299 Days: The Preparation

by Tate, Glen

  It was very frustrating for the little guy. Cole would be tired and want to sleep but he couldn’t say it. He knew what to say but the words wouldn’t form. None of the grownups could understand what he wanted. He would try to talk and they would ask, “Are you hungry? Do you need to go potty?” No, I’m tired, he would try to say. I want to go to bed now. Then he would cry. He cried a lot.

  Lisa, the competitive one and the doctor, went to work learning everything about autism. She bought dozens of books on the topic. She crafted a very detailed plan to teach Cole to talk. It centered on visual things. She made index cards with words on them, like “eat.” She would show a card to Cole and he would know it was time to eat. He understood that because it was written down, it wasn’t words someone was saying to him. Cole soon progressed to showing Lisa or Grant the “eat” card, which meant he wanted to eat. It was like sign language, but with index cards.

  Cole began using the cards less and less and began using simple words. The words were still fewer and more basic than kids his age, but he was learning. It was like he was stuck in France and everyone spoke French except him. He had to figure out how to get things done with simple words and hand motions like one would if they were surrounded by people speaking only French.

  Kindergarten was the first big test. Lisa worried that the teachers wouldn’t accept Cole; Grant was ready to sue them. But, the teachers in Olympia were great. They made educating Cole a top priority. The kids were also great to him; they took him under their wings. For all the bad things Grant thought about government, he had to admit that the Olympia schools were excellent. They were taking care of his little Cole and that was all that mattered.

  Cole got better and better. By his later years of elementary school, he could string sentences together. It was still very hard for him to understand people he wasn’t used to. People like his family had gotten used to how to talk to him, but others didn’t know.

  Manda took amazingly good care of her little brother. She spent a lot of her free time helping him talk and asking him questions to get him to talk. It was heartwarming. Cole came to depend on his big sister. When she was gone, Cole would ask, “Where is Sissy?” He could handle her being gone, but he was much more comfortable with her around.

  Grant had a nontraditional father/son relationship with Cole.

  They were very close and Grant spent all the time he could with Cole. But not being able to communicate well put a crimp in the formation of the relationship. Grant learned that hanging out with Cole meant just being in the same room with him; it didn’t mean talking. Cole got more and more comfortable with Grant just being there and not trying to talk to him all the time. Once the comfort was there, then Cole would let Grant talk to him.

  Even when Cole was in middle school, Grant felt like he had a young boy instead of a middle school student. Grant would notice other dads talking to their sons like Grant talked to Cole, and then realize that the other boys were three or four years old. It was very hard on Grant. He loved Cole, and Cole was doing so much better than a kid with a full case of autism, but Grant still struggled.

  Cole was on a little league team. They gave him a few breaks like pitching him soft balls. At first he didn’t get the part about running to first base but once someone showed him, he did fine. He even hit a homerun one time and ran the bases. He would be OK. Different, but OK.

  Cole’s autism had a big effect on Grant. He realized that the “perfect” suburban life—a nice house, lots of stuff, vacations—wasn’t so perfect. Family was what mattered. Grant felt this urge to disregard the expectations of being a “normal” suburban family and became fixated on ensuring that his family could make it through whatever bad things came their way. Grant was the man in the family, and this was what men did. He started working more reasonable hours and stopped letting his mind be occupied with how to climb the résumé ladder.

  Grant became a Christian. One night he just said, “God, I can’t do this on my own. I need You.” Right as he said that, he had the overpowering sensation that everything would ultimately be alright, but after lots of misery and sacrifice. It was more than just optimism; it was a certainty that amazing things were ahead of him. It was the path again: He couldn’t see into the future, but he knew—with absolute certainty—the general direction things would go. He started to see that people put into his life would be part of the coming amazing things and that he and they had been placed in this place at this time for a reason. He didn’t want people to think he was crazy so he didn’t talk about it. He essentially became a secret Christian.

  During this time, Grant kept thinking about how he was the man and it was his job to get his family through whatever came in the future. He thought about how dependent they were on society. They relied on many other people for things like food, fixing things, personal protection. These were all the things that he used to know how to do in Forks but had lost. It was just a little thought at this point. He didn’t actually do anything to act on the little thought. But he thought it. Over and over again. It was like someone was trying to tell him something.

  Chapter 10

  Other People’s Money

  Grant’s work at WAB was going great, but it was coming at price. The part he loved the most was working for WAB to help its members who were getting screwed by government. It was extremely satisfying to have people like Big Sam break down in tears of gratitude. Grant thrived on that.

  There was a price to it, though. Grant fought people all day, every day. Suing the government is not easy. They fight dirty. They would constantly pull tricks and underhanded stunts. They would lie and Grant would lose cases where his client was right but unwilling to lie to counter their lies. The bureaucrats on the other side would try to set Grant up. They filed a complaint against him with the Bar Association, which had the power to take away his law license. He was completely innocent, so he won, but it was incredibly stressful. This stress began taking its toll. His blood pressure was starting to go up.

