On first sight, his cerulean eyes put me in mind of an open sore, compelling me to touch his hair and tell him…“It’s ok…”
As we shared a couch in my living room, we sipped “sweet tea” in front of the television, as he remembered the morning they came to “get him”, and the long ride through artificially lighted streets that ended at the door of an orphanage. He was three.
His younger brother had the good fortune to be adopted. His older sister was reclaimed by his older brother. His mother visited occasionally, leaving a sock-full of dimes in her wake.
The recounting came in fits and starts. Nights filled with stories were followed by canned laughter, as time rocked on, and lives changed. By the end of the year, we were more than friends.
In the ten years we spent together, he talked often of the camp that would shape his life without ever naming it, though I never realized it, until now. He has been dead for 3 years.
Reverence colored his voice when he spoke of Dr. “P”, the camp director; the same man accused of child molestation in 1986. I listened as he spoke of his mentor, never mentioning the charges. And now, as I read and uncover the atrocities visited upon the children relegated to Dr. Poetter’s care, I wonder if my silence was in deference to his pain, or to mine?
The information I have gleaned has shed new light on his pain, his demons, and his personality. He never explained that the gloriously primitive canoe trips he spoke of, so often, were part of his therapy. And, he never mentioned the back-breaking labor of hauling hundred-pound rocks or digging latrines. He never told me that admission to Anneewakee meant complete isolation from family and friends, and he never told me that home was a tee-pee, or that baths were taken under a pail of mountain-cooled water, regardless of the season.
When the compulsion came to me to research the camp, I had no idea of why, or of what I might find, and the results lead to questions that can no longer be answered.
For ten years, he did the best he knew how to do, as did I, with the information provided.
Would things have been different had I known?
He is with me, still, in his final form. His spirit lives with us, even as his ashes lie, dormant, in the container his childhood friend, Beau, reverently handed me, inside a quiet funeral home, on a cold December evening.
The expression on his face told me Beau had information he wouldn’t reveal, while his hands performed in a way long-since taught, and honed, by years of practice. He chose not to give details, sharing only what was necessary, but the pauses between his words filled in the spaces, making the picture complete.
The call came from his sister, once reclaimed, and the picture she painted, expected, yet, still jarring. A newly purchased, red pick-up truck sat in his driveway; a sign of reclamation. And, inside, two pictures adorned his walls; one of me, old, faded, and dated, and the other, of his son.
Are We There Yet? 
