’s normal about being with a couple who are separated and about to get divorced? Who she’s not even related to in any way? Isn’t that just going to add more confusion and damage? I mean, wouldn’t she be better off getting adjusted to a new home? This just doesn’t make any sense to me.” My mind kept racing around the subject, looking for an answer that added up.
“You know how sentimental I am…I just want her to have a fun holiday that she’ll remember us for.” Tami was very good at coming up with justifications for her actions – whatever she did was always “different,” no matter how obviously hypocritical those actions are. Then she would dig her heels in when challenged, even if she’s shown to be wrong.
“But why does Adam have to be there? You’re not together anymore, right? Or is that something else you’re going to tell me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she steamed back at me. “Nothing’s changing about the divorce. It’s going forward no matter what,” she asserted.
“Yeah, well so is my dad’s cancer,” I said softly while quietly inflamed. “He’s been lucky to last this long. I don’t know if he’ll even make it to my graduation.”
“I know,” she replied softly.
Her response hung in the air and there was a pause in our conversation as it hit me. I tried to organize my thoughts before saying something I might regret.
“You’re not really concerned about whether you’ll ever meet him or not,” I stated analytically. “It’s all the crap my mother laid on you about him, isn’t it?” My statement hung in the air like hers had.
I mentioned before that my mother and Tami had bonded – well, they had bonded too much. So much so that it became a problem, or at least an intervening issue, several times over the long course of my rocky relationship with Tami. Their relationship was fairly well developed, too, with my mother very free in her criticisms of my father and their divorce. Tami had heard all the worst things my mom could say about my father - minus the part about him being massively abused as a child. As a result, to Tami, Gary was an alcoholic womanizer asshole who didn’t pay enough child support (meaning further that he didn’t care much about his children) and whose second wife was a wicked bitch (there was nothing but bad blood between Gary’s ex- and current spouses). Tami had judged Gary harshly without ever meeting him and without even considering that he had evolved and changed in the years since my parents’ divorce. I tried to tell Tami over the years how that image of my father was not accurate, at least not anymore. It didn’t matter – she had judged him, and that was that.
“Well…it’s not like we’re ever going to really get to know each other,” she eked out.
Her response landed me in a place somewhere between dismay and rage. I tried to maintain my cool, but we ended up arguing anyway.
“Baby, how can you even think like that? We’re talking about my father, and he’s fucking dying, and this might be his only chance to meet my future wife, and for you to meet him…Why is that not important to you?” I pushed.
“It is!” came her snotty reply. “But I’ve got other obligations here,” she justified again.
I took a deep breath before continuing. “Okay, then. How about we change the date when you come, for after Christmas? It’ll cost a few bucks, but we can change your flight dates.”
“I can’t get the extra time off, it’s already booked out,” she retorted quickly.
My heart was already breaking, and my patience was almost drained. “If you were going to stay back there, why didn’t you just say so before I bought you a fucking airline ticket?” I demanded. “We could’ve saved all this goddamn drama.”
“Drama? What, you think I wanted it to go like this?” she snapped.
“But that’s how it is going, isn’t it?” I answered. “It was your choice to hang on to Abby for the holidays. It’s also your choice to come or not. I can’t force you to get on a plane.”
“Well, I’ve got to take care of things here, so, no…I can’t make it this time,” she said with finality. “I’ll have to wait until your graduation and hope he can make it, I guess.”
I was pissed at her callousness to my father, and to me. “It feels a lot like you’re choosing Abby over me. You do realize that Abby is not your child, but my dad is my real father, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not supposed to care about her as much because she’s not really mine?” Tami snapped back.
“No, I mean that my family – soon to be our family – is real, and we’re going to lose a big part of that soon. We may never have another chance at this. And that matters a lot.”
“It’s not Abby’s fault her family is so fucked up,” Tami shot back.
“No, it’s not. But you’re not her mother…” I said before getting cut off.
“The hell I’m not! I do everything a mother should do for their child, for her!” she shouted over the phone.
“Maybe so, but it’s not the same. You didn’t give birth to her, and your custody of her is ending soon, should have already. That makes you a temporary caregiver. And you’re divorcing your husband. That’s not a family and not a future. Your family is here, waiting for you to be part of,” I pleaded with some bite in my voice.
The situation was hard to accept but I had no choice. We haggled about it fruitlessly for a few more minutes but her decision was made. Theoretically, Adam was still an approved supervisor for Abby and could watch her for a few days, if necessary, but Tami wouldn’t budge. Despite how upset it made me, I knew that arguing further with her about it would be a destructive mistake. Instead, I wished her a Merry Christmas, she did the same, and we ended the call.
We didn’t talk again over Christmas break. I didn’t see her again until mid-January, about a month before her divorce hearing. Abby had finally been placed in another home. Adam was not in the picture. Their divorce was proceeding. Tami and I were still planning our full reunion and began making our plans to move to Oregon immediately following my graduation from law school.
**************************************
The Interview continued…
“Your resume says that you were appointed to the Air Force Academy,” Blanchett said. “Why didn’t you go?”
“I did everything I could to get in, including graduating from high school in three years, and going to college in what would have been my senior year. I even enlisted in the Marine Corps to get some enlisted experience and toughen up before starting at the Academy….”
**********************************
Grand Forks, Fall 1987…
He was tall for a Midget. Standing 6’3”, he was big enough to be a star Dickinson High School Midget’s basketball player, but he was too short for serious college ball.
Yes, you read that right, dear reader. My junior high and high school both had the same school team name and mascot – The Midgets! We were the Dickinson Midgets, and so proud of it that we even converted the old Notre Dame fight song into our own anthem celebrating the Midgets. How or why that name was chosen, I do not know. The most plausible story I heard was that when the nickname was given, people in the southwest part of North Dakota were shorter than everywhere else in the State. Generally speaking, it was true for my time there, so why not?
The high school basketball star I am referring to is my first college roommate, I’ll call him Brad Green. Brad was in the class that I moved into when I became a Sunior, the class of ‘87. We got to know each other through a few classes and because our girlfriends were friends who were also both part of a larger friend circle (it really just consisted of the hottest chicks in school flocking together occasionally). By the spring before I graduated, Greeny and I started kicking around the idea of rooming together in the dorms at the University of North Dakota for our first semester. We were both easy-going and comfortable around each other and neither of us wanted to risk rooming with an unknown. He knew I was set to leave for the Marine Corps in the second semester, and he was going to check out the frat situation, so it worked out and we committed to it.
On our high school basketball team, Brad got to witness the frequent rowdy antics of our team’s very enthusiastic and totally unofficial cheer squad. There was a small group of guys in the classes of ’87 and ’86 who got the crowds riled up by starting the Wave going through the bleachers after ripping their shirts off and screaming for the crowd’s attention. Even small crowds tended to get into it, at least for a few rounds. The other ploy these guy had was to start the two sides of the basketball court bleachers yelling back and forth to each other, “LESS FILLING!” from one side, then “TASTE’S GREAT!” from the other side, just like the old Miller Lite commercials of the day. These clowns loved to get the administration’s ire up to the point of being genuinely pissed off, and we all loved watching it! They got our school into the Rodney Dangerfield “Less filling” debate so much that it would shut out speakers at prep rallies. The Principal (same guy who objected to my early graduation) couldn’t stop them, so instead he banned pep rallies for several months in retaliation and “to establish order.” My defiant fellow students got right back into it at the next opportunity as a big “fuck you” to the Principal, making it even more enjoyable.
