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By Keith's junior year at Selah High, Duke's life was nearing its end. When the boy came home from school, the listless brown Lab would be at the front door. At night Duke would shuffle to the bedside and wait to be lifted by his arthritic front legs so that he could crawl under the covers with Keith. When the boy watched TV, he pulled his pet up on the couch. At table Duke had always begged scraps, and he'd become too big for his favorite ottoman. On camping trips the two old friends shared Keith's sleeping bag.

Father and son seldom took the old dog hunting. “Duke wasn't a trained hunter, so he had no idea what to do. Dad would get annoyed. One day I took Duke back to the truck, and Dad chewed me out for giving up on the hunt. I said I didn't like the way he treated my dog. He just said that Duke was stupid. Later he apologized and said it was the alcohol talking. He used that excuse for years.”

A few weeks later Keith came home from school to learn from a hired hand that Duke was dead. Years later he recalled his father's explanation: “He must've got in some coyote poison, Keith. He was dragging ass—didn't look good. I had to shoot him.”

The news sent the boy reeling. “I went nuts. Duke was a member of the family. To me killing him was murder.”

He tried to get even by mistreating his father's part-poodle. He was happy when she began to fail. “Gypsy developed tumors. Dad gave me seventy-five dollars to have the vet put her to sleep. I drove out to High Valley Ranch, dug a hole and shot her in the head with my twenty-two.”

When his father brought home other dogs, Keith tormented them. “If they tried to get into my lap, I'd slap them off. Or I'd flick my finger hard on their nose. They knew I hated their guts, and they'd cock their heads and look at me funny. One of our dogs pissed the floor whenever she saw me. If I spoke to her, she'd run off and disappear for hours. Dad accused me of beating his pets, but he was wrong. They just knew I wouldn't tolerate them.

“Coming back from a camping trip I stared so hard at Dad's German shorthair Pepsi that she jumped out of our pickup at thirty miles an hour. One day I yelled at her and she ran in front of a passing car. Dad asked me to bury her, but she was his dog. I let him take care of it.”

 

Still in his junior year, Keith began to feel intense sexual urges, but his only relief was masturbation. He had grown into a handsome boy, with chiseled features, deep brown eyes and a Byronic swatch of hair that bisected his forehead at a forty-five-degree angle. But he still slouched as he walked, and his muscles and coordination didn't seem to match his looks. A favorite teacher described him as “a big man whose feet never fit under the desk.”

He remained baffled by girls. “I didn't know how to talk to them or ask them out. I knew what couples did in cars, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The few girls I approached always ended up using me. ‘Keith, will you drive me to Yakima?' ‘Keith, could you lend me five bucks?' Some of the guys said I was pussy-whipped. I didn't know what that meant. In the boys' locker rooms I never learned anything about girls because I was out of the loop. My parents didn't tell me about the birds and bees. My brothers didn't clue me in, because we barely spoke. Being alone with a girl was a big fear for me. How would I unhook her bra? How would I even get started?
What would I say?

“I thought about making out with girls all the time. I never really fell in love—I just imagined I was in love out of my physical needs. When I saw a hot-looking girl I wanted to jump her bones. I had the finesse of a barnyard bull.

“A friend hooked me up with a girl that asked if she could be my sex kitten. He left us in the backseat of the car and said he'd be back in an hour. It took me that long to get up the nerve to kiss her. When she steered my hand to her crotch, I'm like,
What?
My friend came back and I thought,
What am I doing here? What's going on?

“Somebody told me that you had to be going steady to make out with a girl. So I asked one of my classmates to be my girlfriend, and she says, ‘We haven't gone out yet!' I said, ‘Oh, I didn't know you had to go out first.' Pretty soon every kid in the school was repeating that line. I would pass them in the hall, and they'd look away and giggle.

“At a high school dance I liked another girl and she liked me, but I didn't know how to follow through and she faded out of my life. At a party I told a girl, ‘I wouldn't mind marrying you someday.' She said, ‘Well, we just met an hour ago.' I said, ‘I just meant someday.' She blabbed to everyone that I was a creep. I was so backward, I guess she was right.

