Street roots., May 25, 2012, Page 8, Image 8

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street roots
May 25, 2012
ABUSE, from page 1
children called City Light. Boise lay four
hours from her hometown, Pocatello, a place
she hadn’t seen in months. But simply being
in Idaho opened up a grab bag of emotions
tied to two words: “meth” and “Skye.”
The first tie happened by accident. She’d
had too much to drink at a party, and, when
she wasn’t throwing up, she was close to
passing out. Someone offered her a line of
crystals and said, Here, do this, you’ll feel
better. Brandy snorted. “And it was one
extreme to the next,” she recalls. Her
stomach settled, her mind cleared. So she
kept drinking. She was 14.
From that point on, Brandy snorted and
smoked meth whenever it came around, and
the drug, easily “cooked” in neighborhood
meth labs, turned up on a regular basis in
rural Pocatello. But snorting and smoking
got old, so she switched to needles, injecting
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into veins in her arm. The off-white crystals
made Brandy’s teenage troubles seem to
disappear. For a while, anyway. But meth,
which stimulates production of a
neurotransmitter called dopamine, ignites
the brain’s reward center. Rushes of
euphoria and invincibility result, but they
come with a cost: the likelihood of long-term
addiction.
The second tie occurred when Brandy
developed a delirious fever. Her mother
rushed her to the hospital, where she
underwent an examination. Brandy listened
to the results. “I was pregnant.” Eight
months later, she gave birth to a daughter,
Tyranny Skye. Brandy was 19.
A young mother, Brandy loved her child,
caring for her the best she could. But meth,
it haunted her with its siren song. As
Brandy gave in to its addictive call, her
mother and brother obtained joint custody
of Skye. When Brandy tried to visit, her
mother wouldn’t have it. She left food on
the porch, locked the door, drew the blinds.
Humiliated, Brandy stopped visiting the
house.
Her visits became impossible in early
2004, when she was arrested for burglary.
Paroled six months later, Brandy entered a
mandated treatment program and devised a
remedy for sobriety: “I need clean, sober
friends.” Those friends eluded her. When
she started shooting meth and drinking
again, she broke parole. Thirty-eight more
months in prison.
Back on the streets, estranged from Skye,
high on meth, Brandy knew she needed
help. Fast. A friend from prison, Morgan
Price, had hightailed it to Seattle in August
2008 to kick meth and had remained clean.
Maybe it would work for Brandy. Morgan
bought her a bus ticket. But in the Emerald
City, Brandy couldn’t find her groove: After
failing treatment programs and sleeping on
the Seattle streets, Brandy hopped on an
overnight bus bound for Boise.
Brandy consulted the map with the
address to the shelter that sits three long
blocks from the bus station. She walked
through the bus station’s glass doors and
into the cold Idaho night.
Even after years of meth, Brandy still
carried an air of small-town wholesomeness.
She had a plump, oval face. Deep brown
eyes. Smooth lips. A cascade of auburn hair.
She moved her full figure with a take-your-
time gait, as though she didn’t know the
meaning of hurry.
City Light occupies a remodeled church.
At the front desk, Brandy asked if the
shelter had space. It did, a mat on the floor
in a room filled with women and children.
That night, she listened as women
whispered, kids snored — the white noise of
a place full of people with nowhere else to
go. By 8 a.m., at last exit call, all the women
and children were required to go
somewhere. Brandy walked out into the
Idaho morning.
Boise, the state’s largest city, marks the
eastern fringe of an enormous flood plain
called Treasure Valley. To its northeast,
snow-frosted mountains. Within its borders,
stands of cottonwood, maple, sweet gum.
And meandering through downtown, the
Boise River.
Upon a square-mile grid of downtown
streets, a small number of shelters and
public spaces host Boise’s homeless
population. Nearly every day they trudge a
circuit from drop-in center to library to
shelter. Nearly every day, Brandy considered
contacting Skye, but she knew her mother
wouldn’t allow it.
One afternoon, Brandy wandered into the
library. Homeless people sat at tables, some
asleep. That’s when she noticed him: shaved
head, blue eyes, beard, a few tattoos. Cute
and sitting alone. She caught his eye. He
looked back, then averted his gaze. Neither
spoke. They went their separate ways.
A couple days later, Brandy stood outside
a drop-in center with her cup of coffee.
Homeless people huddled in the cold.
Breath and steam m erged. T h e guy from
the
library stood nearby. Sensing he was shy,
Brandy went up to him.
