a collection of memories
Most of these stories have been told to family and friends throughout my life. Many have never been told at all, till now.
On New Year's Eve of 1972, I left Vancouver in the middle of a snowstorm. I have no idea why I felt so compelled to leave the city that particular night in a blizzard, no less. I headed out in the early evening, hitch-hiking east on the Trans-Canada. I can't remember who gave me my first ride, but it wasn't far enough given my intention was to go as far east as Ontario. The second ride came as I stood on the highway just outside of Abbotsford. The man who stopped for me was thirtyish and looked like a regular guy, nondescript really. He seemed harmless. He was on his way to Chilliwack. I tried to strike up a conversation but his replies were cursory so I stopped; I kept my eyes on the highway, worrying about where I would spend the night since there was so little traffic and it didn't look like I'd be able to keep going through the night. It was blustering outside, the snowploughs weren't out yet, and the drifts accumulating on the road slowed us considerably. Finally, nearing Chilliwack ages later, he broke his silence and said something about how I wouldn't get too far that night and that I was welcome to spend the night at his place. He said it would be okay, that he lived with his brother, and that I would be safe. I asked him if there was a hostel in Chilliwack but he said no, no hostel. I decided to take my chances and accepted the invitation since I had no other options. It seemed a better prospect than spending the night in a snowbank.
We drove to his house, a low bungalow in a rundown residential quarter at the town's edge. In the driveway, he got out of the car without a word and went into the house, leaving the door open for me. I got a creepy feeling but followed him in anyway, lugging my backpack over my shoulder. Inside the door I saw a very fat man sitting in an armchair in front of a television in the living room; the brother, I presumed, though I wasn't introduced. The brother turned around and grunted at me. The other brother, the driver, pulled my backpack off my shoulder and took it into a room straight ahead of me. When he came out he said: "You can sleep in there." I thanked him and started to take my coat off, but then he asked if I wanted to go out for a drink, "it being new year's eve and all". I said sure. I would have preferred to go straight to sleep, but I didn't want to risk offending him. Also, I was nervous about being left alone with the fat brother.
We climbed back into the car and he drove us around downtown Chilliwack, looking for a bar, I think. He asked me a few questions in between long silences. I didn't tell him I was only fifteen and didn't have any fake ID. I figured if he thought I looked old enough to drink, then maybe I would be let in without being carded. Suddenly I realized that we were on a road leading out of the town. I asked where we were going and he said he knew a place. I felt nervous; in fact, it felt like I had a lead ball in my gut, but I kept quiet, involuntarily going along with his program. This was unusual behavior for me; I wasn't normally so compliant in situations where I wasn't comfortable. Generally, I spoke out or I did everything I could to extricate myself, regardless of the consequences, which in this case would mean spending the night outdoors in a snowstorm. As we drove along through the thickening snow, my agitation increased but still I hid it and kept silent. Something was wrong. It wasn't anything he said - he wasn't saying much at all - but something else. I sensed something sinister, and began to think about how I could get away from him. But it was already too late. My pack was at his house, and retrieving it now without causing some kind of scene seemed impossible.
He took me up the mountainside near Cultus Lake. I'd seen the sign at the turnoff. It was still snowing heavily as we climbed and the drifts in the road were thickening, but when we pulled into a parking area next to a huge lodge, the parking lot itself had been ploughed, though I hadn't seen any snow-blowers on the way there. In fact, we had not encountered any other vehicles once we got past the main road, and there were no other vehicles in the parking lot. I saw several lights on in the lodge which may have been a hotel now closed for the winter season. He said something about getting a drink, which I thought was odd given it was obvious the place wasn't open. I wondered about the lights though...and then suddenly we were going down the narrow road between great drifts on both sides. I was confused. My last memory was of sitting in the car in the parking lot looking at the lodge and wondering what we were doing there and now we were moving, driving down the mountain! But I didn't have much time to consider what had just happened because he turned off the road to the left and drove into a feeder road between two narrow fields. Now I knew he was up to something, but what? I couldn't figure out what was going on, why his behavior was so bizarre, why he wasn't talking to me, and now, why he had stopped the car. I started to say we were going to get stuck. Then he grabbed me. He pulled me toward him then he shoved me between the bucket seats and climbed on top of me. My head was jammed against the back seat at a perfect right angle. My arms were pinned down with his elbows, the weight of him suffocating me; I felt the pointed pressure of the gun he held at my left temple.
What the fuck was going on! What was he doing with a gun! Why was he doing this? To me!
And now he was talking, a staccato of words flying from his lips. Rapid fire words I didn't understand, though he was speaking English. And he was angry! Very, very angry. I could feel his aggression like sharp knives, piercing, wounding. While he was screaming at me, the few questions he had asked me in the last hours replayed themselves along with my responses: Do your parents know where you are? Well, they know I am in Canada. Do your friends know where you are? No, I don't really have friends around here, just people I meet along the way. Why did you leave the city tonight in this storm? I don't know, I just felt like it. Does anyone know you left? No, not really, I just left.
