Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Preparation

A Forks Loser

It wasn’t supposed to happen. Grant Wallace Matson was born on a cold day. He had multiple complications, and the doctors told his mother and father that he would probably not live through the birth. They had assembled all the equipment and nurses for a troubled birth; all the equipment they had back then.

Well, there he was, crying. He was rushed straight into the incubator and what passed for a rural hospital’s intensive care unit in those days. He actually lived, and everyone was so happy, except for his dad.

Oh, sure, things were great for the first week or two because they had expected the worst and it didn’t happen. But a needy crying baby soon started cutting into his dad’s recreational time, which was drinking with his buddies.

Grant’s father, Larry Matson, liked to drink. He was an injured logger in Forks, Washington. Forks was an isolated timber town on the extreme northwest corner of Washington State. It was a rough town, but people basically kept each other in check. It was “rough” in the sense of people being tough and occasionally violent, but not raving maniacs. It was like lots of small rural towns in the 1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s.

Many people thought Larry was faking his “injury” to get out of working, and there was some evidence of that, although his back did seem to hurt a lot. That wasn’t surprising, considering how hard the work was out in the woods. Setting choker line—the wire around a downed log to be picked up by a giant log boom tower—killed and injured loggers on a pretty regular basis.

To supplement their limited workers’ compensation income, Grant’s mom, Patty, worked hard as a waitress in one of the two coffee shops in Forks. She was taking a little time off for the new baby but she went back to waiting tables within a few weeks. Larry, who no longer worked, would take care of Grant and, later, Grant’s sister Carol. Larry hated that he had to stay home with the kids. And he let them know it.

Patty Matson was a tough bird. Because she was determined to be a proper woman with a family, she would suffer in silence her whole life. That meant making sure Larry was a husband and a father. Without that, the whole thing would fall apart. She needed him, so she would put up with a lot, which included letting him treat the kids like crap.

Grant had a relatively normal first few years. Carol was born two years later. Other than the abusive father and co-dependent mother, things were pretty normal in the Matson house. They had a little house on a five-acre country lot, a car, and a TV. They got by. One of the main ways they got by on such a small income was to have a few cattle and pigs and a garden. Everyone in Forks canned food, hunted, fished, cut their own firewood, and knew how to fix things. The Matsons were no exception, and Grant learned how to do all these things, just like everyone else in Forks.

Gardening was hard, given the climate. Forks was near an actual rain forest. It rained so much in Forks that, by measured rainfall, Forks was technically a “rain forest,” receiving 120 or more inches of precipitation a year. The moisture blew in from the nearby ocean, and then hit the Olympic Mountains and came down for months every year. This meant gardening in Forks wasn’t too productive, but was possible.

Grant would go out in the summer and pick berries for jam.

They had several apple trees that led to more than enough canned pie filling and applesauce to last all winter. In fact, applesauce was at every meal from about fall to early summer. Deer meat was the norm. Grant’s dad never took him out hunting, though, because his back always hurt. Grant had to go out with friends and their dads, but he learned to hunt. He remembered getting his first deer as a freshman in high school with a 30-30. He was so proud when it went into the freezer. He, at age 14, was providing for the family. That meant everything.

When Grant and Carol were young, Larry was a raging alcoholic. Over time, Larry quit drinking as much and was getting acclimated to being a “house husband,” which was so contrary to his tough-guy logger personality. Larry kind of loved his kids; he would be nice to them from time to time. But, his life wasn’t going the way it was supposed to, and he felt trapped with the kids in the house all day. He couldn’t stand that a woman was the breadwinner in the family.

That would get him drinking and hanging out with his friends to get back to what life was supposed to be in Forks: a logger drinking with his logging buddies.

Larry smacked his kids around. It wasn’t vicious bone-breaking beatings; just a lot of slaps, sometimes in public. Screaming at the kids was common for Larry. Grant assumed all of this was normal.

One time when Grant was in the sixth grade, he forgot to feed the family’s pig. His dad exploded and just started kicking him, really hard, knocking Grant to the ground. His dad kept kicking him, even when he was down. The kicks kept coming one after the other. Grant had the wind knocked out of him and thought he was dying. It was terrifying. It was like his dad went from being normal to some kind of animal who couldn’t stop hurting him.

Grant could barely move after that and spent a few days recovering in bed. His mom said there was no need to go to the doctor’s office for Grant’s “fall.” Grant assumed it was because they didn’t have any money for the doctor. Later he would realize it was because of the shame that his mom would have felt if the doctor knew what had happened. Grant was bewildered that his mom wouldn’t protect him. He realized early on that he couldn’t count on others to protect him. He had to take care of himself in this world.

His dad would go a few months without hitting the kids. He would be a pissed-off jerk for those months and still yell at them, but he wouldn’t hit the kids unless they did something wrong. The anger was sudden, vicious, and uncontrollable, and then it went away. It never ended with an apology. It was always the kids’ fault for whatever happened to them.

His little sister, Carol, was a good sister. They had to band together to fight the “ogre” as they called their dad. Later in life, Grant could see how he naturally rallied people together to fight off threats. He had lots of practice from an early age.

Grant and Carol would cover for each other and standardize their stories so they could stay out of trouble. Carol was a quiet girl, and she was very smart. She would stay out of the fights between Grant and their dad except when she just had to help her big brother. However, Grant thought Carol was a little too much like his mom by staying out of most of the fights. One day he said so. Carol shot back,

“What am I supposed to do? Fight him with my fists?” She had a point. A person had to have the ability to fight, or people would pick on them. That’s just how it was.

Grant had to protect his sister. When his dad was hitting her or screaming at her, Grant would lunge at him and try to help. He usually got his ass beat, but he couldn’t stand by and watch an innocent person be hurt. He just couldn’t.

Grant was drawn to helping people in danger. From an early age, he would rush in and help people. His willingness to leap into danger made people think there was something wrong with him. Grant thought just the opposite; there was something wrong with everyone else for not helping. But he got it; they were weak. They didn’t want to rock the boat. They would let people be mistreated as long as they were left alone.

Grant remembered when he was eight years old and riding his bike with some friends in Forks. An old man in the neighborhood was walking and fell to the ground. The man was holding his chest like he was having a heart attack. The other kids were scared. Grant went right over and tried to help. He didn’t know what to do. The man was turning blue and having seizures. Even at that young age, Grant knew the man was dying. There was no 911 back then, so no help was coming. The other kids scattered, especially when the seizures started.