I think it was only Hunter who threw things. It may be that Sandy threw things also, though even now I recoil inside at the thought. Certainly my mother wouldn’t do such a thing to our family. And throwing something at Hunter with the intention of hurting him, or to intentionally break something important to him, would be like jabbing a rabid grizzly bear with a spear. His retaliation would be massive and without mercy.
One night, while I lay awake, waiting for the screaming to stop, there came again the crash of something smashing against the floor or the wall. This time it was too much. I jumped out of bed and walked out into the kitchen, hoping that the sight of me would make them stop.
It worked. They saw me and stopped shouting, looked away in embarrassment, and told me not to worry and to go back to bed. I did, and there was no more fighting that night.
There were other fights, of course. For a while I found that by getting out of bed and walking into the kitchen, I could make them stop. Eventually, this approach no longer worked. I would make my appearance, they would stop, I would go back to sleep, and then they would begin flogging each other again. Finally, one night I walked out into the kitchen and waited for them to stop, and they just kept fighting.
I couldn’t let this continue. I thought that perhaps I could help sort things out for them. I listened for a while to Sandy, and I listened to Hunter’s responses. If I understood the issue, I thought, surely I could help them come to an understanding, and they would calm down so our world would stop shaking. But Sandy was crying, always crying, and sometimes screaming in frustrated rage. Sometimes I could barely understand her words because she was screaming or sobbing. Hunter was angry too, but even when he was roaring, he was angry in a controlled and directed way. They were like two boxers, one calm and experienced, the other wild, exhausted, flailing in undisciplined rage and desperation. The difference was that Hunter used words, not his fists, as his weapons. Whatever Sandy said, Hunter would take those words and twist them. She would become angrier, more frustrated, and more unhinged.
It was clear to me that the antidote to this craziness was reason, calm, and some mediation. They would smile and kiss, and all would be well again in our home. My mother needed an advocate, someone who could calmly defend her and get my father to listen. She took care of me every day, bought my clothes, fed me, drove me to see my friends, and tucked me in at night. At the time, it seemed right and necessary that I should step up and be that advocate. I spoke in my quiet twelve-year-old voice, and tried to explain to Hunter what Sandy had just said, and suggested that they calm down.
I had no effect. They went right on with the death match, my mother doomed every time to humiliating failure. I tried a few more times to introduce reason and was consistently ignored. I began to realize that Hunter was interested in winning, not understanding.
I began to suspect that his misunderstanding was intentional, more than that—malicious. He was trying to break her down. He didn’t care what she was trying to say, he cared about breaking her. And that’s what he did. With a combination of deliberate distortions and carefully chosen words that would inflict maximum hurt, along with his deep and powerful voice, he crushed her, over and over again, until she understood that he was the master, that he was in control.
As I watched these fights, I began to understand these things about my father on a gut level. Whereas earlier I saw a lack of communication, I began to see a deliberate intent to harm, and that was when I began to hate my father. I saw him bullying, provoking, and insulting my mother. Before, I had assumed my father broke things in a thoughtless rage, but now I began to suspect that he broke things that were important to Sandy to inflict greater pain. He was in a fury, yes, but I began to believe that there was a vein of deliberate cruelty running through his rage.
Sometimes I would be especially angered by something he said, and I would speak up to defend my mother. Thankfully, he ignored me. Had he turned his full rage and malice on me then, I am sure I would have been incinerated like a soldier before a flamethrower.
Finally, one night, my mother invited the outside world in. She did the unthinkable and called the state patrol. Two troopers showed up within minutes and they looked profoundly nervous, no doubt having heard all kinds of rumors about the dangerous, anarchic, heavily armed drug fiend and his gun collection. This legendary fiend greeted them calmly at the door, shook hands with them, and apologized for their having to come out to a scene like this. He was relaxed, smiling, and charming. He intimated that Sandy was drunk, that they had had a disagreement, like married couples do, and she had become hysterical and called the police. Their relief was obvious. They would not have to try to arrest this man, there would be no showdown with guns. This was a simple domestic incident between a calm and reasonable man and his drunken wife.
