Dan's Dad had a quadruple bypass last week, and while everything went really well, we had Dan and Rudy over for dinner and drinks to give them a break from sitting bedside at the hospital. As soon as we finished eating, Ken and Lolo came over, too, and we all moved out by the pool. As always, the conversation was enjoyable, and for the first time, Dan and Ken realised how much they had in common.
Dan had started by talking about his parents and explaining that, while his Dad is his Dad, he's not his biological father. His mother had gotten married, at 16, to a badass gangster; a no good, violent drug dealer. After having 3 kids together in 4 years, she kicked him out. Meanwhile, "Dad" had also left his first wife -- with whom he had had 5 boys -- and after he met Dan's Mom, they moved in together and had one more child, a boy, together. ("Imagine that, my Dad had 6 children, all boys.") At some point, Dan's real father was murdered: he had opened the door at his home to a couple of guys he knew -- probably collecting a drug debt -- and an argument started and one of the guys pulled a knife and stabbed the father, but being a badass, the father grabbed the knife and stabbed the two of them before pushing them out and slamming the door. As he slumped down to the floor, the other two went back to their truck for a shotgun and blasted him through the door. Because they needed medical attention, they were arrested at a hospital, and as Dan later learned, they each received a 7 year sentence. Who knows if that's justice in gangland.
Now, Dan had told us before about his great hitch-hiking adventure across Canada when he was 17, but Ken and Lolo hadn't heard any of this, and he moved into this story:
Dan: I had made it almost to the west coast but I had no money and I was feeling miserable and lonely and sorry for myself, so in a moment of weakness, I called my Mom and asked her what I should do. She told me that my Uncle Brian lived in Surrey and that if I called him, he would probably take care of me. She gave me the number and I called, and sure enough, he told me to come visit. I showed up there in the evening, and the house was this huge mansion, big iron gates and Dobermans coming at me across the lawn. I had to call to the house through an intercom and someone came and got me and led me into the biggest, most elaborate house I had ever seen -- chandeliers and marble floors, you know? I was taken to Uncle Brian and he was with this group of people and he put his arm around me and said, "Hey, it's Danny, my brother's boy." They were all set up with needles and Brian asked me if I wanted to shoot some speed. I told him that needles weren't my scene and he said, "No problem, we'll make you a speed ball." So, they shot some speed onto a kleenex, balled it up and told me to swallow it. It was like the back of my head blew off and, even though I knew I was having the time of my life at this huge party, I couldn't remember any of it. I do remember coming to myself in the morning. I was sitting on a couch between these two gorgeous girls and they were concerned about me and thought they should get me a glass of milk. So I got the milk and then Uncle Brian was walking me to the door, and even though he lived in this mansion -- with the drugs and the money and the girls -- he pulled out 5 or 10 dollars and said, "Here. I owed this money to your Dad. Now we're even." And that was that. I was on my way.
