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When Keith was assigned to longer hauls and began to spend more time behind the wheel, he managed to be home only five or six days a month. His marriage showed strain. Running on caffeine, he became short-tempered and sharp-tongued. He told Rose that he preferred thin women and criticized her for every extra pound, even during pregnancy. Their sex drives had never been in phase, and they squabbled over his need to rush her into the bedroom whenever he returned from a trip.

 

The steady trucking job made him feel more in control of his life, but a few of his old urges remained. He set the occasional wildfire. One day he attacked a stray cat in front of his children. He didn't understand their shocked reaction. “Whenever a cat came near me after that, Rose and the kids would holler, ‘Don't kill it!
Don't kill it!'”

 

He continued to suffer from a feeling of not belonging, of not being accepted by his fellow truckers and friends. “When I was in Canada, I was an American. When I was in the States, I was a Canadian. I even began to lose my accent. So what the hell
was
I? Where did I belong? My best memories were of Chilliwack: Grandpa Bellamy and
Little Cotto
, catching trout, delivering papers, stuff like that. That's why I never applied for U.S. citizenship. My dream was to go home.”

 

In April 1981, his sixth year of marriage, Keith learned that jobs were open at Fording Coal Company in Elkford, B.C., on the western slope of the Continental Divide. After a short exchange of correspondence, he was hired. The pregnant Rose was less optimistic about the migration but agreed to follow with the children as soon as he was settled in.

Now twenty-six, Keith felt as though he had shaken off shackles. “I couldn't wait to get away from the Yakima Valley and leave Dad and his head games and all the guys that called me Igor. I knew I would find my true self in Canada, and Rose and I would have a great marriage. I would even stop fantasizing about other women.

“On my drive north in the family Plymouth, I was put to the test. I stopped for a pretty hitchhiker with car trouble. She popped her hood and I quizzed her on how the motor died. I saw that the plastic lobe on the points that ride on the shift cam had broken off. After I replaced them, she insisted on buying me dinner and gave me her phone number in Spokane. She was so beautiful, but I resisted temptation. As her car drove out of sight, I parked on the shoulder and masturbated over what might have been.”

 

At the coal mine Keith was put to work as a flagger at nine dollars an hour and soon won a five-dollar raise as driver of the coal-carrying trucks. “Those overgrown Tonka toys were a trip. High up in the cab I was king of the road. Those Wabco dump trucks and Electrohaul 120s weighed 170 tons loaded. They ran on locomotive motors. The tires were taller than me. I could hardly stretch my arms across the tread.

“Driving those babies was like being in the eye of an electric storm. The diesels generated enough electricity to run two-thousand-horsepower motors. Some of the downhill grades at the mine were 10 percent. If the dynamic disc brakes failed, we were taught to scrape against the rock wall. That saved my ass a few times. It made it easy for me to drive eighteen-wheelers in the mountains later.”

 

After three weeks on the job, he drove his Plymouth back to Yakima for a short visit with his family. Rose was still cleaning up financial odds and ends and told him it would be another month before she could join him.

He was only too glad to return to Elkford without his family. He felt at home with his fellow Canadians and had made new friends. He rode his Honda 750 with a motorcycle touring club called “Gauntlet and Silk.” He went on a Saturday night drinking binge with his fellow mine workers but decided not to repeat the experience. “I found that I developed a ‘don't give a shit' attitude in the bars. I didn't like myself drunk any more than I liked Dad when he was drunk.

“My schedule changed to four days on and four days off. That meant more time to party. I went out with the single guys and played pool, snooker and darts. I got into some good cribbage games. I met women and had plenty of chances at sex, but I stayed true to Rose. I went home on visits, but each time I hurried back. I missed the bachelor life in Canada.

“At a Sunday parade in Yakima, one of the roaming clowns ran up and kissed Rose. Dad said, ‘That'll teach you to pay more attention to your wife.' I didn't give a damn. I couldn't wait to head back north. I didn't care what Dad said anymore.

“Rose and the kids joined me in Canada on the fourth of July, 1981. By now I was out of the young-husband mode, the good-daddy mode, and into the good-times mode. I wanted to come and go as I pleased. That first weekend I went biking with a new friend named Lou Lewis and left my family in Elkford. The next weekend a group of us camped out at Radium Hot Springs. When I got home, Rose was mad—‘What about me and the kids? How come you don't take us anywhere?' I barely heard her. I figured I worked hard and I deserved a little fun.”

