King of the Mild Frontier (11 page)

My mother lived another seven or eight years. Free now of the bonds of alcohol but not of the tight grip of nicotine, she developed early signs of emphysema. She stopped smoking the day they brought the oxygen machine and was able to stay
several more years at home before losing so much lung capacity she chose to finish up at the extended care unit of Valley County Hospital, three blocks from the house in which she was born, rather than move in with one of her children. We traded off going down to visit, and I would make the 325-mile trip about once a month, understanding as I witnessed her desperate struggle to breathe that there truly are fates far worse than death. Toward the end of her life, coughing up a little bit of phlegm seemed Olympic. I remember the last time I visited, crawling up onto the hospital bed and holding her frail body, telling her it was all right to go between the sounds of her terrified wails. She couldn't die, and I wanted to know why bad things happen to good people. The bad thing in this instance was
not
dying.

I've seen death from many angles. Like I said, I'm fifty-five; I'll see it from more. I've seen it as an enemy and as a friend, as a curiosity. There is much more to learn, but it is clear that the best lessons about death come from the best lessons of life.

I know the answer to the question now, by the way: why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It came from my inner editor, that part of me that forces the wordy writer in me to dump
ninety percent of all modifiers:
Ask both questions again, minus the adjectives.

“Why do things happen to people?”

Just because.

IN THE SUMMER OF 1959
my father started letting me wait on customers by myself at the service station. Crutch believed in protocol, which means any employee who set foot on the pump island was in full Phillips 66 dress: clean, starched shirts with the Phillips 66 insignia above the left breast pocket; heavy, charcoal, pleated pants, cuffed at the bottom, with enough extra room in the butt and legs to shoplift a Volkswagen Beetle. That was
not
the style of the day. In fact we wore our jeans and cutoffs so tight you put them on with an airbrush gun. Not only could you count the change in our pockets from
twenty-five feet, you could determine which coins were heads and which were tails. So it wasn't cool toolin' around as a Phillips 66 fashion plate, but as I said before, my dad was a World War II bomber pilot and he liked uniforms.

The uniform had utility, however. You had to be wearing it to catch the Mystery Motorist. As an incentive for employees in their service stations to be lookin' good and on their very best behavior, the Phillips Petroleum Company designated at random, each month, a number of its most loyal credit card customers as Mystery Motorists. If that Mystery Motorist were to receive Super Service from any pump jockey, the Motorist was to hand over, on the spot, a certificate redeemable for fifty dollars. Now, I started working there at age nine for twenty-five cents an hour (ten of which were earmarked for my savings account so I could put myself through college and not have to be limping out onto the pump island wearing that ridiculous getup trying to catch a Mystery Motorist when I was sixty). Though I received raises every year (up until I was a junior in college), I never made more than a buck and a quarter an hour. Given that, fifty bucks, translated into the currency of today, was equal to four million.

So in the summer of my twelfth year I pulled on that uniform daily, complete with Velcro no-buckle, no-scratch
leather belt and very ugly ripple-soled shoes, and set out to catch me a Mystery Motorist.

One problem was that in a county as small as ours, the Mystery Motorist was likely someone you knew, someone like Bob Miles from Miles Construction, who did business with us exclusively. Proper Super Service included being at the driver's window as the car pulled to a stop. “Good morning/afternoon/evening, sir/ma'am. May I fill 'er up with Flite Fuel?” If they wanted a fill-up, you were to start the gas pumping, check the oil, water, battery level, and fan belt without being asked, wash front, back, and side windows, offer to check the tire pressure, and offer to vacuum out the car. You felt like Eddie Haskell in a baggy monkey suit.

So one morning around eight thirty Bob Miles drives up in the company pickup and I am standing by the driver's window as he rolls it down. “Good morning, sir. May I fill 'er up with Flite Fuel?”

Bob Miles says, “You've been jacking off.”

My response would not earn me CIA Employee of the Month award. “I have not!” I yell. “No, sir! I haven't either! You can't prove it!”

Bob smiles and says, “Look at all those pimples. Fill 'er up with Flite Fuel. Hell, what am I saying? Make it regular.”

I know he isn't the Mystery Motorist now, because
Mystery Motorists always let you fill 'er up with Flite Fuel, so I just want his damned pickup gassed and out of here so I can run into the restroom and survey in the mirror the damage from the fruits of my obsession with friction. Man, who knew
that
was the handle you used to pump out all these zits?

