The Source of All Things (20 page)

After Christmas, Interlochen lay buried in snow. For weeks on end, the wind howled, and the temperature hovered around zero. Most of my classmates stayed in their dorm rooms, drinking chamomile tea and listening to James Taylor. But an old passion rekindled inside me. The hint of sun drew me out of my cramped room and onto the flat, white sheets of snow that covered the campus. I donned sweatpants, a Patagonia fleece, and a pair of L.L.Bean cross-country skis Reed had bought me for my eighteenth birthday and headed across the highway into the trees. I found my way back to trees and rocks and snow, the absolutes of the world, which I had once relied on and cherished. As I skied, a sadness crept over me, and I welcomed it, because I couldn't let it creep in on campus.

My sorrow was an old puddle, flecked by pieces of treebark and soft white fuzz. I could look in it and see the girl I once was. I knew her—then, still—because she hadn't left me. Despite all my successes at Interlochen, my old, wounded self still roamed along the edges of my psyche.

She wanted things: retribution, an apology, a nonsexual hug. She wanted them from her father, not her mother. She felt alone, even though her mom sent her cards on her birthday, Valentine's Day, even Feast of the Ascension Day. She wanted one person who could know her and understand her and still love her even when she failed, or felt robbed or broken.

I skied loops and loops through the forest, burning through the pain in my chest. It was for a lost father, followed by a bad father, followed by all the people who refused to help. But the trees never wavered.

When I graduated from Interlochen in late June of 1989, I'd been accepted at Los Angeles's American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts and was wait-listed at Hampshire College. My new best friend, Amy Burtaine, got into Brown, Harvard, Hampshire, and Sarah Lawrence. Unsure of what we would do over the summer, I scored jobs for both of us in a place called the Escalante Desert in southern Utah. With zero experience in either desert travel or peer counseling, a company called The Challenger Foundation hired us to lead troubled teenagers on 130-mile treks across the desert. We would work with the most rebellious teens: kids who'd robbed places, become addicted to drugs, run away, or been overly promiscuous. Their parents paid our new employer $15,000 to “kidnap” them in the middle of the night. Blindfolded and still in their pajamas, they boarded planes from wherever they originated and flew, guarded by college wrestler thugs, to a remote airstrip. From there, they were blindfolded again and driven deep into the Escalante, where our future bosses, Horsehair and Wallwalker, would meet them. Horsehair and Wallwalker sounded like the names of people who belonged in the Anasazi Pueblo. As it turned out, they were actually fat, white ex-military guys who'd had some success using forced marches and applied starvation to beat the rebellion out of children. At least their reputation was such that desperate parents turned their kids over to them as a last resort.

The program was infamous for its last challenge—called “Handcarts”—during which the teenagers would have to push thousand-pound wooden handcarts (similar to the ones the early Mormons used to transport all of their belongings to Utah in
the 1800s) for three weeks through the searing heat. The kids took turns sliding under a metal crossbar and rolling the contraption across the desert. They'd end their three-week hell walk by running down a two-track road into the arms of their hopeful, expectant parents.

Amy's and my job, for which we were paid $1,000 a month, was to force the delinquents to survive in the worst desert conditions—in 120-degree heat, amidst scorpions, rattlesnakes, and a host of other dangerous critters. Challenger's founders believed that this regimen would awaken the kids to what was important in life and correct their hostile, destructive behavior. Privately, I wondered who I was to pretend to be a role model for these kids. I wasn't sure if I should be jealous—or relieved—that my parents were too oblivious—and poor—to have sent me someplace like Challenger. But the lure of the wilderness won me over—I bought a new pair of hiking boots, tank tops, and shorts, and borrowed one of my dad's old military-issue backpacks.

I felt an instant camaraderie with the “campers” the first time I met them, during their transition from Primitive Camp to Handcarts. A kid in a filthy, soiled red headband whispered, “My parents don't give a shit about us, but they think my sister and I should be angels.” He was smart and articulate, the kind of boy I liked to hang out with. Then he pointed to a skin-and-bones girl who was sucking on a handful of juniper berries, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. I looked around to make sure Horsehair wasn't watching, and then nodded. Most of the kids looked like they could use a giant steak dinner—or ten—just to put some
flesh on their skeletons. I knew that part of our job was to cleanse our charges of the drugs and alcohol coursing through their bodies, but I also knew how hungry I felt after just days in the desert. All we ate during our three-week walk was water and half a cup of oatmeal for breakfast, a dry package of ramen noodles for lunch, and a cup of rice with canned corn or peas for dinner, so it was important that someone knew how to forage the rest. Wall-walker warned us that the kids we'd be counseling were prone to run away, starve themselves, fake all kinds of illnesses. But it was obvious from the second I met them that they were truly suffering for their indiscretions.

My first night
on the job, a scorpion headed for my bedding—with me in it. When I say “bedding” I mean a single wool blanket. None of the kids or low-level instructors were allowed to bring sleeping bags and inflatable air mattresses. We slept on the cold, red earth, shivering beneath our one layer. The most incorrigible of the kids, a boy named Xavier, who allegedly broke into someone's house and stole a stereo, came to my rescue—sort of.

“I'll stab that motherfu…. if he gets too close to you, but if he stings you, I ain't going to be the one to suck out the poison,” he said. I countered his hostility with understanding. My abuse, and the pitiful way I tried to deal with it (by freeing myself and then recovering, but giving in, again and again), made me a conduit for Xavier and the rest of the delinquents.

I felt our similarities poignantly when a little girl named Chicken asked me to walk with her to the top of a rocky outcropping.
It was days into our expedition, and Chicken had been trouble all along, cussing and refusing to share group chores like cooking and cleaning the dishes. Standard Challenger procedure was to punish kids who cussed by making them hike alongside the handcart while carrying an eight-pound rock. Not only did the rock detail compound the exhaustion of the person carrying it, but it made the other kids mad, because it meant one fewer person to push the handcarts.