 

Bachelor playtime ended after the family moved into a two-bedroom apartment. “Rose just wouldn't put up with me playing, and I didn't want to risk losing my kids. I might've been a little detached from everybody else in the world, but I was always tight with Jason, Melissa and Carrie. I remembered how cold Mom had been, and I tried not to repeat my parents' mistakes.

“After Rose said she didn't intend to sit home and knit Indian sweaters like Mom, I got back in the swing of married life, crawling on the floor with my babies, picnicking along the Mackenzie River, hiking in the mountains. It helped that Dad wasn't there to tell me what to do. Everything went great except the sex. Once a week was plenty for Rose, but my style was once a night. Sometimes I got so frustrated that I went into the bathroom and locked the door—a married man, masturbating.”

 

The monthly rent on the new apartment was $983, and other expenses were high, so Keith bid into the welding department as an apprentice. “That's where the money was. Pretty soon my wages were $16 per hour and I was working six, seven days a week, twelve hours a day. Rose and I had a lot of back bills, and I worked all the overtime I could get. In my first two months of welding I made almost $10,000. I bought gifts for everybody. I bought my brother's old truck and drove it back to Canada, and I bought an expensive Jennings Compound Bow and a new set of arrows for myself. Rose and I settled down to raising our family. I was finally getting into married life. Then the walls fell in.”

As usual Keith found a convoluted way to blame his father for the latest downturn in his life. “I'd always been easily swayed, especially if I thought I could get away with something. The mine workers stole tools and resold them. I witnessed thousands of dollars in thefts. One of my bosses smuggled out automobile engine parts in crates. Pretty soon he was driving around with a new Chevy motor! Everybody stole bulk batteries and flashlights, rain gear and boots, and pretty soon I did too.

“My father was scheduled for a visit, and I wanted to please him, like always. Every month or so he'd expect us to treat him royally. Nothing new—he was always around the corner watching. He couldn't control my brothers and sisters, so he did his number on me. This time he changed my life.”

 

Years later Les Jesperson recalled the preliminaries. “I had opened a welding shop in Yakima, and one day when I was working overhead, hot sparks went down my neck and burned me. Talking to Keith on the phone, I said, ‘Sure would be nice to have a set of those expensive leather coveralls you guys wear, to protect me from those damn hot sparks.'

“I never blamed my son for what he did. He was just trying to please his dad. I always wondered if it had something to do with the murders later. Was he trying to impress me in some sick way? Ever since he was little, that boy did strange things.”

 

Keith looked around for coveralls in Les's size. “Dad should have told me not to bother, but all he said was, ‘Don't get yourself in trouble, Son.' My leathers were too big for him, but a friend got me a smaller set. I decided to smuggle them out in a box along with a set of my own dirty leathers that were going to the cleaner's.

“As I walked past the security shack, the guard yelled, ‘Stop!' I ran around the corner, stashed the leathers and walked back. The guard followed my trail and found the goods. He took down my ID number 901680 and said he had to report me.

“Riding into town on the bus I had that same scary feeling that I always had when I did something wrong, like the whole universe was watching. That went all the way back to shoplifting candy at Mead's Thriftway in Selah.

“When I told Dad that I got caught smuggling out his leathers, he told me I'd made a mistake but to never admit it. ‘Deny everything,' he said, ‘Just walk away. You can always get another job.'”

 

The mining company offered Keith a deal. If he admitted his guilt and maintained a perfect record, his record would be wiped clean in a year. “Dad said, ‘Don't do it. Come home. If you stay at Fording, you'll always be known as a thief.' I think he was just trying to get me back to Selah. If I had ignored his advice, I probably would've stayed out of trouble for the rest of my life. But I used his judgment instead of my own. I stuck my nose in the air and denied everything. Now I was out of a job.”

For two years Keith rattled around Canada from job to job, none as good as the one he'd lost by theft. To escape the stigma he moved his family one hundred miles east to Lethbridge, Alberta, and went to work for Big Horn Transport, driving night runs to Calgary in a Mack truck with flatbeds, working days as a welder at a low salary that was made even lower by the weak Canadian dollar.

Then he landed a dream job driving a massive Peterbilt that had a four-hundred-horsepower Cat engine, a twelve-ton cherry picker for loading heavy equipment, and a draw winch that could pull a house. He enjoyed the power pulsing into his hands through the twin stick shifts with their nine forward speeds. Truck and trailer had twenty-six tires and hauled loads up to 210,000 pounds. “I was back on top again—the job of a lifetime. My work was like play.”