Ah, shared memories of stupid times…they help to build bonds. And we did.
Brad was easy to live with. We got along just fine, probably because we didn’t entirely share the same interests or pastimes. Brad played some ball and learned about the frat scene while going to class and being a regular freshman. He wasn’t a big partier like I could be when time permitted, but he would have a few drinks on occasion (I never saw him drunk). His main stress came from trying to salvage the doomed high school sweetheart situation he found himself. That we had in common all the way. Beyond Tami, my focus was on an aggressive class schedule, getting in shape for Marine Corps boot camp and the physical fitness test for the Air Force Academy. So when we were hanging around, we could easily either relate or commiserate.
Entering the University of North Dakota at a young-looking age 17, I immediately felt the uncomfortable looks of other students wondering to themselves how the hell I wound up there. I could tell other students in classes or in the dorms were critical of me or otherwise judged me in some way. It was alienating and probably would have been more of an issue for me if I hadn’t had a familiar roommate and established girlfriend. And a shitload of confidence.
During the delayed entry part of my enlistment before commencing recruit training, the Marine Corps acted like a jealous mistress toward me. My original recruiter, Sgt. Bates, was stationed in Dickinson, so he had to hand me off to the Grand Forks recruiter to babysit me and make sure I didn’t wander away from their tribe. That was accomplished with weekly check-ins, including weekly PT sessions with three-mile runs to get the recruits ready for boot camp. These were no problem for me since I had been going on three to five mile runs every other day for well over a year by then.
My only concern was that I needed to wear orthotic arch supports for the extremely high arches on my feet. The arches of my feet are the highest I’ve ever seen - so high that you can pass a pencil under my foot if I’m standing barefoot on a flat surface. I first became aware that my arches were very high when I played basketball in the fifth grade. Soon after practices began, I had unexplained knee pain that was later revealed to be a result of my high arches. After getting arch supports, it became a manageable problem and did not interfere with me playing sports or running at the level I had been. There was a manifestation of the problem, however, that resulted in an altered stride making for slower than average run times, despite being in good shape. The recruiters all assured me that the orthotics weren’t a concern if I could make the required time, which I could.
So we ran…with Marine Corps cadences to sing along to while we ran, like this hit:
My girl’s a vegetable,
She’s in the hospital,
But I’d give her anything,
To keep her A-live!
She’s got no arms or legs,
All she’s got are hooks and pegs,
But I’d give her anything,
To keep her A-live.
She’s got a new TV,
It’s called an EKG,
But I’d give her anything,
To keep her A-live.
One day, I played a joke,
I pulled the plug and watched her choke,
But I’d give her anything,
To keep her A-live!...
I made the mistake of telling Tami about that cadence and she freaked out in a gasm of feminist outrage. She didn’t get the joke or appreciate the dark humor that came with the Marine Corps. In fact, she didn’t like anything about the Corps, especially my growing cockiness flowing from my increased attachment to it. My confidence had increasingly transcended into arrogance, with the Marine Corps attitude foremost in how I spoke and presented myself. I was shit-hot twisted steel and sex appeal, and my foolish young self wasn’t shy to display that attitude. By early in that first semester, the Marines were in competition with Tami – at least that’s how she took it – and it became one of the primary sources of our fights.
Before the Fall turned to Winter, our regional Marine Corps recruiters had arranged a mini boot camp to take place over three days. Attendance was required, or so they said, and I missed a few days of classes for it. The recruits were bussed from several regional city-hubs of the recruiters, with about forty-five recruits altogether, to a military base in Minnesota (I don’t remember the name).
It felt like real boot camp, at least at first. We had two genuine Marine Corps drill instructors providing the experience, including all the in-your-face yelling everyone had come to expect. I had seen the movie Full Metal Jacket over the previous summer, and these drill instructors sounded like a PG-rated version Gunnery Sergeant Hartman - it was funny as long as they weren’t yelling at you. They were tough and mean, as expected, but they never touched a recruit or got too personally verbally abusive. To me, it was more “proof” that the Marine Corps had indeed evolved since the Vietnam era. In just a few months, I would find out just how incredibly different the mini boot camp really was from the real thing.
The first big difference was that all of the recruits-to-be were all still civilians who wore civilian clothing, marched and ran in civilian running shoes and had civilian haircuts. It had the effect of making us look not unlike college kids at a summer camp, but with military order enforced by badass Marines. The second big difference was that we didn’t get to handle any weapons or have rifles available for drill practice. Marines and their rifles are inseparable, and the absence was noticeable, awkward even. Perhaps the biggest difference was in the behavior of the drill instructors towards the recruits.
The mini boot camp was set up to mimic the real boot camp’s teaching structure, which was broken into three phases. In real bootcamp, each phase was approximately one month long. Here, each phase was a day. And like real bootcamp, each day started with Physical Training, (PT) led by the drill instructors.
Our Phase one consisted of the very basics – how to stand at attention; how to march and how to turn; how to salute; how to make your rack (bed), etc. In real bootcamp, this is the most emotionally intense phase that takes a raw civilian, strips him of his individuality and individual identity, and starts molding him into a blood-thirsty killing machine Marine. The drill instructors are also at their meanest and least tolerable of anything they don’t command during Phase One. At first, ours were no exception in the intensity I expected from them, but there were some things I noticed. They made a point not to swear directly at any of the recruits in terms of name calling, putting on the air of more reasonable instructors rather than the fierce tyrants they are known to be. The meanest insults I heard drill instructors make were to call a recruit a “thing”, as in “bend and thrust, you pink thing!”
The next day was Phase Two. In regular boot camp, Phase Two is when recruits are taken to the rifle range and taught to shoot, as well as field training, including learning land navigation and other combat-related field skills. For our Phase Two, we went out to an artillery range where the focus was on compass reading and being shown several demonstrations of various weapons systems (mortars, tanks, M-2 .50 caliber machine gun, etc.). Less grind and a bit of fun with the guns. As the day went on, I noticed that the drill instructors started acting more relaxed around the recruits in their tone and attitudes. They were less mean and overtly hostile, leaving the impression that we might eventually make it to their level of worthiness.
Day three – our Phase Three – was more field training and some small unit tactics culminating in a night training exercise. The recruits were divided into small five-man units with a squad leader appointed by the drill instructors. I got lucky and was chosen to lead my squad - four guys I never met before from somewhere I didn’t know. All of us were taken out into “the field” by bus about four miles away from our barracks. We were let loose in the woods to navigate our way home as a squad without being caught or fake “killed” by one of the drill instructors, or other Marines assisting them, who were in full camouflage manning foxholes and ambush sites along the way. There were pockets of ambushers everywhere. We had nothing but they were heavily armed, using blanks in their rifles or machine guns.
