Chapter 3

Crazy People Don't Say Please

The sleek charcoal gray Volvo tractor pulled alongside our Kenworth. Reading a book behind the wheel, I waited for the load of GAP/Old Navy apparel to be ready. Looking up from my book, I saw a large man nod at me from the Volvo. I nodded back and resumed reading.

Volvo man, wearing a dirty felt hat and sporting a fairly significant unkempt beard, stepped out of his rig and climbed up on the running board of my own. Rolling down the window, I marked my page and turned to him. I just hoped he would go away. I didn't want to swap trucker stories. I didn't want to repeat tired tales of cops, big engines and evil scale masters. I didn't want to rehearse the same old versions of war.

"Where's your partner?" the man asked.

"He's not feeling well." I didn't offer any more information, despite the fact that it was a pretty good story. My co-driver had pulled a sciatic nerve when a lightning bolt struck within feet of where he was pissing. Dallas had been in the bunk now for near 16 hours. But I kept my answer short, hoping the man would take the hint.

He didn't.

"You must be Tim. I've heard a lot about you. My name is Bill. And that's Jeannie." He pointed to the cab where an equally large woman waved from the passenger seat of the Volvo. I looked at their rig and studied the mammoth truck's sleek lines. It had one of the new Integral Sleepers. There was no wall separating the cab from the sleeper compartment. Inside I knew there was lots of room, a fold out table and comfortable chairs. I'd seen the promotional brochures.

The man held out his hand and I shook it. "Pleased to meet you Tim. I've done a lot of late night running with your partner. He's a good driver."

"Uh huh." I realized that, like it or not, I was next to a "talker" and that my reading was over for a while. Accepting my fate, I put the book down. "Can I look in your truck? I've never seen inside one of the new sleepers. Would you mind?"

"No, not at all. They say our load won't be ready for several hours so we have all the time in the world. I guess we are going to be going to the same place as you boys. We can run together!"

I felt my stomach tighten. We were outside of Gallatin, Tennessee, waiting on loads bound for the San Francisco Bay Area. I couldn't imagine spending so much time with the too friendly driver I'd just met. I couldn't imagine how I was not going to be rude somewhere around Wyoming and just shut off the CB.

I could also imagine that I was not going to finish my book.

I quietly shut the doors of our Kenworth and stepped up into their truck. "Hi Jeannie, I'm Tim.

"Hi Tim. How long have you been waiting here?"

"Just a couple hours." I looked around their spacious cab while I spoke. "We were both running short on hours so this will allow our log books to catch up. I might end up driving for both of us, 'cause you know who isn't feeling well."

I noticed a tiny boy sitting at the table, playing a game on a laptop computer. He looked up at me and smiled. Blond, cute as the dickens, but small and frail.

"Tim, that's Thadd. He's our grandson, and he's been riding around with us most of the summer."

"Hi, Thadd."

Thadd held out his hand and shook mine. "Wanna play with me?" he asked. Looking down at the computer screen, I watched as the kid negotiated his way through a Fisher-Price children's computer game. The kid was smart and already knew his way around a computer far better than I did. Jeannie motioned for me to sit down across from the boy, but Thadd moved toward the sleeper wall and insisted I sit next to him. "Sit here. I'll show you how to play. It's hard at first, but then it gets easier." He demonstrated the game for me. "See? Easy! You try it now."

I spent the next thirty minutes trying to complete just one part of the game. Thadd leaned over the table, pointing at various symbols, telling me to hurry and what to try. I was hopeless. Yet, Thadd kept encouraging me, occasionally patting me on the shoulder to reassure me.

"Thadd, just how old are you?" I asked, trying to deflect attention away from my pathetic performance.

"I'm six. I start first grade this fall."

Stunned at the brilliance of the little guy, all I could manage was a weak, "Oh really."

I looked at Jeannie. She was giggling. "He's a very smart kid, and he's been so good, considering he's been cooped up in the truck for most of the summer."

I nodded. I watched Thadd as he finished the game for me in just under three minutes. He turned and looked up at me, beaming. "See? Easy!"

Yeah, right.

~ ~ ~

The funeral service was finally over. Next stop, graveside.

Shuffling toward the casket, I took my position directly across from my cousin, a sheriff's deputy from a neighboring county. I didn't know the man, but he'd been friendly and walked over introducing himself to me before the service started.