He was laid off after eight months.

 

A daughter, Carrie Marie, was born on March 17, 1983, bringing the family to five. The breadwinner caught on with a construction company, then drifted to two other jobs while managing an apartment complex in exchange for 50 percent off his $425 monthly rent. “I was spinning my wheels, and I knew why. I'd lost my self-respect. I'd lied to so many people about how I lost the Elkford job that I almost believed my own lies.

“Then somebody talked me into trying out for a local boxing team. I'd boxed a little in Selah, but Dad told me to forget about it—I was too slow. With him out of the picture, I boxed in the Alberta Golden Gloves and on a provincial fight card and enjoyed it even though I usually lost. I did roadwork like a heavyweight champion and dropped from 260 pounds to around 220. I began to feel better about myself. Girls hit on me again, even when Rose was with me. She didn't like it, but I did. It was nice to be the center of attention, even if it was just in taverns. I didn't think about abusing animals. I didn't think about setting fires. I told myself I'd never leave Canada again.

“But the better things got for me, the more Rose complained. Alberta was too cold, the people were backward, she missed her mama, school was too tough for the kids, blah blah blah. When she was at her lowest ebb, Dad shows up and says, ‘Mom's got lymph-node cancer, Son. She might live a little longer if you moved our grandkids where she can see 'em.'

“That was all Rose needed to hear. She was taking the kids back to Washington, with or without me. I argued for a few days but finally caved in. By this time I'd pretty much fallen out of love with Rose, but I sure as hell loved my kids.

“In July 1983 I drove Rose, Melissa, Carrie and Jason down to Yakima and put them in a little apartment. Everything we owned fit into the U-Haul trailer behind our 1978 Dodge Monaco. I didn't even have a motorcycle.

“I caught a welding job at eight bucks an hour, a $4.00 cut for moving back to the States. This lasted for five weeks, and then I drove a flatbed trailer for Jerry's Steel in Yakima, hauling metal scrap and returning with finished products. Sometimes I hauled copper, brass and aluminum, and every weekend I drove a van full of old newspapers to a recycling center in Oregon City, Oregon. Some nights I didn't get two hours' sleep. We needed the money.

“When I got my gross income up to $850 a week, Rose started talking about moving out of our apartment. She'd always had the infatuation of owning a home. I tried to tell her to wait till the trucking job proved itself, but she went out and looked at mobile homes every chance she got. I'd get back home on Friday night or Saturday morning and she'd make me help her to look. She'd say, ‘We can do this, Keith! We can do it!' When I told her we didn't have enough money saved up, here comes old Dad again, offering to front us the down payment. Control, always control! What could I say?

“A small mobile home would've been enough, but Rose picked out a four-bedroom double-wide. She said, ‘We can handle it, Keith. You're making enough money now.' I said, ‘Yeah,
now
. But what happens if I lose my job?' I thought,
There's only a few jobs in the Yakima Valley that would allow me to keep up those payments if I was laid off.

“Rose wouldn't listen and neither would Dad. With his help we paid $30,000 and moved to the High Valley Mobile Home Park in Selah. We were back where we started, but with one difference. Now we owed Dad money.”

 

From the day the family moved in, Keith was hardly ever home. “I practically lived in my truck. I was damn near in love with it. It was an orange-and-white 1964 Kenworth needle-nose conventional with a 350 Cummins, five-and-four transmission, and torsion-bar suspension. Once in a while I also drove an all-white cab-over GMC Astro with a 318 Detroit engine and thirteen-speed Ranger transmission. It screamed when it ran, and we used it to haul sixty foot rebar.

“I began to feel more at home in those trucks than I did with Rose and the kids. Driving truck was the perfect job for me—out on the open road, living on Slim Fast and coffee and NoDoz, nobody telling you what to do or criticizing you—master of your own life. I took crap from nobody!

“One day an old guy in a green mini pickup tried to block me from passing on the canyon road between Ellensburg and Yakima. I pulled out ahead of him and blocked both lanes, grabbed a wrench, and walked back to his truck. He put his pickup in reverse and slammed into the car behind him. I lit out for Jerry's truck yard. I never heard a word about it.

“Sometimes other drivers would flip me off and try to keep me from following too close. Generally I didn't retaliate unless they jammed on the brakes. Then I'd push them out of the lane and they'd freak and motion to me that they got my license plate. I'd just flip them the bird and go on my way. I never heard anything about those complaints either. I was getting away with murder.”