Within the first very slow, careful crawl across flat ground covered with tall prairie grass, my squad mates all flaked off on me. They were impatient and had no discipline, choosing to move out quicker in defiance of my commands and committing mutiny before getting themselves “killed” a short while later. Dumbasses had it coming. I continued to slowly make my way, careful of each step through the woods after crossing the open ground on my belly. The sound of slightly muffled fully automatic gunfire started ringing out in multiple places around the woods. Then excited screams of Marines doing their thing: full-auto bursts of gunfire followed by “Die, motherfuckers!” seemed to be going on all around me but just out of sight. Frequently followed by laughter. The Marines were having a ball fulfilling their fantasy mission of wiping out the invading hoard of recruit-trainees. Still, I crept quietly, taking my time and making no noise. I was one of the last of half a dozen recruits to make it safely to the barracks.
In all, the experience gave me confidence that Big Jim’s fears were misplaced because the Marine Corps had changed. There was nothing abusive or cruel that I saw at the mini boot camp. It seemed to me that the drill instructors were actually interested in the progress of the recruits and wanted them to be trained killers of the highest order. One drill instructor even gave us an ego stroke, backhanded and qualified as it was, by telling us, “The Marine Corps is an insane brotherhood…and you all just showed me that you have what it takes to try to be a part of it.” I could see the purpose and points behind all of the training we sampled and was more convinced than ever that I would sail through boot camp without my high arches hindering me.
I didn’t realize that I had just gone through a super-ad for the Marine Corps; a form of sales propaganda that looked and felt real and was thoroughly convincing, like a test-drive. Reality awaited to slap me in the face once again.
The Air Fore Academy had a specific set of physical fitness tests they required for their application. They were not entirely logical, and I specifically mean the so-called shuttle run test. It was called an agility and speed test, but for what? How does running fast back and forth have anything to do with flying a plane or manning a missile site? The applicant had to run from one line to another, touching both a hand and foot on the line, then turn and do the same on the beginning line. You did this three times in under 61.4 seconds (it’s different now and I don’t recall the exact distance or time for the old standards, so that’s what I’m going with). For me, with my fucked-up feet and slow running speed, it was my biggest hurdle. So I practiced. And practiced. And practiced some more. I got consistently .2 seconds under the required time, and that was enough.
On the day of the physical fitness test, I was required to go to the Grand Forks Air Force base, then home to B-1 bombers and a massive ICBM missile platform. It was an official appointment. I had to stop at the entrance gate and have the guards call in to get permission to pass, then I was given specific directions to the gymnasium where the test was to be conducted. After arriving, I met the test giver, a slightly pudgy six-foot tall Senior Airman with a huge stick up his ass. He had a moustache to match his potbelly, and as a future Marine, I was unimpressed. None-the-less, he acted like he was the Base Commander.
I did fine on all of the tests until we came to the shuttle run. The tests were all done in a multi-use gym that had many sets of lines on the floor for various games like basketball, volleyball, shuffleboard, etc. I was told to run to between two black lines but only the starting line was clear. Nothing was put down to delineate the other line and there were several of them. The Senior Airman stood at the approximate end/turn point with his clipboard and pointed at a line on the floor, then stepped back to observe. Then he hit his stopwatch and yelled “Go!” As I sprinted to where he had stood, I saw three sets of black lines several feet apart. I hit the one I thought was it and turned back sprinting the other way when he shouted, “You missed the line!” I had to turn around again and go back to hit the other line he was pointing to, which was about a foot and a half further than the line I touched, then continued on to finish the test. The error completely messed up my time, way beyond acceptable.
I then pointed out the problem to the Senior Airman, but to absolutely no avail. The man was a completely unreasonable prick, telling me, “Too damn bad. You missed the line, that’s you’re fucking problem.” He wouldn’t even let me do a second attempt, intentionally fucking me over in the process like the turf tyrant he could be that day. I left the Air Force base extremely frustrated and angry. That some individual asshole with an attitude could mess up everything I had done to get this appointment had never occurred to me. Up to this point, all of the military people I had met were supportive, even enthusiastic, about hearing me out and/or helping me along my path. This day was my first taste of the reality of politics and petty authoritarianism at play in the real military service.
Fuck that guy, I thought. I’ll overcome that bullshit test simply by becoming a Marine.
As for Tami, the days of the mini honeymoons were over. We kept up with the intense sex life but now she felt competition for her time and my attention. She didn’t care much for actually studying with any kind of discipline or ambition to achieve a certain grade, she just went along with the flow. Going to events on campus and experiencing the campus lifestyle took precedence over academics for her every time. Tami was there as much or more for the experience of college as she was to get a degree.
The only thing she was disciplined about was going to church every weekend at the campus Catholic chapel, dragging me with her because she emphatically wanted to raise our children as Catholics. I was already quite ambivalent toward the Catholic church by this point - instead of being overtly hostile to the idea - only because I had yet to learn of the church’s long history of sexual abuse of children or the abuse of my father by a priest. What I did know from observation was the hypocrisy of the Church, its priests, and its followers, and that was enough of a turn off for me. The most glaring example was our local priest in Dickinson, Father Bacchus. This man was so flamboyantly gay that his priest robes might as well have been a damn dress. Despite that, he constantly railed against the sins of premarital sex, the evils of adultery and fornication, and the sinful abominations broadcast on cable television. We watched him deteriorate rapidly around 1985 and then die of AIDS (but the church lied about it and claimed it was cancer). It was hard for me to take a person so profoundly twisted up as serious or righteous in any regard.
“It’s about the fellowship,” Tami asserted.
Whatever. I went only to make her happy, leaving it one of the quieter tensions between us.
Beyond my studies and the Marines, Tami had one other area of competition for my time – my friends from back home in Dickinson. To a very large extent, I shared Tami’s sense of sentimentality. It was harder for me to let go of my friends than I had expected, and I kept in close contact. There were a couple of high school events that took place in Grand Forks that Fall, including a student congress tournament, so of course I was there to support them and hang out with my friends at their hotel. I also went to Fargo to watch the football team on which I used to play lose their State Championship shot at the last second with a barely missed field goal attempt. I even traveled to Bismarck for the State Student Congress Championship in November to help cheer and coach them along to the school’s fifth consecutive State Championship win. (I really shouldn’t have had the sentimental attachment to the classmates that I left behind, the class of ’88, because they never gave a damn. I still haven’t been invited to a class reunion!)
To a large extent, all of these things were treated by Tami as a distraction from her. She wanted me all to herself. My arrogance did not allay her concerns. I was focused more on my mission than on her, feeling confident in our relationship but also believing that I would do okay without her. I thought I was hot shit, right? And the ugly duckling no more…Well, that was not a very reassuring posture for a partner in a serious relationship. We ended up in a pattern of fights that grew in intensity with each round. The more heated a fight got, the more intense the make-up sex got, too. After a while, it seemed we would have a major blow-up about every three weeks, with a couple of very short break-ups in the mix, followed by wildly passionate reunion sex.
At the end of the semester, we were still together. I had two weeks to celebrate my eighteenth birthday, then Christmas, and then get ready to leave for boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) San Diego on December 28, 1987. Now, I had time to concentrate on Tami, and I did.
