MORE LIKELY DEAD: An American Story Crime, Drugs, Sex, Violence-Redemption?

By Keith Hutchison

MORE LIKELY DEAD An American Story Crime, Drugs, Sex, Violence-Redemption is a true story about a young man in California lost and thrown into a world of drugs, sex, and violence. This is a look back at how he got there. It's a rough ride with rays of light and a chance for self-redemption. Everyone has a story. This is mine. It's an adventure I didn't sign up for, a mental struggle to avoid self-destruction. But it is the path I traveled on the ride of my life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887931166

Book preview

MORE LIKELY DEAD

An American Story Crime, Drugs, Sex, Violence-Redemption?

Keith Hutchison

Copyright © 2023 Keith Hutchison

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

Names of individuals, other than the author, have been changed to protect identities.

ISBN 979-8-88793-115-9 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88793-116-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

About the Author

Chapter 1

Sixteen years old in a small beach town with no goals. What's next?

Wow, what luck. Eric's sister wanted to give us a ride over to her place to wash a couple cars for twenty bucks. Huh? I didn't even know Eric had a sister. Oh, whatever. I would never see her again. But twenty bucks? That should get us some food and booze for the day, and the day at hand was all I plan for. Now with the cars sparkling clean, it's time for a little lunch then a ride back to my place, and the best yet, someone over twenty-one was driving us home who was willing to buy us a gallon of vodka. And the luck just kept coming. Back at my place, or well, you might say my mom's place, out back in the shed, the gallon of vodka started going down.

Well, let me take a minute and tell you about the place and how we ended up here before I move on. We had been sharing a very small one-bedroom house—that was my mother, sister, youngest brother, plus me, and, boy, did we need more space. I was headed on my occasional walk to school one morning when just a few doors down from where we were staying, I noticed a man out in front of a home. He was a weathered-looking old man, pounding in a For Rent sign on the front lawn. The house had a three-foot-tall hedge that encompassed the lawn. It had two entries: one a large arch that went over the front gate, the other was next to the house leading to the driveway. It was very well-maintained but a little outdated. I approached the gentleman in my torn Levi's, sneakers, metal shirt, and hair well past my shoulders. I began a conversation asking the price, how many rooms, how many bathrooms. You know, the standard stuff. I told him there was no way my mother could come up with the first and last month's rent at once, but she could make payments, and I would help also as far as us being able to take care of the lawns, planters, and hedges. We would need him to leave all the appropriate hand and power tools that had already been placed in the back of his truck for departure.

It was at that point and without even meeting my mother, he yanked the For Rent sign from the lawn, pulled the tools out of his truck, and said, Welcome to your new home. The house had three bedrooms and two baths. As you walked through the front door, the living room was positioned to the right, kitchen to the left, and a long hall leading down the middle with bed and bathrooms on either side, ending at a washer/dryer area. Yes, a house, a real house. Best yet, there's a large backyard with a fence that opened up to another identical backyard with no other homes behind us. Just the privacy of a big, wooded state park. But what I really had my eyes fixed on was a rather large free-standing combination work/tool storage shed placed in the second backyard that I knew would soon be my private getaway.

The shed out back became my palace, a place I could get away with just about anything, never hide, never get in trouble. The shed, approximately twenty-five by twenty feet, had two wooden steps leading into the only door. It was a well-built structure with about two feet of clearance under it, all skirted in with one access opening cut in. I moved right in even though it was not drywalled or insulated. But I didn't care. I figured covering the walls in empty beer bottles, as I did, would help. Next, I got some carpet from a friend of my mother's. Then I got a bunk bed, couch, and coffee table from somewhere. It also had a working landline. Now, add my turntable with a couple huge speakers and I'm set. TV, you say? I don't need a TV, just tunes.

Chapter 2

Soon winter hit, and believe it or not, it was too cold out there for a Cali boy, so I moved into my little brother's room in the main house. Or you might say, I moved all his stuff out, put his bed into my sister's room, and moved all my stuff in.

