Stories I never tell.

I find myself working on a highly disturbing poem these last two days. One granted by the muse to some degree (I haven’t had to fight for it), but it leaves me wondering why exactly this? I think it might be quite good, though I worry it’s melodramatic. The subject matter makes me ill. But I keep going back to it anyways. A scab I’m picking off the past. At least I’m not bleeding much over it, just a little scarred.

It makes me think of all the things I don’t write here. All the things we don’t share because they are too scary or preposterous or because I’m afraid of being accused of over-dramatizing my life. Or because I’m afraid of scaring the people who love me – or whatever the reason is.

But I might as well since I’m dwelling here a little bit right now – share the basis of the poem (since the poem itself is nowhere near sharing):

In 1981, at the age of eight years old, I met Clifford Olson on a lonely dirt road in the interior of BC. It was about four weeks before his arrest, during the month of July when he was roaming the province in a bit of a killing frenzy. But I was only eight and didn’t know the man who pulled up alongside me as I pedaled my bike down the road past my grandfather’s house. His car slowed and I stopped my bike. Up there people paused to talk to us on the road all the time. I was related to most of the people who lived in the community, but I didn’t recognize this one. I thought perhaps he was lost, anticipated he would ask me how to get back to the highway and I would tell him. I was alone on the road and he didn’t say anything to me as he started to open his door carefully as if he didn’t want to startle. And I knew then. I knew something wasn’t right. I can still feel it now when I remember looking at his face as he opened that door. It was all wrong. He was all wrong. But then his eyes were on me and somehow I couldn’t move. Literally. One leg on the ground, the other over the seat of my bike and I couldn’t make myself go even though I knew I should. It must have been less than a minute. Thirty seconds even – I can still play out the heat, the dust, his eyes, the brown sedan in my head as though it were hours.

And then my mother and brother came around the corner on their bikes. Just behind me. I had been racing ahead. Forgot about them until I heard them behind me, turned my head. And the man slammed his door and kicked dust up as he took off down the road, past my mother who rode up and asked. “Who was that?” And I felt ashamed that I had stopped for a stranger and told her I didn’t know and he hadn’t said anything but I was afraid and she could see that. Two days later she came to me with the Salmon Arm Observer, a police drawing of Olson on the 2nd page under the heading “Have you seen this man?” because he was in the area, had been seen nearby. Was it him? she asked. And it was. It was him. She wondered whether we should call the RCMP and I said no. Maybe it wasn’t him after all. Because I thought if we called the police I would get in trouble. That his presence on the road was somehow my fault. And I think my mother must have been spooked because she didn’t want to acknowledge it either. It was better to let the matter drop. It never came up again.

His last known victim was killed July 30th, 1981 and when he was arrested in August of 1981 he had two young women in the car with him. Saved. Like me. I often wonder about those women and whether they still carry the end of their life around with them. Are they disturbed by how close they got to someone so dangerous? Have they managed to forget it? Because I have to admit that I haven’t, and though mostly I don’t think about it – when I do, I’m terrified.

Because of that, because I was imprinted strongly by Olson’s case and the later news stories of the Green River killer who seemed to be right in my backyard – I have retained strong visual memories of these boogeymen and their victims who turned up in wooded ravines, at creeksides, on jogging paths. I come across a news story and I’m reminded of their school photographs, braces and feathered hair, and I’m standing on the side of the road all over again. Twenty seconds away from it. And the adult me is just fucking angry about that scared little girl. A momentary encounter and I’m still fucked up over it from time to time almost thirty years later.

I’m not here to cry about it though. It’s just what’s been in my creative consciousness these past few days and I wonder about my reluctance to write about it. Until now, my inability to write about it (I’ve tried). Because I’m somehow still ashamed or guilty that I didn’t run when I could, that my fear got in the way of reaction. Eight years old. I suppose that’s how it happens.

Tags: bc, childhood, murder, stories