Charlie and I share a lot of the same insights, but we’ve come to them from completely different worlds. I’m normally pretty good at putting myself in other people’s shoes. But I can’t imagine enduring sixty-three years in prison. I’ve often wondered how I’d handle seclusion, isolation. I don’t think I’d fare too well. Charlie’s spent most of his incarceration in solitary confinement, where he is forced to be with himself, with his thoughts, forced to confront his demons, forced to develop insight from a depth unknown to most men. Charles Manson is, without a doubt, the most complex person I’ve ever known.
We developed a relationship over the telephone, gradually, in intervals lasting fifteen minutes, the length of a collect call from Corcoran. Almost immediately, I realized I didn’t really know this guy at all. I had assumptions, sure, but most of them were unfounded. Sometimes Charlie is kind, empathetic, and funny. Other times he’s vile and mean; he can be a real condescending asshole. It’s almost impossible to discover the real Charlie. Yet this is exactly what I have tried to do.
Charlie often has a unique way of getting a point across, as the following actual transcripts from our phone conversations shows:
MANSON: I got a gun, right?
ME: Okay.
ME: No?
MANSON: You do, you can’t imagine that I’m standing there looking at you right now. I mean my voice is there, don’t you realize that my body could be there just as easy?
ME: All right, I get it.
MANSON: If I got a gun and I’m standing there with a gun and I tell you, you know, “Get off of that chair, stand up,” would you stand up? ME: Yeah, of course.
MANSON: Then I tell you, “Then if you don’t do what I said I’m going to blow your brains out, you understand me?”
ME: Yes.
MANSON: Do you think that I would lie to you about anything?
ME: No.
MANSON: Then you can understand what I’m saying. I say, “ Well then, here, take this gun.” And I’m handing you the gun, could you reach out and take this gun in your hand? Would you feel safer that way?
ME: Absolutely.
MANSON: In other words, can you face your fear in what I’m saying. Okay, so you got the same options. If I don’t do what you say you can shoot me, right?
ME: Okay.
MANSON: I’ve been in that all my life. There’s two guns up here on the tower that tell me what to do. And when they tell me what to do, I do what they say to do, because if I don’t do what they say to do they will shoot me. Does that communicate?
I
THE WONDER YEARS
I was an odd kid. Unlike most boys my age, I wasn’t interested in sports. My heroes were Houdini, Robert Ripley, and The Elephant Man. I had a tremendous interest in things like sideshows and magic, and, while the other boys in town tossed footballs and climbed fences, I collected bugs. More important, I tried to save them. After a heavy rain, I’d run outside to rescue worms from the gutter, gently scoop them up and return them to the grass with a prayer that they’d tunnel themselves back to their homes in the dirt below. I adorned my childhood bedroom with prized natural artifacts unearthed through countless explorations of the outside world; deer antlers, feathers, even wasp nests decorated my space. I loved to catch, study, and spend time with the tiny, complex life forms I could gather up in the palms of my hands, things like minnows, frogs, and snails. But I was ultimately most fascinated by the enormous, the fantastic, or the extinct: terrifying things that aren’t supposed to exist. I could contemplate dinosaurs and sea monsters for hours on end.
I grew up in Saskatchewan, in the middle of the Canadian prairies. As a kid I developed a love for seashells and a fascination with the ocean, even though the closest ocean was fifteen hundred miles away. When I learned that marble is actually comprised of millions of compressed shells, I fantasized about visiting the Parthenon in Greece and the Coliseum in Rome, not because they are two of the largest, most impressive structures ever made by humans, but because they are comprised from some of the smallest gems in nature. I haven’t outgrown my childhood affection for simple treasures like seashells, and small clusters of my collection are displayed in almost every room of my home. Once, I toured Graceland, where I was delighted to discover Elvis had decorated so much of his castle in vases filled with seashells. The man could have owned anything in the world, yet he showed off his shells as though they were some of his most valuable possessions. Propped up against one of the vases in the display was a small, stuffed teddy bear.