One of the officers spoke to my mother. Sandy was crying, and mumbled and sobbed something about what he had done, only a few words of which they could understand. Hunter continued his good-old-boy routine, and after fifteen or twenty minutes they left. They had done nothing to help her. She had invoked the plan of last resort and it had no effect. He made it clear to her that she was utterly helpless. I was outraged; he was a monster, a bastard, and a dangerous man.
What is so remarkable now, as I look back, is that she very likely was drunk, and so was he. Hunter had been drinking heavily and consistently since he was a teenager, and by the mid-’70s my mother was drinking heavily as well. In retrospect, it would be naïve to think that those vicious fights did not proceed directly from a long night of boozing and the ingestion of who knows what that stripped away all self-control and perspective. But this did not occur to a twelve-year-old at the time, and I was incensed that he was telling the police my mother was a drunk. It never occurred to me that had they been sober, those terrible fights might never have taken place. But based on what I knew and understood then, it was crystal clear to me that my father was a beast, and my mother his victim.
With Hunter and Sandy in the kitchen at Owl Farm in the late 1970s. By this time the kitchen got an upgrade to butcher-block countertops, some tile, and a new stove.
The only thing that changed after that night with the police was that my mother, without Hunter’s knowledge, began sessions with a Gestalt therapist. She told me his name was Stewart. They met once a week and she seemed happier after their meetings. She and my father still fought constantly, and when a fight became a pitched battle in the middle of the night, I still got up and watched. I was no longer interested in mediating because it was clear my father was not interested in the facts; I was now gathering evidence against him, and those fights provided plenty of it.
In the midst of this foul craziness, Hunter announced one day in the fall of 1977 that I was going sailing in the Bahamas with Jimmy Buffett, at the time a little-known musician with a few radio hits. I was to be a member of the crew—the cabin boy, I was told. It was to be for about a month, there would be other guests coming and going from the boat, and Jane, Jimmy’s fiancée at the time, would be with us. I was thrilled. I had been a fan of Buffett for a couple of years and had learned by heart all the songs on his first couple of albums. I had also been taking sailing classes at a reservoir near Aspen, and the idea of being able to sail on a real sailboat on the ocean was irresistible.
Looking back, it seems very strange that my parents would have agreed to take me out of school and send me off to spend a month on a sailboat in the Bahamas with a bunch of strangers and a guy who already had a reputation as a man who liked to party. It turned out Hunter had asked Jimmy to take me sailing. While working on this book I asked Jimmy how that trip came about. He said Hunter was worried about me. Hunter was concerned about the effect of the divorce on me, and thought that some time away from Aspen would be good for me. “I always thought it was out of a true sense of love that he made that decision to send you sailing with me,” he told me.
More broadly, Jimmy said Hunter was very concerned about the effect his lifestyl
e had on me. He said, “Like all of us back then, we were not that equipped to be responsible parents and I think that bothered him. It bothered me. I guess in a way we wanted to raise you to pearls, not oysters, but I believe were mistaken in the belief that how we lived our lives would work for our kids.
Hunter and Jimmy Buffett in Buffett’s apartment in Key West, where Hunter spent several months
“Hunter was always concerned about your well-being,” he said, “and admitted on several occasions to me that he felt guilty about how he lived his life, and how it might affect you. I think that was the reason he asked me to take you sailing….I think he was very happy that you and I developed a bond, I think that was what he was hoping for, as he might have seen me as less crazy than him and some kind of a better influence that he was able to produce.” When I asked him how he saw my relationship with Hunter change over the years, he said, “As you got older, I truly believe you were an anchor for him. As his world seemed to get crazier the older he got, he really cherished you.”
