The Sons In His Eyes

By Garry G. G

An epic story of two brothers raised in sunny California, then forced to live in the desolate wilderness by their survivalist father. The only way in or out of their residence was by boat, snowmobile, or airplane. Set in the picturesque Denali Mountains outside Nenana, Alaska, this is a true story. Both brothers have struggled with loneliness, heartbreak, and loss. Following years of slave labor by their father, they forget what it's like to be kids. Year after year they toil in the frigid arctic weather, becoming survivalists themselves, but with criminal tendencies. They are societal outcasts. When these two boys finally escape the mountains and begin a new life in the nearby city of Fairbanks, they're not free for long. They soon discover that their father has been brutally murdered while they're away. To date, the cold case of their father's murder is still just that - a cold case. For the rest of their lives, these brothers are chained together by the loss of their past, loss of their childhood, and the loss of a parent in the most violent way: murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781640823228

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Dedication

This is for my father, mother, brother Sam, my son Ryan, Shelby, Spencer, Samantha, and Teyla.

It is also for Robin and the memory of Kimberly.

Acknowledgement

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following people for making this possible through their encouragement, and loyalty. I had no idea by simply writing my story it would impact so many.

Thank you Mom for everything. In addition to being my best friend and trusted confidant over the years, you are also the best secretary a son could ever want. To Ronnie Wingfield for putting up with my many different eccentric ideas. Also for being a brother and friend. Your vision and artistic nature are unparalleled. Thanks to Paul Mazzei for the effort and advice given towards this project and the many hours it took to get through this story in one piece. Thanks for teaching me how to ride the waves I love to create.

I would like to thank Troy Sterling and Ted Pronold for tirelessly listening to me and for being good people in a place where few exist. Thank you for allowing me the ability to be myself. I also want to thank My father who instilled in me a drive to succeed in this world against all odds. A special thanks to Thomas Keel for being my friend and brother through it all.

Blood…can it cry?

In Genesis the God of earth said it did

He states it cried out from the dirt

Alerting its God to the killing of Abel

Did it whisper to heaven…Did it cry out for legions of Angels?

The blood of young Abel I have considered…yet?

It’s the voice in his blood I will never forget

Blood…it does cry

After man’s death it will document out

According to Genesis it will seek out its author

a silent red thread knows it all

It updated God where it pooled on the ground

Abels cold blood didn’t die in his fall

While staining the earth it was ready to sound

It presented to God with a word in its mouth

If blood has a voice…can it hear…can it see?

Will the creator it’s reaper always come when it cries?

Does blood come to life in the throes of man’s death?

Considering Ables blood made me pause to reflect

Do all of bloods particles lead separate lives?

When blood speaks it’s voice is there life on its breath?

Will my own blood cry out when I die?

Blood

Chapter 1

Ever heard of a place called Manton, California? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s a little hippie town in Northern California that hasn’t changed much since the 1970s. My very first memories of it begin about 1976, when I was three years old. I remember we lived in a big house that was originally a hotel until my dad moved it to our ten-acre property on Old School House Road. I remember walking around our living room, laughing, while I went from one of my dad’s friends to another, eating marijuana roaches they had finished smoking. That day, I ate about sixteen.

My dad was a hippie in every sense of the word and saw nothing wrong with getting my little brother and me stoned. My brother, Dan, was two then, but I was so stoned I don’t remember where he was that day. He was probably stoned too. My mom was in a nearby town, shopping, and when she came home, she found Dan and I passed out on the living room rug. She was extremely angry, as you can imagine. In the fifteen years she was married to my dad, she was angry, hurt, and scared most of the time. He was a force of nature who had a way of making people love him and hate him equally. Everyone except me.

I have nothing but love for him.

My dad’s name was Gene. He was an average-sized man physically, but emotionally, he was crippled. Intellectually he was a genius. He was beaten severely as a child and physically bore those scars his entire life. He was also raised in a small town in Northern California called Millville. It hasn’t changed much since the 1970s either.

His father, whom I still refuse to call my grandfather, was a multimillionaire rancher. He was a cruel and hateful man who liked to beat my father with baling wire after tying him to a tree. He treated my dad like a slave, robbing him of his childhood. When my dad was a kid, after he lost his baby teeth, he was told to perform a task by his father yet failed somehow. For this failure, my father was hit in the mouth with a twelve-inch crescent wrench that broke his teeth and his jaw. He had to have all of his teeth removed and his jaw wired shut. My dad wore dentures his whole life.

