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In midsummer 1976, when Keith was twenty-one, the lawsuit over his injured foot was settled on the courthouse steps. His share was thirty-three thousand dollars. “In the back of my mind I wanted to use the money to relocate in Chilliwack. My body might be in Washington, but my heart never left B.C. Ever since the sixth grade I wanted to go back. But Dad came to me with a proposal to make me full-time manager of the Silver Spur and 10-percent owner of all our family property, including the house and the trailer court.

“He said he would borrow money from the bank and Rose and I could throw in my settlement. That way we could add forty-six more lots. He said the park would pay our expenses, gas for our car, all insurance and house payments and utilities, and he would buy me a new pickup equipped with a winch, a four-wheel drive and a snow-plow. Dad and Mom would get a thousand dollars per month, and Rose and I would get six hundred. Rose would do the bookkeeping.

“It sounded good, so I signed over my money and went to work. I poured a twenty-by-twenty-foot concrete driveway every day, sometimes two. At night I'd go to Biggs Junction to fish for sturgeon to relax from the pressure, then go back to work at dawn. Within six weeks I finished all the new lots and people were putting houses on them.”

Rose Jesperson had always admired her father-in-law, but now that they were involved in business together, she learned that he could be difficult. She wasn't a trained bookkeeper, but she was good at math, and she kept the trailer park accounts in good order. The paterfamilias was free with his suggestions and advice.

Keith saw storm clouds and considered interceding, but he didn't want to offend either party. “Rose seemed kind of put out, being on the receiving end of Dad's control. She'd get really nervous when he approached our trailer. Now Dad is no dummy. He sees how he affects people and he believes money will fix all. So at Christmas that first year he gave Rose a box full of crinkled-up green papers—five hundred of them.

“Rose dug into the paper looking for her present before she realized it was all dollar bills. Dad said, ‘Rose, that's kind of a payment for putting up with me. I'll try to mend my ways.' It smoothed over a few corners. They got along after that. It was a sign that we could all work together. Too bad the pipe dream couldn't last.”

 

With the addition of the new units and the family future secure, Rose announced that she wanted children. The idea unnerved Keith. “I couldn't get in the mood. What if I had kids as screwed up as me? Kids that nobody liked. Kids called Igor.”

He was still attracted to other women and coveted a highly respectable member of his bowling team. “Arliss was married to the guy who owned Skookum Bowl. She looked great and was nice and friendly, easy to talk to. I used to have sex with Rose and imagine it was Arliss. I fantasized about making it with her on one of the bowling lanes after she shut the place for the night. I had that dream for years.”

Rose knew nothing about the fantasy affairs, and she remained satisfied though puzzled by her new husband. A friend quoted her: “Keith protects me and he's a great provider. He has an artistic side—he draws beautiful scenes: deer, wild birds, all kinds of outdoor settings. He makes intricate designs, buildings, complex plans, like his father. He solves complicated problems in a few seconds. But he lacks common sense. He'll stand outside in a storm. People walk all over him. He forgets his car keys. He seems passive, but I'm not so sure.”

Rose told a few close friends that sometimes she suspected brain damage.

 

When six months passed and she hadn't conceived, doctors determined that Keith's sperm count was too low. Characteristically, he blamed his father. “The doctor asked if I was under stress. I told him what it was like to work with Dad, and he told me my sperm levels would never recover if I didn't break the connection. By then Rose seemed almost desperate for children and signed us on a waiting list for adoption. I didn't want somebody else's children. I was hoping for a long wait.”

The Silver Spur Mobile Home Park remained in Jesperson hands for two more years before financial problems and family disagreements forced a sale. Keith reluctantly approved. “The palm trees were dying in the solarium. The sewage system was failing, and we had to borrow money for that. We borrowed twenty thousand dollars to put in a new well and pay off some of Dad's creditors. Rose and I were at our wits' end and wanted out. I told Dad to unload the park because he couldn't handle the problems and we didn't want to. He sold out.”

 

In his familiar pattern Keith blamed his father for the demise. He recovered his original thirty-three-thousand-dollar investment but soon lost it on cars, vans, motorcycles, bad loans to friends and usurious credit-card interest. When he was close to bankruptcy, he took on a series of low-paying jobs: hauling wood, plumbing, operating a lathe and drill press, working security at night. After three or four hours of sleep, he would rush back to work. He seemed to have less time for Rose.