I realized his actions were premeditated.
He ranted and raved, going on and on about what he was going to do to me. Which was: tear my clothes off piece by piece, and 'fuck the hell' out of me both alive and dead, and when I was 'fucked to death' he'd cut me up into pieces and leave me for the wolves. Nobody would ever find me.
He was insane. I knew he was insane. Words tumbled out of my mouth. Questioning, imploring, pleading. And then reasoning. I remember trying to reason with him. I no longer remember exactly what I said, just the gist of it, something along the lines that I had never hurt him, not me, I had never done a single thing to harm him, ever, so why would he want to hurt me? I told him he could just stop, just stop now and let me up and I would forget that it ever happened, we could pretend that it never happened.
He kept on yelling at me and I kept on pleading.
Then, an eternity later, maybe minutes, he stopped screaming at me. I felt his anger, his violence, peel away from me and he lifted his body from mine. I didn't move a muscle. I hardly dared to breathe. He turned himself around, his head dropped over his arms and he sobbed into the steering wheel.
Some time passed before I moved. Only when I felt he wasn't going to go crazy again, did I push myself up between the seats and press my body against the passenger door. I thought about running, but where? What if I didn't make it out of the woods? We had come a long way up the mountain. There had been no other vehicles. I could freeze to death. I considered going back up to the lodge; there had been some lights, but something about that place made my skin crawl. Besides, if I tried to run I was sure he'd come after me, and then what? He had the gun.
He lifted his head. He put the gun inside his jacket. He didn't look at me. He turned the key in the ignition.
I felt violated. Terrorized.
The car warmed up. He shifted into first gear and turned into an opening on to the field. We got stuck as he started to back up into the feeder road. He didn't look at me when he said: get out and push. I got out, trudged through the snow to the front of the car and pushed all my weight against it. Surprisingly, the car moved, then reversed back on to the feeder road. I hurried back into my seat, and we made our way back to the road. We drove back down the mountain through the column of snow. He kept his eyes on the road and I kept my eyes glued to the frosty window, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
When we arrived at his house, his brother was still in front of the television. I went straight into the bedroom assigned to me and slept in my clothes with one eye open. Not a word had passed between us. The next morning I didn't see the brother, but a breakfast feast had been laid out on the dining table with a setting for one. The driver motioned me to sit. I ate everything while my mind raced to understand what had happened the night before and why. I was confused, but I wasn't afraid anymore; he wasn't going to hurt me. While I was eating he took my backpack and brought it out to the back seat of the car. He got into the driver's seat, turned on the engine, and waited for me.
He drove me out to the highway that morning never having said another word to me.
We drove to his house, a low bungalow in a rundown residential quarter at the town's edge. In the driveway, he got out of the car without a word and went into the house, leaving the door open for me. I got a creepy feeling but followed him in anyway, lugging my backpack over my shoulder. Inside the door I saw a very fat man sitting in an armchair in front of a television in the living room; the brother, I presumed, though I wasn't introduced. The brother turned around and grunted at me. The other brother, the driver, pulled my backpack off my shoulder and took it into a room straight ahead of me. When he came out he said: "You can sleep in there." I thanked him and started to take my coat off, but then he asked if I wanted to go out for a drink, "it being new year's eve and all". I said sure. I would have preferred to go straight to sleep, but I didn't want to risk offending him. Also, I was nervous about being left alone with the fat brother.
We climbed back into the car and he drove us around downtown Chilliwack, looking for a bar, I think. He asked me a few questions in between long silences. I didn't tell him I was only fifteen and didn't have any fake ID. I figured if he thought I looked old enough to drink, then maybe I would be let in without being carded. Suddenly I realized that we were on a road leading out of the town. I asked where we were going and he said he knew a place. I felt nervous; in fact, it felt like I had a lead ball in my gut, but I kept quiet, involuntarily going along with his program. This was unusual behavior for me; I wasn't normally so compliant in situations where I wasn't comfortable. Generally, I spoke out or I did everything I could to extricate myself, regardless of the consequences, which in this case would mean spending the night outdoors in a snowstorm. As we drove along through the thickening snow, my agitation increased but still I hid it and kept silent. Something was wrong. It wasn't anything he said - he wasn't saying much at all - but something else. I sensed something sinister, and began to think about how I could get away from him. But it was already too late. My pack was at his house, and retrieving it now without causing some kind of scene seemed impossible.