At this point, Ken and Dan walked off and had some private conversation, and Ken came back and said that, as unbelievable as it was, they had both done time at the same correction center in northern Ontario. Now, Rudy and Dan had never heard Ken's great hitch-hiking adventure, so he moved into his story:
Ken: I was a total punk when I was a kid and I often stole my parents' car in the middle of the night and drove it into Toronto, just to cruise around, when I was 14. The first time I got caught it was by my Mom and I begged her not to tell Dad, because I knew he would murder me, but she said she had no choice -- she was going to tell him when he got home from work that night. She went to work at the retirement home next door and I took my hockey bag, filled it with frozen meat and some butcher's knives, called my friend John Lalonde, and told him we were splitting. We started walking, not really knowing where to go, and as we went along Bethesda Side Road at dusk, we started looking in people's cars to see if there was anything we could use. One car had the keys in it, and without really thinking about it, we said, "Okay. Let's take it." We pushed the car quietly out onto the road, started it up and started driving. We thought, even though we had no money, that we could drive all the way to Alberta. The first night, we pulled into a gravel pit and had a fire and smoked some dope and roasted some steaks from my hockey bag and thought we had it made. (Here, Dave and I said, "And what did John draw in the dirt? Come on, that's the best part.") Okay, we were also listening to some Black Sabbath or something and John drew a pentagram in the dirt and told me it was the sign of Satan and that if I stepped into it I would die. ("Did you step in? I never remember that part.") Fuck no. The next day we decided to pick up a hitch-hiker and we gave him some story about heading to my sister's wedding and that she was supposed to wire us some gas money, but it hadn't come through yet, and he said, "No problem. I've got gas money. If you keep driving west I'll buy the gas until your money comes through." He had this huge bag of dope and this huge bag of pills and me and John kept smoking doobies and driving while the guy was popping pills and snoozing in the back seat. Eventually, coming onto Kenora, we were pulled over by the cops. The guy in the back woke up and said, "What's happening?" and we explained that the car was stolen and we had been pulled over. He started cursing and saying that we had to take the rap for the drugs -- he was an adult and we would get a slap on the wrist as juvies, but I said no way: my Dad would kick my ass for stealing a car but there was no way I was taking a drug rap. When the cop came to the window and asked for licence and registration, I said, "I have neither. This car is stolen." We were taken to the police station in Kenora and I was in one room and confessed to stealing the car. They had my hockey bag, which by now was stinking with rotten meat, and one cop pulls out this huge knife and asked, "What's this for then?" I just shrugged and said, "Camping?" John was in another room and he must have confessed, too, but since he was 16, they took him away and I never saw him again. Like never. To this day, I have no idea what happened to him. (Dan asks, "You never looked him up on facebook?" Everyone laughs.) I could see through the glass wall that they had our hitch-hiker (and his knapsack full of drugs) at a cop's desk, and when someone came in and asked me about him, I said that he was just a hitch-hiker -- we didn't know him and he didn't know the car was stolen. Next thing I knew, they let him go and he was out the door; no one even looked in his bag. They sent me to the remand center -- I never even saw a judge -- and I spent the next few days there until they figured out what to do with me. I was super polite -- yes, sir; yes, ma'am -- and I told them how I wanted to go into the foster system because my Dad would surely kill me. There was just me, this polite white boy, and a bunch of hard Indian kids, and the staff took a liking to me and they gave me extra cigarettes, and by the end of the week, I was babysitting their kids. They had to send me home, and when they did, I was so scared about what my Dad was going to do -- I had flunked every class in my first year of high school, I had been caught shoplifting, and now I was a car thief -- but he was just sad. He asked me, "What can I do? What do you need to make you happy?" And me, the smartass I was, said, "I always wanted a dirt bike." And by the end of the week, I had a Honda 150.
Dan: When I was going through Saskatchewan, I was dropped off in this small town, and nearly immediately, I met this really sweet little girl and decided to stay for a while. I was 17 and Sandy was 15, and she was my girlfriend for the two weeks I was there. Her family had a big vacation planned, so we only had those two weeks before they left, and I remember she tried to get out of going because she loved me so much, but she was forced to go and I told her that was the right thing to do. (Rudy asks, "Why does this remind me of Grease?" I reply, "Because it's Sandy and Danny?" Laughs.) As she was leaving, she begged me to stay until she got back, but not long after she left, I was out of money and was offered a ride and I was heading west again. I did keep writing to Sandy from the cities that I would stop in, but she wasn't able to write me back because I never stayed in one place long enough. When I eventually did go home again, I asked my Mom if I could make a long-distance call to Saskatchewan, and when I did, Sandy's Mom answered. I asked for Sandy and told her, "It's Danny" and she told me, "I'm sorry, Sandy is dead. And I want to thank you for the letters you've been writing because it's good to know that someone really cared for our daughter in her short life and I wonder if I could send you a picture of Sandy so you can remember her." I said sure and I had that picture forever. The thing is, I felt really guilty about that for the longest time because Sandy died on the back of a motorcycle when it crashed, and even though I wasn't there, she was with people that I had brought together. If I hadn't stopped in that town, Sandy would have never met these people, never been on the back of the motorcycle, never died. I don't feel guilty any more, but I sure did.