“I decided I might have a chance with the younger set. I approached a petite girl about five feet tall and ninety pounds, and she looked like she was gonna faint. Later she told one of my friends that I put her in fear of her life. She said that if a giant like me ever wanted sex, she wouldn't be able to fend me off. I thought,
Where does she get off with that assumption? What am I supposed to do? Shrink?

“I decided I would never have sex with her or any other girl unless she wanted it. But her words made me dream of rape and kidnapping. In the middle of my fantasy, just when I was overpowering this tiny girl, I would lose the thread. What happens after the rape? Would it make her fall for me? At that stage of my life, I was just confused. Murder wasn't part of my dream. Sex, yes. Control, yes. But I couldn't imagine killing a living person. And I kept my fantasies in my head, where they belonged.”

 

In later years Keith realized that his work schedule had been one of the inhibiting factors in his social life. He worked as a laborer, punch-press operator and welder in his father's clip factory, and he took outside jobs for extra spending money. He pumped gas, made apple bins for a fruit company at $2.35 an hour, cut wood, operated a backhoe, dug ditches, ran errands and even ran heavy equipment. From his earliest years Les Jesperson had taught him by words and example that work was the essence of life.

 

By his senior year Keith had all but given up on dating. Women remained as mysterious and unapproachable as they'd been in middle school. His sex life was confined to his bed or bathroom.

Then he met a junior named Clarice (pseudonym). “She was a living doll. Pretty face, dark brown hair, cute round glasses, great personality. I met her when I was dragging the Av on a Friday night, when us kids showed off our cars. We went to the drag races at Renegade Raceway and had a great time. I was a little too dumb about sex and she held me off, but I figured she'd be worth the wait. We went out six or seven times, double-dated with my friend Billy Smith, went to movies, had a lot of fun without sex. I missed her when we weren't together. I thought,
If this is love, it doesn't feel too bad.”

At last Keith Jesperson had a steady girlfriend.

As a senior Keith doggedly stuck to wrestling, alternating between the varsity and the Selah Vikings “B” team. He made up in strength what he lacked in finesse, won a few matches, and earned his letter. Teammates proudly wore the big “S” on their hundred-dollar blue-and-gold lettermen's jackets, but he saved his money. His girlfriend knew he was a letterman, and he didn't care what the other kids thought.

At practice the coach lined up the team for the rope climb. Keith had never made it to the top and was tired of being teased about it. This time he hauled his two hundred pounds all the way. At the top the rope pulled loose from the bracket and he fell twenty-five feet to the hardwood floor.

His feet hit first and he slammed hard on his side and head. Witnesses said he bounced three feet. “I was out for a few seconds. I cried in pain and the coach told me to stop acting like a baby. Some of the other kids thought it was funny. I could hold back the crying but not the pain. After Coach told me to get up and quit faking, somebody helped me to my feet and I found I could hop on one leg.

“I wriggled out of my wrestling gear, showered and dressed. All this time I was in terrible pain on my left side, and I felt dizzy. I heard one of my teammates say, ‘He didn't even make it to the top!' I was too groggy to argue.

“Coach called my mom, and she rushed me to the emergency room in Yakima Memorial Hospital. My big sister, Sharon, was working there as a nurse at the time. They X-rayed and diagnosed severe sprain. They told me I would be wrestling again in two weeks.”

 

A few days after the injury, Keith tried to pull on his Red Wing hightop logging boots and found that his left foot was too swollen. The pain kept him off his feet for a week, and he wondered why the love of his life had stopped returning his phone calls. He slashed the side of his shoe to fit his swollen foot and drove to Clarice's house. “I limped up to the door and her mother met me. She said, ‘She don't wanna see you no more.' I said, ‘Why?' As she was shutting the door, she said, ‘She just don't.' Clarice didn't even tell me herself.
She didn't even tell me herself.”

Back home he thought about the breakup and blamed himself. “Clarice enjoyed my company and my car, but the gimpy foot was a little too much. Who would want to be seen with the school freak? I limped for months. Brad and the other kids had called me Igor since middle school. Now I was
really
Igor.”

