Bad Daddy by Gary Ives

Bad Daddy by Gary Ives

Growing up the Swenson kids lived for nearly two years at our house, so I have always regarded them as family. The twins, Lucas and Marco, and I were in many classes together. Although twins, the boys were quite different. Marco the extrovert, Lucas quiet and withdrawn. Lucas and I became friends at St. Catherine’s in the fourth grade and remain so to this day. I liked Marco and their younger sister Rose, but we did not become close like Lucas and me. There’s probably a more polite way to say it, but to understand Lucas you need to understand how undeniably ugly he was. Extra-large ears, a low widow’s peak, and dark eyes a little bit sunken, immediately brought to mind a chimpanzee. In fact, his dad even called him Chimp Boy. This carried over to middle school and high school. I think only his mom, his siblings, and I called him by his Christian name, to the rest he was Chimp from fourth grade on. He hated the moniker, and perhaps this was one reason he didn’t care much for people. Conversely, Marco was good looking and outgoing. Girls envied his eyebrows and eye lashes and said that he was a beautiful, even angelic boy. No one would ever guess that Lucas and he were twins. Rose fortunately favored Marco in looks, and easily turned heads from the time she was 14 or 15. I mention the looks because it’s true the world over that the good-looking are favored over the plain. It’s the handsome or pretty who frequently get the breaks denied others. Opportunity gravitates into the lap of those blessed with beauty, frequently ignoring more deserving merit or the more qualified. This prejudice often follows into middle age, when good looks fade, usually in one’s 30’s, then blessings seem to vanish. This was the case with the Swenson’s handsome dad, Mickey.

Mickey Swenson grew up poor, raised in a trailer park by a mean red-neck grandmother while his dad did a 20-year stretch in prison for armed robbery. Luckily, Mickey got the breaks because of his looks. He was indeed handsome, blessed with the classic beauty of a chiseled jaw line, cupid’s bow lips, perfect cheek bones, and fine blond hair with subtle hints of red. Ever popular, he made the varsity baseball team. After high school he won a scholarship to The Starz to Be Modeling Academy from which he landed a contract with Darling Publishers modeling for the covers of their Love and Charm imprint. His half-naked image graced the covers of dozens of soft-porn bodice rippers that sold in the tens of thousands. He was that handsome and perhaps those good looks are why, a pregnant 18-year-old Audrey Fitzsimmons married Swenson and bore three children before her 24th birthday. Did she even suspect that Swenson was a loser? Probably not, but she soon learned that his charms were superficial, a thin veneer over an alcoholic with a gambling addiction and a mean temper. This she discovered too late. Divorce was not an option for Irish Catholic Audrey.

Young Audrey had also grown-up poor. Her father’s silicosis from years in the copper mines had left him tethered to an oxygen tank in front of daytime television. The family could not afford parochial tuition, so Audrey attended public school in the bad part of town where they lived, quitting in the 10th grade to care for her dad. Her lack of a proper education plagued her ever after. Conscious of her poor grammar, she remained hesitant to speak outside the family. Micky Swenson aggravated this shyness never missing the chance to mock her over a double negative or misused word. And for this she harbored a deep respect for a proper education.

Photographs reveal a most attractive lady before she filled out rather generously in her 30’s, after three children and years with an abusive husband. Life was tough, Micky, undependable and lacking all ambition was useless as a breadwinner. Consequently, they lived in a series of dumps, trailers, and run-down duplexes. When she was 23 she was surprised one day by a letter from a Denver law firm announcing that her maternal grandfather, a mining engineer, had died leaving her three valuable oil leases in Oklahoma. This she kept a secret from everyone, especially her husband, planning to lift her children from poverty by sending them to universities, maybe even Notre Dame or Loyola. This dream sustained her through Swenson’s selfish, drunken behavior.

He showed no interest in fatherhood. “I don’t like kids and I surely got no use for babies, you take care of ‘em, I don’t want ‘em. They’re yours,” he told her. And didn’t he delight in terrifying them when they were just tots, with an often-repeated lurid story about a ferocious bear named Ugly Max who lived in a cave under the house and who ate children.

Audrey, a devout Catholic attended mass regularly. Her sad family situation was no secret. Father O’Shaunessy saw that the Sullivan children attended St. Catherine’s tuition free. Throughout our years at St. Catherine’s Mickey Swenson would disappear sometime for weeks. There were rumors that he performed in “art films” in California. The marriage was fraught with incessant arguments, displays of temper, and money problems. As his alcoholism progressed he developed a bent for cruelty, sometimes striking Audrey and beating the children with a special belt which hung on a hook by the kitchen door. His favorite drunken punishment was to lock the three children in the pantry after removing the light bulb. He did this so often that Lucas and Marco hid a candle, jugs of water with an empty one to pee in, and a wide mouth mason jar for Rose. Once after he beat Audrey severely she escaped into the bedroom slamming the door. Mickey then nailed the bedroom door shut, then locked the kids in the dark pantry before disappearing for two days. On his return Audrey threatened to have him arrested.

