Palouse - 24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Idanha – September 1992

A Month Later

Idanha School is designed to create an intensive initial impact for boys, teach them positive behavior and communication skills, and integrate strong work habits with effective interpersonal functioning. The beginning of the boys’ stay is comprised of teaching the basic lessons of the outdoors–personal responsibility and awareness of how their behavior affects others and their environment. It is also a beginning for them to gain self-esteem which is based on internal feelings instead of their external world.

During the latter part of the year the boys are motivated to move from a state of awareness into a state of action, turning it into positive personal habits and healthy, productive living. The concept of acting positively and taking accountability for personal behavior instead of living reactively to the external world is emphasized during this part of the year. The boys spend time focusing on teamwork, cooperation, resolving conflicts, interpersonal skills, and service.

– Idanha Wilderness School brochure

“Dad, where are we going? Why did you wake me so early?”

Stan drove on, saying nothing. Greg sat in the back seat of the van that Betty usually drove. He didn’t know what was happening, either, except he had seen his parents packing Micah’s clothes and personal effects the night before while Micah was still out at Amelia’s. He was surprised, though, when his father woke them at 5 a.m., told them both to dress and get ready for a drive.

Micah looked around the van, seeing several suitcases stacked behind the back seat. “Dad, I don’t understand. We’ve been driving for six hours, and now we’re on a dirt road going God-knows-where.”

“Maybe God does know where, Micah. Your mother and I can’t handle your behavior anymore. Your grades have fallen. You stay out to all hours of the night with Amelia. You’ve abandoned your career in music, which we all thought meant something to you. You are so talented; you are so smart. How can you waste what you have? When you came back from the wilderness trek, there was barely one week of changed behavior, and then you reverted to your old ways. Betty and I decided that something needed to be done more permanently, so we enrolled you in a boarding school for the year.”

“On some dirt road in Idaho? What kind of boarding school is this?”

“It’s a small school for troubled youths. It’s run by our church. There are thirty boys, with three teachers. Everybody works – cleans, cooks, takes care of the grounds, raises a garden. It’s supposed to be good academically – and spiritually, which is important to your mother. We want to see you straightened out.”

“I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be ‘straightened out’. I want to live my own life. It’s my senior year. Greg, tell him how important the senior year is.”

Before Greg could join the argument on his brother’s side, Stan said: “Micah, you have no choice. You are 17. You are still under a court probationary order; we think you are in danger of breaking your probation. We have decided that you will go to this school for the next year.”

“Greg, tell Dad not to do this. I didn’t agree to this court order. I thought I was done with it. We didn’t even discuss this. I didn’t get any say in this decision. Tell him I’m needed on the basketball team. Tell him that you’ll keep an eye on me. Anything.”

Greg was as shocked as Micah by the announcement that they were taking him to this school in the middle of Idaho. He wasn’t sure why he had been brought along, except maybe to help calm Micah if things really got out of hand.

A fog of dust rose behind the van, obscuring the road behind them and drifting against the trees on the sides of the forest road. The dust of the vehicles that traveled this road before had formed a cake of light brown on the cinnamon bark of the trees that walled the road. From time to time there would be side roads marked with Forest Service road numbers. Every once in a while, they would cross a dry creek bed that wouldn’t see water until the next spring runoff. The air smelled of pine. There were a few lingering wildflowers lining the ditches alongside the road. From time to time, a startled chipmunk would have to scurry from the center of the road to the ditch alongside, annoyed at having to move.

In any other circumstances, the terrain could be called beautiful, but Micah would have none of that. He felt as if he’d been betrayed, captured without his consent and shanghaied to some God-awful place in the middle of nowhere – even more in the middle of nowhere than Endicott.

“How many days do I have to stay at this school?”

“Not days, Micah. For the whole school year – till you graduate.”

“What!! I want out.”

“There’s nowhere to go, Micah, and we’re only ten miles from the school. You can get out there.”

“I’ll run away.”

“The nearest town is 60 miles away, and it’s not much of a town at that.”

Thirty minutes later they rounded a bend and approached a group of buildings that formed a U around a large green lawn. At the open top of the U was the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, across which a steep, tree-filled bank rose several hundred feet above the river. The rustic buildings made the place look like a forest-setting resort, which it was before being sold to the church for a school; in the summer, the church still operated the resort for river rafters.

The largest building formed the bottom of the U. Its broad shake roof sloped down to cover a building-wide front porch, complete with porch swings, a stained-pine, plank floor and split-log furniture. At one end of the building, a tall, river-stone chimney rose above the roof ridge. Two of the buildings just to the left side of the main building looked newer, though there had been an attempt to make them fit into the rustic environment. One held two classrooms, as Micah soon would learn, and the other contained a generator for the hours in which electricity was made available. There had been no wires along the road to the school, so all the electricity was generated at the school.