I love a great underdog story and I began to tell my own when I was just three or four years old. Babysitters would later relate that they’d been “freaked out” by the tales I’d spin as a toddler. Most stemmed from an epic creation story I’d constructed about my own family, a carefully detailed account of its origins as an underground tribe, which was hated by rival tribes, and hunted if any member dared venture above ground for food.
I spent summers visiting my grandmother in the small town of Bateman, Saskatchewan. She was most supportive of my storytelling and loved to share some of the narrative she’d collected from her own experiences. I was fascinated by a story she told of her emigration from Holland to North America, a trip during which a passenger caught a strange fish. The creature was the ugliest thing anyone on board had ever seen: it possessed the torso of a monkey and the tail of a fish. Listening to this story as a child, I could have sworn the animal in question was a mermaid. On board, the fish writhed and hissed at everyone in sight. The passengers tried to keep the fish alive, but it died, and they had no choice but to throw it back into the ocean. I couldn’t believe that they hadn’t released it sooner. I always thought that story was incredibly sad. I still do. Years later I saw P.T. Barnum’s Fiji mermaid in a museum, and it looked exactly as I’d imagined the creature from my grandmother’s story.
I loved to be in Bateman, walking along quiet dirt roads on which you could hear a car moving three miles away. Everything about that time and place was beautiful. My cousin Kent, who was nearly the same age, accompanied me on all my adventures. Kent knew all the kids in town, and together we always found a gang with which to make slingshots, climb roofs, or hunt for buried treasure. We loved the band Kiss, listening to rock ‘n’ roll, pretending to drive anywhere and everywhere from the ripped up seats of some broken down car.
One lazy summer afternoon, my Uncle Roy unexpectedly sped up the road in his rusted out green Ford truck to take me home. He told me my mother had been in an accident and was badly hurt, that it was important we get back home immediately. I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t trust him. My grandmother urged me to leave, however; she told me my mother needed me and I could come back later. I still remember the crazed look in Roy’s eyes as he drove, way faster than he should have. He was preoccupied, and I knew whatever was going on in his head would disturb me.
From an extremely young age, I’d seen my relatively sane family members drink themselves into delirium, and it scared me. I hated being around drunk people, and I did whatever I could to avoid them. I usually retreated to my room, listened to records, or read books. I thought that getting inebriated was what older people did. Yet, each time I watched an adult slip into drunkenness, I’d worry the fix would never wear off, that he or she would never return to normal, whatever that was. And, while almost every adult I knew got wasted and stupid, there was something different about Uncle Roy when he drank. He never did anything to me, and, at that age, I couldn’t really pinpoint why he seemed to be the worst, most pathetic drunk. But I began to associate everything about Uncle Roy - his creepy, perverse sense of humor, the glazed, psychotic look that could take over his face - with everything awful about alcohol.
We drove the hundred and fifty miles back to my parents’ house in record time. Everything moved as if it had been set to fast forward. During the ride, I kept my face fixed on the passenger side window. I was staring into the ditches on the side of the highway, watching colors blur, browns into greens,
nothing really in focus. In truth, I don’t remember seeing or processing a single thing. I got out of the truck and walked up to the house, and saw the back door gaping open as if someone had carelessly forgotten to close it. Inside, I was shocked to see, for the first time in my life, my dad shaking and sobbing. In the basement, past the green tile steps, my Uncle Steve washed blood off the wall. There was so much blood, all of it thickened in a dark, red stain that, no matter how forcefully he rubbed, didn’t seem to get any smaller. I watched as Uncle Steve kept his eyes riveted to his work, wiping furiously until the center grew larger, spread outward, and finally began to dissolve. I realized that I hadn’t known what complete shock felt like until this moment,
My father wept as he told me my mother had been in a car accident and was taken to the hospital. I could tell he was lying, probably because he had never lied to me before. I asked him why Uncle Steve was washing blood off the wall, but he just stuttered and cried more. I went to my room. I didn’t feel safe. I was doomed. I assumed things would only get worse. My brother and I shared bunk beds, and as I fell onto the bottom one that was mine, I tried to rationalize everything in my brain, produce an answer for what I’d just seen. My mother lived eight hours more before she died. As I lay there, I prayed and made promises, but I somehow knew she was dead, even while she kept breathing.