 

He returned to the wrestling team and tried to work out. At meets, competitors went for his foot. Doctors promised that the swelling would subside. He widened the cut in his left boot and returned to class, but his sagebrush killing sprees, motorcycle and bicycle hill-climbs and trout-fishing expeditions had to be put on hold. He had a few impromptu dates, swore off girls again for the rest of the school year, and worked in the family's punch-press room with his brother Brad.

At the wrestling banquet he was introduced as “Tarzan, our apeman.” Everybody else laughed.

Some of his teachers considered Keith brighter than his mediocre academic record and were baffled by his poor showing despite near-perfect attendance. In six years in the Selah school system, he'd won a succession of Cs and Ds, a few Fs, hardly any Bs, and no As. “In my senior year my English teacher accused me of slacking. Well, he was right. I skimmed textbooks. I borrowed homework and cheated on tests just to get Ds. I hated books, especially novels. Poetry was a joke. Walt Whitman? Who gives a shit? Robert Frost? Boring. My English teacher got so mad at me, he locked me out of his class. I heard him telling the kids that I didn't measure up to the other Jespersons. He said that I was just coasting through and that he intended to flunk me. I ran to the principal's office and demanded to know what was going on. He banged on the classroom door and got me back in. The teacher still gave me an F.”

At graduation Keith ranked 161 in a class of 174. His GPA was 1.72, his I.Q. 102. With his poor showing and his bad foot, the RCMP seemed like a lost dream.

 

In the dim light of memory, the Jesperson family had conflicting memories of the middle son's plans after high school. Les recalled that Keith wasn't college material, and no one had known it better than Keith. “The subject never came up. The whole idea would have been ridiculous. Keith barely made it through high school.”

In younger daughter Jill's memory “Keith never mentioned college. I think he always wanted to be dad's helper. It was his choice.” Other family members weren't so sure.

Keith's version featured his father in his accustomed role of villain. “My sisters knew I resented Dad and asked why I didn't leave home for good. I considered the military, but Dad said I'd end up in Vietnam. I said, ‘Dad, I want to go. I'll learn.' He kept saying,
‘You can't do it….'
When you hear that often enough, you believe it yourself.

“I applied to Western Washington College for a wrestling scholarship so I could study to become a game warden. They said they would accept me but not on scholarship. When I asked Dad if he would pay my tuition, he said, ‘Game warden? There's no money in that, Keith.'

“At the time Bruce was majoring in mechanical engineering and Brad was taking precollege courses. They both went to the University of Washington. Sharon took her nursing degree at Yakima Valley Community College. Jill studied electronics at Edmonds Community College near Seattle. Dad said he might send me to college later. Then he forgot about it.

“In those days he was still drinking heavily. By ten every morning he'd start on the rye and Coke. By supper-time he'd be looped. He kept a bottle in his pickup and another in our car. If anybody complained, he always said, ‘I can quit any time I want to.' He kept on drinking till it nearly killed him. Maybe that's why he forgot all about sending me to college.”

 

Keith moved into an apartment in town with a classmate and got a job pumping gas. When his foot pain persisted, his mother took him to a specialist. “I was diagnosed with torn ligaments in the arch and given a cortisone shot directly into my foot. When I left the doctor's office, I fainted in the middle of the street. I had to go back inside and wait till my head cleared.

“I had to wear an arch support, and in the fall I had the first of three operations on my foot. The surgeon fused the joints of my arch with pieces of bone from my hip. After the first procedure I was on crutches for three months. Dad gave me a light job in the basement, working with wood tools. Then he got the idea of suing the Selah school board, and that occupied a lot of our time, running back and forth to the lawyer and the courts.

“Dad had started a construction business with a John Deere 310 backhoe and a beat-up old twelve-yard dump truck, and he got the idea of turning some of our acreage into a trailer park and building some small units for rent. After I was off crutches, I took over the truck. It was a reconditioned Wittenburg that the Canadian Army had worked to death—rusty red finish, dual drive axles, and front-wheel drive as well. The gearbox was a five-speed with a two-speed splitter, sort of a manual super ten-speed with all-wheel drive. When I drove it down Wenas Road, everybody stared. I felt like I was driving a racing Corvette.

