Chapter 23-1
Similarities
Part 2
Dinner always brings out the monster when you are the new kid. Danny was no different than any other kid that came to the Rothwell home because Dad ran the show. If you needed a reminder all I had to do was look over at Shawn sitting next to him. Mom may not have liked it when it came to her boys not wearing shirts at the dinner table. Even though it was going to be another hot night and the house felt like an oven despite the fans and the swamp cooler going full blast.
Every boy was required to least wear a shirt or go hungry. The only exception was if your punishment required you spend the entire day in nothing but your skin. In some ways we envied Shawn, having our shirts stick to us after the first twenty minutes, even Dad was sweating, having to wipe his face several times with a napkin, and the sweat soaking his shirt from the front and the back.
We all waited for the monster to come out when Danny helped himself to the table like the rest of us. You could hear a pin drop waiting for Dad's response. I cringed closing my eyes and waited like the rest of us, but Dad simply passed him the mashed potatoes and the gravy. Telling him to make sure he got enough to eat. Mom too was cringing, but Dad kept the monster in its cage wiping his face like the rest of us. Dad growled stating this was stupid took off his shirt and stripped down to his boxers. Grabbing a clean towel and went outside and turned on the hose and bathed in the cool water, ordering all the boys to do the same and Jody to put on her swimsuit.
Mom gasped asking what the meaning of this was until Dad squirted her, making her even madder. Until Dad simply stated until he puts in central air or the temperature drops, we are eating outside, and clothing is optional before anyone passes out from the heat. Mom wasn't sure to be mad, shocked, or angry, but the decision was made. Even though dinner was getting cold Dad simply had us boys carry out the table and reset it after we were all good and wet with towels around our shoulders. Mom changed into her new swimsuit took her seat and we continued eating.
Dad was true to his word, but summer was a busy season when it came to putting in new air conditioners, like everyone else we had to wait our turn, and like everyone else who was smart we slept outside, wasting no time with Danny. Clamping on an ankle monitor and chained him to a stake that was buried at the edge of the garden. Trust had to be earned and Danny hadn't earned it.
Dad and Mom wrestled with ideas on how to keep us cool while we waited on the long list before it was our turn. Dad had decided after we took a drive up Provo Canyon for family home evening and feeling the cool air that this would be a good time to go camping. Considering school was out and summer school for Shawn and Danny wouldn't start for a couple more weeks. I was still on the swim team and had just had a meet. So all I would miss is one practice and the coach wouldn't hold it against me missing one or two once and a while, so the decision was made.
We would leave on Wednesday and be back on Saturday in time for church. There was not a snowball's chance in hell we would miss church for any reason, not when it would be Danny's first chance to visit with the Bishop. Like me, Mom and Dad had given Danny a set of scriptures and like me, they spent time going over his many sins in private, as well as private as a tent would allow. Sometimes he would take a long walk with Mom and Dad out of earshot of the rest of us to spend some "quality time" with him.
Shane and I shared a small tent that barely fit two people and having Arthur shared a tent with Danny staked to a tree near Mom and Dad to keep him from running off. Shawn chose to sleep under the stars and then share one with Mom and Dad. Jody being the only girl had her own tent next to me and Shane and her two younger brothers. Yet that would soon change considering the weatherman lay predicting a 10% chance of a storm, which soon changed to a 100% chance of dry lightning and a downpour.
I don't have to remind you that storms are bad news when it comes to my night-terrors. The second the lightning struck and with a roaring boom. Dad and Mom were there waiting with several tranquilizers and Shane had one in his hand. Holding me confined in his arms sharing the same sleeping bag. All I did was snuggle closer repeating my safe words when it flashed the fifth time, and the rain came down hard. I dug deeper into the sleeping bag screaming my safe words, telling Shane through gritted teeth on the very edge of an episode to do it. I was doing my best to fight between realities, watching my phantoms coming near me. I screamed then nearly ripping the sleeping bag to escape I had reached the edge holding tight to Shane waiting for the darkness to take me.
I yelled at my parents if they came closer, I would kill them watching my father rip open the tent with a large knife. I could smell the leather and the rope in his hands. I could feel the pillow suffocate me as my mother put it over my head. I worked at the night-terror unleashing in my mind, trying to escape the nightmare. I could feel Shane's body-hugging me tight begging him to do it before I hurt someone or myself. I worked hard feeling the sweat pour down my face, waiting for the belt to sear my skin. I looked up begging him to do it, Shane stating he had, but it was having no effect whatsoever.
I was in and out of the terror watching the lightning and hearing it crash against the sky. I watched as my parents kept trying to kill me. Wondering why I was still alive, and still breathing. I felt the third pin poke, but nothing seemed to put me under. I kept begging someone to knock me out, seeing Dad sliding into the tent and pressing me against him.
While three of us worked at breaking the terror. Dad and Shane held me tight stating they couldn't give me another without hurting me. I nodded watching my phantoms do their worst. But for some reason, I couldn't feel the sting or the searing pain each time the belt came down to hit me. My mother was still trying to suffocate me, but I could still breathe the cool air as if the pillow really wasn't there.