Funerals force strangers who share DNA or last names to confront the awkwardness brought on by the fact that we don't get to choose our relatives. Most of the time.

Looking down at the casket, the final resting-place of my father's mother, I shivered. Life is so complicated. Here my grandmother lay inside and I didn't know what to feel. Prior to the service I'd had such mixed feelings as I'd said my good-byes and looked at her lying posed in the casket wearing her best Sunday church dress.

She'd been a good grandmother to me, despite of living on nothing but social security. As a child, I'd always received a card and a couple bucks from her at Christmas and on birthdays. This seemed even more amazing when during the funeral I learned that the woman had fifteen children and stepchildren.

Furthermore, she shared her devotion among more than 120 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren. The numbers boggled my mind.

Yet the same woman was hardly a champion to my father. Among the adults gathered for this last goodbye, everyone carried memories of violence, beatings, and atrocities committed by her final husband, Hank. Offenses that should never be mentioned and mostly weren't.

"OK, gentlemen. We all need to lift at the same time. Try to keep the casket level. Walk slowly and I will direct you." I listened to the funeral director and tried to ignore the alcohol smell coming from another cousin who stood in front of me.

He was drunk off his ass, and it wasn't even noon. Prior to the service, the drunken cousin approached my sister, staring at her, and swaying. My sister was mortified when without so much as saying, "Howdy," he offered her his advice.

"Kellie, I hope you're breast feeding your baby. I hear it makes them smarter."

My sister nearly fell into the coffin behind her. Leaning away from the cousin and over my dead grandmother propped in her casket, she turned away pretending she'd not heard the comment. But, I wondered upon hearing my cousin's words, if my deceased grandma didn't consider rolling over. And she wasn't even six feet under yet.

Looking around the chapel, I wondered about this group called us. The family. Or as my mom liked to put it, "Your father's family." Somehow not even the bonds of matrimony could make them her family as well.

I suppose they, or we, looked just like any other huge family. There were the people whose appearance and mannerisms scared the hell out of you. The people who seemed freshly released from any number of institutions. And for comic relief, a few normal ones. In other words, the people who kept their secrets really well. Perhaps too well.

I looked at my sister who was looking back at me. I nodded toward the drunken cousin and made a face. My sister glared at me with the universal warning that all brothers instinctively understand means, "You better stop. Now."

"Everyone ready?" The funeral director abruptly ended my mental vacation. "Remember try to keep the casket as level as possible. Just roll it off the platform"

We nodded and followed his instructions, lifting the casket mostly at the same time. Naturally the casket didn't stay level. Negotiating the stairs we discovered all the tall pallbearers were at the rear and the short ones were up front. The shorter among us never had a chance. We struggled to keep our balance, hold the coffin level and stay in step. Lifting our arms higher and higher, we descended the stairs, looking for all the world like waiters holding trays of beverages over our heads. Eventually our arms proved too short, and the casket dipped. I kept waiting to feel the thump of my dead grandmother, as she slid down to the low end.

After we eased the casket into the hearse. I turned and waited. My poor father stood in the midst of his large extended family. Right now he found himself in the role of Pastor Anderson, conducting the service for his own mother. I couldn't imagine his feelings. He never gets to grieve like an average person. Instead, he is stuck being the rock, the person everyone else looks to in the center of the storm. Only his immediate family knows that much of the time he is the fragile one.

The family didn't purchase an official funeral procession from the church to the cemetery, so we did it redneck style. Lining up behind the hearse were 4x4's, SUV's, beaters, and luxury cars. As a group, the collection of vehicles in the procession honored the diversity of brand names. The hearse pulled slowly away from the curb and a very long line of vehicles moved in behind.

By the time we reached the cemetery, nearly a mile of traffic followed behind the hearse, headlights on. Organized chaos defined our progress. Everyone struggled to keep up with the hearse, but the signal lights weren't long enough to allow the entire procession to make it through each intersection. So we just ran 'em. That's us. Even in death, we're the people who live to break the law.

Arriving at the cemetery, we climbed up a winding road to a bald mesa overlooking the river and downtown Spokane. My father's father lay here. As did his stepfather. And the rest of the rest of my father's family-a family that to me seemed endless in names and deed.