“I had a lot to learn, like keeping the weight to 12,500 pounds on the steering axle and 34,000 on the drivers, to avoid overweight tickets. On my way to a job on Sixteenth Avenue, a state patrolman instructed me to drive my truck to the Bekins Moving and Storage Building so he could weigh it. He drove on ahead to set up the scales.

“I watched him make a U-turn to head back to First Street. I drove quick to my delivery site and laid down a spread of rock and brought the empty truck to the Bekins Building. He asked me where my load was and I told him I'd laid it down at the job site. I said, ‘I'm sorry, Officer, but you said you wanted to weigh my truck. If you wanted to weigh the load, you should've told me.' He had to let me go. That was the kind of trick you couldn't be taught.

“Pretty soon that truck became my passion. I'd have driven it all day for nothing. But Dad found other work for me.”

 

His father taught him how to use a backhoe to dig up compressed rock, sandstone, and loam to provide foundations for the new trailer court. At first Les kept a careful watch, but after a while he left Keith on his own. “That made me feel good. I always prided myself on being a quick learner. Dad decided on a Western theme and said we would name the place Silver Spur Mobile Home Park. He said, ‘We're gonna have a hundred units. Eventually I'll retire and you'll take over.'

“It made me proud that he had so much confidence in me. Maybe it wasn't so bad to miss college. I'd always enjoyed working with my dad. It didn't occur to me till later that nobody else could've done that job the way I did it. I was carefully trained.”

 

One weekend Les asked to borrow Keith's Honda 750 motorcycle. “I'd promised Mom not to let Dad drive it because she was afraid he'd kill himself. Right in front of Mom, he said, ‘What's the matter, Keith? Don't you trust your old man with your bike?' I said, ‘Okay, Dad, but promise me you won't drink and drive.'”

When Keith returned from a weekend hunting trip, his mother said, “I told you not to leave that damn motorcycle here!” Les was in critical condition with internal injuries. He'd lost control on a curve and wiped out in a ditch.

In the odd push-pull of their relationship, Keith couldn't imagine a world without his father's presence, and he sped to the hospital in a panic. “Dad was bandaged and hooked up to tubes. He could barely talk. He whispered, ‘Keith, I'm worried about the bike.' I said, ‘Hey, Dad, worry about yourself. Bikes can be fixed.' He says, ‘That isn't what I'm worried about. Go back and get rid of the bottle before the insurance company gets there.'

“I drove to the farmer's barn where the wrecked bike had been taken and found a bottle of Seagram's rye with an inch left in the bottle and a six-pack of Pepsi with one bottle half-empty. I took a whiff and it was rye and Pepsi—I knew
that
combination. I removed the fairing and swished gasoline around the side boxes to cover the smell.

“Twenty minutes later the cops arrived, inspected the bike and released it to me. The farmer helped me put it in our pickup with his front-end loader. I went back to see Dad and asked him why he'd broken his promise. He said, ‘I wasn't drinking, Keith! And don't bring this up again! I was run off the road by a hit-and-run driver in a green sixty-eight Thunderbird. I was
not
drinking!'

“I knew it was bullshit, but I let him talk. He said he wouldn't be able to work for a while and I'd have to run our operation. He promised to make it up to me. When I got home Mom said she really needed me around the house, so I moved back in. When Dad came home with a patch on his eye, he made me sell my bike. Said he couldn't stand the sight of it. My equity went into the family bills.

“Nowadays he tells people I didn't have the balls to make it on my own and came running back to Mom and Dad. Not true—they begged me to come back. He had to wear the eye patch for a long time, and his doctor told him if he didn't stop drinking, he would be dead in a year. He said he quit for Mom and us kids, but he really did it to stay alive.

“With Dad out of action I worked seven days a week, dawn to dark and sometimes later. That was my life for almost a year. It gave me a funny feeling, as though I wasn't really somebody—just one of my father's tools, an accessory. Dad couldn't operate any of our equipment because of his eyes.

“When more surgery was scheduled for my foot, we had to sell the backhoe business. Dad said he wasn't worried. He said the Silver Spur Mobile Home Park would eventually make us rich.”