The Campus Kid
When I woke up in the attic at Myers Ranch the
next morning, early on the morning of October
2, a shotgun was cradled in my arms. I knew why.
I was waiting to kill two National Park rangers
when they came looking for the arsonists who had
burned their earthmover. Charlie had told me to
kill them, just as he had told me to kill before.
I looked down at the gun and knew, just as certainly
as I knew what he had told me, that I was not
going to use it. I was not going to kill again
for Charles Manson.
I'll never be sure exactly why I was able to
say no then, when for the past eight months it
had always been yes for Charlie. I think it had
something to do with being without drugs for two
or three weeks. Suddenly I didn't believe we were
ever going to find the secret hole into the Pit;
suddenly I knew the world was not going to end;
suddenly I was tired and hungry; suddenly I didn't
care what Charlie had told me to do-all I knew
was that I would not kill anyone. Not again.
I tossed down the gun and went downstairs as
fast as I could. Sorting through a pile of clothes
we had all shared, I picked out the best shirt
and pants I could find and ran out to a Dodge
power wagon we had parked behind the house. Now
it seemed inevitable that the rangers would be
there at any moment, and my hands shook as I started
the wagon and tore off down the Wash. Golar Wash
was never meant for driving, much less at the
speeds I was taking it, but I knew I had to get
away before Charlie or the rangers or anyone else
found me and stopped me. I knew if I could make
it to Ballarat, the town a few miles up from the
mouth of the Wash, I could hitch a ride back into
Los Angeles. I had to make it to Ballarat.
I finally roared out of the Wash onto the unpaved
road to ward town. About three quarters of the
way there I realized I was running out of gas.
I turned off the road and started out across the
salt flats-a shortcut across an air-force testing
ground to the road to Trona, eighteen miles or
so to the southwest. Halfway across the flats
the wagon died, bogged down in the salt and out
of gas. I jumped out and started walking, leaving
the door hanging open behind me. The sun beat
down, dazzling up from the white salt all around.
Suddenly there was an enormous roaring, like the
Apocalypse I'd been waiting for so long. I threw
myself flat on the ground just as an air-force
jet flew over me, hugging the flats so close I
was sure it would hit me. The sound waves rolled
off into the empty desert and I got up and walked
to the highway down to Trona where an old prospector
picked me up in his jeep.
It's a long ride from the desert to Los Angeles,
but I made it in one ride that took me to San
Bernardino. I called my parents and told them
I wanted to come home. When the money arrived
an hour later at Western Union, I went to a store
and bought a pair of Levi's, a coat, and new shoes.
It wasn't enough-I was shaggy and filthy, with
my hair full of sand and salt. I changed clothes
behind a building and gulped down a Big Mac. It
was the first meat I'd had in months and I thought
I was going to throw up.
A helicopter took me from the San Bernardino
airport to Los Angeles International and while
I was waiting for my flight to Texas I had my
hair cut and washed. When my sister and her husband
picked me up at Love Field in Dallas at five o'clock
the next morning, the first thing they said was
that my Los Angeles International haircut was
still too long for Texas. As soon as the barbershops
opened they took me in for another trim, before
my parents saw me. "And this time make him
look like a boy." I was home. Texas. Copeville
- a few white frame buildings scattered on either
side of the railroad; my father's store and gas
pumps; my mother in her kitchen with the picture
of the Last Supper over the dinner table. From
where I'd come it was as far away as the moon,
and just as unreal.
The Copeville I grew up in was like a lot of
small Texas towns in the fifties, only smaller.
Early in the century it had boasted a whole main
street, even one brick building, but by the time
I was born the years and the Great Depression
had wiped out most of that. Now the white wooden
buildings were separated by vacant lots scattered
with rusting junk. From beside the gas pumps out
in front of my father's store you could see nearly
all there was left of Copeville-peeling white
on gray, with green weeds sprouting up in the
open spaces in the spring.
My folks were married during the Depression and
spent several years living off a small garden
and a few animals until they scraped together
enough capital to buy one of Copeville's stores,
the whole place about the size of a single-car
garage. It had one gas pump in front-a real pump
that lived up to its name; you pumped the gas
by hand. Over the years they built their house,
enlarged the store, added new automatic pumps,
and had three children who they were determined
would have the chances they never did. They worked
hard; they believed in a God who rewarded hard
work and simple values. They believed in an America
that was always right and would never change-not
in any way that couldn't be made right by an appeal
to the way "decent" folks had always
done things.
I was born on December 2, 1945, exactly two months
after V-J Day. America was the moral champion
of the world. And it would always be that way.
We would always fight on the side of right and
justice, and the wars we fought we would win.
It wasn't for nothing that Eisenhower added "under
God" to the flag salute shortly after I started
school.
God was very much a part of my world. He was
the One you talked to every Sunday at the Copeville
Methodist Church. He was the One who had long
blond hair and a beard (like no other man you
ever saw) and wore a white robe and sat under
palm trees with children on his knees in the Sunday-school
calendars. Next to my stuffed panda bear and my
older brother, God was probably one of my favorite
people. When I prayed as "I lay me down to
sleep," that the Lord would keep me, the
Lord was a hazy mix of that long-haired, bearded
man in the Sunday-school pictures, my mother,
and Santa Claus.