I didn’t know any of this at the time, though I wish I had. I just knew I was going sailing in the Bahamas with my favorite musician. And, just as important, I could escape the dreadful tension at home that was becoming increasingly more oppressive. I flew down to Miami by myself and met Jimmy and Jane. We spent a week or so there while the work on Buffet’s new thirty-three-foot fiberglass-hulled ketch, Euphoria, was being completed. He was having all manner of customizations added to it—ratlines, lots of teak, and old-fashioned port/starboard brass lamps. I hung out on the boat, running errands with the carpenters, doing whatever odd jobs needed to be done. I remember the omnipresent smell of powerful weed. I also remember one evening sitting at the top of the ladder leading down into the cabin while several adults gathered around the galley table talking and listening to James Taylor’s latest album. Suddenly a lot of white powder went spraying across the table onto the floor, and two or three agitated adults were immediately on their knees trying to gather all that powder back together.
Once the boat work was complete, we set sail for Bimini, just east of Miami across the Gulf Stream. I remember midway across, in the midst of a storm that drove Miss Jane and me belowdecks to wait out our seasickness, Jimmy suddenly yelled for help. I popped my head up and saw the bow of a giant freighter like a black wall looming up over us out of the pouring rain. In his haste to get on deck, P. J. O’Rourke, a young journalist at the time, staggered out of the tiny bathroom and lurched for the ladder to the deck, one hand holding his pants, which were still hanging around his knees. The freighter narrowly missed us, and we made it safely to the port of Alice Town in the Bimini Islands, where Hemingway had spent some time, according to a plaque in the local bar.
We sailed leisurely south along the string of tiny islands that make up the Bahamas, anchoring each night off the shore of some nameless hillock of an island with a deserted white sand beach and crowned by a tuft of pale green vegetation. The sky was clear and the water was warm, and we often jumped off the boat in the mornings or evenings to swim and cool off. Sometimes we stopped at a small town for groceries, conch fritters, and for the adults a cold beer at the local bar. We stopped for a few days in Nassau and finally reached Great Exuma Island where I disembarked for the flight home to Colorado.
Various friends of Jimmy’s came and went during the trip. I was crew and cabin boy, and on safe stretches I would take the helm and hold a compass heading as though our lives depended on it. I was determined to be a good helmsman to validate Jimmy’s trust in me, and I focused my whole being on holding the boat to the course. I can still see clearly the large compass dial with its white digits on a black background mounted just in front of the wheel and the dim red light that illuminated it during night cruises.
Jimmy taught me how to read charts and how to plot our position using a bearing compass and dead reckoning. He began to teach me to use the sextant to determine our position from the angle of the sun, but that was a tricky art that I did not master before the end of the journey. I learned how to properly tie off a line on a cleat, how to use the winches, how to set the anchor, and how much slack to leave in the chain. I learned how to lower the sails and fold them so that they would unfurl neatly when raised again. I became captain of the Zodiac rubber dinghy that we towed behind us, and I was light enough that I could get it to plane on the water when I cranked open the throttle of its small Mercury outboard motor. I also learned how to scrub teak, polish brass, coil line, and do other lowly tasks suitable for a cabin boy. And I loved it. This wasn’t work, this was an apprenticeship, and I wanted to master it.
At one point we were staying at Staniel Cay for a few days, and I wanted a sweatshirt that had the Staniel Cay Yacht Club logo printed on it. I had not come on this trip with any money, so I asked Jimmy if he could buy it for me. He agreed, but in return he told me I would have to scrub the icebox on the boat. It was a deal. The next day I crawled down into the icebox, just a big insulated box under the cockpit seats large enough for a thirteen-year-old boy to crouch in, and spent a couple of hours in the hot sun scrubbing the surfaces, draining the scum, and then restocking it with ice, then food. It was hard work, but I didn’t mind it a bit. I considered myself lucky to earn that sweatshirt. More than that, I was eager to have chores and work. I wanted to learn to be a sailor, I wanted to earn my right to take the helm and determine our position. Jimmy was a patient teacher and he was happy to do it, and when circumstances called for it, as when we were nearly run down by that freighter, he was firm and knowledgeable.
