A Rock Fell on the Moon

by Alicia Priest

  In the legal world, testifying on one’s own behalf is risky. While a defendant may feel in control when questioned by his own lawyer, when the prosecutor gets his go, he may feel otherwise. The testimony from the rebuttal witnesses had gouged a big hole in Dad’s account of hauling 70 tons of raw ore over rugged terrain on the deck of a smoothly gliding toboggan.

  No testimony, however, could erode Dad’s confidence, which seemed impervious to selected parts of reality. Shortly before the end of the trial, Bob Cathro ducked into the Taku Hotel to have a drink with Al Archer. The two men were chatting over beers at the crowded bar when a patron beside them downed the last of his whiskey, dropped some change on the counter and left. Just then Dad walked in. As he approached the two UKHM employees, he stopped in his tracks.

  “Hey,” Dad said, pointing at the loose change, “I don’t like to see this. Silver, just lying around? Not good.”

  On March 26, Dad wrote home for the second last time during the trial, which was fast approaching its conclusion. “We are confident it will be no less than a hung jury again, with every chance of a not guilty verdict,” he began. “Wylie and UKHM have fought this case in the dirtiest fashion possible—Parker is showing his prejudice now and no doubt will give a convicting summation again, but the jury isn’t going to buy it.”

  The following week, Judge Parker delivered his instructions to the five-man, one-woman jury. The charges against both men had been reduced to three: conspiring to sell stolen goods—in this case a “precious metal” containing silver; selling precipitates; and unlawfully selling ore containing silver. After nearly three hours of deliberation, the jurors found both men guilty on the first count. Sent back to consider the other two, the jurors returned late in the afternoon to pronounce Dad and Poncho both guilty.

  That evening, long after we were in bed, Dad phoned Mom. In her notebook, she jotted: “He lost! After all this—found guilty!”

  The next morning, April 1, a now shaken convict wrote his last letter home. “My Darling, in a couple of hours I will appear in court to be sentenced. It will not be a heavy sentence, as the Crown does not want me to appeal. We don’t know what happened here—our case was stronger than before. But at the end, the judge directed the jury to convict.”

  In a bid for mercy, Hogan asked Judge Parker to consider his client’s clean record and that he was the sole supporter of an invalid wife and two young children. He also pointed out that Dad had suffered nearly two years of “apprehensive concern” during the lengthy hearing and two trials and asked for a suspended sentence. Parker was unmoved. “I do not make light of the burden of a prison sentence, it could weigh heavily on these two men,” the judge responded. “In Priest’s case the burden will be on his wife and two children who will inevitably suffer. Unfortunately, this is frequently the case.

  “However, I cannot overlook the fact that the amount involved here was very substantial. It is true that the accused have not, in fact, benefitted at all as a result. Priest held a position of some responsibility with United Keno Hill Mines… his obligations were higher than Bobcik’s… Mr. Priest took an extraordinary attitude toward life and toward people… a bitter, cynical attitude which I hope he will be able to put behind him.”

  And then Judge Parker sentenced Dad, aged thirty-six, to four years imprisonment. Bobcik, thirty-two, received three years less the four months he’d already served. Dad would begin doing time at Oakalla Prison Farm, one of British Columbia’s roughest jails.

  With the swift return of a guilty verdict, Mounties McKiel and Strathdee sensed that public sentiment had shifted against the two criminals. With that change, they felt that maybe someone somewhere would finger the third man they knew existed.

  “I do not feel that we should relent in our efforts toward definitely establishing the third party,” McKiel wrote in a memo following the convictions. “Many persons interviewed stated that they knew nothing about the activities of Priest and Bobcik, but appeared to be concealing the truth of their actual knowledge. It is hoped to re-interview these persons and gain further information toward definitively ascertaining the third party involved… neither Priest or Bobcik have any intention of implicating anyone else in this case.”

  But McKiel’s hopes were never realized. No one but Poncho and Dad would ever do time for the crime.

  Chapter 17

  In the Jailhouse Now

  Fate has written a tragedy; its name is “The Human Heart.”The Theatre is the House of Life; Woman plays the mummer’s part;The Devil enters the prompter’s box and the play is ready to start.