According to church records, I received Christ
as my personal Savior in August 1958 and was baptized
and received into church membership. What I remember
most vividly was being told in class one Sunday
morning that two other kids and I had reached
the age at which we would join the church and
be sprinkled. For some reason I didn't like the
sound of that so I ran all the way home and hid
under the covers, even though I was twelve years
old. I finally went through with it, to please
my parents and because it was what you did when
you turned twelve. I wasn't even conscious of
any deception in the act. Being in church and
being a Christian were just part of what it meant
to be a young American boy, a Scout, a good citizen,
and a Future Farmer of America. Religion was important,
especially for women and old people, but the only
folks who got carried away with it were some blacks
and poor white trash that we called "Holy
Rollers." I never saw a "Holy Roller"
in the flesh, but I knew that they were almost
as "bad" as the Catholics.
As I got older, I was involved in activities
at church, even led devotions for the youth group
and gave talks for Sunday-night evangelistic services.
Inside, I was beginning to feel as if God and
my mother had one more thing in common-they both
wanted to hold me down, keep me from doing the
things I wanted to. They both said, "No!"
and "Bad!" to some of the urges I was
starting to feel, especially about girls. But
Mom wasn't very hard to fool, so I supposed God
wouldn't be either.
My childhood was very happy. There was an older
brother with whom I only started to feel I had
to compete as I got into high school. There was
an older sister who raised me almost as much as
my mother. There was a big collie dog and there
were my projects. Even before I started school
I began making things with my hands-little cars,
models, toys. And from the time I was six I helped
my father in the store and worked on the onion
harvest each year.
After my arrest, the media had a field day comparing
Copeville's Charles Watson - honor student, track
star (my record in high hurdles still stands),
Yell Leader, the boy next door with the crew cut
and the prize-winning calf-to the doped-up killer
who grinned stupidly out of Life magazine with
glazed eyes. "If it can happen to an all-American
boy like this," the articles and picture
spreads seemed to be asking, "what about
your own children?"
I went to school in Farmersville, a few miles
up the road from Copeville. It was home of the
"Fighting Farmers" and had also been
the home of Audie Murphy. Some people thought
I might be the next son of Farmersville to bring
fame and pride to that dusty little community.
When I was only ten a local reporter commented
in print on my industry in gathering and selling
crawdads to fishermen on a nearby lake. Three
times during my years in high school I was chosen
"Campus Kid" by the Hi Life school newspaper
staff. They noted that I was active in everything
from the school band to the yearbook to the paper
itself to drama. And there was sports.
My brother had been a football hero at Farmersville
High before me, and I very quickly realized I
had a legend to live up to. I was determined to
better it. In eighth grade I entered my first
track meet and walked away with five first-place
blue ribbons. They were not the last. My mother
kept them all in an old tie box and as the semesters
went by, meet after meet, the box started getting
stuffed. I wasn't content with just track-I went
out for basketball and lettered in football, left
halfback. I played on district teams, was voted
honorable mention, alldistrict. I won more ribbons
and my mother started collecting clippings from
the sports pages of the local papers.
In my junior year I became co-sports editor of
Hi Life with my buddy Tommy Caraway. Although
we'd have been embarrassed by the word at the
time, I really loved Tommy. We hung around together,
worked on the sports section of the yearbook,
talked about our futures, what we wanted out of
life. It seemed as if what we mainly wanted at
that point was women. We'd tool around the country
roads in a 1956 Mercury two-door hardtop I'd bought
from my brother-in-law and sneak beer and water-ski
in the hot summer months. We thought we'd live
forever.
I was determined to go to college. I worked summers
and afternoons in an onion-packing plant, saving
money, and in between school and work I found
time to rebuild cars (a skill of mine Manson would
find useful a few years later) and make a pool
table from scratch, even time to get to know a
particular girl who gossip had it was "easy."
I think one reason the sexual freedom I found
later in California, especially in the Family,
seemed so liberating at the time was the fact
that sex was never discussed much in my family-somehow
it seemed forbidden, secret, dirty. Growing up
in the country, you couldn't help discovering
how things worked, and as strange changes started
happening in your body there were always other,
wiser boys who could tell you what "it"
was like and how to get it, even if you didn't
talk about it at home. There were the usual whispered
conversations in locker rooms and on overnight
visits, the Playboy centerfolds sneaked out of
an older, college-age brother's room and shared
among the team, the campus rumors about which
girls would and which wouldn't. In that day before
the Pill, there was always the chance of pregnancy,
and you knew once that happened it was a church
wedding and baby pictures seven months later.
The problem was that the girls you'd want to marry
didn't, and the girls that did weren't the kind
of girls you took home to meet your folks for
Sunday dinner.
It's probably hard for kids growing up today
to understand, but the early sixties, at least
in Texas, were still times when stealing a quick
caress on top of some high-school junior's bra
in the backseat of a buddy's car seemed unbelievably
exciting and forbidden and could provide fantasy
material for weeks. And no matter how bad my mother
or the church might say it was, I knew what I
wanted and I found a girl who would give it to
me. The only problem was the fact that her reputation
had spread beyond the locker room. My parents
told me not to see her anymore. That didn't stop
me-we just met in secret for those clumsy encounters.
If I felt any guilt at all, it just added to the
excitement. I told myself that my parents just
didn't understand what it was like to be sixteen
. . . . Just like-good Methodists that they were-they
made a big fuss about beer, but once I tried it
I found out you didn't get roaring drunk on your
first sip.
My parents' world of church and God and rules
wasn't what I wanted. I was a success, I could
handle my life without them or that pale-faced
Jesus in the church magazines. I started to think
about getting out, finding a larger, more exciting
world where everybody didn't know you and every
false step wouldn't get reported and discussed
within twenty-four hours behind the counter of
my father's store.
(Will You Die For Me? Copyright 1978, by Ray
Hoekstra. Published by Cross Roads Publications,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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