Hi, Brandy said.
Hey, he said. His name was Richard,
Richard Duncan, but sometimes he went by
Auto. Their eyes locked.
Wanna go hang out tomorrow? Richard
asked.
Sure, Brandy said.
The next morning, Brandy and Richard
reconnected. Each brought along a friend,
and, piling into Richard’s buddy’s old SUV,
they went for a joy ride. They stopped for
gas and stocked up on Joose, a caffeinated
malt alcoholic beverage in a 23.5-oz. can,
before they drove to the Boise foothills. All
four tipped back cans as they gazed out over
Treasure Valley. It was barely 9 a.m. Brandy
had failed to find clean, sober friends.
Brandy talked with Richard. He made her
laugh. She found him nice, sweet. Plus, they
had things in common. He’d been released
from prison in November, the month before.
She’d been released in July. Richard had a
teenage daughter in Boise, but he barely
knew her. Brandy had a 6-year-old daughter
in Pocatello. He told her people sometimes
called him Auto because he stole cars.
As her mind absorbed information about
Richard, her eyes drank in his appearance.
He had a pair of small lightning bolts
tattooed near his left eye. Across his upper
fingers, displayed like a pair of brass
knuckles, was a word: “SKINHEAD.”
Brandy’s father was of Native descent, so
the tattoo made her wonder. But once, two *
male friends who had done time in
California told her that just because
someone got tattoos while on the inside, it
didn’t mean he was a white supremacist
outside. “I was just really thinking it was a
prison thing,” Brandy remembers.
Still, she asked him, It’s not going to be a
problem, me being part Native?
No, Richard said.
When his buddy left, Richard, Brandy and
her friend bused back to town and bought
beer. They sat near the greenbelt, the area
hugging the northern banks of the Boise
River. There, Brandy kissed Richard for the
first time.
If you wanna back out of this, he said,
that’s fine.
Brandy thought it a strange thing for
Richard to say. Back out? Of what? She
didn’t know what he meant, so she told him,
No, I’m sticking with it.
As Brandy’s friend visited a job center,
Brandy and Richard tagged along. The pair
sneaked into a bathroom together. They
kissed again. Passions rose. Clothes came
off.
It’s a vulnerable moment, undressing in
front of someone the first time, the body
revealing its secrets. When Richard removed
his shirt, Brandy saw more tattoos on his
arms and neck. Then she saw the two on his
chest.
Covering most of his left pec, in blue-
green ink, was an enormous swastika. On
his right pec sat a likeness of - Adolf Hitler?
“I was just like, ‘Wow,’” Brandy remembers,
stunned by the imagery. Northern Idaho had
a reputation for white supremacy, but
Brandy had grown up in the southeast. She
had little experience with it. The story the
two guys told about tattoos came back to
her: probably just a prison thing.
Brandy, drunk in a bathroom in Boise,
fumbled to remove her clothes. True, she
felt a little uncomfortable about the tattoos.
But by that point, she and Richard had hit
the ground running, and she didn’t think
there was any reason to stop.
The illustrated man
ichard might never have hit upon those
tattoos as an adult if he hadn’t learned
of Odin as a child.
Richard grew up in Salinas, Calif., the son
of a Vietnam vet and a home day care
provider. As a kid, he entertained himself
with, among other pursuits, the role-playing
game Dungeons & Dragons. Diehards call it
D&D. The game allows each player to
embody a mythical being: dragon, wizard,
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giant, troll or even a dungeon master.
Players gain a deeper understanding of
D&D through reference books, and one
book described the pantheons of numerous
mythologies. Drawn to the text, Richard
became enthralled with the gods who lived
in the Norse mythos: the father god Odin,
the trickster god Loki, the warrior god
Thor. That mythology had inspired author
J.R.R. Tolkien as well, leading to his “The
Lord of the Rings” series, books Richard
stole from the library — and loved.
The fantastical realm of childhood
suffered a dose of reality when Richard’s
father split. His relationship with his mother
disintegrated, and when she kicked him out,
he became a ward of the state, bouncing
between group homes and juvenile
detention centers. He longed for the stable
family he felt he never had.
In a group home one day, Richard read a
sign: Witchcraft is not a state-recognized
religion. “Of course they said we can’t have
it,” recalls Richard, “so I got into it.” He
discovered Wicca, a Neo-Pagan religion that
blends respect for nature, herbal magic and
benevolent witchcraft. He loved it. Together,
Norse mythology and Wicca shaped his
spiritual beliefs.