When dad was fifteen years old, he hit his dad in the head and ran away. He went and found a telephone book, opened it, and put his finger down. It said Graham. That was how I got my last name. By birth, it would have been Sanford. I never met my dad’s father and was never allowed to ask much about him, as it would enrage my dad. The emotional scars he carried never healed, and despite his intellectual genius, they defined him. In many ways, it has defined me, because I soaked everything he was into myself as a child.

He was my idol.

My brother and I were born a year and ten days apart from each other in Red Bluff, California. We were best friends most of our lives and did everything together. Our father took a special interest in his two boys. We went everywhere and did everything with him. Even as babies of two and three years old, we were allowed to smoke marijuana and hang out with all his friends. Most of his friends were hippies or Hells Angels, who hung out at our house or Dad’s auto shop in a nearby town. We were always there and always stoned. I do not possess any sober childhood memories.

My mother was a refuge for my brother and I growing up. She was my rock. I don’t know what she ever saw in my father, but they couldn’t have been more different. My mother was honest, sober, sweet, and the most loving person I’ve ever known. When I was a child, she hated that Dad took us everywhere we really shouldn’t be and kept us stoned. My mother loved him and believed in him. He kept promising to change, but he never did. I believe she knew he never would and most likely never could.

My father was a criminal who stayed one step ahead of the law his entire life.

If he needed diesel fuel, he would load my brother and me into the truck, and we would go steal it from a fuel company in the middle of the night.

When I was about seven years old, my dad came into our room and woke Dan and I up about midnight one night. We got into the truck, and he drove us to the Coleman Fish Hatchery. He shut off the lights to the truck as he eased into the yard. He handed me a military survival .22 rifle known as a skeleton gun and told me to shoot anyone if they came while he was gone. He then slipped into the water and stole several hundred pounds of hatchery fish for our household to eat. I didn’t have a traditional childhood and didn’t learn the things a normal child should learn. I learned how to shoot, steal, and lie.

I also learned how to kill.

One of the things I heard more than anything growing up was Don’t tell your mother.

When she’d ask us where we had been or what we’d been doing, we’d lie to her with whatever story had been scripted to us by our dad before we got home. He also made certain when we were little, that what he said was the law. He made sure he was our best friend above all others. He did this by taking us with him and allowing us to do things, see things, and learn things we couldn’t talk about with Mom. He built our trust upon many layers of shared secrets. It created a bond that was unbreakable.

We always knew that with Dad, we would be doing something different and getting high with him. Most of the time, what we were doing was illegal but to a six- and seven-year-old boy, that equaled a lot of fun. My dad was also a very dangerous man and a killer. When I was a boy too young to remember, my dad shot a forty-year-old man in the chest with a .38 caliber pistol. I heard this story repeated many times over the years knowing it was true.

My father owned the auto repair shop in Shingletown, California, and spent most of his time repairing cars for the locals. One day, while my brother and I were home with my mother, two men pulled their car up to my father’s garage. Both were extremely drunk, and their car needed immediate repair. During this period of time Dad was recovering from a severely broken back and was in a lot of pain. He could barely walk, but when he did, it was in a shuffle, making him move much like a hunchback.

Shortly after repairing their vehicle, these two men began fighting with each other. They eventually left but returned not long after, needing a tow because they had crashed into a tree. My father agreed to help them and towed their car back to the shop. However, during the tow back to the garage, an argument ensued between one of the men and my dad regarding the fact that my father kept a gun at the shop. After they got out of the truck, one of the men broke the neck of his beer bottle and threatened to kill my dad with it. My father reached into the cab of his truck and grabbed the pistol he kept wrapped in a shop rag on the front seat. He then turned around and pointed the gun at the man while jacking the hammer back. He told them to leave before someone got hurt. He warned if either of them took even one step in his direction, he would kill them. Within seconds the inevitable happened when one of the men lifted his foot off the ground. Without hesitation he shot him in the chest.

Upon seeing how serious the situation had become, my father got on the phone to reach the Shasta County Sheriff’s office. He told them he had just killed someone and if they didn’t hurry up and get there, he would kill his friend too. Meanwhile, the dead man’s friend attempted to perform CPR, but it just caused big blood bubbles to rise then pop from the hole in his chest. Finally, after several moments passed, his friend realized he was dead and he went into a rage. Seeing this My dad pointed the gun at him and warned he would drop him right on top of his pal if he moved again. Shortly, the sheriff showed up to conduct an investigation of the incident and write a report detailing the facts. It was later ruled self-defense by grand jury. From that day forward, Dad warned Dan and I to never hesitate to kill anyone who posed a threat to our family. We were told never lay our hands on another man in harm unless we intended to kill him.

We were taught how to hunt, shoot, and kill as soon as we were old enough to hold a gun. In effect, my father was raising two little criminals that would bare those scars for life.