Standing at the end of the hearse, my father nodded and we began to roll his mother out of the long black car. My drunken cousin coughed on me and I was nearly intoxicated from his breath. As pallbearers, we walked slowly, carrying my grandmother toward that final resting-place. Alongside that hole, covered in Astroturf, was the sanitized earth that would fall over her.

Funerals are among mankind's most amazing celebrations of horror. As participants, we spend so much effort trying to talk about everything but the reason why we are there. We comment on the flowers. We comment on the lovely service. "Didn't she look so nice and peaceful," as if she was just going to the dentist, her hair appointment.

We remember the person's life but don't talk about their end. We sing "Amazing Grace" and "How Great Thou Art" but we never talk about the ugly suffering, the dementia, and the disintegration of dignity surrounding many deaths. We do everything within our power not to talk about it- the "why-we-are-really-there" stuff.

Why is it at this, the most perfect moment to question everything, no one publicly doubts any of it? No one asks Pastor Anderson who is burying his own mother, if he has any doubts. I mean, it's the perfect imperfect time to pose such questions. To ask the unspeakable, "What if's?" What if we've just buried all of her forever? What if there is no spirit, no soul, no eternal life? What if there is nothing but just an end accompanied by drunken cousins tripping over themselves?

Maybe the only one among us who really acknowledged this uncertainty was my inebriated cousin. Maybe he was the only one saying that this was maybe the end of the end. That it was just a little more than he could handle, thank you Maybe my cousin, through the fog of his polluted breath and floating thoughts, had already faced what all the rest of us were politely refusing not to face.

My father said some words, poured dirt, and then we turned back toward our vehicles.

~ ~ ~

The massive bulk of the grain elevators of Stratford, Texas cast long shadows across the fading light of the summer panhandle flatlands. The air was hot, humid, and sticky. Our idling rigs hid in the shadows while the A/C clutch fans engaged and disengaged in a rhythm that blew dust and commotion into the air. Thadd was restless and as he dragged a small dog named Missy behind him, his wound up energy seemed to consume the last reserves of his patience. We'd run with his grandparents, one rig following the other, for the last several days. Back to back tours from Kansas to Los Angeles, returning again and again to the magical cadence of U S route 54.

Earlier in the day, as the morning sun rose, we stopped at a Winslow, Arizona Wal-Mart to re-provision our rigs. I found the store nearly deserted in the early morning chill. A Navajo woman in a Wal-Mart uniform smiled as Bill and I paused in the toy department and eyed the picked-over selection of Hotwheels cars. "Hold on honey, I'm about to restock."

She returned a moment later with a virgin, unopened case of Hotwheels. I left the store with two each of at least twenty new brightly colored die-cast models. One set for me, another for Thadd. Returning to eastbound I 40, Bill and I joined the parade of super stroking freight wagons. Eastbound and down, playing in the hammer lane, rolling toward Kansas like we meant it, the day seemed full of kept promises and easy returns.

Somewhere outside of Albuquerque, Thadd woke up and found the treasure of new Hotwheels. His shrill voice came shrieking over the CB "Tim!" he squealed. "Thank you!"

I grabbed the mic and moved into the hammer lane so I could see Thadd as I passed their rig. Leaning all the way back in the driver's seat so I could see Thadd, Bill smiled. I gave Thadd a "thumbs up" and the little guy saw me and shoved his thumb up in return. I imagined the torn blister packs, and how the truck's interior must look like a Christmas morning disaster area. Thadd waved, holding Hotwheels cars in one small hand and the CB Mic in the other.

Pulling back in behind them, I asked Thadd which die-cast car he liked best. He didn't hesitate. "All of them!"

Talking excitedly over the CB, Thadd described what he liked most about each car as he arranged them meticulously on the dash. Other rigs fell in behind us, and most of the eastbound rigs seemed content to listen to the joy of a six year old boy and his assessment of the toys in his midst.

"What's your favorite color?" He asked out of the blue.

"The color of the truck I'm driving."

"Mine too," he responded.

I asked him what was the best place that he'd seen while in his granddaddy's truck.

He answered, with his grandfather's help, that he liked Washington, DC. He then recited the states he'd seen and those he hadn't and told me that he loved his grandmother and that he was the smartest and fastest kid in the whole school. This was the bigger than life, huge world of a child, documented from the ever changing ride of a large car. His vantage was safe a place as any, with its fold out sleeper tables, and drop down couch. His coloring books were laminated atlases and his rewards were midnight chocolate shake dinners. This was an interstate child who rolled with the punches and whose reflected glances out the window could barely keep up with all he saw.

