“Still a sweet, demanding little thing, aren’t you? You’re still the confident girl you’ve always been. Okay, I’ll start with something about your mother, and then get to the other things I need to tell you. It will be my rules for what I tell and when I tell it.”
The old man was bearing a cross. She didn’t understand it. Nor was she interested in lifting any burdens from his shoulders without getting the things she wanted. He had been so withdrawn through the years, it seemed almost like negotiating with a stranger for information.
Jake spoke without reluctance.
“She was a pretty girl. That’s where you get your good looks, from her. When we got married, I thought I was the luckiest guy alive.”
“Did you marry in Omaha?”
“We married here. Yes. I’ve been here most of my life, and she was an Omaha girl. We were still young. I dropped out of school to get married. You were born five months after a justice of the peace married us at the courthouse.”
Maggie gave a slow, deliberate nod as new information sank in.
“The math says a lot, Dad. Did her parents help?”
“When she got pregnant, her parents wanted nothing to do with her. We were on our own. That’s how things were then.”
“It had to be really tough for you guys.”
“Sure, we had it tough. It didn’t take long to realize our beautiful marriage was a lot like beautiful cut flowers from a florist that wilt in a week and end up in the trash. Oh, we were happy while she was pregnant, but after you were born, she started getting dissatisfied. Got tired of spending all day in a flop house room with a crying baby.”
Jake let her think a moment, then continued.
“One day, while you were still tiny, she decided to make a change. ‘I think it’s time to take a job somewhere,’ she told me. I thought it was a little soon after your birth, but we were poor. God knows we needed the money. I didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“So she went to work?”
“She took a job at a donut shop downtown. I found work at a newsstand several blocks away. We took turns staying at home to take care of you. Eight months later, she moved out—left me one morning while I was at work. There was a scribbled note waiting for me when I got home. All it said was, ‘Jake, I’m leaving you. You can have Maggie. She is with Susan.’ When I picked you up, her girlfriend told me she had left town.”
“And that was it?”
“Pretty much. She had papers served on me for a divorce. I got custody, but the divorce never went through. It just sat there unfinished all these years. I guess technically we’re still married. After she left, her parents softened and kept up with us until you were four years old, then their lives turned upside down. Your grandfather got killed at the stockyards. Your grandmother, who had never worked, had to take a job to support herself. She remarried after a year and moved away. I don’t know whatever happened to any of them.”
“Do you know where my mother lives? Is she still alive?”
Jake lifted a hand several inches to stop her. It was enough to make her listen.
“Let me tell the story my way. I’ll answer all your questions, but my rules, remember?”
Same old control tactics.
Maggie acquiesced and sat back to let him talk.
“Do you remember that I was an orphan at Boys Town?”
“I know very little. Nothing really.”
“Boys Town was a good place with a staff that really cared about us.”
She nodded.
“We donate to Boys Town every year,” she said softly.
“Anyway, a lot of the guys I knew had sad stories and backgrounds. One of the things I wanted to tell you is that while I was there, a new boy came who ended up very well-known.”
“Who would that be?”
“Brace yourself.”
She smiled as if nothing could shock her. But she was wrong.
“Ever heard of Charles Manson?” he asked.
“The mass murderer? He was at Boys Town? Are you kidding me?”
“He was there alright. We were roommates while he was there. He didn’t stay long.”
“Okay. I’ll admit it. I am surprised.” She gave a nervous laugh. “So, somehow my father survived living with Charles Manson?” It was a comment that begged for more information.
“Yeah I survived. Part of what I need to tell you are things that happened with me and Charlie. He was just a boy when I knew him. We got along real well. He was a friend, a really good friend.”
Maggie was speechless. Irritation and shock plastered her face. Her tone changed as she grasped the importance of Jake’s revelation.
“That’s real nice to learn at age sixty-two that your father was good friends with Charles Manson. I can’t believe you’re springing this on me.”
“Let me tell the story before you close your mind, honey.”
Maggie tightened her lips as a signal she would hold her comments for now.
Jake studied Maggie’s expression. Her jaw was set defiantly and worry lines were showing. He recognized intransigence was setting in.
She needs a day or so to get used to Charles Manson being a friend. Don’t get into at loggerheads with her. Remember how stubborn she can be. Give her some time to get used to the idea.
“I’ll tell you all about Charlie when you come back. I’m really tired now, baby.” It was a half-truth.
“Would you mind so much if we continue this tomorrow?”
Maggie reflected for a moment. She knew that seeing him, listening to his story was important. His rules. She knew it would be on his terms, and again, as always, she bowed to his direction.
“Sure, Dad,” she said. “I know you need to rest. I can come back tomorrow after work.”
“That would mean so much to me,” he assured her. “I’ll be rested and ready for you.”
Within minutes she was gone, mind churning with questions about what this meant, what her father would tell her next.
Jake stared at the ceiling, her fresh kiss still wet on his cheek.
Have I done the right thing by asking her to come? Is she prepared for the emotional pain to come? It will hurt when she learns the truth about me. There’s no easy way to do it.
He would have trouble sleeping despite the pills they would bring.