When you’re becoming a little boy, you don’t know you’re a little criminal, nor can you know how that will shape your life. Since we lived so far out in the boonies, we didn’t see a lot of other people. We lived our lives very different from other children our age, isolated from the rest of the world because my father was adamant about the secrets we shared never being disclosed. My poor mother didn’t know until too late what was being instilled into her two little babies. She knew he was getting us stoned, but no matter what she did, he kept doing it. The other stuff she learned later.

The one thing my dad always did was provide for his family. Growing up, Dan and I were made to work much harder than any other kid we knew. He always made us work. When he owned the auto shop, we were always being sent on errands to get one thing or another for him and we had to pay close attention. We cleaned the shop and learned how to work efficiently. If not, we had to suffer his angry tirades. We knew he loved us despite how hard he was on us. He would hit us with a belt, which hurt, but his words cut like razor blades. He would swear at us, using every foul word he knew, and it cut us to the core. However, he would come back without fail a few minutes after one of these tirades, in tears, apologizing for what he had said and begging our forgiveness for talking to us that way.

He explained his verbal degradation towards us as his only true outlet for his anger. He rationalized the way he talked to us using the excuse of being beaten so badly as a child himself, he couldn’t beat us the way he was as a child. I understood this as a child and accepted it. I think it was how I coped. Dan didn’t and still suffers on a level far beyond anything human beings should have to endure. I suffer too, yet we have chosen different ways to deal with it.

My dad owned a garbage business after the auto shop, and I remember Dad pulling us out of the cab one cool evening. He gathered us in front of the dirty old truck and made us promise no matter what, we would always stick up for each other. The three of us made a pact that day to always stay together.

Fate has a way of killing childhood promises, I discovered much later in life. I learned Time is a merciless thief nobody can stop.

During those early years, so much was seared into us to form and sculpt us. My dad had this vision of raising his two boys to be criminal geniuses. This doesn’t work, however, when you love too hard and teach too many bad things to hungry little sponges. This will cause them to adopt the same character input into them, however it’s likely to be magnified many times over. It cripples instead of feeds them. I learned so many things as a child and some of them carried me great distances throughout my life. However, the bad things which took place much later seemed to shape and define my future. Coincidently, even during times of great hardship in my life, I don’t complain about a single day of it and I never will. I am who I am as a result of these circumstances. Thankfully, my childhood in Manton, insured I would still remain a little boy at the core of who I am throughout several turbulent years. Underneath all the calluses and hard exterior, I’m still a good person trying to not let what happened define the rest of my life. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I fail. That’s life.

Chapter 2

In 1980 I was seven years old. My family moved to Woodland, California, because Dad intended to start a new business there. He started the first twenty-four-hour day-and-night emergency road service in California long before any other companies provided it.

In order to get the money needed to start this new business, he moved us to Woodland before sneaking back to Manton one night to burn the old house down and collect the insurance money. We didn’t hear about his late night trip for years, but this was often the case.

My brother and I began attending school at Beamer Elementary, in a predominantly Mexican area of woodland. My mom began working at a local bank, while my father got his business off the ground. Fortunately, it took off like a rocket, and soon we lived in a nice home near the school and a public swimming pool. Dan and I took a bit of coaxing, but soon we fit in at the new school.

It was a big change for us to have clothes purchased from a real store instead of being gleaned and repurposed from the garbage business we had previously owned. For the first time in our lives, we lived in a city and had friends. Soon we had motorcycles and other nice things regular city folks owned. On one memorable occasion we were lucky enough to enjoy two weeks on vacation at Marriott Hotel. Despite all appearances of a new life, we still knew we were not like everyone else. This was evident to everyone who knew us since we were old enough to walk. This, because our father was instilling into us the same character and morals he possessed.

Most kids learn sex education from their parents, carefully and tactfully, by sitting them down and explaining how it all works. Dan and I were taken to a pornographic drive-in when we were seven and eight years old and made to watch as our dad explained what was going on. Of course, my mom wasn’t there during this outing and didn’t find out about it for years. My father was foulmouthed, crude, and blunt. However, he also had a very sharp mind and could design, build, repair, and invent anything he needed when necessary. He was a master mechanic, who could professionally fix and operate anything.

He also had a sex addiction that drove him most of his life. He was unfaithful to my mother and every woman he was ever with. Dan and I were with him many times while he cheated on our mother with one woman or another. Finally, that caught up with him, and Mom finally kicked him out for a while. Despite the lying, cheating, and a million other faults he had, he was never physically or verbally abusive to our mother. She was truly the love of his life. She put up with him as long as she could because I believe she knew he was so scarred from his childhood he could never change. She had her boys to think about too, and she tried to save us from him while loving everyone at the same time.

