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By the fall of 1974 Keith had just about given up on women and made a bet with his friend Billy Smith that neither would marry before age thirty. He resigned himself to his lack of charm and finesse and confined his romantic activities to a little lighthearted flirting. At nineteen, he considered a long-term relationship to be out of the question.

A careless mistake by a short-order cook changed his outlook in less than a week. At the Lariat Barbecue in North Yakima, he met Rose Pernick, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, dark haired, pretty, ninety-nine pounds of personality and charm. She'd been raised in the steel town of East Chicago, Indiana, and retained her Midwestern accent.

The meeting was an accident. “I went to the Lariat about midnight and ordered the large Lariatburger and a chocolate shake. I flirted with Pam, a waitress who would never let me take her out, and then I headed home to Selah. When I bit into the burger I noticed they'd forgotten the meat, so I drove back, but Pam was gone. I asked Pam's best friend Rose, ‘Hey, could I have a little beef on my burger?'

“She laughed and we talked a while and she seemed interested. I asked her out to a Bighorn concert at the Capitol Theater. At first she said no, but after I came back and asked her a couple more times, she accepted. I couldn't believe I was going on a real date and it was my own idea.

“Dad lent me his Blazer for the date, and I almost got killed crossing Twin Bridges when a car nearly sideswiped me twice and I ended up in a 360. It gave me a gut feeling that this date might be a mistake. I parked off First Street for about twenty minutes while I tried to decide whether to go through with it, but I went ahead and picked her up because I'd already bought the tickets. I kissed her at the concert and again when I dropped her off.

“I wasn't allowed to come inside her house for our first five or six dates. Her mother didn't trust me at all. Mom told me to put off marriage as long as I could, but Dad kept saying that I needed to settle down with a wife. I think he figured that if I married a local girl, I'd be available to work with him.

“Everybody in the family said I was lucky to be engaged. Why couldn't they tell me the truth? That I was too young, too immature. Why hurry? Why didn't they tell me to check out other women first? Nobody gave me any advice. I just blundered ahead like I always did. But something kept telling me I was making a mistake.

“Two weeks before the wedding, I said, ‘Dad, I can't marry Rose. I don't really love her.' He says, ‘I've already invited the relatives. Don't disgrace your family, Son.'

“Rose wanted out of her house in the worst way. I was her ticket to freedom from her mother and three brothers. She said we'd be married on her eighteenth birthday. I still didn't know how to say no. It almost didn't happen. At the rehearsal at Denny's restaurant, I was thinking how much I would like to run off with the maid of honor, Rose's friend Pam, and I gave her a friendly kiss.

“Rose said, ‘Why'd you do that?'I said, ‘She kisses better than you.' I felt penned in and wanted to get out of there. But it was too late—I was smothered by Rose and my relatives.

“I got pissed off at the rehearsal. Dad had talked me into buying a travel trailer and putting it in our Silver Spur Mobile Park, right behind his house. I thought that Rose and I should sneak over there for a few hours, but her mother took her home. I didn't expect a bachelor party, and I didn't get one. That was okay. What was there to celebrate?”

Rose Pernick and Keith Jesperson were married on August 2, 1975, at the Catholic church in the little hops-growing community of Moxee, just southeast of Yakima. Keith was twenty, and Rose was eighteen. When he stood up straight, the groom towered a foot over his bride. Keith's brother Bruce, a handsome six-footer, was best man.

Keith paid for the reception, but Rose was put off by the drinking and insisted that they leave early. Keith didn't mind. “For our honeymoon we stayed in the Starlite Motel on the Trans-Canada Highway near Chilliwack. It rained, and one of the bed legs was broken, and the faucet dripped. We argued all night. Rose was learning that getting away from mother wasn't so great after all. I was still thinking about Pam.