That night I prayed beside the bed on my hands and knees, fingers intertwined and locked in a dead man's grip. Without releasing that grip, I crawled under the covers with the resolve to reach some never-before-imagined level of celibacy, clear that the God of my fathers truly was the Old Testament God, one who would create such a gloriously spiritual-yet-forbidden feeling and then count on your face the number of times you achieved it. This had Ark of the Covenant written all over it. I brought to bear the willpower of my ancestors: Crutchers, Morrises, Pattersons, and Aherns alike. For almost ten minutes I clung to their legacy—before realizing eight out of ten of them couldn't resist the temptation of a third dessert. I untangled my fingers and said, “What the hell, what's one more pimple?”

 

So I figure if I'm going to spend my teenage years pockmarked, I'll turn it in my favor. What I need is that out-doorsy look. A rugged dude can accommodate a zit or two.

Enter Chuck Spence. Chuck Spence was the Valley County prosecutor who had spent eight years as a marine and would later return to active duty. Chuck Spence was a cross between Charlton Heston (the young, rugged, cowboy-Moses Charlton Heston) and Davy Crockett—a strong, handsome, physically fit man with a jawline you'd send away for. He was known to take a horse and a pack mule and disappear into the hills for days, fishing and hunting for food, totally comfortable in the wilderness. At about the same time I discovered my midnight (and midday and morning and afternoon) shenanigans were causing a
National Geographic
lesson on my face, Chuck was in the process of forming a Boy Scout troop. I would join the Boy Scouts and let Chuck toughen my body and my spirit to match my new ruddy complexion. There was an extra added attraction. Chuck's wife was Barbara Spence, a willowy dark beauty who taught dance and piano lessons. A year or so earlier I had signed up to take piano lessons after stumbling onto the information that she had an opening the half-hour before Paula Whitson's lesson every Wednesday after school. Suddenly I had discovered a deep yearning to become the next Liberace and begged my mother to sign me up.

Among Barbara Spence's piano prodigies, I was not. The maddeningly repetitive key stroking did not fit the
temperament of a boy who had not, in his infancy, been allowed to launch his body onto the hardwood floor or bang his head against the bathtub at will, and my mother routinely ended my practice sessions within fifteen minutes of their onslaught when I began hammering the keys mercilessly with each mistake, breaking at least one commandment in the process. Each Wednesday afternoon, as I was finishing my lesson and Paula Whitson was showing up for hers, our conversations went like this:

The point is, not many upbeat Chris Crutcher stories were passing through the Spence household to Paula Whitson's ears, but I was about to change all that. I would join Boy
Scouts and turn my mind and body over to Chuck Spence and become the very embodiment of the craggy, ruddy-faced frontiersman, as well as the centerpiece of the Spences' evening dinner conversations. My imagination knew no bounds.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” my mother asked as I pulled on my coat to walk to the Legion Hall for my first meeting. “You didn't fare so well in Cub Scouts.”

“That was just because I couldn't learn to tie that stupid necktie,” I said. “Where we're going, people don't wear neckties.”

“No,” she said, “but they have to learn to tie knots. In ropes.”

“And learn to tie knots in ropes I will,” I said back. “Trust me, I was
made
for the outdoors.”

“Are you sure they'll let you wear that coonskin cap?” she asked. “I think Boy Scouts have uniforms.”

“They'll let me wear it,” I said. “It's a coonskin cap, for crying out loud. Davy Crockett wore one. Daniel Boone. Those guys had to be the original Boy Scouts, if you think about it.”

“Lose the coonskin cap, Crutcher,” Chuck Spence said as I passed through the entrance to the Legion Hall. “This isn't play. We'll order uniforms tonight, and when they
come each of you will be required to attend every meeting in full Boy Scout dress. Until then, slacks, collared shirts. Understood?”

Understood. Geez, this guy was a Stotan before there were Stotans. Besides, they couldn't be as ugly as my Phillips 66 uniforms. (My dad wouldn't let me wear the coonskin cap down there, either.)

