by Tracy Ross
Nor will I forget, as I put my dad through the interrogation that’s coming, that he has always been my father. When my mom was in danger of falling apart completely, he swooped in and brought joy to our lives. I spent too much time as a child worshipping this man who stole my innocence and almost ruined me. But I can’t help myself. The weak places in my heart tell me that he, too, has suffered.
I’ll never know the urges that existed inside him, driving him to prey on a cherub-faced near-baby. But I have seen him pay for it every day of my adult life. I also know things about him now that make his actions toward me somehow more understandable; before our trip, he told me that he had been molested as a child. An older cousin sodomized him at a family gathering when my dad was five. It went on for years, said my dad, but he didn’t think he was scarred by it. “It taught me that sex wasn’t something you should be ashamed of,” he said. “It was how you showed your love.”
Twisted or not, he now sees the damage that he has created in me. The fact that he and my mom stayed together means that he gets to watch his damage play out, daily, on the one person he claimed to love more than anyone else in the world.
I know that I should hate him. But however flawed, weak, unforgivable, revolting, or treacherous it makes me, I can’t. For better or worse, I believed him the one time he cried over his crimes against me. It was in the car after a bluegrass concert when I was twenty. And before that—before everything—there were the years at Redfish Lake. I hold those early memories with care, knowing they are like pressed wildflowers: if shaken too violently, they’ll turn to dust.
Still, the tent is a terribly uncomfortable place. And so, this too becomes a crime, because one of backpacking’s greatest virtues is that it makes instant bedfellows out of strangers and friends. When else do we lie side-by-side under a star-filled sky separated by a thin piece of nylon and a few cubic inches of down? In the tents of my past, I have fallen in love and whispered my greatest longings and dreams. I’ve huddled with friends while lightning flashed just inches from our heads. We have wept and laughed until we peed our pants, knowing that in the morning, we will have created a shared history at 10,000 feet. This is one of backpacking’s true beauties, beyond the stunning vistas and close encounters with wildlife: it creates an intimacy that transcends normal friendships and eludes even some of the best marriages.
This is the first time my dad and I will lie shoulder-to-shoulder since I was a teenager in Twin Falls. I will wear all my clothes and never really fall asleep.
The next morning, we pack up, eat breakfast, and head back down the switchbacks, which murder our knees. As we walk, my dad fills the silence I create. He reminisces about bird hunting with his friend Gary Mitchell and fishing for the eight-pound trout that used to feed on freshwater shrimp in Richfield Canal.
He sifts through his better memories, until we come to a big log on the side of the trail, where we break out our lunch. Then this: “I was sixteen the first time I killed a deer,” he says. Bob Murphy and Gary were there, when a four-point buck “that would have been an eight-point by eastern standards” walked into the crosshairs of his gun. When Dad pulled the trigger, he got so excited he started shaking uncontrollably. It was buck fever, and he had it bad.
“You can hardly grab your breath,” he says, grinning mischievously. “Just knowing that you can actually kill something—it’s the height of excitement. It makes you weak in the knees.
“I got away from shooting does,” he says, “after I killed one with a fawn.” The fawn’s cries echoed through the South Hills, and my dad couldn’t stand the sound. So he put a bullet in its head.
We chat, nibble on sausage, and dry our sweaty shirts in the breeze. While they sway in the wind, we take off our boots and wade into a bottom-clear lake. The silence comes back, bigger than it has been all week. A giant rock leads into the water, then drops off like a cliff. The fish are rising now, and my dad is following the ripples out to the weeds that line the lake. Watching him, I rehearse different ways to interrogate him when the time comes.
So, Dad. When was the first time you…
…abused me? (Too clinical. This isn’t an after-school special.)
…touched me? (Too tactile. Might make him fantasize about me.)
…completely fucked up my bearings? Yes, that’s it. That’s how I’ll start the conversation when we get to The Temple and he’s so tired he can’t retaliate. I join him down by the water. “Feels warm enough to swim,” he says.
Two days later, my dad and I finally reach The Temple. We’re in the middle of the boulderfield that threatened to break us in half. Dad collapses the second we reach the altar. Sweat drenches his torso and his face looks punched and weak. Before we left the trail, he stopped to peer up at the stone minarets surrounding us. “Beautimus,” he whispered. I heard the bones cracking as he craned his neck.
Crouching behind him on the altar, I dig into my pack. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for: when the truth will shine down upon us and the heavens will break open beneath the weight of a million white doves. I take out my Dictaphone, test the battery, and push record, beginning the interrogation I’ve waited twenty-five years to enact. I have only four questions. The entire conversation will take less than twenty minutes.
The Truth in One Act
[The lights come up on a rock in the middle of a boulderfield. Don, a once athletic man in his mid-sixties, sits slightly in front of his stepdaughter, Tracy. She holds a reporter’s tape recorder in front of his face.]
Tracy:
So… this is going to be hard.
Don:
It’s okay.
Tracy:
[Hands spread on the rock, absorbing its heat.] All I have are four questions. And I don’t want to know details. Because I know. I was there. And so what is important to me is to know your version of the truth.