The entire state of New Mexico passed in what seemed like less than an hour. Our parade of listening ears kept up, and sometimes other drivers asked the child for his assessment of an adult world, rocket-shipping by at just shy of 80mph. When US 54 loomed and our exit called, the eastbounders waved and laid on their horns. Their noisy good-byes reflected the hopeful goodwill of strangers bonding over the mile markers.

---

Thadd looked up at me, then bent down as the dog licked at his face.

"You know what, Thadd? I bet you can't run ten times around your grandpa's truck."

"Bet I can, Tim."

"OK. Let me see then." I stepped back, and kicked a line in the gravel with my cowboy boots. "Ready. Set. Go!"

The small boy bounded off, running past the first trailer, the con gear, and then the last pup trailer. This was no ordinary truck but a set of doubles.

The adults all turned to watch as Thadd rounded the cab. "One!" he yelled. The small dog trailed behind him, jumping up and down as if to mark the lap, then followed behind in some sort of wild energetic spasm that hardly defined any sort of set gait.

By the second lap, Thadd was already winded. "Two!" he panted. The dog trotted over to Thadd's grandparents and lay in the dirt, its tongue lolling.

Thadd continued running. But he never made three.

Our rest break over, we returned to our rigs, and began grabbing gears on our way east out of town. The twilight ignited the stars, and Thadd was quieter over the radio. Country music and dedications to strangers replaced the sing-song of the CB. As the expansion joints tapped out their rhythms, I felt life was innocent and sweet.

Somewhere west of Liberal, Kansas, we opted for dinner and a driver change. We sat at a Formica table, and a waitress who looked like she stepped right off the cover of the Supertramp album "Breakfast in America" stood gazing down at us. Thadd ordered breakfast, pancakes and sausage, and the rest of us made a series of choices based on risk assessment and the lesser of so many evils.

Our food came, our coffee was replenished, and Thadd put most of a container of maple syrup on his pancakes. The goo covered everything, and as the sugar hit his system, his energy peaked. Bouncing in his booster chair, he played with the syrup, sometimes scooping a great spoonful into his mouth. Before long, he was covered in syrup, with the majority of his actual food remaining untouched. Sitting next to him, I too was covered in syrup. Leaning down, I coached the reluctant eater. "Thadd, you need to eat some of the pancakes and sausages. They aren't so bad with syrup."

Thadd stopped playing in the syrup long enough to shake his head violently. He was having none of the pancake and link sausage action.

"Will you eat some for me?" I hoped that a small bit of loyalty and bribery could persuade the little guy to lean forward and eat a couple forks full of food.

Putting down his fork in the middle of his plate, he looked up and smiled earnestly. "Next time Tim. I will eat it next time."

"All righty then. Next time it is." I'd been put in my place by a six-year old. I looked at Thadd's grandparents who could only shrug in response. Tousling his hair, I agreed. "OK, Thadd. I'll hold you to that."

Returning to the parking lot, we stood in front of the idling rigs. I said my goodnights to Bill and Jeannie. Thadd pulled on my Wranglers, and I bent down to listen. "You know what Tim?"

"No, what?"

"I know you like me." He beamed and in the darkness, I was pretty sure his halo was blinding. "And I like you too. ".

His affection was a sucker punch. Slugged out of left field, totally unexpected but targeted dead on, the kid had hit a homer. I felt myself tearing up. Not knowing what to say, I just looked blankly at Thadd for a minute while I collected myself.

Finally I managed to speak. "You know what, Thadd?"

"What?"

"You are too smart for your britches. You got me all figured out." I gave him a hug and then turned toward the sleeper bunk, my eyes completely bursting.

Some gifts come so unexpectedly with nothing asked in return. Simple yet satiating, they frame our lives in the midst of so much turmoil and strife. Lying down in the sleeper bunk, I felt the truck taste motion, and the gears floated back to me as our progress lit up the night, and we joined the never ending parade of the wander lusted freight shakers. Final destination unknown, we were just connecting one more dot in the travelogue of our lives.