  He would come home from work—the “fist fight” as he called it—and would snap at his wife and kids. He would apologize but he couldn’t just go from a fight to the calm of his home in an instant.

  One time, Grant was driving home after a junior government attorney he was winning against had falsely accused him of trying to physically threaten her. Even as he was nearing his house, he was still frothing mad that this lawyer would accuse him of that and that she might call the police and then he’d have to prove his innocence. Grant pulled in the driveway and hit the garage door button. He knew that when he hit that button he had to put all the anger and fighting away. He owed that to Lisa; it wasn’t fair for him to come home and be furious for hours. But, Grant couldn’t stand it. Someone had falsely accused him of a crime. Yet he had to just be calm and tell his wife he had a good day at the office. Grant stopped in the driveway. He just stopped.

  Then it hit him. He was a fighter. Grant fought people all day long. Not with guns or fists, but with law and politics. But it was fighting just the same. He was learning how to fight; how to not fear his opponent, and how to channel the anger into an advantage while controlling his outward emotions. Grant didn’t want to fight, but he was always found himself in a position where he had to do so to help innocent people. He realized that ever since he punched his dad in the face that he had been placed on a path of fighting and winning. He felt like these obstacles were being placed in front of him to teach him how to fight.

  You are being taught to fight. You will need this fighting spirit even more for what’s next.

  What was that? It was like an outside thought, as if someone was talking to him, but not with words he could hear. It was… an outside thought. But it was loud and clear.

  Grant was stunned. He just sat in the driveway for a while. Did that just happen? Was an outside thought talking to him? That was crazy. But there was no mistaking it. An outside thought had spoken to him.

  The kids came out of the house because they
heard the garage door go up but hadn’t seen their dad come in. As they were coming up to him, Grant was in a trance realizing that all these fights he was forced to take on had a bigger purpose. The outside thought had said so. It was crystal clear.

  Grant rebelled. He didn’t want to listen to the outside thought.

  He screamed at the steering wheel, “I don’t want to fight! I want to be normal. Why do I have to do this?”

  The windows were up so the kids didn’t hear him. He snapped out of the trance and saw his two fabulous kids. They were so happy to see him; smiling and waving. How could he be in a bad mood when they were so happy to see him?

  A few days later, back at the office, Grant got a call from a WAB member named Ed Oleo. His case was unusually egregious but it illustrated what was going on in the larger sense of things.

  Ed was a real estate agent who owned a small real estate agency. He was a nice guy. He caught the head of the Board of Real Estate Licensing, a corrupt man named Bart Sellarman, underdisciplining an agent for a large real estate agency. The underdisciplined realtor had stolen almost a million dollars from clients but, because he had connections, got a $1,000 fine. Ed was outraged and started talking to other real estate agents about how Sellarman was giving sweetheart deals to some realtors. Word got back to Sellarman that Ed was accusing him of corruption.

  Ed had to have a real estate license to be in business, and having a real estate license meant that the Board had the power to inspect every aspect of Ed’s business. Lo and behold, Ed was selected for a “random” audit by Sellarman. Ed wasn’t concerned; he had always been honest so they could look at whatever they wanted.

  Sellarman found that Ed had improperly allowed “unlicensed” realtors to work at this company. Ed was puzzled because all of his agents were fully licensed. It turned out that a law mandating that an agent from another state had to take the Washington real estate exam before selling real estate had been repealed about two years ago. The new law said there was a grace period, and that the out-of-state realtor could take up to one year to get his or her Washington license. Sellarman found that one of Ed’s agents had only had an Oregon license for eight months but then got a Washington one. But, Ed explained, this was legal now.

  “That’s not my interpretation,” Sellarman told Ed. Sellarman told Ed that the new law, passed by the Legislature, did not apply until the Board wrote regulations enacting it. Yes, but the law says what it says, Ed argued, and it was passed by the Legislature. No “interpretation” in Board regulations is necessary. Besides, Ed thought, no state agency could write mere regulations overturning a statute passed by the Legislature.

  Grant backed Ed and explained to Sellarman that the statute is the law; it doesn’t take Board regulations to make a law of the State of Washington effective. This was not good enough for Sellarman. He revoked Ed’s license for violating a repealed law. Then Sellarman revoked the real estate licenses of all of Ed’s employees for working at an “unlicensed” real estate company. Sellarman didn’t care about all these innocent people; he was vicious, vindictive, and, thanks to how much power the good people of Washington State had handed to their “public servants,” had the unlimited power to do this.

  Of course, the law didn’t allow taking away the licenses of people based on repealed laws. But it would take a “hearing” in front of the Board of Real Estate Licensing which was presided over by Sellarman. Ed and his employees could appeal to the county court in Olympia that heard all the appeals of state agency decisions. The judges on the court were very pro-agency. Olympia was a company town and making sure government worked smoothly—that is, got its way—was the job of most people there, including the “impartial” judges. Ed and the employees could appeal to the court of appeals, and then the state Supreme Court.