After a few months in the house, I got word from a friend at the place me and my mother both worked (the Fish Bowl) that it was time either I moved back into the shed or my second option was to move anywhere else on earth but that address. Then came Paul, a wonderful friend of my mother and truly one of those people with a great heart. He was about ten years older than me and the same number of years younger than my mother. He offered to help me insulate and drywall the shed, and within a week, we did it. Next was carpet, paint, bunk beds, put the turntable back, I made speaker shelves, I had a landline (same number as the house, but if you dialed six, nine, nine and hang up, it would ring the other phones on the same number; this way I could communicate with Mom and have limited personal contact), and the masterpiece of the palace shed was an eight-foot-by-two-foot counter that I had lacquered in pot leaves from plants I had grown and liquor labels from bottles. I had drank the liquor then soaked the bottles in a bucket of water until I could carefully pull the labels off, let them dry, and there you go. I think it's still there today.

Now that was finally done, and it was time to move back to the second backyard into my palace shed. It was also time to start throwing keg parties with over a hundred minors like me at a time while selling piles of dope and vials of LSD. I never cared for beer then, so I carried a pint of Yukon Jack in my back pocket, only to be shared with me and my own head. Yeah, things would get crazy—yes, crazy—like most people would never want to know. I had a black Lab named Josh (stolen from the warden at California federal correctional facility…another story) that loved beer. Josh was the family (for lack of a better term) dog who I had previously fallen in love with after returning from a four-week-long hitchhiking trip from Merton Bay, California, to Salem, Oregon, hoping to spend time with my older brother, Jeff, only to find out he had almost no time to spare for me. Guess I should have called first.

But I didn't. That wasn't part of my plan. I figured I would put my thumb out. Most people are good—right? Jeff was the polar-opposite of me at this point. I thought seeing him could do me some good. I told my mother I'd be taking off a couple weeks before Christmas. She didn't seem to care either way. I let the school (Continuation) know. They approved it. Next was shop class. I made a beautiful 36 x 18 inch wood sign. With a router, I wrote North on one side. The other side said Please. This was a one-way sign. I used a stationary sander to bevel the outer edges on both sides. A map-gas torch was perfect for darkening the lettering, complemented by light strokes across the face. A fine wire brush was used to remove any char and ‘presto', I got an A+. OK, provisions. An ounce of weed, two pints of Yukon Jack, hot dogs, buns, nuts, jerky, and my new friend—my protection—an incredibly sharp machete. I also had my bed (an old red canvas sleeping bag) and my motivation, find Peace. I loaded up an old blue backpacking pack, perfect for hauling everything while keeping my machete accessible.

A friend offered to drop me off at the intersection of Hwy 41 and 101. I accepted. My second ride was a man holding his jaw with one hand while using the other to steer. He told me he was not going far. He said he was on his way to have a tooth extracted. He thought I was in a bad spot to get a ride, so he dropped me in what he deemed a better location. Nice guy, huh? The next couple rides were uneventful and short. The last ride of the day got me to north of San Jose. It was getting dark. Time to find a place to have a hot dog and bed down for the night. There was a park with a baseball diamond in the distance. It was just about a block off the highway. It was the big city, but I wasn't worried. Dinner, a few shots, a joint and I'm out. When I went to sleep, I was laying in the middle of the baseball field. When I awoke, I wasn't sure where I was. The fog was so thick I couldn't see the fencing that surrounded me. My sleeping bag was so wet, red dye had seeped into the clothes I was wearing, even furthering my hippie vibe. I was cold and damp as I made my way back to an on-ramp. I stopped at a gas station along the way with a sign that read free coffee. I asked the man at the counter if I might have a cup. He said sure, so I took it and left. I had never drunk coffee before, so I just held it tight in my hands as I walked. With the coffee now cooling off, I dumped most of it on each hand for added heat when I decided to try a sip. It was warm and bitter—not bad.

With my sign in hand, flipping from the side that said North then back to Please, I set out once again. If I didn't get a ride, I would usually get a smile from the people reading my sign which I found entertaining. Day two, slow going again. Just a little over three hundred miles of movement. Last ride of the day. It was a young college man dressed well, headed to see his family. Before we parted ways somewhere around Humbolt, he took me into a small general store. He bought me some other snacks, a soda (good, some chaser) and a sterno can. Another nice guy. I made my way up into the hills over the highway. The moon was full as it glistened off the ocean. I sat atop a hill in the pines preparing my hot dogs over a lit sterno can. Alone in the hills, I fell asleep as thoughts of bears were subdued. That would just be a natural death, unlike someone killing you at an ATM for twenty dollars. So off to sleep I went. Day three—pour some water on my head, comb my hair, out and off to the highway.