Chapter 30
Keeping The Demon At Bay - Boys Town, April 1949
As the Saturday sun dipped toward the western horizon, rumors about Charlie and Link galloped across Boys Town.
“Did you hear? That new kid whupped Link’s ass.”
“Could a guy as small as Charlie really whip Link?”
“I saw Link today. He was scared of his own shadow.”
“I don’t know about Link, but Charlie scared us shitless at the barn today.”
“I like Charlie. He knows – well, he just knows stuff, man.”
No one knew the connection between Link and Charlie, but most believed something had happened. The changes in Link were too dramatic to miss. Everyone thought Charlie had done something to him.
Though his classmates wouldn’t know it, fear was still growing in Link. The scourge of Boys Town had faced his mortality. He worried about what might come next. He carried a terror in his heart: Charlie must never be angered again.
Link pictured Charlie as a cobra: a deadly, aggressive creature that could not be bullied or intimidated. And like a snake, Charlie had the capacity to inflict a mortal strike as long as he lived.
Deep inside Link was the scared little boy, the coward his father created. He anguished over more than Charlie’s threats. He dreaded the small acts of retribution that would inevitably follow his repentance – the misdeeds he himself had inflicted on others: a chunk of feces between his sheets, pubic hairs on his tooth brush, a missing shoe that would never be found, a dirt clod whizzing past his ear.
The recent tyrant cringed. He must accept these punishments to keep the demon at bay.
Chapter 31
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br /> The Ice Capades - Omaha, 1949
Half an hour after dinner Charlie, Jake, Hiram, and almost everyone on campus except Link Collins who was studying the order of Mass, poured out of the dorms and cottages and onto six buses waiting alongside the chapel.
Charlie and his family of Jake and Hiram, staked claim to the rear seats on the last bus. Admirers soon surrounded them.
Charlie entertained them with a story about eluding reform school guards who nearly caught him heisting Coke machine money intended for their Christmas party.
“I call it ‘walking the dog’ when I control things like that,” Charlie said.
Just before departure, Sister Agatha hobbled onto the bus. She judged that peace prevailed and settled into the front seat. She never looked back again, but focused instead on giving the driver a steady stream of advice.
At the Ak-Sar-Ben coliseum, the buses parked in a line at the edge of the busy parking lot. The Ice Capades Snow White performance was family entertainment popular nationwide. Judging from the huge number of cars in the parking lot, the boys could see Omahans were turning out in big numbers.
The boys on Sister Agatha’s bus joined the Boys Town procession to a special entrance where an attendant waved them inside and pointed the way to the highest seats in the building.
Charlie sat between Hiram and Jake in the upper bleachers for the first hour of bright lights, sparkling costumes, and ice-skating.
After intermission, Charlie grew bored with the performance. The singing animals were the last straw.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he told Jake and Hiram and slipped to the end of the row where Sister Agatha slept.
In the concourse, Charlie meandered along watching people, mostly parents buying snacks for demanding children or rushing them to restrooms. The smartest shoppers were there too, gathered around the souvenir stands, beating the swarms that would come when the show ended.
Charlie walked and searched until he found what he was looking for: a girl.
Marcy Bahr was standing in line with a girlfriend waiting for pink cotton candy when he spotted her. How could he miss her? Her flowing blonde ponytail had flashed in the lights with a quick head turn.
He stopped and stood looking as she turned the other way creating another wild ponytail toss.
She wore a simple, inexpensive dress, with printed pink flowers. She was not unaware that she was one of the most dazzling girls to come out of South Omaha in a long time.
She knows she looks good and doesn’t care who’s watchin.’ The dress is a little too long. She comes from a good home, but has a strict mama. Too strict. That fresh makeup will come off before she gets home. I’ll bet the flowers on the dress are too pink for a reason.
And he was right. The dress with the tiny, hot-pink flowers projected a subtle sexiness that had escaped her mother’s scrutiny.
He watched, and from her actions and mannerisms, he distilled and understood her very essence.
She was an eye-catching, five foot four beauty, now lost in mindless chatter with her friend, a bovine-faced girl, filling the role of the subservient sidekick. They were smoking Chesterfields. Charlie watched her expressions.
She’s putting on her own show.
Charlie saw beyond the high cheek bones and wide smile, past the appealing eyes and the innocent look and examined the disenchantment within. Charlie saw the signs of a girl rooted in hard work and family values, but wanting rootlessness. He saw needs that she herself could not recognize: a need to rebel, to experience life, to make her own decisions.
What he could not know across the concourse was the uninspiring family setting. He did not yet know how she felt hearing her father leave for the stockyards before daylight every day, and returning after dark to bicker with her mother. He could not know her dreams for a different future, one unshackled from the South Omaha stockyards and the odors her father brought home. Charlie could not know the background, but he knew she was ready for him.
He materialized close to her from the crowd. He was short and young, maybe two years younger than she. She saw him staring at her, gave a perfunctory smile and then looked away.
He was new to Omaha and unfamiliar with its social nuances. He should have recognized her smile as Omaha polite and moved on, but Charlie took it as an invitation. Charlie moved closer.