One night, about a week before I was scheduled to leave for boot camp, Tami and I were snuggled up on the couch at my house watching an intense World War Two movie about the biggest escape from a concentration camp during the war. It was called Escape From Sobibor, starring Alan Arkin among other notable talents. I had always felt huge empathy for the plight of the victims of the Holocaust – so much so that I got physically sick to my stomach watching old videos played in a history class of the bodies being bulldozed into pits or piled onto carts for the ovens. I was strongly motivated by an internal sense of justice and humanity to keep that sort of barbarism and horror from ever recurring, and I was very willing to put my life on the line to fight for freedom. The United Nations’ initial motto “Never again!” really meant something to me.
Semper Fi!
There was a sequence in the movie that really stuck out to me and filled me with righteous outrage, horror, and grief. It starts out with the escape of two inmates on a work detail who run off into the forest. As punishment, the camp commander forces the remaining thirteen prisoners, now back at camp, to choose someone else to be executed with them or else the commander will choose fifty prisoners. The prisoners make their choices and all twenty-six are then shot dead. My sense of Justice was offended to the maximum…what monsters! How could anyone have such a lack of basic human decency or just honor? I could only imagine the sense of hopelessness and despair those people suffered…
RINGGG!! The phone interrupted my thoughts. I answered.
“Hello?”
“Is this Wesley Miller?” It was an official sounding woman’s voice.
“Yes,” I replied.
Before I could say anything else, she cut me off with, “Please hold for Congressman Dorgan.”
Holy shit! Why would he be calling me at home, over the holidays, at night? Was this IT?!
I held for a few white-knuckle moments before his familiar voice picked up the line.
“Wesley,” Congressman Byron Dorgan said firmly. “How are you this evening?”
“Just wonderful, sir. How are you?” I replied with firmness in my voice as well.
“Doing well, thank you. The reason I’m calling you tonight is that I wanted to talk to you about your Academy application.”
This IS it!! Holy fuck!
“Now, I know you were focused on an appointment to the Air Force Academy,” Dorgan continued. “I’m sorry to say that I have a prior commitment for that appointment.”
FUCK! Gotta be some big donors kid…shit! My mind was racing just like my pulse.
“What I would like to do instead is offer you the principal nomination to the United States Military Academy at West Point.”
I just got appointed to West Point!...What the fuck do I do now?...
“But the thing is, I don’t want to throw away my appointment. I know how much you want to go to the Air Force Academy specifically, and if you get an appointment to go there from one of our Senators (as he thought I would), I need to have your commitment that you will still be going to West Point,” Congressman Dorgan said quite sincerely.
FUCK.
This was something I didn’t see coming. At all.
The man was asking me to accept a position some people would kill for, one that would put me in exactly the same career position as if I attended the Air Force Academy, just not the exact WHERE I wanted to go. As a Marine-to-be, I looked down at the Army as not elite enough or tough enough. Yeah, that arrogance thing. If I accepted and committed, my enlistment in the Marines could be tossed aside and I could finish out the year in college, with Tami. I would have crossed the finish line but not gotten the prize I sought. And I honestly did not want that.
Honor. I was trying to be amongst those who “do not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate among us anyone who does,” so how could I tell this congressman anything other than the truth. So I did. I made the biggest, most fateful decision of my life by processing all that went into the decision in about five seconds when I answered him.
“Sir, thank you so much for calling me and being so forthright with me about the situation. And for the offer of the West Point appointment. But I have to be totally honest with you – if I get an appointment to the Air force Academy from one of the Senators or from the alternate pool, I would have to go there. I really fell in love with the place,” I told him. “So I guess if you can’t offer me that principal nomination, I would rather have an alternate nomination from you for the Air Force Academy and take my chances in the alternate pool. I’m pretty confident I would beat out enough contenders to get in.”
I think I rocked the Congressman’s world as he took a moment before he responded. “Young man, I can’t say I recall someone being so truthful and direct with me. I really respect your integrity. I’m sorry I can’t give you the Air Force slot, but I will give you that alternate nomination and recommend you as a principal nominee to the Senators.”
“Thank you, sir. And thank you again for calling me.”
“My pleasure, Wesley. You have a merry Christmas with your family.”
“Merry Christmas to you, sir.” And the call ended.
I just turned down going to West Point for a full-ride college scholarship and military career to go to Marine Corps boot camp the following week. If you think that sounds like a stupid decision, just wait and see how monumentally fucking stupid it turned out to be.
(Don’t worry, dear reader, this timeline gets picked up again in a few chapters)
****************************************
Interview continued…
“…And that’s why I couldn’t go - I’ve got extremely high arches in my feet, and after a couple of weeks of humping the hills in boot camp, my feet were all tore up and they discharged me. I still got the appointment, and a promise of a medical waiver for the feet, but the day before I was supposed to leave, I was notified that the waiver had been denied.”
After a short pause, Blanchett deadpans, “That’s a really sad story.”
“Yeah, well, it forced me to make some fast adjustments to my college plans, and that’s how I ended up at UND (University of North Dakota).
Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 13
No Good Deed...
The Interview continued…
“Well, you made it through law school,” Blanchett said, “so I guess you picked yourself up after all that and made something else for yourself.”
“I had to do something, right? And having ties to Grand Forks made it an easy choice,” I replied, thinking about Tami. “That, and it was the cheapest university for me to attend,” I finished with a grin.
“Personally, I like the idea of having someone with some Marine Corps thinking around here,” Peter said with a touch of swagger. Then he looked to Bob and Patty and said, “I’m pretty well satisfied with his background. Are you?” he asked, referring to Bob and Patty.
“Yes,” Bob replied. “I don’t have more questions about that.”
“Oh, I’m satisfied” said Patty while looking at me with a slightly seductive smile.
“Okay, great,” Blanchett said. “Wes, this job comes with a tremendous amount of power and responsibility. You’ve heard me say it already, and you’ll hear it again all the time if you get the job: your job is to do the right thing. ‘To do Justice.’ Exercising good judgment is absolutely key to being a good prosecutor. With that in mind, I’d like to move on and go through a few more standard character questions that we’ve asked all of the candidates for the job. Fair enough?”
“Sure thing,” I replied. “Fire away.”
“We’ve got a few hypotheticals. Here goes,” Blanchett started. “What would you do if you found a bag of meth or even a bag of weed in one of your coworker’s desk drawers?”
“First, I would confront them about it directly,” I responded after a brief pause. “I would want to make sure it wasn’t misplaced evidence or something like that. But if it was that person’s stash and they’re using, I would strongly encourage that person to own up to it with you (referring to Peter), privately, and seek treatment or whatever help they need to get straightened out.”
“What if they didn’t, and just blew it off?” Bob asked.
“Then things would have to escalate, and I would take it the boss, the D.A. Quietly, if I could, but I wouldn’t just let it go,” I replied. “If someone’s doing hard drugs, or using at work, they need help right away, especially if it’s a job with big responsibilities, like in this office.”
They all seemed comfortable with my answer. We moved on.
“Wes, I have a good one I like to ask,” Patty stepped in with. “What are the top three qualities you look for in a close personal friend?”
“Honesty, integrity, and loyalty,” I said instantaneously in reply. “In no particular order.”