He took me up the mountainside near Cultus Lake. I'd seen the sign at the turnoff. It was still snowing heavily as we climbed and the drifts in the road were thickening, but when we pulled into a parking area next to a huge lodge, the parking lot itself had been ploughed, though I hadn't seen any snow-blowers on the way there. In fact, we had not encountered any other vehicles once we got past the main road, and there were no other vehicles in the parking lot. I saw several lights on in the lodge which may have been a hotel now closed for the winter season. He said something about getting a drink, which I thought was odd given it was obvious the place wasn't open. I wondered about the lights though...and then suddenly we were going down the narrow road between great drifts on both sides. I was confused. My last memory was of sitting in the car in the parking lot looking at the lodge and wondering what we were doing there and now we were moving, driving down the mountain! But I didn't have much time to consider what had just happened because he turned off the road to the left and drove into a feeder road between two narrow fields. Now I knew he was up to something, but what? I couldn't figure out what was going on, why his behavior was so bizarre, why he wasn't talking to me, and now, why he had stopped the car. I started to say we were going to get stuck. Then he grabbed me. He pulled me toward him then he shoved me between the bucket seats and climbed on top of me. My head was jammed against the back seat at a perfect right angle. My arms were pinned down with his elbows, the weight of him suffocating me; I felt the pointed pressure of the gun he held at my left temple.
What the fuck was going on! What was he doing with a gun! Why was he doing this? To me!
And now he was talking, a staccato of words flying from his lips. Rapid fire words I didn't understand, though he was speaking English. And he was angry! Very, very angry. I could feel his aggression like sharp knives, piercing, wounding. While he was screaming at me, the few questions he had asked me in the last hours replayed themselves along with my responses: Do your parents know where you are? Well, they know I am in Canada. Do your friends know where you are? No, I don't really have friends around here, just people I meet along the way. Why did you leave the city tonight in this storm? I don't know, I just felt like it. Does anyone know you left? No, not really, I just left.
I realized his actions were premeditated.
He ranted and raved, going on and on about what he was going to do to me. Which was: tear my clothes off piece by piece, and 'fuck the hell' out of me both alive and dead, and when I was 'fucked to death' he'd cut me up into pieces and leave me for the wolves. Nobody would ever find me.
He was insane. I knew he was insane. Words tumbled out of my mouth. Questioning, imploring, pleading. And then reasoning. I remember trying to reason with him. I no longer remember exactly what I said, just the gist of it, something along the lines that I had never hurt him, not me, I had never done a single thing to harm him, ever, so why would he want to hurt me? I told him he could just stop, just stop now and let me up and I would forget that it ever happened, we could pretend that it never happened.
He kept on yelling at me and I kept on pleading.
Then, an eternity later, maybe minutes, he stopped screaming at me. I felt his anger, his violence, peel away from me and he lifted his body from mine. I didn't move a muscle. I hardly dared to breathe. He turned himself around, his head dropped over his arms and he sobbed into the steering wheel.
Some time passed before I moved. Only when I felt he wasn't going to go crazy again, did I push myself up between the seats and press my body against the passenger door. I thought about running, but where? What if I didn't make it out of the woods? We had come a long way up the mountain. There had been no other vehicles. I could freeze to death. I considered going back up to the lodge; there had been some lights, but something about that place made my skin crawl. Besides, if I tried to run I was sure he'd come after me, and then what? He had the gun.
He lifted his head. He put the gun inside his jacket. He didn't look at me. He turned the key in the ignition.
I felt violated. Terrorized.
The car warmed up. He shifted into first gear and turned into an opening on to the field. We got stuck as he started to back up into the feeder road. He didn't look at me when he said: get out and push. I got out, trudged through the snow to the front of the car and pushed all my weight against it. Surprisingly, the car moved, then reversed back on to the feeder road. I hurried back into my seat, and we made our way back to the road. We drove back down the mountain through the column of snow. He kept his eyes on the road and I kept my eyes glued to the frosty window, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
When we arrived at his house, his brother was still in front of the television. I went straight into the bedroom assigned to me and slept in my clothes with one eye open. Not a word had passed between us. The next morning I didn't see the brother, but a breakfast feast had been laid out on the dining table with a setting for one. The driver motioned me to sit. I ate everything while my mind raced to understand what had happened the night before and why. I was confused, but I wasn't afraid anymore; he wasn't going to hurt me. While I was eating he took my backpack and brought it out to the back seat of the car. He got into the driver's seat, turned on the engine, and waited for me.
He drove me out to the highway that morning never having said another word to me.
The morning was bright, clear and crisp, and biting cold. The highway had already been ploughed and there were massive snowbanks on either side, so white they were blue. I jumped up and down, clapping my hands together, trying to keep warm. Not long after I had been dropped off a vehicle pulled over to the side of the highway just past the entrance ramp. I ran for it as best I could under the weight of my backpack.
The driver was a man in fifties, gruff looking with a hunter's cap on.
"I'm only going as far as Hope." he said.
"That's fine." I answered, as I shoved my pack onto the back seat and got into the passenger seat.
Putting the strange events of the night before behind me, I settled in for the ride. Today was a new day, a new beginning, the first day of a new year. It felt good to be on the road, heading closer to my destination, even if I didn't know exactly where that would turn out to be.
The summer before I became involved with a young man I had met at a hostel in Ottawa.
Continue...
The driver made a pass at me. When I rebuffed him, he got angry and pulled over to the side of the road. I thought he would tell me to get out but instead he made a grab for me.
"You asshole!" I screamed, as I turned for the door.