  Whether or not he knows, is prepared or cares a whit, a father holds his daughters’ hearts in his hands. Dad, like many men, had steady, strong and tender hands when we were young, but as Vona stampeded and I tiptoed toward womanhood, his hands trembled, became rough and, at times—there is no other word for it—cruel. It didn’t help that we were raised in a remote northern hamlet in the fifties—an era of gullibility, tranquility and family-focused cohesion. And that we came of age in a west coast city at the height of the sixties—the decade of sex, drugs and rock and roll. And rebellion. Another knock against us was that the year Vona and I turned thirteen and twelve respectively, Dad was in the slammer.

  And what a slam dunk of a slammer it was. Oakalla Prison Farm, built in 1912, achieved notoriety as a full-service penal colony. Full-service meant nearly anyone could be incarcerated there: innocent men and women awaiting trial, convicted murderers and child molesters, pimps, rapists, armed robbers, petty thieves and white-collar criminals. (In the scheme of things, my father was a blue-collar criminal.) A monstrous brick Dickensian gaol, Oakalla boasted a reputation for inmate brutality and prison escapes. Originally built to house a maximum of 484 prisoners, its population bulged to nearly 1,300 by the mid-sixties. As former Oakalla guard Earl Andersen wrote in his book A Hard Place to Do Time: The Story of Oakalla Prison, 1912–1991, despite sweeping reforms in the fifties, Oakalla continued to be “vastly overcrowded and infested with misery. Destruction of prison property was equaled only by the destruction of human lives.”

  Life in a 6 × 8 concrete cell was not living but existing for Dad, as it was for many. For someone whose elbows felt grazed when he walked down a city street and whose signature anthem was “Don’t Fence Me In,” it must have been hell. His finely penned dispatches of witticisms, hopes and extravagant promises were squeezed between rivers of rancour and worry. His main complaint was oppressive boredom and loneliness. Other inmates were “a bunch of up turned glasses” and deliberately kept to themselves, as he did, especially avoiding his former “bosom buddy” and accomplice Poncho.

  April 9, 1965

  Please excuse this novel stationery! As with everything else in my new life, I find there are regulations for things I never dreamed of! How are you and the children? Not taking it too hard?… Am still getting a kick out of Parker’s words when he sentenced me—said that due to some incident in my early life or marriage, I had become a bitter and cynical person and that I needed to establish a happier outlook on my fellow man!! Just wait and see how a few years in prison will improve my outlook!

  One outgoing, single-page letter a week, on narrow-ruled penitentiary stationery with Oakalla’s communication regulations on the back, was all prisoners were allowed. They could receive unlimited incoming mail—all if it, of course, censored. And write him Vona and I did, every week, as we were not permitted to visit, being under the age of eighteen. He wrote almost every weekly letter to Mom, occasionally reserving part of the page for notes to Vona and me. He was also allowed only one visit a month, but Dad discouraged Mom from seeing him. “I don’t want you coming out to this grubby hole again.” When she did visit, they communicated by speakerphone through a thick plate-glass window.

  By now, Vona and I knew the truth. At least the version circulating at the time: Dad had lost his trial but he “didn’t steal anything, hurt anyone
or threaten anyone.” So while he was behind bars now, he’d be freed when his appeal bail was granted and then a new trial would right all the former wrongs and he’d subsequently receive tons of money, allowing us to finally move to that paradisiacal home in the country. But not before he and Vona crossed the Rockies on horseback, and he and I explored Disneyland, although I sensed a definite waning of enthusiasm for the Magic Kingdom. In one letter, he asked if I wouldn’t rather canoe down the Stewart and Yukon Rivers instead: “The same canoe trip I took while you were being born!” I immediately changed my mind and wanted to cross the Rockies too. When he responded that he’d take us both, Vona declared that first he’d have to take her alone as he’d originally promised. In yet another letter, he said we’d buy a boat and cruise the world’s oceans—“that should please your mother!”

