Abandoned Prayers (21 page)

“It’s none of your business!” Stutzman raged, before turning his back.

Stutzman frequently left the ranch, disappearing for several days at a time. He stayed a week in Reno, picking up tricks at the Gay Rodeo. He phoned from Albuquerque, where he said he was looking for construction work.

Palmer asked when he planned to return.

“I’ll be home when I get there.”

Yet, when it suited him and the circumstances required it, Stutzman continued to play his role as father. On December 10, 1982, he wrote to the Mosers that Danny had adjusted to his new surroundings and school just fine.

“It doesn’t seem to bother him that 40 percent of the kids in his class are Indian and Mexican,” he wrote.

In addition, he and Danny were planning on taking up skiing.

Over the course of the school year, schoolteacher Janet Green saw Eli Stutzman more than most other parents—five or six times. When Stutzman came to a school function
for which the kids had made a big salad, he watched Danny to see what the boy ate.

“He was very concerned about his boy,” she later said.

On New Year’s Eve, Stutzman and a hundred or so gay men and women drifted in and out of a party held in a log cabin just off the highway outside of Durango. The Hansons also attended, as did Stutzman’s ranch partner, Palmer.

Though the party was themed “favorite fantasies” and party-goers arrived in costume, no one outdid the host, who wore only a cape and a cock ring, a device used to encircle the penis and testicles in order to maintain an erection. The host repeatedly flashed his erect penis as party-goers milled around, drinking beer and smoking pot.

Among Stutzman’s friends and lovers there that night was David Tyler, the stoned, groggy-looking owner of the Automatic Transmission Exchange, in Durango. Tyler had been busted in Utah for cultivating marijuana, and users in town knew they could count on him for coke and pot. For many, Tyler was seen as bad news, but for some reason he and Stutzman hit it off. Stutzman had partied with him at the Strater or Holiday Inn, and Palmer overheard Eli a number of times on the phone talking with Tyler from the ranch.

The gay hosts had installed a portable structure—similar to a mobile home—behind the log house. It was a large unit, built for sex, with several hot tubs and a sauna filling the floor. Condensation streaked the windows and temperatures soared to 100 degrees inside the adult playpen.

Louise Hanson would never forget what she saw and participated in. “The hot tubs were full of women and men doing anything you can imagine. Lesbian girls were licking each other. There were gays giving each other blow jobs, and there were different-sex couples having intercourse.”

The biggest shock occurred when a Four Corners clergyman made a dramatic point of removing his wedding ring.

“Guess this doesn’t cut it tonight!” the clergyman said, before stepping nude into the sexual soup.

Among the men licking and sucking at the all-night orgy was Stutzman, who paired off several times.

“He seemed to be really enjoying himself,” Hanson later said.

At dawn a group of the tired and bleary-eyed party-goers were invited to Stutzman’s ranch for brunch. The crowd was mixed and the talk centered on the fun of the night. But for the Hansons, the orgy in the mobile unit behind the log cabin had been too much.

“I’m not so sure we’re like these people,” Louise Hanson told her husband on the drive out to Stutzman’s ranch.

During the brunch, David Tyler invited Stutzman and Palmer to a party at his home in Durango. Danny Stutzman showed off his train set. By afternoon the place had cleared out and Stutzman turned a cold shoulder to Terry Palmer.

“You clean up this place,” he said.

After little more than two months together, Stutzman and Palmer’s relationship was heading for the inevitable breakup—though, by Stutzman’s standards, the relationship had been successful. After all, it had gotten him away from the Amish.

In mid-January
Ryan Bloom
moved onto the ranch. Bloom, a good-looking man a few years younger than Stutzman, knew immediately that he had walked into a mine field of emotions and betrayal in which Palmer and Stutzman were at odds. While Stutzman continued to display his anger at Palmer—the reason for which was still unclear—he was friendly with Bloom.

And so was Danny.

If Stutzman’s plan was to have his son “learn the gay way,” as he had stated at parties, it seemed to be working. Within the first two days of Bloom’s arrival, Danny climbed onto his lap and tried to unbutton his clothes. The
intent was overtly sexual. Horrified, Bloom pushed the boy away and went to Palmer.