 

I realized my Boy Scout career was following a familiar path the next summer at Camp Billy Rice, a summer scout camp near Warm Lake, about thirty miles into the hills over one-lane logging roads. Troop 235, made up of three patrols of eight scouts each and under the tutelage of former U.S. Marine Captain Charles Spence, showed up en masse for the last weeklong session of camp that year. Chuck had demanded that we be the most highly decorated troop of the entire summer. We would conduct ourselves as gentlemen at all times, spending twenty-four hours of each day being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, or we would walk—I mean,
march
—back home from Warm Lake. He mentioned something about Bataan. There's a reason I still don't like Charlton Heston.

It's too late to make a long story short, but suffice it to say
that by the end of camp I had risen to my usual level of competence, just above those scouts whose parents had forced them into scoutdom to give themselves free Wednesday evenings. The final day was to be spent taking on challenges in archery, knot tying, rifle shooting, tracking, water sports, and safety, and proving once and for all that Chris Crutcher should have stayed with the piano. At each station the one or two scouts best at that particular activity would step up to take on the challenge. The full event was called the Gold Rush, and a patrol could earn up to eight gold nuggets at each station, depending on the competence of the participants.

Our patrol leader, Gary Hirai, was as competent as they come. It was his job to select which scouts would compete in which challenges. He was doing his best to match scouts with their strengths, and at each station he would look at me in a way I would learn later to recognize from coaches when they were deciding not to put me into a game. Look, consider, turn to another scout/athlete, fire a “maybe next time” glance, wink, and go on. Gary did that until there were no more next times. The last station was the rifle shoot, and all our other scouts had participated. We had earned more gold nuggets than any other patrol in the camp and had to earn only three more for our troop to win the summer. All I had to do was not screw up.

The rifle shoot station overlooked the lake. One staff member manned a clay pigeon launcher several feet away. The participant was handed a bolt-action .22-caliber rifle; he was to insert a bullet into the chamber, signal the staff member to launch the clay pigeon, then attempt to shoot it as it sailed over the lake. We were told that it is nearly impossible to hit a clay pigeon with a .22, that the exercise was about gun safety, really. I was relieved. I had proven on several occasions during the week at the rifle range that I couldn't hit the ground with a bullet, much less a moving target. But I knew gun safety from back in the days when my father wouldn't let John or me have a BB gun. This was in the bag. Gary stood behind me as the staff member set the launcher, calmly repeating those gun-safety rules. I listened and nodded, recognizing each one. This was akin to being given the last shot in a basketball game or being chosen as pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth. And for once I was up to it.

The staff member charged with running the station, Marty Thorn (Fartin' Martin Thorn, the other staff members called him), handed me the rifle, then the bullet, and nodded. I pointed the barrel of the rifle at the sand, locked the shell into the chamber, nodded toward the launcher, and called, “Pull!” The clay pigeon shot out across
the water like a nuclear Frisbee and I took aim, giving it lead, watching, squeezing the trigger….

Click!
The bullet didn't fire. I swung the barrel around until it leveled on that spot directly between Fartin' Martin Thorn's eyes and said, “What's the matter with this thing? It won't shoot.”

The only thing faster than the speed with which that rifle was knocked out of my hands was the speed with which our patrol lost every one of our gold nuggets. They took nuggets away from us for
next
year. They took nuggets away from future patrols who might harbor later generations of Crutchers.

The craggy-faced Davy Crockett I longed to be was not to come out of Camp Billy Rice.

 

But according to Chuck Spence, every boy deserved at least one second chance. Toward the end of the summer he called to invite my brother and me to hike with him and the Bilbaos and Hirais up to Shirts Lake on West Mountain, looming behind our high valley town. It was a five-mile trek, straight up the mountain. We would be there a week, fish for our food, hike to the tallest peaks, find out what planet Earth was about at its most graceful. My mother said she was sure my brother would go but didn't know if I was up to it. Ha! No wonder people thought I was a momma's
boy. My momma had no idea of the depths of my resolve to become a modern-day Jeremiah Johnson. I could scale West Mountain blindfolded with one arm tied to the opposite leg.

The Hirais and Bilbaos were
born
to take on this kind of challenge. They were natural athletes and outdoorsmen, could catch a rainbow trout in a mud puddle. From a DNA point of view my brother was probably a step down from them, but only a step, and he was tenacious and a fast learner.

I started walking daily. I filled my Boy Scout pack sack with cookies and candy bars and hiked the three blocks to work at the service station each day. I filled it with Coke and root beer and Orange Crush while at the station and walked the same distance back home. I ate and drank everything I carried to build my strength.