  Competing for Dad’s love and approval became a full-time job. Good marks were always prime ammunition. Getting a C in anything was unacceptable. But the real zingers were recurrent avowals that, at heart, we were still his country-loving, bush-savvy girls and hadn’t been tainted by “that miserable city.” In April, I sent him a three-page letter peppered with endearments, a few Mad magazine jokes (such as “Support Mental Illness: Join the Klu Klux Klan” and “Save Water—Shower with your Steady”) and a bucolic drawing of our future home: a two-storey log house, Mom parting the curtains at the window, cows in the corral, chickens and goats running free with Caesar and Pierre, Dad and I holding hands in the front garden and Vona riding her horse high on a hill.

  In May, Vona launched a formidable salvo.

  Dear Pal,

  I really love you and every time I think of you behind bars I nearly cry. But I stop myself because a girl who wants to go out in the Rockies with the best horseman in the world shouldn’t cry like a baby. But it’s pretty hard not to, because I love you so much.

  A month later I dispatched the following volley:

  Dear Pappy,

  At school they had sports day and I came third in running! Vona didn’t win anything. Ha-Ha!

  Then Vona delivered the final and winning shot.

  Dear Pal,

  I still sleep with your picture and your two letters under my pillow. I love you more than all the horses in the world and you know how much I love horses!

  As Judge Parker had poignantly predicted, Dad wasn’t suffering solo. Like a stone plopped in a pond, his misery rippled out and collided with his parents, his younger brother Ronnie, and Omi and Grandpa. Most grievously, it threatened to drown his daughters—and his wife, who, with a scared and faltering heart, had to manage a house, two dogs and two antsy teenage girls, and deal with disapproving in-laws, a new level of poverty and a husband in the hoosegow. The immediate effect was the bottoming out of our bottom line. Within two weeks of his sentencing, the cheques from Campbell ceased. Within four weeks, Judge Parker denied his application for appeal bail. Increasingly dissatisfied with his lawyer, Patrick Hogan, Dad raged and attempted to console us from his cage:

  May 4, 1965

  I don’t know what’s become of this case of mine—I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t believe much of what Hogan says. I don’t think that Hogan or any other lawyer can really do anything. They’ll do exactly what they want.

  Please honey, watch your health and don’t work. You didn’t look too well when you came to see me the other week. I know you won’t have much money but enough to scrape by on. You know I’m still sure I’ll win in the long run and we’ll come out way ahead! The children are on the right road now and won’t be affected to any great extent by this whole business. We’ll lick this wicked world yet!

  I’m sure you are enjoying this in a rather perverse fashion. Now you can sit in the evenings with your mandolin and sing those sad, melancholy Russian songs!

  Enjoyment was not on Mom’s menu. Macaroni and cheese was. At least it wasn’t Kraft dinner, but start-from-scratch white sauce with orange cheddar, the only kind available. On a good week we mixed in a can of tuna or cut up a couple of wieners. We’d already received our first visit from a social worker and overnight we slid from lower middle class to welfare class. Mom’s cheeks flamed as she explained why she couldn’t go out and get a job. She tired easily, slept only with the aid of pills and suffered shortness of breath with little exertion. As she would say more and more, “My heart hurts.” In more ways than one. For Vona and I being on welfare meant monotonous weekday meals, more weekend feasts at Omi’s and, if we wanted new clothes, more strawberry picking, bean picking and babysitting. Our choice retailers were the downtown Army and Navy outlet or Honest Nat’s Department Store at Forty-eighth and Fraser. Another source of income for me was my hair. I had been growing it since we left Elsa and by 1965 it touched the small of my back. Later that year Mom cut it just above my shoulders and I sold my brown strands to a wig maker for ten dollars.

  Behind bars, Dad made ineffectual attempts to decrease our expenses and increase our income: “Send Caesar to my brother and save on dog food.” (Unthinkable.) “Pawn my two gold wristwatches and one pocket watch I inherited from my grandfather.” (Never.) And, most intriguing, “Get me Martin Swizinski’s address in Elsa.” Mom followed through on that one. A month later, she received an envelope from Elsa with no return address. Inside was fifty dollars cash. Finally, Dad ordered, “since you still don’t have a driver’s license, let my Dad take the car and he’ll send $200 for it.” She did that too, but the money never came. Relations with Mom’s in-laws, my grandparents, were more strained than ever, with Granny writing Mom missives such as “How are your English classes coming? Can I look for an improvement in your letters?” They got worse after what happened next—the one fortuitous outcome of Dad’s enforced absence.