~ ~ ~

After Grandma Swim's funeral, I began receiving emails from family members I'd never known. "Your father's side of the family" became my side of the family. They noted my website address on the doors of my pickup. Surfing the site, looking to find out who the stranger was among them, they read about my life, and they read about our lives. Details emerged filling in the blanks of family events that they'd never known. In the process, we all discovered that far more brought us together than separated us.

As the letters from long unknown family members arrived, I found myself confronting something I'd spent an enormous amount of energy avoiding. Through long and meaningful introductions typed from cousins twice my age, cousins my own age and from cousins half my age, I looked back into a place called our history. Cousins who'd seen my childhood drawings posted on Grandma's wall, and cousins who'd seen me interviewed on TV newscasts, put a life to a face and in turn, introduced me to a family I barely knew. I answered the sexuality questions of cousins who'd heard rumors and cousins who never knew. The letters brought me home to my father's family, filling in the blanks, screaming out omissions, reminding me that blood is thicker than water and that sometimes when blood is poured, it floods.

In letter after letter, I discovered family members I was unaware I was related to. Some cousins lived in far away places. Others lived close by, creating their histories just over the Kettle River Range or across the state line in Idaho. One cousin, a woman slightly older than me, wrote the longest, most unexpected letter. Reading her testimony, I learned she was also a resident of Pend Oreille County. Out of all the letters I received, her correspondence brought me quickly to my knees. Arriving via heaven, her words announced that although we'd barely met, we'd known each all our lives.

We'd met when we were five.

~ ~ ~

I was five years old, when an adult neighbor of my grandparents led me into a barn and escorted me into a hell that is difficult for anyone to ever really understand. I was five when his mother interrupted him and saw what she didn't want to see. I was five when she turned and left me to her grown son's devices. I was five when I learned that it hurts less if you don't scream, that big boys don't cry, and that some wounds bleed even when you can't see them.

I was five when I was one of one, or one of ten, or one of fifteen kids silently enduring that barn. We understood that we didn't dare tell, and that in that barn, not even God could find us. I was five again when the same man was later arrested for fondling a three-year old girl. And still, we didn't dare tell. I was five, when at thirteen I went through puberty and the man, charges dropped, told me I was a faggot. Although I didn't know what the word meant, I knew it was something you didn't want to be. As my early teen years advanced, upstanding men in the community saw and exploited my disillusionment of being forever five.

Sheriff's deputies and teachers. Boring, conservative uncles. And exciting men with fast cars. All somehow recognized that first moment and together they carved up the remainder of my innocence, my youth, and worse, my consent among themselves. As an adult, being five remained my first conscious memory. Those nightmares would affect what I knew of sex, love, God, and humanity.

Five had become a lifetime, when even at 35, you still didn't dare tell.

My cousin was five when her father raped her. She was five when she found herself doing unnatural acts with others her own age. But like me, whether she was five, or seven, or thirteen, or eighteen, or twenty-five, she could never seem to get back to starting over. The innocence of being five become a stolen narrative and a dividing line of before and after. Like me, when she couldn't reclaim five, she could also never seem to put enough distance between herself and being five.

When my cousin become a teen, she told her mother about being five. Later as she developed into a young woman, she also told her grandmother about being five. They saw what they didn't want to see. Turning from her, they left her to her own devices, proving once again, you didn't dare tell. Finding her own way, she struggled to discover who she was and always found that who she was, began in a single digit year.

Even as an adult, the cycles repeated. When my cousin was in her twenties, on the run and seeking refuge from a husband who beat and abused her, our grandmother Swim opened her front door one Sunday morning to my terrified cousin's pleas. Observing the bruises she refused to see, the old woman discarded my young-cousin's fear and desperation. As grandma calmly dialed the phone, she told my cousin, "You got yourself into this, now you can get yourself out of it."

Reaching the outraged husband, the old woman calmly told the violent man just where her granddaughter would be standing. Leaving for church, Grandma Swim, turned away as the husband arrived. Slapping his wife back into the car, forcing the runaway spouse back into his life, the violent man overpowered the young woman's will with the blessing of the family matriarch. Suddenly my cousin was five all over again.

Sometime before I turned 16, my parents learned I'd been molested by an uncle. Great fireworks exploded over my life, and for a day, upheaval seemed to rule the order of that day. Terrified, I ran for cover assuming the blame, the disappointment, and the outrage. Yet, like emerging from a strange fog, the next morning when I awoke everything was calm. Silence, thick and unbroken enveloped everything. On that day, you-didn't-dare- tell resumed and reinforced the silence. The brief period of accountability faded. Nothing further was said for many years, until just before I left home for Bible College.