“You get tired of the singing animals too?” he asked her.
“Yeah. We came down for cotton candy,” she said to humor him and looked away again.
Do I know this boy?
“I think you had the right idea,” Charlie said. “Watching men dressed like squirrels and skating in circles just wasn’t doing it for me.”
She took a second look. This time she saw. The eyes were riveting. She couldn’t break her gaze into those deep pools of—what? Understanding? The power in his eyes was near physical.
“Got an extra cigarette?” Charlie stepped closer, almost touching her.
“Sure,” she said handing her cotton candy to the girlfriend.
“What’s your name?”
“Marcy.”
“Marcy what?”
“Marcy Bahr. What’s yours?”
“Charlie Manson. So, how lucky am I to get to talk to the prettiest girl in town?” Charlie asked. “I’m new in Omaha. I never knew someone like you was here, or I would have come a long time ago. You’re perfect.”
She ignored the flattery and lit a cigarette for him.
He’s a confident little shit, isn’t he? Probably one of the boys Dad warned me to stay away from. Cute.
She gave him another, closer look and Charlie knew he had her.
Marcy retrieved her cotton candy and offered him a pull.
“Thanks,” he said, tearing off a piece. “I rarely eat cotton candy. Try to treat my body like a temple, you know. Besides, you’re the real candy in this town. Yep, I’d say about hundred and three pounds of sweet Omaha candy.”
She was starting to enjoy his attention.
“Wanna hear something else?” he asked.
She leaned in toward him. “Sure.”
“My Grandpa used to have a hang up picture of the most beautiful girl in the world. Girl from Nashville he saw once while he was there on the C&O Railroad. Kept it in his locker at the rail yard so Grandma wouldn’t see it. She was naked as a jay bird. Her name was Candy Barr. I’m calling you Candy Bahr from now on just because you’re more beautiful than the other Candy ever thought of being. So what do you think about that, Candy Bahr?” He touched her arm.
His touch gave her butterflies. She felt a sensation of warmth and security. There was an aura of power about him that made her stay close to feel its full effect. Here was a boy who would never shackle her to a rundown home in the wafting stench of stockyard blood, dung and rotting offal. Here was a boy who would never come home reeking of putrid odors to demean, demand, and condemn her every action and thought.
“Candy Bahr,” she said reflecting on it.
Charlie eased closer.
“I like Candy Bahr,” she said. “Nice name.” She gave him an appraising look, then turned to her friend. “You can go back up to the show, Susan. I’m going to finish my cigarette and eat my cotton candy.”
The girlfriend knew a ‘get lost’ hint when she heard one and split.
Charlie and Candy Bahr strolled idly around the concourse. She offered him more candy, and Charlie accepted, tearing the sugary stuff and laying it on his tongue as his eyes roved her body.
“I sure like to eat Candy,” he said.
“I’ll bet,” she said.
Marcy, now Candy Bahr, knew what he was doing. She liked it.
Charlie took a half step back and cocked his head to stare at her legs.
“Mmm,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
Though Candy was no stranger to male attention, she felt herself flush at the knowing hunger in Charlie’s eyes. She was a bad girl, and Charlie let her know he knew it.
By the time they finished th
e cotton candy, Candy Bahr was hooked by Charlie. She might have thought she was standing in the concession concourse. The fact was, she was standing in the palm of Charlie’s hand.
“Dump your friend,” he said simply.
“How will I get home?” she asked.
“I’ll get you where you want to go,” he said, his leg rubbing against hers. “Trust me.”
She made her decision.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll tell Susan that she’ll be driving home alone tonight.”
When she returned, he grabbed her by the back of her neck and kissed her hard. A cannon boomed in the auditorium and the crowd roared. Her legs turned to rubber.
Charlie wasted no time. He took Candy Bahr by the hand and led her from the arena. The moon lit the way to the last bus alongside the fence.
They walked toward the buses at the edge of the parking lot, the partially covered moon illuminating the way.
In the coliseum the Ice Capades troupe ended their show dramatically, all bright lights, high leaps, and rousing music. When the cheering ended and the house lights came up, the Boys Town delegation reluctantly queued up and began an orderly march from the bleachers. Leading the procession to the parking lot were Jake and Hiram, frantically searching the crowds for Charlie.
“You see him?” Hiram asked nervously.
“No. What should we do?” Jake answered.
“I guess we’ll keep quiet. Charlie can take care of himself. At least I hope so,” Hiram said.
On the back seat of the last bus, Charlie and Candy Bahr, were about to make Boys Town history.
Her panties came down as quickly as his jeans. She pulled him to her. If bodies are temples, as Sister Klara had suggested, Charlie had the key to her temple gates. They fit perfectly together.
Charlie rode her hard, and she let him. And in her wild abandon, she fulfilled her needs to rebel, to experience, to decide for herself. Charlie showed her life beyond disillusion.
Neither noticed nor cared as the bus doors opened for students to file onto the bus. Where was Charlie?
Before He Became a Monster: A Story Charles Manson's Time at Father Flannigan's Boystown Page 17