The restrictions he experienced in
juvenile homes created a longing for
freedom, which accompanied a frustrated
desire for family connection. As an adult, he
moved to Sacramento, to be near his
mother. She didn’t want to see him. Richard
hung out at friends’ places sometimes, slept
on the streets other times, developing, over
the course of a year, a bad heroin habit. His
mother relocated near Reno, Nevada, and
again seeking connection, he followed. He
lived outside the Biggest Little City in the
World, where he dropped his heroin habit
and fell big time into meth. On a search for
important family papers at his mother’s
place, he stole his stepdad’s safe and found,
instead, money. Once Richard had pocketed
the cash, he tried to return the safe, but it
was too late. He was arrested. On his 22nd
birthday. Grand larceny. Five years.
In prison, life fragmented along racial
lines. White this side, black that side, Latino
over here, Native over there. Within these
groups, more fissures emerged. Richard
noticed that among white inmates, there
were long-haired druggies, sometime
druggies and we’re-not-druggies, and the last
group, with their full beards, resembled
modern-day Vikings. He gravitated toward
the druggies, but as he met more neo-
Vikings, he felt pulled in their direction. He
discovered the group not only stayed clean,
but they clung to a unique belief: They
practiced Odinism.
Odinism follows spiritual principles
spelled out by the Norse god Odin. His
words form the body of an epic poem dating
from the ninth or 10th century called “The
Havamal” or, in English, “Sayings of the
High One.” The poem offers a folksy blend
of divine prescriptions that touch upon
topics ranging from self-respect to ethical
conduct. Richard admired its principles. “If I
could ever adhere to them like I’m supposed
to,” he recalls, “I’d never get in trouble.”
Unlike most Odinists on the outside,
those practicing Odinism within Nevada’s
prison system were a gang whose members
also clung to another belief: white
supremacy. They called themselves the
Aryan Warriors. For them, Odinism and
white supremacy went hand-in-hand — and
all over the body as well. The prison tattoos
that decorated their skins blended pagan
symbolism with Aryanism. Not that
Richard’s first tattoo evoked either. On his
right hand, between thumb and forefinger,
someone inked a heart. Years later, he
covered it with an iron cross, a German
military honor.
Released from prison in 1999 and away
from his Odinist brothers, Richard couldn’t
make the principles of “The Havamal” stick.
He guzzled beer and malt beverages and
ping-ponged between heroin and meth,
addictions that opened the gates to multiple,
lengthy prison terms. Eight months for
carrying a concealed weapon; 24 months for
possession of a stolen vehicle; 24 months
for attempted battery causing substantial
bodily harm ; 22 m onths for assault with a
deadly weapon.
Richard shaved his head in prison. The
more time he served, the more tattoos he
acquired: the words “Ladies Love Outlaws”
on the nape of his neck; a D&D dragon on
his left shoulder; the term “PURE BLOOD”
on his left forearm; near his left eye, “SS,”
the insignia for Hitler’s elite defense corps.
Others tattoos decorated his neck, his arms
and his legs.
By the time he left the Nevada
Correctional Center in Reno in November
2008 and boarded a Greyhound to Boise, his
skin had become a living canvas. A pastiche
of illustrations that touched upon paganism,
white supremacy, pop culture and prison
life, Richard’s flesh told his life story in
cerulean ink.
The illustrations also evoked an important
concept to him: family. Through Odinism
he’d learned that a man was a provider. In
this regard, he’d failed. His teenage
daughter’s name once adorned his left pec,
but the tattoo artist had screwed up the
lettering. So Richard covered it up with an
enormous swastika. And like that messed-up
script, he’d messed up with his daughter:
He’d been in jail at her birth. If he ever
started another family, he’d do better and be
there at his child’s birth.
In Boise, Richard, 35, decided to provide
for Brandy. True, they didn’t have a family
together. Not yet. But no matter what
Brandy needed — shelter, food, cigarettes,
money — he’d provide. He’d protect her.
That’s one rule he swore he’d never break.
The lady and the outlaw
hortly after their bathroom encounter,
Richard suggested he and Brandy always
follow a rule: stay together. His Odinist
principles told him a man must keep his
family safe, so he left the men’s shelter to
ensure Brandy wouldn’t be alone. It touched
her. He wanted to protect me,” she says.
They just needed a place to stay.
They heard about a guy with an unheated
house who let people crash for free. To make
S
See ABUSE, page 9