“You do that, and I’ll cut you and then I’ll cut Rose’s pretty little face too!” Each of the children feared and hated their father with a burning vengeance.

Mickey’s reckless drinking and gambling cost him his job with the publisher. Bills could not be paid, and the family was turned out by the landlord. Mickey Swenson disappeared, and the mother and children moved to an abandoned trailer with water but no electricity.

There they subsisted for a summer on food stamps and what Audrey earned as a cashier at Kroger’s until September, when, thanks to my mother and father’s kindness and understanding they moved in with us. Throughout these troubled times Audrey refused to touch the secret Oklahoma oil leases. She fervently believed that the only path out of poverty was a university education. She got a restraining order against Mickey and filed for divorce despite the church’s stricture. A decade of misery had eroded faith in mother church. But, before the mandatory year’s waiting period required before a divorce could be finalized, Audrey died suddenly from an aneurism.

Having no will, Audrey’s estate was probated. The oil leases long intended for all three children to attend good universities, went instead to the surviving spouse, drunken Mickey Swenson.

Two years of booze and blackjack pissed away every last penny, and Mickey Swenson’s whereabouts became unknown.

After high school the twins took jobs and attended community college for a while. Lucas got a job working nights at the Wonder Bread bakery. A friend of Father O’Shaunnessy offered Marco a job waiting tables at his upscale restaurant. Marco looked great in a tux and was so good at the job that some weekends he brought in over $200 in tips, big money in 1969, and about what I made in a month. When he learned this, Lucas applied for a waiter’s job at the same restaurant and two others, to no avail. I did not have the heart to tell him that with his looks and his reticence, he’d be restricted to kitchen work if ever a restaurant hired him. Customers were tipping Marco’s good looks and outgoing personality as much as his good service. Similarly, as soon as Rose reached 18 she entered PanAm’s stewardess program and embarked on her successful career. Then the airlines foremost criteria for its stewardesses was beauty.

Lucas tired of the bakery job and joined the Marines, losing his left foot to a Viet Cong land mine in Can Tho Province. Following six months of rehab he took a summer job at an Idaho fire tower. He found being close to nature suited his reclusive ways. The solitude afforded him the quiet he needed to write wildlife and conservation articles for nature magazines. Winters he spent as a camp host at a national park in Texas. The owner of the restaurant where Marco worked, an old bachelor with no family, left the restaurant to Marco and he has prospered. Because of their father none of the Swenson children ever drank. Marco and Rose served alcohol, but never drank.

In September 1975 on a layover in St. Louis, Rose was shocked to see her father Mickey Swenson in blue coveralls emptying trash cans into a movable bin in the passenger terminal. She was certain it was he. He had aged and the good looks were gone having surrendered many teeth, his face deeply lined, a midriff gone to fat, and his posture a shuffling stoop. She immediately called Marco who in turn contacted Lucas who was finishing his final week of the season in Idaho. Over the next three days plans were shaped.

Rose arranged a vacation leave. Marco drove to St. Louis where he and Rose rented a commercial van with a secured caged stowage space. Using cash for everything they then purchased a set of handcuffs from a pawn shop. At WalMart with cash they bought food and a few supplies, including a dozen pints of honey. From a liquor wholesaler they paid cash for a case of vodka in pint bottles.

“I think we’re ready, Rose.”

The next morning Rose staked out the passenger terminal. Shortly after noon she saw her father emerge from a service door pushing the portable trash bin. She confronted him, all smiles, overwhelming him with a patter of rapid chit chat.

“Daddy! I can’t believe it’s you, oh Dad! Oh, Daddy you’ve got to see Marco. He’s down in the parking lot, come with me, it’ll just take a minute. We can have lunch together; you can leave this shit for an hour, can’t you? Marco will be so happy to see you. How have you been?” Blah, blah, blah. So stunned was he that he remained speechless, mouth agape like an old man.

With a smile, Marco lured a stunned Mickey into the van’s rear seat. Rose slipped behind the wheel and as soon as the door shut with Marco in the passenger seat, off they drove. Marco continued the stream of talk confounding a dazed and silent Mickey Swenson who listened, slack jawed.