The first ride was about 25 miles long to Arcata, where I sat for the next couple hours hoping to be picked up. Tired of waiting, I decided to have another soda, so off to a liquor store close in sight I went. While standing in the shade in front of the store having a sip of my soda, I noticed a guy in a small old truck with a camper shell pull into the dirt on the right side of the store and park. Another car, newer looking, shiny and sporty, pulled up next to him with one man inside. He stepped out and headed over to the truck with a small brown lunch bag in hand. They talked for a while, then the man in the truck held a large brown bag out the window as they made a swap. Pretty sure I know what's going on here. The shiny car departed as the other man headed into the store. I was still standing there as the young man with the old truck went to pass by me with a 12-pack in hand. I started up a conversation, asking the best way to make it over to Hwy I-5 from here. He told me I was a long way off but that he was heading to Happy Camp off Hwy 96 (a ghost town now, once a bustling lumber mining community), kind of in the middle of nowhere. He said he was a vacuum salesman and his next stop after spending the night in Happy Camp would be Yreka, which is on the way to Hwy I-5. He said I could ride along. It sounded good to me, plus the camper shell looked like a nice, safe place to sleep. I opened the back hatch, slid my backpack in next to a couple of Hoover vacuums, then headed back to the cab without my machete.

I had spent hours practicing with my machete, even in the moonlight, tossing it carelessly straight up. I would reach out snatching the handle out of the air, then swing it violently right to left, flipping it so as to have the blade facing the direction of force. Why have it, if you don't know how to use it?

We took a long, windy, sometimes dirt road, arriving around 5:00 p.m. It was a community of mostly mobile homes. Old truck dude parked out front of an aging double wide mobile home, surrounded by similar homes. It was the forest. There were a couple of good ole' boys and a wife hanging around the barbeque. Old truck dude introduced me. They welcomed me to their home, then offered up one of many beers. After dinner the five of us gathered around for some poker. A few hands in, when one of old truck dude's friends exited to the bathroom, he came back into the room, sat down in his chair next to me and said Hey, I left you something in the bathroom. Casually, I headed past the couch into the master bath where I found a mirror. There were four lines on the mirror, so I figured he had done one, leaving one each for the rest of us. I did a line, then headed back to my chair. The guy next to me turned his head toward me and asked, Did you get them all? What? I replied. Did you get them all? They're yours. Happily surprised, I got up, said thanks, then hurdled the couch on my way back to the bathroom. I didn't get much sleep that night, but boy did I have a good time.

Morning—time to go. Old truck/vacuum salesman dude was waiting for a few pounds of killer Christmas Tree buds (as we called them at the time). I'm not sure, but maybe you think the vacuum gig was just a cover – could be. The weed showed up and we were gone.

Yreka, I'm here—Hwy I-5. Next ride—Grants Pass exit was my drop-off. Twelve feet of snow with sunset nearing. I hadn't thought about this possibility or prepared for it. No homes in sight. I hoped for a ride. There it was—a lady and her child. It's the only time that would happen. She said the only reason she picked me up was that she was exhausted and needed someone to keep her awake. Springfield, Oregon is where we parted. It was too cold to stay outside. I found a Denny's, ate something, then sipped coffee until sunrise. One ride with no waiting and I'm in Salem. Still early. I called Jeff's house, and his girlfriend answered. She explained between college and work, he hardly had time to spend with her, let alone with me. Nice welcome.

Well, it worked out. I stayed at my buddy Markus's house. His mother loved me, and the day I showed up, Markus happened to be sleeping in on a school day. So we grabbed some other buddies out of school, and within four hours of arrival, we went mushroom picking. Markus had a truck, and the brothers had a car. We took both and headed out of town, from the city to rolling farmlands in no time. We noticed a lone car pulled off the road with two people on their knees not far off. They were wearing backpacks, wired open. They moved along studiously, pulling mushrooms then dropping them over their shoulder into the backpack. There were many ways to make a living. This might be one. We took turns holding the barbed wire apart as we made our way onto someone's farmland. I don't think they wanted these kinds of mushrooms anyhow. We worked together filling a gallon zip-lock baggie until we got bored and decided to eat them right then. So, what if they weren't washed, and half of them came out of cow patties? It's time to eat. We split them up and kept picking, but not for long. The mushrooms were starting to kick in. Probably best to drive home now, but we can't go to Markus'. We're just too high. Over to the brother's house we went.