One day, after learning I'd sought counsel from an Assembly of God pastor in Albany, my mother took me aside and explained that I should never tell people about what happened. If I did, my new friends in the perfect land of Christian heterosexuality might reject me. That I struggled with so much could make people who'd led more innocent lives feel awkward.

Standing in the entryway to our home, I felt shame and confusion. I'd enrolled at the Lutheran Bible College of Seattle (now Trinity College) to hopefully find a pathway to heterosexuality, serenity, and affirmation. My parents knew only the smallest slice of the story. They knew only of the actions of an uncle. They knew nothing about the man in the barn. The sheriff's deputy. The man with the yacht. The teacher. The others. As I stood there, loneliness threatened to overwhelm me. Even as an adult, I hid from disclosure, knowing full well that you didn't dare tell.

As I left my childhood home to find "normalcy", I still had many battles left to fight. These skirmishes with my childhood would always bring me back to being five. In the coming years, I would be subjected to detectives and investigations. The actions of those who shouldn't have would be brought to light and as justice was miscarried time and time again, I finally accepted the truth that no matter what the cost, you didn't dare tell.

I don't know how one reclaims the innocence of five. What do you say to an eighteen-year old who's had more sexual partners than their parents ever will? As a parent, what does one say to a child? No one has a clue how to start over, find peace, put the genie back in the bottle, or find a way to defuse the shame that becomes more familiar than even the warmest memories. Often, those of us who were five must lead our parents, our grandparents, and our friends and families along that uncertain path.

In my generation, we didn't dare tell. And, when we did, we learned about fault, denial, "asking for it", and about covering up the cover up. We discovered that it wasn't good to go back to being five, but we also learned five never really goes away. As adults, my cousin and I told the stories that no one wanted told to each other. Intellectually we understood. Rationally and calmly we tried to explain what we couldn't explain to anyone else until now.

We talked about trying to find God, but that the God who lived at John 3:16 wasn't home that day. And sometimes, as we bled our common shame, it felt like He was still elsewhere. John 3:16 couldn't be the same "Jesus Loves Me This I Know" we'd sung about in Sunday School the day after the unspeakable things happened. "For the Bible Told Me So" wasn't the "B-I-B-L-E Yes, That's the Book for Me", that we still knew by heart. The Bible simply couldn't be our book because that book said nothing about the disillusionment shared by people like us.

My cousin and I spent weeks talking to each other about what for years no one wanted us to talk about. Still trying to find our way, and replace that which we'd lost, I believe we were also hoping for some kind of reassurance that someday our being five wouldn't matter.

During my grandmother's funeral my predatory uncle sat next to me. And her predatory father approached her as if nothing had happened. During that service, I was unaware that others who sat nearby shared similar histories. As my legs shook and my hands trembled out of control, I could not hold my end of the hymnal that I found myself sharing with my perverted uncle. My cousin faced her own instant replay. The father who'd raped her stood close by. All of this happening in the one place that was supposed to be our refuge from the storm, the land of the ever watchful God, referenced by the red flickering candle up on the altar, the one that never burned out.

Yet once our stories were out, we vowed that we'd never stand alone again, shaking next to those who'd taken so much from us when we were least able to say no. Roughly a month after my grandmother's funeral, my father's side of the family gathered once again for another round of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This time my great uncle passed. Many of the same faces stood upright, their attention fixed on the pulpit, the transitory nature of life, and their own fears.

Yet on this occasion, a subtle change appeared unannounced, marking a different moment in our history. Alignments shifted, reinforcements arrived, and for the first time in maybe five generations, hope finally fell among some of us.

My cousin and I attended the funeral together. We ran interference for one another. When her father approached, I stood between them. When my uncle approached, she did the same for me. We stood together against those who had so often stood against us, those who had bet on our shame to keep their secrets silent, and wagered fear and the power of appearances over the truth that simmered just under the surface.

My cousin and I have been standing together ever since.

~ ~ ~

The call came as these types of calls always come. Unexpected. The news fell on my former sense of the world with blunt force trauma, shaking the last bit of optimism out of my life, and bringing me to my knees. The moment the phone rang marked a jagged change in the course of my life. That phone call was an event I knew would always mark a before-and-after significance. Prior to the call I saw life in certain contours. After the call, life would never be the same.