The rest of the U was taken up with cabins, and several more could be seen in the background between the U and the large trees. Each cabin contained two dormitory-style rooms, each one housing two students. Behind the whole complex was a forest of tall Ponderosa pine. The place was idyllic as a summer resort, but it was a school for troubled boys who would have to live together through the rest of the seasons of the year, including a mountain-bitter winter.

Stan pulled the van up in front of the main building as a burly, tawny-bearded man stepped off the porch. Stan got out, and they shook hands. Micah stayed behind, not willing to accept what was happening to him. Greg sat in the back seat, unsure whether to get out or stay with his brother.

“Greg, you knew this was going to happen,” Micah accused as his father talked with the burly man.

“No, I swear it. This was just as much as surprise to me as you. It’s not fair. I’m almost as much a rebel as you are. They picked on you. Do you think Mom and Dad maybe just wanted to split us up?”

Stan was signaling Micah to get out of the van and join them. Micah just sat, pretending he did not see his father. Stan and the burly man came up to the van. Stan’s anger showed in his face, and Micah had an urge to taunt him some more when the burly man came up to the door.

“I’m Steve Rhodes,” he said, offering his hand after Micah felt forced to open the window. “Welcome. I’m looking forward to having you here for this year. I think you’ll learn a lot – academically and otherwise.”

Greg got out of the other side of the car and introduced himself.

“Have you had lunch? We’ve got food in the main lodge, and then I can show you around the complex before you go off,” Steve said, addressing Stanley. “I know you have to get on the road in order to get back to Washington before too late tonight.”

“Sounds good to me,” Greg piped up before turning red from the embarrassment of being so forward.

Steve laughed. “I’m sure you need to be fed. I suspect you’re a bit nervous, Micah, but I hope you can still have a bite. We’ve got some really good apple pie for dessert, in any case.”

If glares made sounds, then there would have been no ability to have a conversation around the table. However, Steve and Stan started talking about fishing, Micah fumed, and Greg tried to digest all that was happening, feeling a great sadness for Micah and the sudden loss of what had been a growing relationship between them over the past year. It was going to have been a great senior year for them and the basketball team. That year was not to be.

Steve gave them all a tour of the facilities. “You’ll be in Cabin 7 on the north side with Casey – Casey Newman. He’s a year behind you, but as you’ll see, that doesn’t make a lot of difference here. Casey’s over there now, so I’ll take you and your family over so you can meet him.”

“Whatever,” Micah muttered, earning him a harsh look from his father.

The cabin was one of the last buildings before the Salmon River. It had a small porch wide enough only for two side-by-side doors, labeled 7A and 7B. Steve led them to the one on the left, knocked briefly and went in, apparently without waiting for an answer. Micah noted that and figured he had to make sure there was an interior latch so he would avoid, well, embarrassment when he was doing very personal things. He expected that Casey would have the same need for privacy from time to time.

All the shades on the windows had been pulled, letting only a seepage of orange-amber light through. There were no lights on in the room. When Steve flipped them on, they saw Casey in his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. Casey was a good-looking, delicate boy with honey-blond hair hanging straight over the edges of his face, an aquiline nose and lips that had a natural pout. He was slight and probably always would be.

“Casey, I’d like you to meet Micah, your roommate for the year.” Casey nodded at Micah and eyed him and Greg closely. “This is his father, Stan, and his brother Greg. Casey came in yesterday.”

“Pleased to meet you, Casey,” Stan said, holding out his hand for a shake. Casey didn’t respond.

“Same for me,” Greg said, but getting a nod in response.

“I’ll leave you to get set up,” Steve announced as he went out the door. Casey stayed put while the Kingmans brought in Micah’s suitcases and boxes. Stan and Greg helped put the clothing in the dresser and closet, while Micah put his personal items where they would be convenient. Strangely, it made him feel he was moving in to yet another hotel room in another city where he would be playing a concert piece the next day. He felt no sense of “home” in the cabin. Besides, there was no violin.

The room was large enough for two single beds, two dressers, a table in front of a small, curtained window at which two could study facing each other, and a small wood stove. Besides the few electric lights, there were brackets on the walls to hold lanterns. The floor was wooden and covered with a Navajo-patterned throw rug. A small bathroom, little larger than a closet, was reached through a door near the entrance; it contained the toilet, a small sink and a shower hidden behind a white plastic curtain. It wasn’t a cabin space that anyone would want to explore. It was a summer-camp room intended only for sleeping which had been converted to fall/winter/spring school use.

Given how late it was getting, Steve asked Stan and Greg to stay for dinner and spend the night, but Stan begged off, saying he was needed back at the farm. So, in mid-afternoon Stan and Greg climbed into the van as Micah stood nearby and watched, a look of pain on his face. Greg opened the van door and ran up to Micah to hug him once again.