“My God, Terry, Danny was trying to undress me!” he told Palmer. Palmer was not surprised.
Danny’s father had taught him to do that
.

“He was trying to make a pass at me,” Bloom later said. “I was shocked. I didn’t know what was going on.”

Bloom stayed behind one weekend when Palmer went to Denver for a workshop. Stutzman suggested they go to a party in the Grandview area, outside of Durango. Bloom, a father himself, was aghast when Stutzman took Danny along. When they arrived, Stutzman paired off with another man and began to make out. Other gay couples did the same.

“It was a gay group, a bunch of lesbians, and some college kids. Eli was on the floor kissing a guy and Danny was there, sitting there oblivious to it all. It was as though he had seen it a million times,” Bloom recalled.

The scene was replayed later at a party at the ranch. This time Danny was the only child there as he watched his father writhe on the floor, his tongue inside another man’s mouth.

Bloom knew that what was going on was wrong, but he copped out. It wasn’t any of his business, he told himself.

He and Palmer, however, discussed the situation, and the older man considered reporting Stutzman to Social Services. In the end, he backed down. He didn’t want anyone to know he was gay. Instead, he confronted Stutzman.

“I don’t think you really should be taking Danny to gay parties,” Palmer told him.

“Ryan’s been blabbing to you,” Stutzman shot back coldly. “You think you know a lot about kids, but you don’t know shit.”

Louise Hanson was another who considered notifying the authorities. For her, the impetus was a statement she heard someone make that Stutzman had been “messing” with his boy. But, like Palmer, she didn’t report it. She
couldn’t
. If she did, then she’d have to answer the question:
“Well, Louise, why were you at that party?”

She rationalized her silence later. “They’d probably just blow it off, thinking I was a busybody.”

Later a gay man told the woman: “Eli said he was going to turn Danny over to his buddies for sexual favors.” Louise Hanson found it hard to sleep that night.

But she did.

In January, Stutzman, apparently bored with Palmer and the Durango and Farmington gays, advertised again for sex through his old standby,
The Advocate
. This time he indicated he wanted a “topman,” meaning he was a “bottom” and wanted to be on the receiving end of anal intercourse.

He also added an inch to his height.

Hndsm masc hairy W/M early 30’s, 5′7″, 140#, into ranching, construction. Seeks topman with same interests. Write with photo to Box 185, Bayfield, CO 81122.

The response to Stutzman’s ad must have been good. Each day in ritualistic fashion he brought the mail to the ranch and sorted it, setting aside Palmer’s. One day, Palmer noticed a letter addressed to Box 185 and asked about it.

Eli grabbed the envelope. “It’s not yours,” he said, glaring before retreating to his bedroom.

Stutzman, however, continued to befriend Bloom and let him into his life—at least to the extent that he would talk with him. Much of what Eli said, of course, was a lie. One day he told Bloom that a man he was corresponding with had wanted a photograph.

“I’m certainly not going to send him a nude photo,” Stutzman demurred, as though he couldn’t conceive of such a thing. He apparently forgot about his nude photo in
Stars
.

If Palmer had ever thought even for a minute that things might improve with Stutzman, it was all thrown out the window when Danny started showing signs of being swept
into the gay world. One night, while watching television, Danny reached into Palmer’s robe and grabbed his penis.

“Danny!” Palmer said, standing up and brushing the boy away. “What are you doing?”

The little boy looked up, surprised that he had done something wrong. “I just wanted to see your body,” he explained.

“Danny, I don’t want to be touched there. It’s not nice.” For sometime, Palmer had noticed that Danny had a curiosity about the male anatomy. He colored pictures of phalluses.

For Palmer, it was time to get out.

“I couldn’t live there, because I would suspect that something was going on with Danny. It tore me up, but the best thing was to get out of there,” he later said.

The truth was, he was afraid that Danny Stutzman would do something or say something that would tip off people that Terry Palmer was gay.

Ted Truitt
was 26, unhappily married, and living in a small midwestern town when he answered an
Advocate
ad Stutzman had placed. Truitt was looking for someone to help him out of the closet, and Stutzman, who was a dairy farmer like himself, might understand.