I could tell that they all liked my answer. I could almost hear Patty thinking “wow,” because that’s the look she had on her face.
“Okay,” Peter said. “Next question: what would you do if the D.A. told you to prosecute a case where you believed the defendant was innocent?”
“Well, that would probably be the last day I would be working here,” I said, again without any pause or hesitation. “Because there is no way in Hell that I would ever abuse my power and prosecute an innocent person.”
At my answer, Peter Blanchett, Coos County District Attorney, looked like he had just gotten kicked in the balls. His face turned beet-red in a flash, and he looked like the wind was knocked out of him. He abruptly straightened himself upright in his chair before speaking. Then the stammering started. For their parts, Bob was grinning broadly, and Patty was trying hard to stifle her laughter. I could tell they both loved my response.
“Oh, well, ah…that’s not exactly what I meant to say,” Blanchett said with some awkwardness, followed by assertiveness. “Of course, we’d never ask you to do anything like that. Like I said, this job is about doing justice. We don’t do frame jobs around here.”
“That’s good to know,” I said with a smile. He quite obviously had never heard an answer that honest and blunt in response to his question. I knew without any doubt that my answer either just got me the job or just got me eliminated from consideration. That’s exactly how I wanted it, too, after being asked that question – either these folks were for real, or I wanted no part of it.
“Yeah. Um…let me re-phrase that one somewhat,” Blanchett continued back peddling as the red color in his face started to subside. “What if the D.A. told you to prosecute a case where there was enough evidence for probable cause to prosecute but you personally weren’t convinced that the defendant was guilty? How would you handle that?”
“That’s a bit of a different story,” I said. “It’s an adversarial system for a reason. If there’s sufficient evidence that a defendant committed a crime and I wasn’t personally sure about it, I would do my job and present the best case I had with the facts and evidence available. It’s not my role as a prosecutor to usurp the job of the judge and jury; it would be my job to present my best evidence of guilt and then let the jury decide. I truly believe that when everybody does their jobs right and under the law, the system usually sorts it out to the best conclusion.”
“That’s very reassuring from the perspective of the Juvenile Department,” Bob Hartman, the Juvenile Department Director spoke up. “Since Measure 11 was passed, the entirety of the of State’s juvenile system is sort of scrambling to get properly organized and have the right resources where we need them. From our perspective, it’s very important to us that we charge whatever crimes fit the law and the facts of each case.”
“As it is on the D.A.’s side, too,” Blanchett chimed in, “From my perspective, I’d rather have to reel in my prosecutors for going too far rather than have them too scared to try a tough case.”
“Hear, hear!” Patty added. “We in the victims assistance unit like it when the bad guys go to jail for a long time. Kinda our ‘thing,’” she said as she smiled and winked.
“I appreciate hearing that, from all of you,” I said sincerely. “I can commit to doing the job you’re looking to get done. I’ll charge whatever crimes the evidence supports on every case. I’ve made plenty of tough decisions under pressure, so that’s nothing new for me. I’m sure there will be many more to come.”
*******************************
Coquille, Oregon, November 2, 1995…
After saying goodbye to Keith, I had a cigarette in the parking lot separating the Juvenile Department from the District Attorney’s Office. The nightmare at Bandon Beach that I had that morning was still rattling around my head…it was so surreal and vivid. I had to try to put it aside as I finished my smoke and went into my office at the Juvenile Department, a few minutes before it opened.
On my desk stood a short stack of files – it was scheduled to be a light morning at court. None of the cases today were very serious and all of my plea deals had been negotiated. I moved on to the next day’s calendar for plea dates to start pulling files, and it practically slapped me in the face – the Freddy Nelson case was set for a plea the next morning. Freddy Nelson, as I call him, is the 15-year-old severely physically and developmentally disabled pedophile who was caught in the act of giving oral sex to a 5-year-old neighbor boy by that boy’s mother. It was the first police report I ever read on the day I got the job and drove to Coos Bay with Keith to find a place to live.
Nothing had happened with me on the case because it was charged by Kevin and Freddy was arraigned while I was away at my father’s funeral and then away for a week of training. The reason nothing had happened on it is that Kevin had charged this case as a sexual abuse 3 case, a class A misdemeanor. I didn’t understand why Kevin would do that since the perp was caught in the act committing sodomy 1, a class A person felony under Measure 11, and we had further confessions and substantiating testimony to go for as many as five separate counts. Further, Kevin’s recent admonition rang in my ears about double jeopardy preventing any felony charges if the defendant pleads guilty to misdemeanors based on the same facts and evidence. If I was going to do my job and do it right, as I had committed to doing, I had no choice but to dismiss the misdemeanor charges immediately before Freddy’s lawyer pled him out on chicken shit charges with a slap on the wrist as punishment.
It wasn’t right. No fucking way. Not on my watch.
We had a rock-solid case on the class A felonies. Indisputable facts. Clear law. This was the job I promised to do, no matter how hard or emotionally draining it would be.
Why did Kevin only charge it as a misdemeanor? Is there something I’m missing? He made a huge point of letting me know this was my case to handle…but I better talk to him before I drop the misdemeanor charges just to be sure...
Immediately following my morning court appearances, I went back to the D.A.’s side of the building to look for Kevin. He was behind closed doors doing his secret grand jury proceedings. “Secret” means I couldn’t go in or interrupt him. My only choice was to keep coming back.
On my first attempt to find Kevin to no avail, I found Chuck instead. Chuck’s trial for the day had pled out at the last minute, giving him a bit of time to chat. I went into his office and asked him for advice.
“Hey Chuck, I’ve been trying to get ahold of Kevin all morning but he’s in grand jury,” I started. “I’ve got a real bitch of a case here and I’m looking for some input.”
“Sure. What you got?” Chuck asked.
“It’s nasty…a 15-year-old developmentally disabled kid with multiple birth defects got caught sucking off a 5-year-old neighbor kid,” I said, “by that kid’s mom.”
“Oh shit, that is nasty!” Chuck bounced back at me. “Just how low is this guy’s IQ, anyway?”
“The school has him at an IQ of 72.”
“Damn,” Chuck said, “that’s like house-plant stupid.”
“I was thinking more like a retarded grasshopper, but yeah, you get the idea,” I said.
“Have you had him candled yet?” Chuck asked.
“Candled? What the fuck is that?” I asked in reply.
“You know when they hold an egg up to a candlelight to see if it’s been fertilized? Well, it’s the same thing, but using his head instead of the egg,” Chuck laughed as he made a hand gesture like holding an egg to the light. “It’s having him get a psych eval from the State.”
“No, nothing like that yet. It’s only been charged as misdemeanor sex abuse 3,” I explained.
“What!? You got Sodomy 1 cold with just the mom’s testimony alone. Why’d it get charged so low?” Chuck said in dismay.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m looking for Kevin. The problem is this thing is set for a plea date tomorrow,” I said before Chuck cut me off.
“…and you need to drop that bitch so he doesn’t walk away on the misdo,” Chuck said, trying to sound cool. He was extremely sharp. “You got anything else in the file on this guy? Any reason why Kevin went with sex abuse charges?”