When my mom and dad separated, Dad wasted no time going out and buying an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. He was like a kid in a candy store with that rifle. It took some time to get it sighted in right and come to an understanding of what it takes to use such a tool effectively, but he got it down pretty fast. I use the word tool because when we were growing up, we were taught guns are not only weapons but also a necessary tool. They fed and protected us.

True to form, Dad bought the gun for reasons most people would never have considered. Because my mom worked as a bank teller, Dad would come by often to take her to lunch and, sometimes, to give her ride to and from work. They were not together, but Dad was always there anyway. What she didn’t find out until later was that he would spend hours outside the bank while she was working, hoping someone would try to rob it. He would sit there across the street with that AR-15 on his lap, just praying some dumb ass would try to rob it so he could see what his new gun did to a man. I remember several occasions when Dan and I were with him, stoned of course while he sat there, silently waiting. Fortunately, the bank robber never showed up.

From day 1, our dad let us cuss, smoke pot, steal, and lie to anyone we felt the need to. Except him. We were never to do that under any circumstance. He did not allow us to lie to Mom either, unless he needed us to do so. It was okay then. We were never allowed to question our dad either or to complain. Talking back was never an option. As a matter of fact, from the age of about three, Dan and I knew we should never do things that would anger our dad. My dad stood five feet eleven inches, but he was the coldest, scariest person I’d ever met when he was angry. If he saw you doing something he didn’t like, he could bore a hole all the way through you with the coldest, bluest, and deadliest eyes you had ever seen. Not quite evil, just cold and hard. If you didn’t stop doing whatever it was making him angry, he would reach out in a flash, and the next thing you knew, you were hanging in midair. By only your ear. He would snatch us up by that ear, look deep into our eyes, and say in a very calm voice, I said don’t do that! In fact, he could convey that message with one fleeting glance that unmistakably said it all: Stop immediately.

My mother was my refuge. When Dad would really hurt my feelings, I would run to her and she would love me. This was the same for Dan. She was the softy in the family, and the angel that she is, she would wrap her arms around us and tell us to be calm, explaining Dad was just mean. Then she would go chew him out. She was the only one who could ever do that. She knew he was hard on us, and so did everyone else, but we were his boys and he wasn’t going to raise any sissies.

When Mom and Dad separated the first time, we would stay with her for a week and then with him for a week. At that time, Mom and Dad only lived a couple of miles apart. Woodland being predominantly Hispanic, Dan and I had mostly Hispanic neighbors and friends. We still spent most of our time together and fought about everything.

We were always best friends, though, no matter what. He was much lazier than I was as a kid, and because I was so protective of him, he took advantage of me every chance he got. We were expected to do our assigned chores daily, and Dan learned that if he just lagged on his end of the work, I would come along and pick up the slack. The only thing I hated worse than being attacked by my father was seeing Dan get attacked by him. If I saw that Dan hadn’t done what was expected of him, out of fear for his safety, I would complete his end of the work. I was too young then to realize Dan would use this same system for years in order to get me to do his chores. Dan was smart.

Those early years were a blur for me. There are many fragmented memories that don’t really come into sharp focus. We were small children, and we were stoned most of the time. Until we moved to Woodland and had been there for a year or so, all the criminal activity we were part of was done in conjunction with Dad.

Dad had a thriving business with his shop in Dunnigan, California, a few miles away from Woodland. There wasn’t a whole lot happening in Dunnigan, which made it the perfect place for my dad to operate his business. The only things I remember being in Dunnigan were an old Aladero truck stop, a seedy motel, and our little mechanic shop.

I remember numerous occasions when Dad would load Dan and I into the truck with his three-hundred-gallon fuel tank in the back, so we could sneak out at night and steal diesel fuel from local fuel companies. My father would pull into the yard at one or two in the morning, with his electric fuel pump ready to go. We would pull into the yard with the headlights off and ease up next to a huge twenty-thousand-gallon fuel tank. My father would step out of the truck and unscrew the fuel cap. He would then snake a hose into the container and begin pumping diesel fuel into our tank. Dad would store up several thousand gallons of fuel so we could turn around and sell it to the truckers at a discounted rate. We would pull up to the Aladero Truck Stop and undercut their prices right there in the parking lot.

By the time I was nine years old, Dad’s business had grown significantly. He had several employees and four service trucks on the road twenty-four hours a day. He also had a parts warehouse in Napa, California, and one in Coalinga, California. He was making a pile of money and working around the clock. He wasn’t just the owner; he worked just like everyone else and was still the best diesel mechanic in the business. Although much is a blur, I remember those years