Memories of Sagehen Reservoir, 1969

There's a place my family used to go when I was a kid. It's a place we went to be happy, as a family, my mother, my stepfather, and myself. We were so happy. We had each other.

This place we would go is called Sagehen Reservoir, in Idaho. We would leave on Friday, and come home Sunday. I don't remember much about the reservoir. I remember it taking what seemed like forever to get there. We would drive on a dirt road that went along farms, and valleys, and then a high cliff just before we got there. I remember that especially because I kept thinking about what would happen to us if we went off the road. At the bottom of the cliff, several hundred feet down, was a river, that I suppose flowed out of the reservoir. We didn't speak much getting there. We all wanted it to be a nice trip. We had a camper that we used. It was nothing special. It was on a pick up. It had two beds and could hold three to four people.

We got there safely, and set up camp. That consisted of not much really. I believe turning on the gas for the stove and heater was about it. My stepfather did all of that. This was up in the Idaho mountains and it did tend to get cold at night. He came in and we talked for awhile.

He would talk to me, but I could always tell that he didn't like me. He would make little comments here and there about how he didn't think I liked girls, in a joking way. I was a fifteen year old boy. I didn't process his insults too much, other than my knowing that he didn't like me. I remember knocking on their bedroom door once. He said, "Come in." I entered. They were in bed. I asked if I could have my allowance early because a friend of mine wanted to go to see a movie, and I needed it to buy my ticket. He gave me my allowance, which consisted of $2.50 a week. He was naked. It was actually the first time I saw him naked. I looked away and he said while looking down at his penis, "I suppose you want this, don't you?" I was embarrassed. I took my money from his hand and ran out of the room. I think it was actually the first time that I had seen a man naked. I didn't know what to make of it.

Camp was set up, and as the sun was setting, Mom was getting dinner ready. She asked me to get something out of one of the cupboards. I got up and reached for the handle on the cupboard. My stepfather was standing in front of it. I tried to open it but it was stuck. Suddenly, it did open and it nicked my stepfather's glasses. With that, he retracted his arm, he swung at me. The back of his hand struck my face. I fell backwards, hitting the door to the camper. It swung open and I fell out onto the ground, knocking the breath out of my body. He came to the door and screamed at me, "And don't come back in!" I was shaking and in shock. I'll I could say was, "I'm sorry." It all happened so fast. I never saw any of them coming. Not this one, and not the others. And there were so many others. They were all the same pattern. I would do something to set it off. I didn't mean to, but it was mostly my fault. I would later apologize to him and would say, "I'll try to be better. I promise I'll try to be a better son." It was never good enough.

As I lay there on the ground, I realized that I had just missed a pine tree that I landed next to. I was thinking that I was lucky that I missed the tree. Then, I felt the taste of blood in my mouth. I hate that taste. It tastes like iron. I realized that one of my teeth was knocked loose and the blood was from my lip being cut by the tooth. I remember being upset that I would have to go in to see the dentist when I got home. Would I have enough money from my allowance for the dentist, or maybe I could just pull the tooth out myself? My brother and sister had such expenses covered for them. That was before he came along. He had a thing about making sure I paid for all of my expenses myself. Kind of Joan Crawford-ish, I suppose. But I was only 15 years old. I'm not complaining, mind you. It made me tough to face what I had to endure later; things that I would never be able to imagine at my young age. It wasn't that I didn't have money. My father died with I was six years old. I received around $100 a month from his Social Security check, but I always had to sign it over to my stepfather. He would put it into his account, along with his other money for safe keeping for me and Mom. I would get $2.50 a week from it.

I got up off the ground after he slammed the door to the camper. There was no dinner for me that night. They continued to fight throughout the evening, then it got quiet. Mom threw a blanket out on the ground, I'm sure without his knowledge. I think she was afraid of him getting angry again. I understood. I tried to get into the cab of the pickup, but he had locked the doors. Night came. I had no matches to start a fire. I could smell the propane gas burning from the furnace inside. I never thought about what spent propane gas smelled like until that time. When your mind has time to think on different things, it will take a lot of time and energy devoting itself to analysis of just about anything. My mind went from thinking about the smell of the expended propane to wondering what animals would be wondering around at night in the woods. I could hear things moving as night set in. Then, it was quiet. It was very very quiet.

After awhile I could hear them getting ready to go to bed. I waited until it was quiet, and I went to the door, quietly, to open it. It was locked. When I thought things were as bad as they were going to get, it started raining. We had a thunderstorm and a rained heavily. I crawled underneath the truck for shelter and wrapped the blanket around me. It was cold. It was so cold. It was a good thing I didn't know about hypothermia then because it would have just been one more thing on my mind.

It stopped raining mid-morning, around two in the morning I would guess. Perhaps later. I lost track of time. I remember seeing the first signs of sunlight through the trees and being relieved that soon it would be warmer. The air smelled so clean. An hour or so later, I could hear activity in the camper. They were getting up. I wondered if I would be invited in for breakfast. I was so hungry.

Breakfast didn't happen. They got up. My stepfather gathered everything up quickly. He was mad again. I didn't know if he was still mad at me, or if this was new. I stayed out of his way. I said nothing. I asked my Mom what was going on. She told me, "We are going home." He took a Percodan. He took them often throughout the day for back pain. I always welcomed seeing him take them because it made things better for us. I would sneak some from time to time. It made me feel better inside about my world, about my existence. It made it so I could be in a nice place, at least for awhile, even if it wasn't real.

After everything was packed up, we got in the pickup, again not saying anything. As we left Sagehen, he drove like a madman. When we got to the canyon where the cliff was, I thought that we may go off the edge because the truck was skidding around the corners. My mom turned to him and said, "If you are going to drive like this, stop the car and let Bill and me out." With that, he stepped on the brake bringing the car to a halt. He looked at her and said, "Get out." The look on my mother's face was disbelief. I could see her weighing the risk of staying in the picking, or waiting for someone to come by who could help us. There was no one else. It was off-season. We had been the only people in the campground all night long. We were alone. We stayed in the pickup, because we both knew he would leave us behind, and say nothing to anyone on where we were.

We got home a couple of hours later. I went to my room and shut the door, only coming out for meals, and only spoke when spoken to. I took one of his pills. Life was back to normal. We were happy again.