“It was nice to have steady sex, but I knew the thrill would wear off. I also knew I needed more than what Rose offered, but I wasn't exactly sure what. I wasn't experienced about pleasing women. That first night I pulled out to avoid getting her pregnant. She appreciated that. A baby was the last thing we needed.”

 

Keith took a job with a Yakima lumber company, operating a 780 Case backhoe and hauling prefab housing sections in a GMC Low Boy truck, but after another operation on his foot he went back to work for his father. “I still needed to get away from him. It just seemed that no matter what I did in life, he would persuade me to come back. If it wasn't him, then it was Mother telling me that I was needed around the house. I was twenty-one when Rose and I traded in our travel trailer and bought a 1976 Bendix mobile home. Our address was Space 56, Silver Spur Mobile Park. That turned out to be a little too close to home.”

 

With his brothers in college, Keith and his father worked closely together, occasionally in harmony. He learned to hold his own with the ultimate authority figure. “I was driving down a dirt road with chuckholes, and Dad said, ‘Hey, you missed one!' I backed up and drove over it again, only faster. I said, ‘That'll teach ya to keep your mouth shut, won't it?' Dad didn't say a word. After that I made sure I hit every goddamn hole on the road.”

A developing competition between the middle son and the alpha-male became a problem. “As backhoe operators we learned together. Several times he dug himself into a corner with no escape. He finally got it through his head that he might be our family's engineering genius but I was a better equipment operator. After that, he let me do more work on my own. But he was like my shadow. When I finally moved on to other businesses, he followed to stick his nose into every company I worked for. He was a pain in the ass.”

 

The father's memories of their work together were more generous than the son's, as usual. “Keith helped me build a 105-unit mobile court, doing the ditching, water and buildings. He ran the backhoe, the dump truck and everything else. There wasn't an earth-moving machine he couldn't handle expertly. He plumbed, graded and installed sewer systems. He was a quick study. He learned how to weld, use a torch, fabricate metal, install electrical outlets. He learned how to run a crew. When tenants started to move in, he was patient and helpful and became very popular. I couldn't have made it without Keith.”

 

Years later everyday events that Les recalled as minor were described by Keith as trials, ordeals, tests of will. “Dad decided to add on a solarium, with waterfalls and fish ponds and palm trees. I was doing some wiring on an aluminum ladder when he turns on the electricity.
Boom!
It knocks me on my ass. Dad's laughing. He says, ‘Did that hurt?' He says, ‘I'm sorry, I forgot you were up there.'

“I always had to watch out for his sick sense of humor. He liked to tell kids to piss on the electric fence to see if it was on. I'd yell, ‘Don't tell them that! They're
kids
. They'll believe you.' Once I was too late and I heard a yelp. That was Dad's idea of a joke.

“Another day I came out with a cup of coffee, and he says, ‘Keith, stand over there.' He had an X marked in the dirt. I said, ‘Why, Dad?' He said, ‘Just do it.' I stand on the X, and he walks to the breaker box and turns it on. I jump three feet from the 220 volts. Coffee flew all over. He shuts down the breaker and laughs. I says, ‘What'd you do that for?' He said, ‘I couldn't get the dog to stand over the conduit.'

“I said, ‘You mean I'm dumber than a dog?' ‘No,' he said. ‘You're not dumber, Keith. You're just more obedient. I needed to find the short.' I took my coffee cup into the kitchen to get away from the prick.”

Les had a different take on the incident. “I might've sparked him a few times. I always enjoyed practical jokes, especially the ones played on me. But it wasn't 220 volts. It was 12. Keith always had a tendency to exaggerate.”

Despite the jousting the middle son usually enjoyed working with his father. “When a job was done well, he praised my work. I'd always wanted to be accepted by him. We worked fine together as long as I followed his rules. Dad said, ‘You have to be strict with the tenants, Keith, or they'll run right over you!' He referred to himself as ‘Nasty Landlord' and used it as his handle over the citizens' band radio.”