Don:
[Nodding, looking down.]
Tracy:
Okay. When did it start?
Don:
[Clearing his throat] On a camping trip up here at Redfish. I had been drinking. I lied. I was tucking you in. My hands went to a spot, which surprised me, and I kept them there. But the severity—it wasn’t that often at that age. Just periodically.
Tracy:
But I was eight. Couldn’t you see what that did to me and say, “Oh my God, oh my God, I did that. That was a mistake”?
Don:
[Choosing his words.] A person who does what I did … you make things up. You don’t think of the other person. You just need that closeness. If I had ever known how it would have affected you, I probably would have done something completely different.
Tracy:
So… that day on the log. I wasn’t upset?
Don:
I don’t think so. I don’t remember. I was trying to cover things up. I had feelings for you. I thought of you as my fishing buddy. The only thing I could do was lie. I wasn’t thinking of you.
Tracy:
Just so you know … in case you were wondering … I was thinking about what would happen if I jumped in the river and died. [Starting to cry.] I was eight. That’s so fucked up.
Don:
[Tenderly.] No, it isn’t.
Tracy:
Yes, it is. When you’re eight years old, you’re a little kid. It wasn’t a physical thing?
Don:
Not then, but later I was put in a position where you were going through puberty. These were your teen years; you were probably twelve or thirteen. Your mother stopped being intimate. I leaned to you for closeness.
Tracy:
Okay, okay. So mom wasn’t interested in being intimate?
Why didn’t you go have an affair?
Don:
That’s what I shoulda done. By all means.
[A break. Tracy takes a drink of water, shakes her head. Stands up, sits down. Don looks across the valley. A hawk skims the trees.]
Tracy:
Okay. Now, how many times did i
t happen? In various degrees of whatever it was. Coming into my room … whatever that was. Till it ended.
Don:
Between twenty-five and fifty times maybe. You know, I never kept track.
[A long silence.]
Tracy:
[Fighting tears.] Well, you must have felt like shit about that, right? I mean, I didn’t want that, right? I wasn’t a willing accomplice … right?
Don:
You weren’t a willing accomplice. I didn’t expect you to be willing. I really felt screwed up. Why would I jeopardize my family like that? And I’m not using this as an excuse, but I was abused when I was real young.
Tracy:
I know, Dad. You told me. Did you do it to Chris?
Don:
[Quickly.] No, no. It’s never boys.
Tracy:
Okay, Dad. Okay. [Another long silence. The wind picks up, wrapping around the rock towers and pouring into the basin, blowing Tracy’s hair in her face. A hawk finds a thermal and rises toward the clouds. It seems as if the conversation is winding down.]
Tracy:
There’s one more question, Dad … I have to know. Scout and Hatcher … What about them? Because people ask me. They say, “How can you let him stay with your kids?” And truthfully, I … I … I don’t know what to say. If anything ever happened to them, I would have to kill you. I could never forgive myself. So why would I even risk it? Why put them in that position when I know what you’re capable of doing to little kids?
[Don’s eyes begin to water. He shakes his head.]
Tracy:
I’m asking you again, Dad. If you ever had those thoughts toward my kids. I’d have to know that so you could never be with them again. Because they know. They feel. They’re intuitive. They know when something doesn’t feel right.
Don:
[Still shaking his head. Looking Tracy directly in the eye for the first time throughout the whole conversation.] Trace …
I haven’t had those feelings for anybody, ever since.
Tracy:
Since when?
Don:
Since you. It ended when you left, when you ran away.
[They’re both crying now. The wind has picked up.]
Tracy:
So one day it was just … over?
Don:
No, it’s never over. You have those feelings, but they’re just like this tape. It replays but you learn how to stop it. You learn how.
Eighteen minutes after I pushed record on my Dictaphone in July 2007, I ended my dad’s and my conversation. I knew that I had heard all I could take. My dad sipped water from a clear, blue bottle, and I bent down and started loading my backpack.
We sat, listening to the wind scream along the ridge directly behind us, and before long, we both knew it was time to go. I struggled to stand up, because it felt like someone had cut open my chest and crammed it with boulders. Dad creaked into a standing position and for a second acted like he was going to hug me. I shook my head, and backed so close to the edge of the altar that I almost tumbled off it. From that moment on until we were back in Twin Falls, I made sure to keep myself out of my dad’s arms’ reach.
We recrossed the boulders beneath The Temple and then continued down the trail to our last campsite. When Dad asked how much longer I wanted to stay, I said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” We packed our things and started hiking back in the direction we’d come from. I knew I’d walk all night if that’s what it took to cover the fifteen or so miles back to the boat ramp. I also knew that if my dad and I missed the last shuttle boat of the evening, I would keep walking, circumnavigating the lake, until I was finally back among other people.
Dad and I drifted down the trail, barely speaking to each other. I didn’t know whether to scream at him or thank him. Twenty-eight years had passed since he first abused me, and now, finally, I had the truth. I liked knowing that I’d caught his confession on my tape recorder and could now share it with anyone I wanted. But no matter how hard I tried to rouse myself into a feeling of lightness, my heart felt a thousand times heavier than when we’d started.