By the time Chicken came to me, whispering that she needed someone to talk to, she was skin on bones with bruises and sores mottling her arms and legs. Her lips were cracked, and her eyes overlarge and overly bright. I knew I couldn't tell Horsehair that I thought Chicken needed more daily rations, but I got permission to hike her to the top of the outcropping, and we picked our way to the apex of a sandy red boulder. It looked out over a sea of saline washes and wind-scoured badlands.

“Neat, isn't it?” I said, picking a spot with a view that extended for what seems now like a million miles. Chicken sat so close that our sun-warmed arms were touching.

“What's neat?” Chicken asked.

“The desert. All that earth with nobody in it.”

Chicken looked at me like I'd just piloted a unicorn out of a cloud of cotton candy and landed it on the boulder where we were sitting. She picked a scab at the center of her forearm and looked at me forlornly.

“You're serious?” she said.

“Yeah, I am serious. I like being out here, even if we're not on a vacation. The desert makes me feel small and invisible, like a mosquito or a piece of dandruff.”

“Dandruff?” Again, Chicken looked at me like I was crazy. “Come on. Dandruff's gross. Why would you say that?”

I thought about it and silently chided myself for saying something so stupid. I was joking around when I wanted Chicken to see what I saw. The desert in front of us was different from the one in Twin Falls. It was softer-looking and rounded, with no trace of skin-tearing lava.

What I meant was that I loved the simplicity of walking all day only to lay my head on the sandy earth at sunset. I liked the stars buzzing over my head. The desert killed people who didn't know how to find shade or water. But it didn't hate them or prey upon them, the way dads sometimes preyed on their daughters.

We sat and watched the shadows change directions. The sun crept a couple of inches across the horizon, and the wind kicked up the scent of fossils. Every now and then, Chicken looked up from a beetle she was poking and acted like she wanted to say something. I waited until she was ready.

Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed. She was ready.

“What I want to know is how you managed to get through high school without getting sent here,” she said. “And why I couldn't grow up like you did, because maybe then I wouldn't be here.”

I felt like a liar, wishing I could tell Chicken the truth about myself and my circumstances. I wanted her to know that I'd been through
everything
. Well, everything short of being raped and getting pregnant by my own father, like the
worse-worst
cases of girls who are abused. But I wished she could see that even a fuckup like me, who'd been seriously jilted and tried to fill her emptiness with her so-called sinful behavior, had found a crack and seen the light
shining on the other side of her life. I knew if Chicken could know this, it might be the best thing she learned during Challenger. But the “rules” of my job kept me from telling her the one thing that might have helped her. I knew, as counselors, we were supposed to show only our glossiest sheens.

Sitting on my perch above the desert, I leaned over and knocked forearms with Chicken. “You're not all those bad things people say you are,” I said. “And trust me. The only reason you think I'm better than you is because you don't know me.”

At the end
of Handcarts, the kids ran eight miles into the arms of their parents. Amy and I didn't have to, but we joined them. We ran until we saw the faint outline of Challenger's institution-green Chevys, surrounded by adults: Wallwalker and Horsehair, plus most of the kids' parents.

As we approached the yellow tape that marked the end of the kids' worst nine weeks in history, many rushed into their parents' arms. They collapsed, overwhelmed, exhausted, and enlightened. It was the first time many had seen the people responsible for having them ripped from their beds and shoved onto a plane bound for Utah. I could sense their anger, as well as their relief.

Amy and I sprinted behind them. We loitered in the emotions around us, wondering if we had something to do with it. Amy had already decided that she'd come back to Challenger for two more hitches, while I'd decided to spend the rest of the summer in Twin Falls. We hugged and congratulated each other, reflecting on our accomplishments. In the desert, we'd learned to be patient, open,
and fearless. Challenger had taught us leadership, kindness, and perseverance. Though I still thought I would become an actress, I now added “youth counselor, wilderness guide, and social worker” to my list of possible professions. I knew that my successes were even greater than Amy's: in the course of one year, I'd pulled myself up from the dregs of teenage society to become one of the top students in my class. I also knew that instead of tarnishing me, my past had given me the gifts of empathy and understanding. I felt pride and gratitude for the chances Jude, David, Wallwalker, and Horsehair had given me, which allowed me to prove that I was far greater than my circumstances.

Amy and I were just about to get too self-congratulatory, when we heard footsteps shuffling up the dusty road behind us.

Xavier lumbered toward the finish, his shirt soaked through with sweat. His fists were clenched, and he pumped them along the sides of his waist. At first I thought he was pumping with joy, or maybe pride. But then I saw that he was frowning. “There he is. The boy we've been waiting for,” I heard a female voice behind me say. Another, gruffer voice, responded, “First time in God knows how long I've seen him running without being chased.”

Xavier didn't hear what they were saying. He trotted up to the crowd, looking for his parents. I caught his eye and smiled but was overshadowed as his dad extended a giant, Rolex-draped arm for what struck me as an overly formal handshake. But instead of taking it, Xavier recoiled. Spitting into his father's face, he shouted, “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME!”

Before Amy, or I, or anyone could move, Wallwalker grabbed Xavier by the neck. Xavier struggled, contorting his body like he wanted to slam it into Wallwalker. But our leader was too strong
for even a big, rage-filled boy to overpower. He wrestled Xavier into one of Challenger's Chevys and got in, firing up the engine. As they headed back to Sheep Camp, where Xavier would start his second, nine-week round of wilderness rehabilitation, I stood on my tiptoes and peered over the dust cloud billowing up behind them.