Ken: Well, my Dad gave me my dirt bike and told me to have fun and to never drive it on the roads. Of course, within a week I was driving it on a back road, and a cop saw me and started following me and I opened it up and -- I don't know if you've driven a dirt bike, but it was shuddering at top speed and it felt like I was flying but I probably was only going about 40 mph and the cop was right at my back tire and he said over the loudspeaker, "I will ram you if you don't stop" and I looked at the fields on the sides of the road and knew that I could lose a cop car there, but I also knew I was going too fast to cross the ditch, so I had to stop. The cop came up and gave me a lecture about how unsafe it was to drive a dirt bike on the road. I begged him not to tell my parents, but he said he would have to, and that I could drive the bike home if I stayed off the roads. I started off across the field, but as soon as I thought it was safe, I was on the road and speeding home because I knew that I had to take off again before the cop talked to my parents. I packed a light bag and beat it for the highway, thinking to hitch-hike without any real destination. I eventually made it to northern Ontario, this time without any money, no food (not even rancid steaks), and my last night I slept in a ditch. I had been walking along a dark road, in the pissing rain, and saw a cop car with its lights going up ahead and I just knew it was for me. I ran across a field, and exhausted and starving, I passed out in the ditch. I remember in the morning, I got up, brushed myself off and said, "Okay Krissy. We gotta go." You see, I thought Krista here was with me and I thought I had to take care of her. Actually, I've always believed that Krista was with me and she probably saved my life -- if I didn't have to get her to safety, I may have just stayed in the ditch. I eventually got a ride into Kenora and I went back to the remand center, where they had been so nice to me. This time, though, it was all different -- I looked like a spoiled brat, not a kid in trouble, and no one was happy to see me (like I thought they would be, I thought they were actually my friends) and they put me on a Greyhound home that same day. This time, when I got home, my Dad bounced me off the walls of my room screaming at me what a bastard I was and he took me to the barber shop and had my long, blonde hair buzzed off. And then he took me out for a hamburger, because that's who he really was. I mean, at one point, the cops had been called on us as a domestic disturbance, but if I was 14, Dad was 33, and he had honestly no idea what to do with me. A couple days later, I saw the cop who had stopped me on the dirt bike come to the house and talk to my parents -- it was then I realised that they had no idea why I had run away the second time. Dad gave me the dirt bike that I said would make me happy and I left a week later -- and they had no idea why. I braced myself for another beating, but it never came -- I think they were somehow relieved to have gotten an explanation.
Dan: I remember this one ride I got was just outside of Edmonton and the guy said he'd be heading into B. C. and happy to take me there, but first he needed to stop at his music store in the city. Sounded good to me so I tagged along. We got to the shop and he turns on the lights and gives me a hit of acid and explained that he was Janis Joplin's organist for a time. I didn't care if that was true or not, but he told me to follow him to his back room, and when he turned on the light in there, it was filled with keyboards, like the Phantom of the Opera, floor to ceiling around his chair. I sat down in this other armchair, and he raised his arms and then just gave'er. I was knocked back in my chair as the music played and I was hearing it and feeling it and seeing it in the air around me and it was the most beautiful music and the most terrifying music and I don't know how long it lasted, but it was one of the most intense experiences of my life. We eventually left the shop -- I don't know if he was picking something up or if the point was to blow my mind -- and we started driving west. As we were going through the mountains -- it was totally dark and desolated -- the guy told me to look in the glovebox and see what was there. I opened the glovebox and took out a bunch of papers, and could see that it was some kind of screenplay. He told me to have a look and tell him what I thought. I scanned the first page and could see that it was gay porn, and I knew that I was kind of vulnerable out here in the middle of nowhere with a virtual stranger, so I just shrugged and said, "It's not for me" and I put the papers back in the glovebox. He was okay with that, and eventually, he said he was too tired to drive anymore and we pulled over and both got into the back of the van and we slept. He didn't try anything. "It's not for me" was all he needed to hear. Janis Joplin's organ player.