“Keith became obsessed with money,” a friend recalled. “Every time I saw him he had another part-time job. It wouldn't have surprised me to see him shining shoes on Yakima Avenue.”

Ever since his days behind the wheel of the ancient Wittenburg dump truck, Keith had wanted to learn how to drive big semi-trucks and become an independent driver. He found his opportunity at Muffett and Sons of nearby Buena. “My first job with Muffett was truck driver, equipment operator, welder and mechanic at five bucks an hour and sixty hours a week. I rode my bicycle to work so Rose could have the car. I covered twenty-two miles in just over an hour.

“Now that I was away from the mobile-home park, my stress eased and I started thinking of living in Canada with Rose. But then Melissa was born. I was kinda relieved it was a girl. I like girls. They're not as much trouble. Jason was born a year later. How I loved my babies!”

 

Finances remained an issue in the young household, especially when Keith discovered that the travel expenses of a long-haul trucker were higher than expected. “Rose kept me on the same tight budget as when we were first married—forty dollars a week for food. Driving truck, my morning coffee was costing me a dollar. With three or four coffee breaks a day, I would've been out of money by Thursday if I didn't lump my own loads and pocket the sixty or eighty dollars. Rose would have sent me out with nothing.”

To friends and relatives the first few years of the Jesperson marriage seemed smooth and uneventful. Despite his early doubts Keith realized that he was in love with Rose. After Jason Roy was born in September 1980 and named after his great-grandfather Roy Bellamy, the young husband tried to spend every free moment with his family.

Later Rose told a friend: “He adored our kids. He always had one in his lap. He made a plastic carrier on the back of his bike so he could carry them around wherever he went. At Christmastime he gave piles of gifts. He was always generous to a fault. He bought an expensive mountain bike for a friend just so they could ride together. He gave gifts that we couldn't afford. That's what he substituted for love. He could only show love to little kids. I called him the Disneyland Dad.

“He took me to a jeweler and said, ‘Pick out the diamond ring you want.' I said, ‘Why?' He said, ‘Just because.' He walked out of the shop and said he'd be back in a while. He couldn't be there when I put on the ring. That would have been too emotional.”

 

Keith started taking his wife “adventuring,” as they called it, with his father often coming along for the ride while Gladys stayed home and knitted sweaters—her customary preference. After the trailer-court issues faded, father and son began to enjoy each other's company. On weekends they climbed steep hills in Les's pickup truck. “Dad and I would pick the highest hill and try to go straight up. If the angle got too steep, I'd yell, ‘Jump, Rose,
jump!'
She'd fly through the air laughing.

“We explored back roads and made some roads of our own. Dad would say, ‘Hey, let's go to Chilliwack.' He'd get us up at 4:00
A.M
., and off we'd go in his pickup. He hung out with old friends, and Rose and I toured British Columbia on a motorcycle. Dad and I were always drawn to Chilliwack. It was in our bones.”

 

The conflict between father and son simmered below the surface. “No matter how much fun we had together, I could never forget how he belted me. Once when he baby-sat our kids, I told him, ‘Don't hit them.
You do not touch them!
I've never touched my kids and neither will you.'

“Dad said, ‘They're
my
grandkids.' I said, ‘Well, they're
my
kids!'”

To friends and relatives Keith still seemed to revel in stories that cast his father as a fool or a weakling—a skewed characterization that he seemed to find comforting. He described an ocean fishing trip: “I caught two salmon and Dad got seasick.” He liked to tell about the roll of pictures his father shot without film. He tended to put a negative interpretation on Les's activities and routinely referred to him as “the prick.”

 

As always father and son seemed to have little insight about each other's needs and feelings. “Dad still treated me like the runt of the litter, daddy's little helper. He dragged me to a nursing home to visit one of his hunting buddies. He said, ‘My friend Smitty's not doing too good with his lung cancer, Keith. I'm going out in the hall. Talk to him, Son. Nobody likes to die alone.' I'm sitting there, listening to the rattly breathing, watching his life drain out. After a while Smitty goes limp. I'm holding his hand for ten or fifteen minutes before I realize he's dead.

“I guess you could say Dad helped me get used to people dying. Was he saying he wanted me with him when he died? Was he afraid of dying alone? Was that why he had me sit with that old guy?

“On our way home he said, ‘Keith, someday you'll thank me for putting you through this.' I never feared a dead person after that. When I was killing, I'd talk to my victims as if they were still alive. It was something to thank Dad for.”