Handing him a pint of Vodka he said, “Dad, here if you’d care for a drink. There’s more in the back, so please help yourself. I own a restaurant now so I’m always on the lookout for bargain liquor, I know a good place out of town where we can eat and catch up on our lives. Did you know Lucas was a Marine in Viet Nam?” As Rose drove west out of the city, Mickey was not shy with the vodka. Marco kept up a steady stream of talk and within a half hour Mickey was ready to crack open a second pint.

“Rose, pull over, Dad and I need to get to the carton in back.”

Marco reckoned that as a seasoned heavy drinker, he wasn’t drunk, but was relaxed enough for him to cuff him onto the heavy wire grate. “See this empty jug, Dad? Know what that’s for? You never let us have an empty jug in the pantry, did ya? Try not to spill any pee. Enjoy the ride.”

Mickey Swenson was now their prisoner, handcuffed but within reach of unlimited vodka to keep him sedated for the 24-hour drive to Idaho. Marco searched his pockets but found nothing, no keys, no wallet. No doubt he changed into coveralls when he reported for his shift. He carefully placed gauze pads over a sleeping Mickey’s eyes then duct taped them in place. Another strip went across his dad’s mouth, though Mickey had yet to speak a word. Lucas commented on how much their dad had rapidly aged.

“Booze’ll do that, won’t it?” Rose replied. “I think his mind’s shot. He would never have let himself go like this. He’s lost it somewhere along the way.”

Lucas met them in his four-wheel-drive Ram Charger at a deserted motel at the foot of Mt. Grimwald. Everyone got out to stretch and pee. Their father had to be helped into the extended cab. Once buckled up he fell asleep instantly. Once the cargo was loaded they began the two- hour four-wheel slow crawl up a rough, overgrown logging trail.

The ruins of a 12X12 cabin built a hundred years ago sat just above the trickle of a small stream near the ridge of the mountain, the cabin’s door, window, and most of the roof gone. Piles of scat from generations of wood rats and bats littered the remnants of a floor.

“We’re home, Dad!” Lucas shouted.

Lucas and Marco unloaded the few supplies, the rest of the vodka, and the dozen pints of WalMart honey. With an ice pick Lucas punctured each of the plastic containers which began to leak into the backpack and onto the sleeping bag.

Marco removed the duct tape and eye pads from his father’s face and the handcuffs.

Mickey Swenson sat on the ground, his hand gripping the pint of vodka. Dazed by the sunlight, he lay down in a fetal position, eyes closed, silently clutching his booze. “This is for treating mom and us like shit all those years, you bastard. We thought about leaving you in a locked pantry, but we decided to give you a sporting chance. All you have to do is cross the valley and climb about half-way up that mountain to the ranger station. It can be done in a day. You’ve got energy food, peanut butter and honey, and there’s still plenty of vodka. So, here’s your backpack, and here’s your sleeping bag, ooh, sorry ‘bout all that sticky honey. Happy camping, Dad. Let’s get outta here, gang.”

In the Ram Charger each of the siblings withdrew into himself for a long while until Marco wondered aloud why their dad had refused to say a single word. Rose asked what Mickey Swenson’s odds were.

“Pretty close to zero, Rose. I’ve watched this ridge for a couple of years now. With the 7×50 binoculars I can see this cabin from the fire tower. There’s a mama brown bear with two cubs that come in the mornings to drink in the stream. Things might get interesting when she smells that honey. And if he sobers up enough to try to cross the valley, well, Fish and Wildlife Services just reported three female and a large male grizzly who I call Ugly Max down there. They’ll stick around on account of a dead elk they’ve started feeding on.”

No one looked back.

At the end of May 1977 Lucas received a registered letter from the San Bernardino County Attorney informing him of his father, Mickey Carl Swenson’s death on May 2nd. “Mr. Swenson, victim of a stabbing at the California Men’s Correctional Center in Chino, had been admitted to the San Bernardine Medical Center where he died undergoing emergency surgery. Prison records indicate you as next of kin. Please know that after 60 days unclaimed remains are cremated then disposed of at the nearest state burial facility. To make arrangements you may contact the San Bernardino Coroner’s Office, telephone 909 387 2978.”

Lucas pondered this situation. He had once read that everyone had a doppelgänger somewhere. Now he believed it. Tearing the letter into tiny pieces he let the wind scatter them among the tops of several Douglas firs. No one else need know.

Willy Knudson, who had suffered umbilical strangulation at birth had been a deaf mute his entire 54 years, raised as a ward of the state at Fellinger House, a facility for the severely impaired, where he had been classified VLF very low intellectually, but educable to repetitive tasks. A federal program to employ such persons had, in 1973, placed Willy with the St. Louis Airport custodial staff from which he disappeared in September of 1975. His name remains on the National Missing Persons Registry.

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Copyright Gary Ives 2023