Micah had turned his back on his father. Micah took a secret pleasure in spurning his father, but it was tinged with a deep sadness. He wanted to hug his father; he wanted his father’s reassurance; he wanted his father to take him back to Endicott. He had not felt so alone since he said good bye to Mamma M in Phoenix, eight years earlier. He felt abandoned. It was almost as if he was going to yet another foster home, except, down deep, he knew this time there was a backup place for him in Endicott. The last hug from Greg and the tears in his father’s eyes told him so.

When he got back to the cabin, Casey was still lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. He’d barely moved all day.

“What are you – some kind of zombie?” Micah asked after many silent minutes in the room.

No response.

“Look, we’ve got to live side by side in this fucking place for the next few months. I don’t care if you don’t say a word. Hell, I don’t care if you’re an asshole. Just don’t bother me, okay?”

No response.

Many more silent minutes passed as Micah finished sorting out his belongings and inspecting the room that he had already inspected once.

“I’ve got to get out of this room. Just don’t touch any of my stuff.” Micah shut the door hard as he left the room.

What a jerk! Casey said to himself. As if I’d want to touch any of his stuff.

Outside, a bell rang, announcing dinner. Casey rose from his bed and went to the main building, where he took a seat at the end of one of the picnic-style benches that hugged the long dark-wood tables. About half the spaces were filled. Micah chose a place at a different table from Casey. Steve entered from somewhere in the building, said grace, and the meal began. Micah found it to be pretty good. It was more like home and less like the buffets at the cocktail parties where he had played. More meatloaf and less concert-trip giant shrimp. It certainly was a step above Endicott High School’s cafeteria. Some consolation.

On the next day, the last of the boys arrived. In late afternoon, all the boys were summoned to the main house for an orientation. They sat at the dining-room tables and faced a podium where Steve held forth. Steve introduced the other two young instructors, Sam and Jacob, then passed out class and work-detail schedules to each of the boys.

“I want to explain some things about this school. We are largely self-sufficient, except for food, and we’d be self-sufficient in that if school lasted over the summer – the growing season. We have a generator for electricity, and it usually works, but we don’t turn it on all the time. When it gets cold, we rely on wood fires. You’ve seen the stoves in each of your cabins, and you can see the big pot-bellied stove in the main house.

“All the wood for those stoves will be gathered by you, starting tomorrow. For the main house, you will see your name on the work-detail list about once a week. For heating the cabins, it’s up to you. If you don’t gather wood for your cabins, well forgive me, Lord, for my language, you’re going to freeze your butts off. Also, your stove heats the water for your showers, and you will come to class freshly showered and shaved – if you are old enough to shave.

“Your work-detail list has you helping in the kitchen, both before and after meals, helping my wife, who is the cook. Three or four of you will be detailed to help there every day, so that means you will working with her about once a week. On other days, you will help with the grounds. In winter, there will be snow to shovel.

“Breakfast is at 7:00 on weekdays and 8:00 on Saturdays and Sundays. Lunch is at noon every day except Saturday, when we have a 2:00 Sabbath dinner. Dinner is at 6:00 every evening except on the Sabbath when there will be snacks and sandwiches available after sunset. Church is at 9:30 on Saturdays.

“For recreation, there is the lawn till the snows come, there are games in this main-house living room, and there are trails that go up and down the river. That’s the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, by the way. Most of the year, it’s fairly tame, but in the spring it can get high and dangerous. There will be no games or hiking between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday. As you can see, the bookshelves are filled with almost any variety of books, and we encourage you to borrow them to read here or in your rooms. There is no television, there is no CD player in the main lodge, but we have a VCR when the generator is operating.

“Are there any questions?” Steve looked around the room and saw no hands. “I see no hands now, but we on the staff are always available to help you if need be. There is a brochure on the end table that explains our program in more detail. Please pick one up.

“Classes start tomorrow at 9:00. Good luck, all of you. Dinner will be served in an hour, and you will meet the three other schoolmates after they finish helping my wife in the kitchen.

“Now, I want you to go around the room and introduce yourselves. Tell everybody your name, how old you are and where you’re from.”

The boys came mainly from Eastern Washington, Oregon and Idaho, with a sprinkling coming from the west side of Washington and Oregon. When it came time to introduce himself, Micah realized he was relieved that the boys weren’t asked to say why they were there. He thought he saw the same level of relief on the other faces. He expected he’d find out soon enough why they were there, and he was ready to say why he thought he was there. Micah did find out that Casey came from Prineville, Oregon.

The next few days were filled with classes, shyness, homework and not much camaraderie because the boys didn’t yet know one another. After classes in the afternoons, the boys were taught how to split and stack wood.