The longer I fought the more distant the storm got, it had to be nearly three hours before my phantoms started to dissipate and the storm became distant. I kept at my breathing exercises. Feeling Shane and Dad relaxed when I finally stopped struggling and fell asleep in both their arms. When I woke Dad was gone and my head was on Shane's chest, and he still had his arms around my shoulders. I could smell bacon cooking over a fire and the birds singing in the trees. Dad poked his head into the tent to wake us after a very long night.
Ever since that night, storms didn't bother me as much and I didn't require a tranquilizer just my normal sleeping drugs. Mom and Dad were proud of me for working through the episode for as long as I did even though it took several tranquilizers and my sleeping tonic to knock me out enough to sleep. It was mostly me working through it until it broke, at last, we were making progress. Even my psychologist said I had made progress, considering it was a big thing on the shortlist I needed to conquer.
Shawn was soaking wet doing his best to dry his sleeping bag across a large rock in the morning sun. The very idea of sleeping with his parents made him angry at me and Shane watching him growl at me whenever I came close to him, he would shove me or bump into me on purpose to call me names.
Dad heard him say the word fag-it. Earning him a nice run around the campsite and down the dirt road making twenty laps as if he was home in our field, even on a family campout modesty didn't exist. Danny watched from the fire staked to the ground with an ankle bracelet. In some ways, I felt sorry for him considering when I first arrived, I too wasn't trusted. Dad only released him when Mom and they went for their morning confession out of earshot from the rest of us.
Danny was quiet compared to Kelly and knew when to keep his head down. Not once did I hear him swear or cuss openly when he was near any of the Rothwells. He was a whole different person when he wasn't home or around any of them except Shawn. That's when the bad boy came out and said plenty out of earshot. The hardest thing was giving up smoking or at least not having Mom or Dad find out about it, and that included drugs.
He wasn't fooling anyone. Mom and Dad knew he was smoking and worst of all so was Shawn. All you had to do was take one whiff when either of them got close to you. They would try to hide it on their breath by chewing gum or breath mints. Cigarette smoke lingered in their clothes and in their hair. You could shower and it still stayed with you. Mom and Dad went through the roof when Shawn was caught smoking a pack behind the fence when Dad came home early from work.
A new rule was in place after that. Dad would enforce strip searches daily the second they came home from school. Shawn did his best once again to hide it in mine and Shane's room. Sometimes both of them blew smoke in my hair hoping to get me in trouble not realizing that Dad hadn't removed the nanny cam in my room. Both Shawn and Danny spent more time running laps in the field that they had a good tan on their backsides.
In some ways I was sad to come back from our camping trip, seeing home once again and feeling the heat beating you down the second I opened the car door. It didn't take long for us boys to quickly strip down to our shorts by the time we walked in the door and put the camping gear away. Dad quickly made a list of chores that needed to be done. Like always my main job was taking care of the animals and mowing the lawn which also included me mowing Brother Niles as well and I was glad to do it.
Dad was working Danny and Shawn hard considering Shawn was grounded and Danny was the new kid learning the ropes on how things work. The heat was bad even though every window was open and every fan in the house was turned on. Personally, I thought it was one of the hottest summers I could remember at the time.
It didn't matter how many times you cooled off from cold showers outside with the hose or spent at the pool fighting for space to cool down with everyone else suffering from the heat. The heat was a living nightmare. When the new air-conditioner was put in we celebrated by standing over the vent to feel the cool air. It was also the best night's sleep that any of us who slept upstairs got in a very long time.
Dad nearly hit the roof when he saw the electric bill stating changes were going to be made or we would be in the poor house quickly. Mom agreed even though she didn't like it. Mom added a new rule at the dinner table. Shirts were optional when the temperature outside was in the high nineties, or the one hundreds, and the air- conditioner would be set at seventy-five during the day and sixty-five at night.
It seemed strange to think during the winter that those temperatures would make you cold having to wear warm clothes, but during the summertime, you felt like you were melting into a puddle. Even Dad wasn't that cruel during those temperatures. The hothouse was out of the question, but that was during the heat of the day. It was another story when it was at night or after the sun went down.
Dad had the opportunity to change jobs and make more money plus work fewer hours. He had been transferred to work at home for boys that had just opened up closer to home. He would work the morning shift from eight to four or five when they transferred in new boys. Dad had been working hard learning to type and do paperwork, having to spend extra weekends and late nights in class at the trade tech and other management classes to get that bump in pay. Even though he spent less time at home during the summer months it was necessary. Stating he'd been taught a hard lesson when it came to typing. That it was something that everyone one of his kids needed to learn how to do. Also stating the world was on the brink of change requiring college kids to turn in papers that needed to be typed. Either by them or having someone type them for them at a price. Dad was big on doing things for oneself.
Typing was an option that he refused to ignore, by purchasing a typewriter so he wouldn't have to spend hard-earned money to have some college kid or his wife type up his papers. Even Kerry had taken a class during her last year of high school and another refresher class in college instead of spending money to have someone type her papers.
So Dad made it a requirement for everyone including Danny and I. Arthur was the only one not required to take the course. Personally, I was glad and could see the benefits of doing it, and if wasn't for him, I would have never learned how to type.
Dad was right the world was on the brink of change. When it redefined what was once a woman's work was now required for men to pick it up as well when jobs started to require it. From data entry positions to management positions. Even more so when Microsoft came to town and built a building in Orem and later broke up into several new companies states wide like Apple and Novel.