“Not much beyond the police reports,” I said. “The kid – the perp, I mean – Freddy…well, Freddy gave a full confession to the cop who interviewed him. Freddy even acknowledged that he knew what he did and that it was wrong. Altogether, I think we could bring five counts of Sodomy 1 against Freddy based on his confession and corroboration from the mom and victim.”
“All Measure 11, and you said Freddy’s 15, right? So all adult charges in adult court,” Chuck pondered.
“And all with adult jail time in adult prison,” I finished for him. “You think that’s why Kevin went with lower charges?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Maybe he already talked to opposing counsel and worked out a plea deal?” Chuck speculated.
“From an A felony to an A misdemeanor?” I replied skeptically. “That’s one hell of a leap.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that. There may be more to the case that would make him go for a plea deal,” Chuck offered.
“Like what?”
“There are all sorts of things that can wind up fucking you on a case,” Chuck said assertively. “I always prefer an agreed plea deal to rolling the dice with a jury. Any fucking day, my friend.”
His words shocked my sense of justice, of the Justice system. That’s not what they teach you in college or law school, or anywhere else, and my patriotic core was a bit offended. I challenged him.
“Isn’t that what the system is all about?” I asked. “To be judged before a jury of your peers?”
Chuck laughed. “That’s great! Next, you’re gonna tell me a trial is about finding the truth!” He laughed some more, then seeing the confused look on my face, he said, “Look, the fact is: juries are fucking stupid. They are usually made up of people too dumb to figure out how to stay off of them. If I can get a satisfactory result, satisfactory to me and to the victim, one that is guaranteed, like through a plea deal, I’ll take it every fucking time over relying on a jury to do the right thing.”
I was stunned again, but only because I was a rookie. I would learn the harsh truth of his comments soon enough - the hard, bitter way - but today I was still quite green and naïve. Still a believer.
Chuck was a great trial attorney, and he could read my confused look, so he went back to the reason I came to talk to him. “But it sounds like you have him dead to rights, no question. I say go for it! Let the jail figure out what to do with him. You do your job and let them figure out how to do theirs,” Chuck said confidently.
About an hour later, I was back on the D.A.’s side of the building looking again for Kevin. He was still unavailable while in grand jury. Instead of finding the assistant district attorney directly senior to Kevin, as I had with Chuck, I found the man directly junior to Kevin, I’ll call him Ted Williams.
Ted was tall and lean, standing a thin 6’2’, with an affable but professional disposition. He came off as a bit bookish but approachable. He lacked any condescending attitude toward junior attorneys, I guess, because he was relatively new on the job, too. I could tell when I first met him that he was smart and dedicated, a strictly by the book kind of guy. He had some time, so I briefed him on my case and crisis.
“You sure pulled a tough one,” Ted said as he started to laugh. “Good luck!”
“Gee, thanks,” I smirked back at him. “Any idea why Kevin would charge this as just a misdemeanor?”
Ted sat back with his arms over his head as he thought about it. “It could be all the problems that are going to come from Freddy’s low IQ,” Ted opined. “The way I see it, you got two potential issues that the defense could create problems with. The first is: does Freddy have the mental capacity to be able to assist in his own defense? If not, your case is sunk right there.”
“Yeah, I know it’s a possibility. But we have some good evidence of capacity with his confession,” I countered.
“Yup, you got something to work with there. The other problem is whether Freddy has the mental capacity to be held criminally liable,” Ted said. “They’re not the same issue.”
“Mens rea (that’s the mental capacity necessary to be held criminally liable) . Yeah…but those questions both have the same answer – Freddy said he knew what he did was wrong.”
Ted sat up straight and brought his arms down to his desk. “You said Freddy had multiple birth defects…”
“Police report claims he’s had four heart surgeries and is on eleven different medications,” I interrupted him with.
“Well, that’s going to be an issue at the jail. That, and keeping him from being tossed around as a sex tool by the other inmates,” Ted chuckled again. “Man, you sure do have the luck!”
“Gee, thanks,” I smiled and shook my head. “So, what do you think? Should I go for it?”
“You got a solid case…and the jail’s gonna have to figure what to do with Measure 11 kids anyway, so yeah. I’d go for it!” Ted said with an encouraging smile.
About an hour later, I was back in the D.A.’s offices looking for Kevin when I found our Chief Deputy, Steve Keutzer, who was the functional boss of the office. He got stuff done, managing all of the attorneys and their trial schedules, as well as his managing his own top-level felony workload. Steve bore a resemblance to the actor Dean Norris and carried himself in a similar fun-loving but professional manner as Norris’ character “Hank” on the hit TV show Breaking Bad. Steve was extremely likeable and one of the best trial attorneys in Oregon. His advice really mattered to me.
Steve had just gotten back from the then felony-handling Circuit Court (now they’re all circuits courts) hearings he had that day. He had a good morning and was chipper as usual.
“Hey Wes. What can I do you for?” Steve asked with a smile when he saw me at his door.
“Hi. I’ve been trying to talk to Kevin all morning but he’s been jammed up in grand jury,” I began again. “I need his input on a really tough case. It’s this 15-year-old developmentally disabled kid – who also has some significant physical birth defects – who got caught blowing a 5-year-old. By the 5-year-old’s mom.”
“Oh fuck,” he said with an exaggerated look of shock for comic effect. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, there’re a few. Kevin charged it before I came on as one misdemeanor, sex abuse 3,” I informed him. “The perp, Freddy, also confessed to perping the little boy at least four other times, and that’s backed up by what the victim verified.”
“Okay, so just drop the misdemeanor and take it to grand jury for the Measure 11 case,” Steve said.
“It’s a bit more complicated. The perp has an IQ of around 72, according to his school,” I said.
“Shit, that’s as dumb a housefly,” Steve quipped with a mock serious face. He was in a good mood and having fun. Nothing shocked him. Steve was the most accomplished murder prosecutor in the State of Oregon and had been to every single crime scene of those cases. The man had seen it all and managed to keep his sense of humor, off color though it was.
“Or fresh Jello,” I offered. He laughed and I joined him for a chuckle.
“So, you got competency to stand trial and mens rea issues,” Steve concluded for me.
“Yup. But wait, there’s more,” I promised with a smirk. “Freddy the 15-year-old perp was so severely physically messed up at birth that he has undergone four heart surgeries to this point in his young life.”
“Fuck,” Steve said more seriously this time. “The Sheriff ain’t gonna want to babysit a sick kid, I can tell you that.”
“Hasn’t the jail figured out what to do with juveniles charged as adults?” I asked.
“Not under Measure 11, they haven’t. Normally, the juveniles are kept in juvenile detention, regardless of the charges,” Steve explained. Then he perked up, almost congratulatory when he said, “Hey, I think this will be the first one for them under Measure 11!”
“Great,” I said sardonically. “I’m good at firsts.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll figure it out,” Steve reassured me. “You got mom walking in on the act, right? You got him dead-to-rights! Shouldn’t even be a long trial, at least not as far as proving your case.”
“So you think I should go for it?” I asked bluntly.
“Hell yes! If I were you, I’d dismiss the misdemeanor case before the afternoon court session gets called – just in case his public defender is smart enough to go in and cop to the lower charges while they still can,” Steve finished.