Both of their folks were at work. Markus, me, and the younger brother Dave, who was our age, were hanging out upstairs smoking through a bag of weed. Dave was lying on the carpet in the middle of the bedroom on his back on the floor laughing, while looking through the scope of a rifle. Dave's brother, Don walked in. Did you guys smoke all the weed? Dave, while still laying on the floor, replied Ya, man" then chuckled. Don, now openly aggravated, leaned over Dave, put a hand around the barrel, and yanked as if he wanted to pull it away from Dave. BOOM!—a bullet passed by only inches from Don's head, leaving us all in shock. With Don still alive, there was another problem. There was a small hole through the ceiling, leading to a much larger hole through the flat roof above. Either way, the stress level of Don almost getting shot was killing the high. Markus and I headed over to the mall parking lot. We made ourselves comfortable, enjoyed the high for a couple hours, then went back to his house. So began a monthlong party. Well, maybe I didn't have that much time for my brother either.

Upon returning to Merton Bay, I got dropped off at the last exit in town, about 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. I was traveling alone through the dark, wondering if anyone knew I was here or even cared.

Then about a block away out of the dark came this dog from down the road. He picked up speed as he got closer. Josh? How did he know who I was from that distance in the dark? I couldn't believe it! He missed me! From then on, he lived with me in the palace shed.

As I started saying earlier, shiny cars and a gallon of vodka and it's time to get wasted at the palace. It started out with me, Eric, Travis, and my too-hot-for-words blond beauty, Lisa. But this would not last long. The next one to visit changed everything, Mitch. Hey, Mitch is here. Well, kind of a friend. I worked with him a bit. He was a couple years older, not well-liked in this small town. But I had no beef with him, so I grabbed him a glass. Just a few drinks in, something happened between Travis and Mitch. I was not sure at the time what, nor did I care. It happened just outside the shed but didn't seem like anything to worry about. Just stick with the plan and drink.

Later I was to find out that Mitch, at about five feet and six inches and probably 150 pounds (a real scrapper, not much fear), had started accusing Travis (six feet even, with always dirty-looking black semi-short hair, weighing in at all of 120 pounds, a talker, kind of a con-type of guy, but not a fighter) who just slipped away without bothering to inform, or let's say warn us, of Mitch's whacked-out behavior.

We noticed Travis had left. But seeing Eric did not think much of Travis, who I didn't mind seeing even if he was a dork. But all the same, and seeing Eric was my best friend who really cares? Travis split…let's drink.

The four of us—I, Eric, Lisa, and, of course, Mitch (good old Mitch)—decided we should pull out the ping-pong table, get the speakers up on the roof, crank up some AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, Young…you get the point. It's time to get baked before I destroy everyone again in pong. Never any good at pool, but playing pong? Look out, few would ever beat me. After a few games, it's time to have a session. Back into the shed. Bust out the cookie sheet and clean a handful of seeds out of an ounce of Columbian Gold and get baked. Yeah, man, my favorite pastime, bonging out, so let's go. I, Eric, and Mitch got at it smoking, laughing, drinking, and working my favorite two-foot-tall plastic, blackish-blue bong. But not Lisa. She did not smoke anything or really drink much, let alone do hard drugs. No way. I never really understood what she saw in me. I was the very meaning of self-destruction, drowning, trying to forget, no care of whether I wake up tomorrow or not. But, boy, you wouldn't know it, and, man, could I throw a good time. Well, it doesn't look like we're making it outside again.

I think I'll grab the speakers, guys. I headed outside and grabbed the three-by-two-foot-with-seventeen-inch woofer, ear-pounding speakers. I had no need for TV. Just music and a pile of dope. Didn't care about much more. Okay, I might head into the main house to watch reruns of Get Smart through one eye at midnight. You know, looking through one eye at a TV so you don't see double is very helpful for an underaged nightly drunk. So back inside.

I was on my second trip and throwing a speaker up on its little Keith-made shelf when I noted Mitch's voice getting louder in a conversation directed specifically toward Eric. Mitch was sitting on the couch with a relatively cheap and flimsy coffee table separating him and Eric, who was kneeling on the other side of the table which was covered in tall bar glasses filled with vodka and a shot of OJ for kicks, an ashtray far past due to be emptied, and a pile of weed with everything possible to smoke it out of. Then out of Mitch's mouth across the table, looking right into Eric's eyes, he yelled, You stole $3,000 from me and killed my father!

As you might have guessed, that statement was bullshit, and that was exactly what Eric yelled back. Then Mitch stood up, looking Eric straight