  Each one of these three or four steps would cost Ed about $50,000 and take nearly a year, while he had no license to be in business and couldn’t make any money. So he had “due process” appeal rights, but they cost more money than anyone had, and took longer than anyone could take. This was big government’s approach to Constitutional rights: they still exist, but we’ve created a system where no one can actually use them. You have appeal rights; good luck exercising them. Now do what we say.

  Ed got physically ill over this. Besides nausea and vomiting, he had a host of other ailments. The ordeal was devastating. Long- standing clients were leaving in droves. Ed’s wife was furious at him for “making a big deal” out of Sellarman’s corruption and thereby costing them money. She threatened divorce and made him move out for a while. He was a wreck. He had spent hundreds of thousands on his attorney, who was getting beaten repeatedly in court. The judges kept deciding that the Board had “discretion” to carry out its important regulations. After all, the Board had to have “discretion” to protect the public from all those evil companies.

  Out of money and totally desperate, Ed called WAB. Grant took the case.

  About this time, a new junior lawyer came to WAB to help Grant with all the cases he was getting. Eric Benson was a smart guy who was fresh out of law school. He was really devoted to the cause; even more conservative than Grant. He was a libertarian, actually. Eric shared Grant’s hatred of government and actually hated it more. Eric would stay up at night thinking of ways to defeat bureaucrats. Eric was Grant on steroids.

  Eric started working with Grant on Ed Oleo’s case night and day. Eric had dug up some interesting information out about Sellarman and his finances. (Grant was afraid to ask how Eric got the information.) It seems that Sellarman, who earned a relatively modest state salary, had all kinds of assets like boats, a race horse, and a condo in Mexico. It was obvious Sellarman was taking bribes to let people off if they paid him. By the time Grant and Eric were done with Sellarman, the Board of Real Estate Licensing agreed to drop all the charges against Ed and his partners and settled the retaliation claims for $200,000. Sellarman was not fired, of course.

  On the day he had to hand over the check for the $200,000 of tax payer money, Sellarman confidently told Grant and Eric, “So what? It’s just other people’s money. We’ve got more. Much more. See you in round two.”

  WAB’s attempts to get the Governor’s Office to fire Sellarman were laughed at. Sellarman, it was explained, was “protecting consumers.” Government was not protecting people—it was terrorizing them.

  No one outside of WAB seemed to care. Grant wanted to scream to them to forget all that crap they learned in school and on the news about fair government employees protecting the public by using reasonable regulations. That might have been true forty years ago, but now government had so much more power. Ed’s business was in the hands of a guy like Sellarman who could shut him down just to get some quick bribes or to get even. The courts were letting it happen. It took something unusual like finding out about Sellarman’s corruption to stop it.

  Ed’s view of how government worked was forever shattered. “I’m a Democrat,” Ed told Grant and Eric at their celebratory dinner after winning. “Hell, I even donated money to the Governor’s last campaign and she’s the one who just told us that Sellarman is a faithful public servant doing his job.” He was stunned by all of this.

  “I thought,” Ed continued, “that all these agencies were here to help people and be the one fair referee in the system.” Ed looked like he was now embarrassed to be saying it. “Everyone I know thinks like I used to. My friends think I’m making all this up until they see the check Sellarman had to write me. They all think like I used to. How can everyone be so wrong?”

  “I know, man,” Grant said. “I deal with this all the time.” That’s all Grant could say.

  “They’re evil bastards,” Eric said. “Evil. That’s the answer.”

  The majority of regulators were not like Sellarman but it only took a few like him to make the system corrupt. Grant started to feel like there were two universes. One universe was where normal people just went about their business not caring about what was happening,
and another world where Sellarmans were out destroying people. The universes existed simultaneously. Why didn’t people care? Why?

  Ed, Grant, and Eric were silent for a while, trying to figure out the answer. It was beginning to ruin the celebratory mood of the dinner. Then Ed looked Grant and Eric in the eye and said something that was obviously hard for him to say.

  “When are people going to stand up and fight back?” he asked.

  “When are we going to put a stop to this?”

  “Soon,” Eric said with a smile. He looked like he would enjoy that day.

  Grant thought and answered. “The problem, Ed, is that only a small percentage of the population ever gets screwed like you did. Most people just live off the system and don’t care. But the number of Ed Oleos out there is growing and growing. The government is getting more bold and brazen each year. They’re drunk with power. No one can really stop them. They’re creating more Ed Oleos. That’s how it will stop.”

  Grant paused. “I hope.”

  Chapter 11

  A Country Boy Can Survive

  The phone rang in the middle of the night. Grant knew that was never a good sign.

  “Hello?” He mumbled.

  “Grant, it’s mom.” He hadn’t heard her voice in several years.

  Grant had not had any desire to go back to Forks for a visit, and his mom and dad never invited him. Things were always so tense on the few occasions when they were together. Larry was jealous of Grant’s success and interpreted all the good things in Grant’s life as a slam on Larry. And Larry hated Lisa. She was the “stuck up” one who made Grant leave the wonderful life he could have had in Forks. Grant and his parents were living totally separate lives.