  Saint Paul had his epiphany on the road to Damascus. Mom had hers on Main Street. While he was being tried, she’d told her husband she held a single thought before her, and turned to it like the North Star whenever she felt lost and discouraged—he would come back to her. Although she would always, she vowed, stand by her man, her man couldn’t or wouldn’t always stand by her. In fact, chances were he’d be elsewhere for a long time. Despite her faltering heart, she had two promising girls and two dogs depending on her and she wasn’t about to hook their futures to the whims of a landlord. Even the birds didn’t rent, Mom used to say, which irked Dad no end given that his parents viewed a mortgage as a capitalist ball and chain.

  The same month Dad was locked up, Mom revealed that Uncle Ken, Ricky’s realtor father, had found us an affordable home—a house to own, not rent! But Omi would pay the down payment. Unbeknownst to us, years before Omi had bought a small plot of Fraser Valley farmland in Clearbrook. She would use the $1,000 from its sale for a down payment for our new $8,000 property at 6136 Main Street, between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Avenues. The rectangular, flat-roofed, two-bedroom, one-level cottage was painted white with bright blue trim, blue awnings and cherry red front steps, giving it a Mediterranean flair. Two white faux-Grecian urns bookended the front entrance. Perfect for life in a rainforest. The cottage sat far back from Main Street traffic on a long, narrow lot with a small tool shed and a cement pad for a backyard. Our home was, by Omi and Mom’s mutual agreement, registered in Omi’s name to ensure that Dad never got his hands on it.

  On a rainy Friday in late May of 1965, with help from Uncle Ken, Ricky, Angus MacDonald and other friends, we moved once again. This time we had our piano and a number of treasures from our Elsa home resurrected from storage: Mom’s Italian vase and Queen Anne bone china Yukon tea set; precious books, photos and pictures; our phonograph and records; Dad’s three hunting rifles and his twenty-nine-volume collection of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Dad was so proud of the dark brown suede-covered set, he’d demonstrate its superior binding by dangling an entire volume by a single tissue-thin page. Our new home was small—about 800 square feet of living space—with no grassy backyard, so Caesar had to be
walked four times a day. But it was ours and Mom’s eyes glittered with the pride of homeownership. After all, welfare cheques made out to Helen Priest paid the sixty-dollar monthly mortgage and Maria Teichroeb’s name on the registration was only a formality. Mom didn’t have money to decorate her “cottage” or even buy a washing machine, but trundling our dirty linen to the laundromat at Main and Forty-eighth was a small price to pay for some stability and security: the first Mom had since the uprooting from Elsa.

  Now, if only her girls would settle down. A small home with two tiny bedrooms became smaller still due to their dreary interactions. I viewed my sister as a bossy bully and an arrogant know-it-all. She saw me as a whiny tattletale tangled in Mom’s apron strings. How could we be expected to share a bed? Mom solved the problem, at least temporarily, by giving Vona her own room while I slept with Mom. When Dad came home, of course, Vona and I would be stuck with each other. Other disruptions arose too. Vona quit accordion but continued with piano, although lessons were skipped. I quit both piano and guitar lessons. We complained about the entire dog walking/dish washing/laundry hauling/bathroom cleaning chore routine. Our school marks were rising but not as quickly as our hormones. And that meant arguments, subterfuge and amazingly creative excuses. My big sister was not only a year older but endowed with a wildly different temperament. And we both felt surges of a force and yearning that alternately pulled us out of ourselves to some unknown place and then drew us deeper within.

  Whatever it was, we were bound for a head-on collision, not only with Omi’s Mennonite creed, in which dancing and popular music were considered tools of the Devil, but with the traditional values of Mom and Dad, which, if closely examined, were not all that different from those of the Anabaptists. There was a boy at school I’d been making eyes with, and he with me, but that’s as far as my romantic forays went, other than strolling by his house occasionally to quicken my pulse. We listened to C-FUN radio every spare moment, and the sounds blaring from our black transistor stirred our souls like Jericho trumpets. They blew the roof off and the walls down and home was never the same. The top ten hit me like an A-bomb—lyrics broadcasting how wrong the world was, melodies that melted my innards and rhythms that rattled my bones. Not dance? I’d rather sign up to roast in that very warm place.