It was Jeannie.

I listened in shock and horror as she described recent events. A small, six-year old boy's image appeared then disappeared. Others followed. A sleek Volvo semi. A summer of golden runs across the Western deserts. A child's voice on the CB. Maple syrup.

I vividly recalled a little boy's voice under a deep Oklahoma panhandle sky. "Tim, you know what? I know you like me."

Silent tears streamed down my face, their salty trail met the cold phone receiver. Jeannie, the robust, always laughing, grandmother spoke as if the words came from a place she'd never been, a place she didn't recognize. Monotone she explained that Thadd's mother was in the hospital having attempted suicide. Thadd's father was in jail. Thadd was in protective custody with a state social services agency. Hesitantly, she informed me that for the past several years Thadd had endured repeated molestation by his father. Thadd, at seven years of age, would be testifying in a courtroom what it was like to be five.

The call was short. There was nothing I could say that would ease the pain shared among all of us. I simply told Jeannie that I understood. I had been there. And that no matter what, I loved Thadd. As Jeanie began to softly cry and then sob, I heard her mutter that she didn't even know where her grandson was, nor did she understand the world that had suddenly turned on her.

If nothing else, I understood those words more than anything I'd ever heard. Anyone who has been there, and acknowledged this loss of faith, whether from the perspective of an adult or the vantage point of a child, understands the implosion of a world that has suddenly turned on you.

Jeannie told me that she had to go. I told her that I loved her and that I loved her family. The crying intensified and then there was silence, and finally a dial tone. To the accompaniment of the dial tone, I remembered all the sounds of that first day when I remembered being five.

I have lived my entire life under this cloud, obscured from the sun. No matter how hard I try, the reality of my being perpetually five years old will always mark me as different. The search for normalcy and balance is always fleeting. Leading back to a specific moment, stands the beginning of a journey few can fathom and one that as much as I wish would vanish, remains. I try to find the equilibrium that doesn't mark me a "victim" or create a sympathy that envelops who I am. I try to find compassion and forgiveness where often all I see is the darkest void. I can't describe the journey to one who hasn't been similarly lead astray.

Sometimes I thank God I can't see into the future. Sometimes I also thank God that the past can be so far away. Just dealing with the realities of the present is a full time job.

The last Christmas I saw Thadd, Jeannie gave me a beautiful snap shot of the young boy, sleeping peacefully, his golden blonde hair tousled and holding their small dog Missy cradled in his arms. The snapshot captured innocence, peace, and the love of a child for a cherished companion. I studied the picture, imagining that as he slept, he flew through his young trucker to be dreams.

Today, Thadd's photograph keeps watch over the living room up at the ranch. I know that he is no longer a small energetic boy. Intellectually, I accept that by now the exciting and paralyzing world of young adulthood must be unfolding around him. I do not know what a life in the foster care system has done to his outlook. I hope his home has provided healing and reassurance rather than the blight of additional scars.

My cousin and I now stand looking toward the future while looking back squarely at what actually happened. We've come forward because we know that others have gone before us and we acknowledge that others will follow. It is not easy to erase the shame. Nor is it easy to forget that what we carry with us, these moments of frozen paralysis and hushed whispers, has altered our outlook. It is not easy to force families to reckon with their complete unabridged histories. It is not easy to look forward while still healing from an honest look back. But we must.

I believe when the time is right, Thadd will re-enter my life. God seems to make these things happen. In His perfect timing, the dots connect in the most amazing ways. Yet, I still wonder where God was looking so long ago.

Propped up alongside that conflict, I also have the strangest sense. I acknowledge God's possible intervention during a video game when a young boy instinctively found someone who understood what he was going through. God reached out to me through the wisdom of a six-year old boy. "You know what, Tim? I know you like me. And I like you." I believe in those words, God was looking for me.

God was also looking for me when an old woman with a checkered past was laid to rest and two cousins who presumably didn't know their place, began to share their histories and created a link.

And especially now, I believe that God was always watching over all of us. In that barn. In my cousin's shattered home in Spokane. And, in that little boy's horror with his father. I can no longer dismiss God as absent or uninvolved. I might not understand the timing but I truly believe that God was watching.

Even in our darkest hours. When crazy people didn't say please.

© 2003 Timothy Anderson