“Okay. Great! Thanks for your help,” I said as I left his office…
…and bumped into the boss himself, Peter Blanchett, Coos County District Attorney. I was trying hard to not get myself into trouble with this case, but I also wanted to do the right thing. Best talk to The Man.
“Hey Wes,” Peter said.
“Hi Peter. Hey, do you have a few minutes?” I asked. “I’ve got a doozy of a case I wanted to ask you about.”
“Yeah, sure. Come into my office,” Peter replied. I followed him a few feet next door to his corner office and sat opposite him across his desk. “What’s the case all about?” he asked.
I had run down the essential details three times already that morning, allowing me some practice in how I presented it. As I briefed him, Blanchett sat stone faced while listening attentively.
“Okay. I’ve got a 15-year-old sex offender who has major birth defects leaving him with an IQ of around 72. This perp – Freddy - was caught in the act of giving oral sex to a neighboring 5-year-old, by the 5-year-old’s mother. It’s a dead-to-rights sodomy 1 case, right? But it gets worse – Freddy admitted to the cops that he understood what he was doing to the little boy and that it was wrong. Freddy went on to admit to multiple occasions that are corroborated by the victim and the mother, in terms of access to the little boy and timing of the other offenses. So it’s a clear Measure 11 case, requiring that Freddy be charged and tried as an adult in the adult system. But here’s another ugly wrinkle – Freddy was so messed up from birth that he has had four heart surgeries to this point in his life and he’s on at least eleven different medications for all his medical maladies…so he might be a bit of a problem for the jail, too.
“My immediate problem is that Kevin had previously charged it as a sex abuse 3 misdemeanor case, and the plea date is tomorrow. I’ve been trying to talk to him all morning to find out why, but he’s been tied up in grand jury. I’ve talked to Keutzer, Chuck, and Ted about it, and they all think I should go for the Measure 11 case. So that’s what I’m going to do as soon as I leave your office,” I said. “I just wanted to run it by you first and see what you think.”
Peter Blanchett paused for about five seconds while looking directly at me as he thought about it. Then he said in a total deadpan, “Son, you are going to either get elected Governor, or your ass is going to be ridden out of town on a rail.”
I smiled awkwardly and made a small chuckle while suppressing the cold knot in my stomach.
“It’s your case,” Blanchett continued. “You’re the juvenile prosecutor and it sounds like a solid Measure 11.”
“I definitely have a lock on at least one count,” I replied.
“So what if it’s the first one for juveniles?” Blanchett said assertively. “The voter’s decided they wanted this when they passed Measure 11. It’s our job to follow the law and prosecute crimes according to the facts and evidence we have.” He paused for a second before nodding at me and saying, “Do it.”
The relief I felt made me want to hug him. Instead, I smiled and said, “Thanks for your input,” as I left his office to go back to the Juvenile Department. I then instructed the office secretary to print out a “Dismissal Without Prejudice” form for the Freddy Nelson case, which I promptly marched up to the Juvenile Court and filed just before the office clerk’s office closed for their lunch break.
After coming back to my office from my own lunch, I got to work on the next steps required on Freddy’s case. The first thing I had to do was set up an interview with the mother. I needed to have her give me all of her testimony before I could take her into a grand jury room. I had to have the full story so I could prepare to file all the charges we could allege. I also needed to test her credibility and find out how her 5-year-old son was doing. I didn’t know yet if the child would be capable of testifying, so I needed to meet him at some point as well.
I reached her on my first attempt to call. After I explained who I was, Wendy (I’ll call her) was very happy I called. She was shocked that the case had only been charged as a misdemeanor. She was also angry that she had been seeing Freddy around the neighborhood like nothing had happened. “You’ve gotta get that kid out of here,” she said sternly. “There’s a lot more going on that you need to know about,” Wendy finished. I had no doubt she was right. I promised to hear her out completely and do everything I could to help her and her son. We made arrangements to meet the following week in preparation for grand jury.
As the afternoon started to wind down, I went back over to the D.A.’s side of the building to look for Kevin again. This time I found him at his desk after he apparently just got through with grand jury. He was reading something and he looked tired, like he had had a really long day, but as soon as I said “Hey Kevin,” he looked up at me with fire in his eyes.
“What did you do?” he snapped at me.
“What?” I responded.
“What in the living fuck did you do?” he said again with a raised voice. “Why did you dismiss the Freddy Nelson case? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
I didn’t expect this kind of reaction. I was taken aback and tried to be polite in how I responded. “I’ve been looking for you all morning to talk to you about…”
He cut me off, as was his habit, saying, “dismissing the sex abuse 3 and going Measure 11 on this. Are you fucking kidding me?” Apparently, someone told him about the dismissal. He went on, “I charged that case! Who are you to decide what to do with it?”
“You said it was my case the first day I met you,” I replied.
“Yeah, maybe so. But do you even know what you’re doing? The kid – Freddy – is only 15, and he’s mentally retarded! Not to mention the fact that he’s on a dozen different meds for a heart problem and god-knows-what other birth defects!”
“Yeah, I know all that,” I said calmly.
“And you want to throw him in adult prison! It’ll fucking kill him!” Kevin screamed at me. “Do you know how long the sentence is for each count of sodomy 1? It’s 100 months, automatic, at minimum and per count! IN ADULT PRISON! You’re not just punishing him, you’d be giving this kid a fucking life sentence! You could even think of it as a death sentence!”
“You don’t know that. And that’s the law – Freddy got caught in the act committing sodomy 1…” I said before getting cut off again.
“Sex abuse 3 gets us all we need in prosecuting Freddy,” Kevin demanded. “He’ll be on probation and have to register as a sex offender, so we’ll have an eye on him.”
“But that’s not what Freddy did,” I countered. “Sex abuse 3 is just the touching of another’s sexual parts for the purpose of arousal or sexual satisfaction. That’s a statute aimed at unwanted gropers, and that’s why it’s only a misdemeanor. What Freddy did was far more serious and fits exactly the crime of sodomy 1, sexual contact between the sex organs of one person with the mouth or anus of another. That law was passed for exactly this type of offense, and it’s aimed right at child pedophiles. So that’s what I’m doing with…” I said before Kevin cut me off again.
“Oh, what a bunch of…” Kevin said as he got out of his chair and started toward Peter’s office. I got up to follow but Peter was already coming our way. The whole office could hear Kevin going off on me. They were all paying close attention, too.
“Do you know what he just did?” Kevin asked Blanchett with some heat.
“Yeah, he told me about the case,” Blanchett said plainly.
“Do you know the perp is mentally and physically handicapped? Severely?” Kevin continued. Peter and Kevin walked back to Kevin’s office as they talked. I sat back down across the desk from Kevin as he sat behind his desk. Peter stood in the doorway and continued.
“Yes, and he wouldn’t be the first disabled defendant we’ve ever…” Peter said as Kevin cut him off.
“But he’d be the first 15-year-old retarded and disabled kid we threw into adult jail!” Kevin screamed. “He’ll never make it out of there with all that’s wrong with him. Not to mention that fact that he’ll be tossed around by the other inmates like a fucking sex doll!”
“Look, the jail has to figure this out sometime, and…” Peter started.