They corresponded and made plans to meet at the airport in Cleveland when Stutzman returned to Ohio after Christmas, 1982.

Though being with a man was what Truitt had wanted for so long, there was an emptiness after he and Stutzman had sex. If he had hoped before their first encounter that something serious might develop between them, it was clear Stutzman wasn’t interested.

“Eli said he preferred men with hairier chests than mine,” Truitt said later.

They drove out to Welty Road so that Stutzman could visit his parents, and Truitt stayed in the car an hour and a half, turning on the heater to keep warm.

On that trip, Stutzman showed up at the Kratzers and told them that the “strange mail” they had received wasn’t meant for him.

“Those letters were for Tim Brown,” Stutzman lied.

Stutzman told Truitt that his wife had had heart disease and died in a barn fire, smoke inhalation contributing to her death. “Eli told me he knew he was gay before he married,” Truitt recalled. “He played around with some men a few times as an Amishman.”

The Indiana man didn’t ask why Stutzman had gotten married if he knew he was gay. Truitt already knew the answer. He had done the same thing himself.

The ranch house front door was locked, which was unusual. Though he had a key, Palmer, who had come home from work early to snowplow, figured Eli Stutzman didn’t want to be disturbed, so he went on with the plowing. Later, three men piled into a car and drove erratically down the driveway. From the way they drove, Palmer thought they must have been drinking or on drugs. He wondered if Stutzman had been dealing drugs—it didn’t seem like a sexual rendezvous.

“Who were those guys?” Palmer asked later.

“Some friends of mine.” Stutzman’s speech was clipped. “In the future, if you decide to come home from work early, please call.”

In February, Palmer summoned the courage to break the ranch partnership. He was afraid Stutzman would be angry, maybe even violent.

“Fine. What do you want?” Stutzman was icy.

Palmer signed a quick claim deed, turning the property over to Stutzman for $5,000—Palmer’s equity. Still strapped for cash, Palmer jumped at the chance when Stutzman offered to buy his tractor and some other farm equipment. Stutzman wrote out a check for another $5,000 as though it were pocket change. Palmer wondered just how much money Eli Stutzman had.

They also worked out a contract for Stutzman to care for the $15,000 stallion.

“He was so good with horses and he had the big ranch. It made sense that he could do a better job with the stallion,” Palmer later said.

It was spring 1983 when Palmer and Bloom moved off the ranch, leaving Danny alone with his father.

Chuck Freeman
drank too much and knew it, but whatever troubled him was so deep he couldn’t stop. Yet, by all appearances, the man had it all. In his 50s, Freeman had amassed a considerable estate of ranch land, investment properties, and southwest Indian artwork. He had been married and was a father, but between drinking binges he lived on the fringe of the gay life. Freeman was sharp and knew a good time when he saw one. Eli Stutzman was a good time.

Stutzman wasn’t particularly interested in the older man, at least sexually—though his money must have seemed appealing.

It wasn’t that Freeman and Kenny Hankins, for that matter, were sexually inexperienced or naive about the gay world; it was more that Stutzman still had the kind of wild streak that the years in the closet had drained from them. Stutzman represented a last fling at outrageousness.

As he had repeatedly done with others, Stutzman continued to use horror stories about his father and the Amish to win sympathy. Freeman asked about Danny’s mother, and Stutzman said that she had died in a tragic accident.

“We bought a secondhand car that we kept in a garage in town so that none of the Amish would know we had it. We were out driving and I rolled it, killing her. It was the first car I’d ever driven,” he said.

At the ranch, later, he showed Freeman a snapshot of Danny and him wearing Amish clothes.

“That’s the reason Danny stutters,” he said, pointing at the black hats in the photograph. “It’s the Amish. We
weren’t supposed to speak English for years, until school.”

Stutzman typed a letter asking whether, if something should happen to him, Freeman would raise Danny. Again, as with Palmer, Eli’s stated reason was his hatred for the Amish and the fear that they would take his boy away from him.

Freeman turned him down.

“Eli,” Freeman said gently, “I’m just too damn old to raise any more kids.”

It rained like hell the spring day that Stutzman invited ten gay men, including Freeman and Hankins, to a party at the ranch. Stutzman served an Amish-style chicken dinner.