I knew my dad had done me a magnificent favor by being honest, but nothing could have prepared me for the things he’d told me. All my life I’d convinced myself that I was overblowing my abuse—that I was the selfish, melodramatic girl my parents, brother, and grandparents had always called me. But twenty-five to fifty nights of molestation? When I looked through family albums from the years I was abused, I saw a girl who, though awkward looking, was often smiling. Not once did I see the strained smiles or tear stains I’d imagined I would. Two years later, when I asked my dad to decode my apparent happiness, he said, “You didn’t suffer as much as you could have. I drugged you with your mother’s sleeping pills.”
I reeled from him in horror.
“What?” I choked.
“I knew from what happened after the trailer that you wouldn’t be able to handle what I needed to do. I gave them to you at night, when you were already groggy from sleeping. I’m sorry, Tracy. I was sick.”
So much for the oft-touted “closure.” That revelation is the thousand pound weight I now carry around my neck. It turns out the truth doesn’t quite set one free. But would I rather know the full story? Yes, absolutely. This disclosure turns my dad into a premeditated predator, not “just” the admittedly sick individual he had to be to molest a child. But now I understand my sleepwalking through so many years, the phantoms that formed in the shadows around me.
All along I’d thought that my dad’s confession would be my ultimate vindication—the moment in the movie when the colors fade and the beautiful music starts playing. Dad’s revelation at The Temple wasn’t anything like I’d expected. It only raised more questions. Some of them I knew would never be answered, because I wasn’t brave enough to ask them. Like how he’d been able to watch me suffer and still put his own needs first. Now that I was a mother, it horrified me that he could take a child’s trust and twist it into a form of bondage.
Around dusk on the last evening of our trip, Dad and I descended the final switchbacks to Redfish Lake. Waves lapped against the boat dock, and crows argued in the trees. My dad removed his boots and stuck his toes in the water. I looked at his bare ankles and felt the urge to vomit. He smiled up at me and said, “Talk about a little piece of heaven,” and I wanted to tackle him and throw him into the lake. My hands strained against my wrists, wanting to punch, scratch, rip his ears off. But I was too pathetic. I sat on the hillside above him and drew circles with my fingers in the dirt.
After a while the boat arrived, and we boarded it, shoving our gear into the stern. Dad clambered to the back and said, “Man, a beer is gonna taste good.” I silently agreed with him, imagining the cold, yeasty liquid sliding across my tonsils. But my heart was plagued by a feeling that a much larger mystery remained.
Could I still forgive him? I moved past forgiveness into an acid understanding etched in pain. I had explored the perimeters of love, however warped, and saw that love could retain some value while wreaking destruction at the same time. There can be no resolution of my childhood suffering, but I have the best life I can dream of. My main goal is to protect my own children from such injuries to body and soul. I refuse to let past pain intrude on the present possibility of joy. Shawn, Scout, Hatcher, and I all share the beauty of wilderness, the adventures that helped save me. My sons are spirited, outspoken, and instructed on the dangers of pedophiles. Shawn is a kind, compassionate companion, and my job is the envy of everyone I know.
But where to go, how to be, with this new information? Before the hike, I had started to accommodate my parents into my children’s lives, allowing them to babysit, have unchaperoned access to my sons. That ended with the word “drugged.” For months after hearing it, I severed all ties.
Love cuts with a serrated blade, and there are shreds of my feelings that form an unbreakable bond to my parents. They’re getting older and weaker. I now see them, bu
t rarely, on special occasions. At those “holidays,” the damage between us floats like static electricity. I never let my parents watch my kids alone and try, diplomatically, to keep space between the boys’ bodies and my father’s. When my parents depart, I turn to Shawn, Scout, and Hatcher and know that though I’ve just compromised I’ve been a better, more protective mother. So maybe there is peace, however hard won.
I often think back on the last morning of Dad’s and my father-daughter journey—how we packed up, stopped at a bakery for coffee, and left for Twin Falls. I listened to my favorite Neko Case album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, three times in a row. As we drove south, I could see the Sawtooths receding behind me. I thought it was nice that for the first time in a long time, my dad didn’t ask me to change the music.
Two hours later, Dad dropped me in Twin Falls. As he drove away, the more lasting impact of my journey began to percolate up into my consciousness. Over four days in July, I had retraveled the fateful path of my eight-year-old self’s last innocent trek into the Sawtooths. I’d passed the signposts of my past—Russian John hot spring and the ranger station on Highway 75.
This time, I noted the small wooden sign, barely visible from the overlook on Galena Pass. Through a camera lens you might not even notice it, dwarfed as it is by the mountains. But if you know where to look, you’ll find that sign, and below it, a tiny spring buried in overgrown grass. The narrow silver streak of water trickles upward—the headwaters of the River of No Return. It seeps out of the earth, gathers volume and speed, and becomes so fierce one hundred miles from here that it cuts a trench in the earth a thousand feet deep.