Ken: Well, back up a second. That last night that I was walking along a dirt road in the rain -- my last ride was from this guy in a truck, and he seemed normal enough at first, but then things got weird. I was 14, a virgin, but this guy asked me if I had a girlfriend and I lied and said yes. "Yeah, I bet you do," he said. "I bet you give it to her all the time." I nodded and slipped my hand into my bag (that was wedged between myself and the door) and grasped the handle of the knife I had brought. "Yeah, you give it to her all the time. Hey, tell me, who makes the bigger mess when you're giving it to her? You or her?" I didn't even know what he was talking about and said, "Um, me" and he laughed and started talking about how good it would be if we could get some girls, even if we had to rape those girls, and I was totally freaked out but just kept agreeing with him, what else could I do? Then he told me it was getting late and starting to rain, and since we were almost at his place, I should just crash there and he'd give me a ride back to the highway in the morning. I was hungry and tired and I thought a sleep in a bed would be a good idea, so I said sure. He pulls off the road and drives into the middle of nowhere and drives up to this shitty mobile home in the woods. He leads me to the door and tells me to go in, but I take one step and it's dark dark dark and all I see is shadows in front of me and this guy looming up behind me and I said thanks but no thanks and took off out the door. Then I saw the cop in the distance, crossed the field, slept in a ditch and Krissy saved my life. Ended up in Kenora.
Dan: I was older than you when I was locked up in Kenora. I was in for seven days and I got a beating every day.
Rudy: But he wasn't trying to kill you.
Dan: No, it was this old Indian, and he beat me every day. It wasn't like he didn't like me, he was just trying to toughen me up.
Dan never did mention what got him locked up in Kenora (except, presumably to Ken in their first private conversation, and I figure Rudy knows), and since he was so straightforward about everything else, I didn't think it was my business to ask. We had been talking about his boys earlier (who, at 22 and 19, think the buses in the city where they live are "too sketchy" to take once the sun goes down), and I asked Dan if he wishes his own boys could have had some of these big experiences like he had had; if he thought every young man needed to go through a rough initiation to adulthood.
Dan: No, I don't think so. Everyone has their own stories; there's a richness to everyone's life whether they went to University (points at Dave) or went right to work out of school, or whether they hit the road. No one hitch-hikes anymore, but when I was a kid, I would put my thumb out just to get around town and that's how I got everywhere. Even the cops would pull over when I was hitch-hiking at night and give me a ride home sometimes. My boys can't duplicate that now, and that's fine. They'll have their own stories. The point is that, no matter what I did, no matter what happened to me, I've always been me. I've always been a good person. And I still would have been that person no matter what I did.
Dave (Who had been drinking a lot of Scotch while listening to the tale of two juvies, slurred as he blurted out): Well, all I know is that this proves what I believe about Karma. You're both good people and that's why, no matter how dangerous the situations were that you put yourselves into, Karma kept you safe. That's all I believe. Everyone needs to believe in something and if I didn't believe in Karma, I'd have nothing to believe in.
Me: I don't know if I believe that completely. Maybe light attracts light, but plenty of young kids are abused or murdered, and I can't believe that's Karma or whatever.
Dave: We don't know what those murdered children might have grown up to be...
I have to believe that was the Scotch talking, but even as we went to bed -- so late after a night of much talking -- Dave wouldn't leave it alone. As I was trying to go to sleep, he kept slurring, "But don't you believe that's what kept them safe on the road? That they're both good guys and Karma was keeping them safe?"
All I know, and all I could say to Dave, was that, despite being two messed up kids who took terrible chances, both Ken and Dan are good people who survived to go on to responsible lives. They both have stable relationships, kids who love them, jobs and mortgages -- do they have Fate or Karma to thank for that? Who knows, but I'm grateful it is so.
*****
To keep it literary, and to highlight the weird synchronicities of my life, here is something I read today after writing the above, from Robertson Davies' What's Bred In the Bone:
What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us. I know that sounds horrible and cruel, considering what happens to a lot of people, and it can't be the whole explanation. But it's a considerable part of it.
