The Happy Killers Face

A work in progress. For 30 years now. But I’m picking up pace recently. Lyrical rendition here:

HAPPY FACE KILLER

 

The memory is vivid, yet today, appears in my head, as if remembering a long ago watched movie. I stopped being the girl in that movie long ago, she now is but a a character, an unknown actress cast to play a role where terrifying things happen, but at the end of the day goes home happy and untraumatized.

 

13 years old, in the frigid depths of a northwestern February, I had made it across mountain pass between Montana and Idaho,  by thumb.  On foot in a light jacket with no belongings and less money, the winding highway of the mountain pass, covered in ice and snow, several times readied itself to consume me. 

 

I had left in search of my childhood friend. No plan. No money. No address. I knew only that she moved to Cheney Washington.  Being from a small town, I had it in my mind that so long as I could get to Cheney, I would need only ask a few people on the street “where Robin lives”, and we would be reunited. A kind sheriff delivered me from the jowls of that frigid mountain pass, to a lonely mountain bar.  There, the manager saw I had no money, begging only for water, and kindly gave me for free a soda.  An old mountain man in the bar named Francis, he noticed me sitting afraid as the business closed.  And took me home to his remote mountain cabin. No electricity or plumbing, kind Francis stoked up his fire for my comfort, offered me to stay indefinitely, perhaps to become his wife, yet no hand befell me.  I slept alone and undisturbed on his sofa with warmth of his friendly dogs as my comfort.  But, a safe routine not my desire, my thumb soon led my leaving.  

After the pass, came Washington. 

 

And that is how I found myself walking alone, in the dark of winter, down some kind of a main road leading out of Cheney, Washington. Where I climbed into a the cab of a semi truck being driven by Keith Jesperson.  Now known as the “Happy Face Killer” of the Northwest. 

 

The rest can be left to imagination, which will probably be correct. Until at least the breath catches me enough to speak into further words.

Author's Note

Lyrical rendition here: https://youtu.be/p6S_iG9awCI?si=6fooRthvACoT_YBi