Sometimes Keith felt burdened by the rules. “Dad said, ‘Remember, the boss is always right! Even if he's wrong, he's right—especially in front of customers. If something goes wrong, it's your job to take the blame.' Once he cracked a wall with the backhoe. Later that night he knocked on the tenants' door and said he was sorry about his clumsy son. They laughed about it. They'd been home when he did it.”

 

The Silver Spur workday began at daylight when Keith would pick up windblown trash. “After I took the garbage to the dump, I'd start on my daily list of things to do, like replacing heater elements in hot-water tanks and fixing leaks in the rentals. On warm days I poured concrete for new units and hauled in the sand and dirt. I plowed the snow, built fences, planted trees. Dad always had some little criticism—my work lists were in the wrong order or I'd missed some of the trash or I was spending too much time talking to the tenants. One of the women offered to trade me sex for rent, but I wasn't into that. At night I'd watch the women undressing, and I'd fantasize about them when I was in bed with Rose.”

 

Les wondered later if there might have been more to the story. “Keith was popular, maybe a little too popular. One day when I had to evict a woman, she remarked, ‘If you don't watch out, I'm gonna charge your son with statutory rape.' She had a teenage girl. I thought it was a joke, and Keith denied everything. He said, ‘When would I have time to bother a little girl? I'm always working.' I took him at his word.”

After six months of working with his father, Keith felt a renewed urge to drive out to the badlands and slaughter animals. Les thought he knew how it started. “We couldn't permit strays. That was in our bylaws. Dogs had to be on a leash. Keith got rid of some stray cats and I didn't stop him. In fact I almost persuaded him to do it. But I never taught him to kill. Never! My way was to drown 'em in a gunnysack. Once I saw him take a kitten and smash it down. Killed instantly! It made me shudder.”

For once, the father-and-son memories almost meshed. In Keith's version: “One of our tenants had a problem cat, and I warned her to get rid of it. One day Dad and I went to her place to fix a leak, and the cat was still around. Dad said, ‘What do you intend to do about this, Keith? You're too soft!' I threw the cat on the pavement to stun it. Then I wrung its neck like a chicken. I said, ‘Is that what you wanted?' I drove a few miles and threw it out the window. That night I told the owner, ‘Fluffy ran away. Live with it.' She moved out the next day.”

Following his customary practice, Keith blamed his harsh attitude on his father. “Dad said, ‘You're gonna control the area, Keith. If an animal becomes a pest, shoot it.' I got real good at hitting dogs on the run. I bought a CO2 pistol and accidentally shot a neighbor's dog and had to pay the vet to dig out the pellet. After that I took a few strays to the pound, but they found their way back.

“I decided to take no prisoners. I killed the pests with whatever I had at hand—hammer, sickle, scythe, screwdriver, shovel, or my bare hands. I'd take a dog into the sagebrush, give him a good kick, then open fire with my thirty-thirty. I tossed the suckers out the window at fifty miles an hour.

“I baited trash cans with poisoned meat and collected bodies in the mornings before anybody got up. One night I killed seven cats and kittens. I caught a dog in our garbage and used a hook scythe to cut off his head, but the blade only went halfway and he ran into the woods. I threw cats in the incinerator. I set one on fire and it ran for the barn. Flames everywhere! Another cat got into our burn barrel. I put a piece of plywood over the top, poured in gasoline and threw in a match. The cat howled till it was cooked. It made me hot and hard.

“I enjoyed the feeling of power. I liked taking a cat or a dog into my room and poking it with a stick. There was no running away from Keith the Avenger. I knew it was wrong to hurt dumb animals, but I did it anyway. It was just…an urge.”

 

Keith's little sister made frequent complaints about his cruelty, but she was ignored. “Dad and Keith both hated cats,” Jill recalled. “Keith bragged about wringing their necks and throwing them in the garbage. I was taken aback by this. You don't do that to animals. We never dreamed he would do it to people.”