It was an extraordinary trip. Jimmy was famously laid-back, we were in no hurry, the weather was calm, the whole pace of life in those tiny islands was slow and easy. Best of all, there was no fighting, no screaming, just a boatful of slow-moving, stoned, happy people. Except me, of course. No drugs for the cabin boy.
As I look back on that trip, though, what stands out most clearly is not the sailing and the water and the beaches, wonderful as that was, but the lack of tension and the surrogate fathering of Jimmy. For that time he filled a great need in me for the attention, care, and guidance of a man who gave me the opportunity to earn his trust and respect. I will always be grateful to him.
When I returned home the situation had not improved. I hadn’t thought about it the whole time I was gone, except to appreciate the lack of tension, and I’m sure this is exactly what Hunter hoped for. Later that spring things finally came to a head. It happened during the day, when I wasn’t home. What I know is from my mother, and her memories of that day are in turn filtered through more than thirty years and, like all memories, like my own memories, are shaped by what she wanted to remember.
She was in her room when Hunter came in, yelling at her about something. She looked up and told him, “Hunter, I’m going to get a divorce.” She says he became furious, began searching the room for her journal writings, and when he found them he built a fire in the fireplace and started burning the pages, along with her photos. At that point Sandy called the sheriff’s office to ask for help in leaving the house. The sheriff and his deputies were doing an all-day encounter workshop together (this was Aspen in the ’70s, and the sheriff, Dick Keinast, had a degree in philosophy and theology), and there was only one deputy on duty. Shortly afterward the deputy, a young, soft-spoken man, who like all the deputies at the time did not carry a gun, came to the door. He asked, “Does he have any guns?” She told him that he did, that he had many, and that they were loaded. She says he was obviously frightened. Then Hunter came to the door and told him, as he had told police before, that he was sorry he had to come all this way, that his wife had been drinking again, and that there was no problem. He might as well leave. Meanwhile, the fire was still burning, and Hunter continued to put more of her papers and photos in the fireplace. Sandy told the deputy that Hunter was burning her things, and she says he told her, “I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s nothing I can do.” With the deputy watching, she got the car keys, got in our blue Datsun 510 wago
n, probably only with her purse and the clothes she was wearing, and drove into Aspen to pick me up. She learned later that as soon as she left, Hunter piled most of her clothes in the driveway and set them on fire.
What strikes me now is that I used the pronoun “we” whenever I talked about that first separation. I said, “we left,” or, “when we left Hunter,” as if I helped to make the decision, as if Sandy and I were partners, rather than mother and son. Yet that’s exactly how it felt, that we were a team united against my father. To me, he was a very bad man who tormented my mother, whom I loved dearly and depended upon.
I remember riding in the car to a little motel in downtown Aspen, where we checked in. I remember it was important that Hunter not be able to find us because we thought he might hurt us if he did. He had an extensive network of friends and acquaintances in Aspen, which was a very small community, and in retrospect, I’m sure he knew exactly where we were, or at least he knew that he could find us with a couple of phone calls, and that he chose to not contact us. At the time, though, I only knew he was furious and dangerous, and I was terrified of what he might do if he found us. We stayed at the motel for a couple of days, and then we packed up the Datsun and drove west to California, to stay with Betty Benton and her children for a couple of weeks at her house in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.
Tom and Betty Benton were my parents’ best friends in the early and mid-’70s. Tom was a silk-screen artist, political activist, and Hunter’s collaborator for many years on broadsheets, book covers, and campaign posters, as well as the iconic Gonzo fist and blade. They had a three-story cinder-block gallery/home in the middle of Aspen that Tom had built with his own hands in the late ’60s. Tom’s studio was on the top floor, the gallery was at the front of the building, and the rest of the building was living space for Tom, Betty, and their two children, Brian and Michelle. Brian was a year older than I, Michelle a year or two younger. Brian and I were good friends and tormented his sister and her friends whenever we could.
Stories I Tell Myself Page 5