“But do we want this kid’s blood on our hands?” Kevin interrupted again. “You know this is learned behavior, right? It’s being ‘bitten by the vampire’! You know this kid learned it from somewhere. You know he was a victim, too, right?”
“Of course,” Peter replied. “So are most criminals.” Peter was referring to the basic fact I had recently learned - that around 85% of all crimes are what law enforcement considered “A v. A,” meaning “Asshole versus Asshole,” otherwise known as crimes amongst and upon other criminals. Those tended to have less priority for some reason. Gee, I wonder why?
Kevin cooled down a notch at Peter’s point, easing into more of an attempt at persuasion while he carried on with his rant. “Yeah, but this is significantly different than just a regular criminal background. Kids don’t think up behaviors like this, it’s learned from someone. Especially a mentally deficient kid like Freddy. He’s a victim who got bitten by the vampire and turned into one himself. A child getting perped by a pedophile is just like someone being bitten by a vampire – they don’t all turn, only a few do. It’s only about one in a hundred, or so. Hell, maybe it’s only one in every two hundred victims of child sex abuse who turn, but the point is that it’s not all of them. And this kid is retarded, for Christ’s sake! So tell me,” Kevin said directed at me, “knowing all that, what do you do with someone who’s been bitten by the vampire?”
I looked Kevin in the eye, embraced his metaphor, and said with complete sincerity, “If someone has been bitten by the vampire, and they turn, you drive a stake through their heart and cut off their fucking head so they can never do it to anyone else. It’s got to end somewhere.”
Several seconds of stunned silence was followed by Kevin pointing at me and looking at Peter. “See? You see that? That’s what we’re dealing with…” Kevin started ranting again before I cut him off.
“Now just wait a damn minute here,” I cut in. “I’ve been listening to you yelling at me, now it’s my turn to speak. Of course, it’s learned behavior. We all know that. But where do you think he learned it from?” I asked sharply. “Home, or from someone close to it. So please tell me how it does him, Freddy, any good to send him back home to be further abused, AND letting him roam the neighborhood looking for other kids to perp! Where the hell is the honor in that? If he stays out on the street, he’s getting raped at home and he’s a threat to the community. Do you want that?”
“Oh, come on, he’ll still be a registered sex offender and be on probation with the sex abuse 3 count,” Kevin shot back.
“Yeah, how many pedophiles does that actually stop from committing further crimes?” I asked. “You and I both know that won’t do shit to stop Freddy from perping some other kid, or kids, as long as he’s walking around free in the community. How many more lives does this victim, Freddy, get to destroy in his process of becoming a vampire? How many more vampires are we going to let him create? How is that in any way ‘doing justice?’”
“He has a good point,” Blanchett spoke up. “Our priority should be protecting the community from further harm. We all know Freddy’s learned it from somewhere…”
“And that’s another issue I have,” I interjected. “Why the hell aren’t we trying to work up the chain to the master vampire? Sort of like working drug cases up the chain by putting pressure on lower-level dealers to turn on their suppliers or face hard time, why the fuck aren’t we trying to find the person or people who perped Freddy? We know they’re out there, probably very close by. How are we going to ever go after the really bad guys, the master vampires, if we’re afraid to pursue their vampire creations?”
That drew a few seconds of silence before Kevin piped up, “So who’s going to try this case, him? (Gesturing to me) It sure as hell won’t be me!” Kevin asserted loudly. Then while looking to Blanchett and pointing to me, Kevin yelled, “He can’t do it – he hasn’t even had a goddamn jury trial yet!”
“I’ll have had a few by then, but if that’s what it takes…” I began before Kevin cut me off again.
“You have NO idea what you’re getting into,” Kevin raged on. “Remember the trial I told you about just before you got here? The ex-police chief?”
“Yeah,” I responded.
Kevin was talking about a trial he had finished shortly before I was hired. It was a horrendous sexual abuse case that started when the mentally disabled teenage stepdaughter of the then-current police chief of one of the small towns in Coos County made some sort of disclosure of abuse. As required by Oregon law, it got investigated. Evidence was found and it turned into a major molestation case against the chief. The disgusting two-faced monster had cut a hole in the attic floor/ceiling above the stepdaughter’s bed. He then set up a video camera and recorded in graphic detail various sex acts demanded by him or with him. Investigators found a pile of videos as evidence. Kevin had to watch them all in order to prosecute the case. Beyond the absolutely disgusting nature of the crimes themselves, having had formerly worked with this chief as a trusted member of the legal profession made it particularly hard for Kevin. The chief went down for the equivalent of a life sentence for it, too.
“You have no fucking clue what you’re stepping into, the kind of toll it takes on you,” he said intensely. “But you do this one, you’ll find out!”
“Well, it’s his case,” Peter chimed in, “and we’ll back him up wherever he needs.”
God, I loved Peter Blanchett in that moment. In that instant I believed I had found an honorable man to work for, giving me a big glimmer of hope for the longer term.
“Oh, bullshit,” Kevin chimed in with even more heat. “Whatever. You’re pretty good about telling us we have the authority to handle our cases as we see fit, and then pull crap like…”
Peter cut him off. “It’s his case. What’s your problem?”
“You make all sorts of promises you don’t ever keep,” Kevin retorted back to Peter.
At this point, I realized I had stepped into a much bigger fight between them, perhaps an ongoing fight, that I was not privy to – but getting caught in the middle, I was being punished for it. They had a brief, maybe five minutes, intense argument over the top of me about issues between them from the past. It was all pretty vague as Kevin had no desire to clue me in and Blanchett didn’t want to embarrass himself or drag out an old office fight.
“You’ll see soon enough, man” Kevin said to me as he put on his sports jacket to leave. “Stay here long enough, you’ll know exactly what I’m bitching about. I’m outta here,” Kevin said as he left the office and the building for the night.
I stood up as Kevin gathered himself to leave, following Peter a few feet toward his office. Blanchett’s cheeks were still a little flushed when I looked at him and said, “Thanks.”
The office was dead silent even though it was fully occupied. Everybody heard everything and nobody was saying anything.
“Have a good night,” Peter said calmly before retreating to his office.
I left the D.A.’s office in total silence but feeling the heat of eyeballs burning into my back.
I walked the one block east and one block south from the courthouse to my new mostly unfurnished two-bedroom duplex home. The place I moved into the night before to accommodate Tami’s arrival. It was about 5:30 by then, and as soon as I walked in the door, the phone rang. I picked up.
“Happy Anniversary!” Tami exclaimed on the other end.
It had been ten full years since our first official date. I was slightly surprised that she remembered or felt the need to acknowledge it considering that we had been apart for about half of those years. It shouldn’t have, though, since from the start, her overblown sentimentality required me to adhere to the strict observance of “month-a-versaries.” Yeah, she made that a thing between us.
“Happy anniversary, baby,” I said in reply. “You wouldn’t believe how glad I am to hear your voice after the day I’ve had…”
I spent the next half-hour explaining what I could about the case to her, then the office fallout as a result. The good news from her was that she was on her last week of work and everything was set for her to move on schedule as planned the following week.
Despite the ugliness of the day, it ended for me with hope.