My mother didn’t die in a car accident. That day, she’d walked down into the basement and shot herself. Throughout my childhood, which she’d made exceptionally happy, I don’t remember seeing my mother sad. There was no indication she would do what she did. My mother was beautiful, and whenever people spoke of her they always said how lovely she was. She was a homemaker who sewed her children’s clothes from scratch. When I was small, I had very bad feet and a difficult time walking, and she would lift me up and carry me around. It took tremendous patience, physical and emotional strength for my mother to get me through that time. She had a lot of love, and when she left us, it felt completely out of the blue. It didn’t sink in that she was gone until the next day, when I answered the phone to hear a man say he was sorry for my loss and would I authorize the donation of my mother’s eyes, so someone else could see? I didn’t understand what he was asking and I hung up on him mid-sentence. But that was the point that I realized my mother was really gone. I was eight years old.
I didn’t go to her funeral. My dad didn’t think I could handle it. I was too young, and it had been difficult enough to lose a few pets. I was the type of kid who found a dead bird on the road and made a point to give it a proper burial. My dad did allow me to read the note my mother had left in her delicate blue handwriting, on a plain, white, crumpled piece of paper. It was a short note. I think it said something like, “I’m in a better place.” She wanted us to go to church. I don’t know what happened to the note, but I can still remember holding it and reading it over and over again, as if it were the most important thing in the world.
Because it was the last thing she’d asked ofus, my siblings and I went to Sunday school. I’d been to church before and had learned some things about religion in school. But I didn’t know much, and what little I’d been taught hadn’t made much sense. Class was held in the basement of Rosemont Church where we recited the scriptures, learned the order of the gospels, and sang songs. Every week our teacher brought us little gifts, things like bookmarks, prayer cards, or stickers. We sat solemnly at long tables and were expected to be serious and studious. Above all, we had to stay silent, something at which I have never been very good.
One day, a quiet, timid boy approached me and summoned the nerve to ask, “Did your mom really shoot herself in the head?” I just looked at him. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think anything except that he already seemed sorry for what he had said, very aware he couldn’t take any of it back. When I didn’t answer, he looked down in embarrassment. Behind him, I noticed three older boys, laughing nervously, trying to shake off the awkwardness that had ruined their joke. I could tell they’d put him up to it. That day in class I would learn that suicide was the worst sin a person could ever commit. It was considered murder, and if you did it, you would go to Hell for all of eternity. That day was my last day at Sunday school.
The idea of my mother burning in Hell gave me nightmares. In the middle of the night, I’d wake up to see a witch watching me from my bedroom door. She wore a black gown that seemed much too large; it completely covered her feet and her hands. She was ugly, hideous, older than any person I had ever met, transparent with a colorful, static quality, like the texture you’d see on a television when it wasn’t set to a station. There was a consciousness about her, an energy that mocked me, terrified me. She gave off her own light in a room that was completely dark, but sometimes I could feel her before I saw her. She didn’t have a voice, but somehow she’d send me thoughts. She’d project ideas like, “You’re such a bad kid,” and, “You make me sick.” Or she’d repeat the things I’d say in my head. I would see her and think, “Oh shit” and she’d send each word back. I could tell she hated me, and, seeing the look of disgust on her face, I’d literally piss myself with fear. She never blinked, never opened her mouth, never appeared or disappeared; she was just there, unless she wasn’t. She hung around for months like this, until one night, I summoned the courage to move toward her, slowly, with one arm extended and the other shielding my eyes. Eventually I made it through her, all the way to the door, and when I turned around, she was gone. She never came back.
I learned that my mom had previously been hospitalized with depression, that she’d had a nervous breakdown once while I was visiting my grandmother. I was told that she just couldn’t stop being sad. After she died, the drinking in our house increased tenfold, and during these somber occasions I’d learn small bits about the things my mother had kept secret. It was said that Uncle Roy had signed my mother out of the hospital against her doctor’s advice. I listened in on whispered rumors that Uncle Roy had raped my mother and another one of his sisters. I heard he’d given her drugs. After her funeral, I went through her purse and discovered a bunch of pale green, pink, and white capsules. I threw them into the toilet, crying as they dissolved, because it scared me to think someone else could have taken them and wound up killing themselves too. It wasn’t hard to piece things together. I believed it when people gossiped that Uncle Roy had blood on his shoes the day my mom died. I could imagine him encouraging her to pull the trigger.
My father couldn’t cope with the loss of a wife and sudden single parenthood. His life had been difficult. He lost a sister he adored to leukemia when she was just fourteen. His father, a machine gunner in the Polish army during World War II, had been captured by the Germans and retrained to fight the Russians. The Germans told him if he ever surrendered, the Russians would torture him so badly he’d wish he were dead. When he was in Siberia, his machine gun froze, and he began desperately dousing it in whiskey, trying to loosen it up. The Russians outnumbered him, and they began screaming at him to surrender; he yelled back that he wouldn’t succumb to torture. Finally, a Russian soldier attacked him and stuck a bayonet into his skull. He had been shot four times. His life was saved in a Russian hospital, and at the end of the war he was released. But he was left with terrible, chronic pain as a result of his injuries, and he hanged himself in the neighbors’ barn when he returned home. My grandmother died less than a year later of cancer. My father had to quit school in eighth grade to help support his family.
My dad started drinking a lot and became, more or less, a functioning alcoholic. He’d done construction work most of his life and he worked hard to take care of us during the week. But every weekend was a party and he would get wasted in such a way that I knew he still hurt over my mother. We had several live-in baby sitters and, occasionally, relatives would help take care of us. All three of my closest childhood friends had fathers who were alcoholics, and we helped each other when things got out of control at one of our homes. I would stay at a friend’s place if my dad was too drunk, and
they would stay with me if things got a little too dysfunctional with their families.
Throughout the rest of my childhood, Uncle Roy showed up once in awhile. He’d stumble around our house, collecting various discarded bottles of alcohol, so that he could drain the very last drop from each into a terrible looking concoction he’d chug in two or three huge, sloppy gulps. He’d be extremely sick from withdrawal as he tried to gather enough alcohol to stay drunk for just a few more minutes. One morning, I watched him perform this desperate ritual as I got ready for school. He shook and staggered around, clinking with the bottles he clutched to his chest. “Hey,” he muttered almost inaudibly, though he was clearly intent on getting my attention. His eyes were bulged and bloodshot, barely focused. “Promise me something,” he strained to say, slouching over and slobbering out the sides of his mouth, “Don’t ever drink, okay?” I remember thinking to myself that I wished he would just die already. “I won’t drink,” I said, and, with that, he finished off the last of his homemade sludge and I ran off to school.
I own only one photograph taken of me before my mother died. In it, I seem healthy, alive, and vibrant. When I lost her, I became withdrawn. I hadn’t heard of suicide before. It didn’t make any sense, and what I couldn’t understand left me scared. I was terrified my siblings and I would be put into foster care. Relatives would whisper things over my head. They’d question my father’s ability to care for us and offer to take us in. No one ever talked directly to me about the nature of my mother’s death. I was never able to grieve properly because I wasn’t given the opportunity to make sense out of it. It hurt to see my father suffer, to see my four-year-old little sister left without her mom. It took me a long time to realize what an effect her death had on me. She was the most important person in my world.
Charles Manson Now Page 2
