Carine McCandless - The Wild Truth - The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild

“Who’s that, Mom?” I asked.

She looked up from the pile of clothing, and I couldn’t tell if her puzzled expression was due to the tangles my fingers were creating or the sea of socks she was attempting to reunite. “What?”

“That man in the picture.” I pointed. “Who is he?”

She dropped her hands to her sides, tilted her head, and gave me an answer I would never have expected. “Oh, Carine, don’t be silly. That’s your father!”

Although the mother I knew rarely smiled and had a different hairstyle, it was obviously her in the picture. But my father was completely unrecognizable. I was staring at a stranger, one who clearly loved my mother. I imagined his hands rested peacefully at her waist. His head leaned slightly toward hers, as if she might turn at any moment with something important to say.

Over a decade later Chris would tell me the true history behind that mystifying photograph. Through Chris, other family members, and my own recollections, in time I pieced together the entire story.

Back in the early 1960s, before I was born, my mother was a beautiful young dance student fresh out of high school. She left the small town of Iron Mountain, Michigan, for the dream life of affluence and prestige she believed awaited her in sunny Los Angeles. Her name was Wilhelmina Johnson. Friends called her Billie.

My mother was the third of six children born into a hard-working, low-income family. The siblings shared one bedroom in a tiny house built by their father and nestled in an expansive pine forest. I remember Grandpa Loren as an accomplished outdoorsman, with a body that seemed too thin, skin that seemed too thick, and a smoldering cigarette permanently attached to his right hand. He had great hair—a lush wave of deep brown and silver that flowed straight back until it disappeared behind his ears. His voice was gentle and kind when he spoke to me, to my brother, or to the wildlife around his home, but it grew harsh when he criticized my Grandma Willy—for being overweight, for the mess that accumulated indoors, or for being lazy. Grandma—a thoughtful woman who always had her hands busy crocheting, making crafts for her next church bazaar or gifts for her many grandchildren—barked back just enough to let him know that she had heard him and was choosing to ignore him.

I remember Mom often speaking about her difficult childhood. How they had very little money, how she had to endure the brunt of Grandma’s aggression, which was not aimed back at the proper assailant. But she also spoke of the solace she found along the wooded trails where she led tourists on horseback as part of the family business and the comfort she found in the peaceful snowfalls of a long winter.

At eighteen, Billie was bright and eager but also naïve. She thought the dance lessons she’d taken in Iron Mountain could be parlayed into a career, but after several fruitless attempts to develop her talent in the bustling entertainment capital of California, she tagged along with her roommates one day to apply to be a stewardess. Although her slight figure fell within the strict requirements of the era’s airline industry, her height did not measure up to her adventurous spirit. Unafraid of hard work and determined to succeed in her independence, she created a fallback plan with her excellent typing skills and landed a secretarial job at Hughes Aircraft. There she met her new boss, Walt McCandless.

Walt was a respected leader in his division and quickly climbing the ladder. In the decade after the Soviets launched Sputnik, the U.S. space program was well funded, and the Hughes operation in California was large—the epicenter of the effort to prove American dominance in space. Walt wore his lofty position well. He was well educated, a hard worker, and a talented jazz pianist with a voice that made ladies at after-hours socials swoon. He was also a married man with three children and another on the way. Billie was attracted to his success. Walt noticed.

I can imagine my father as my mother must have seen him. When he walked into a room, he commanded it, his magnetic hazel eyes daring you to look away. But when he laughed, his eyes watered, making him look far less dominant. He swept you up in his knowledge about books, world history, music, travel, and science. He knew how to make a perfect omelet and how to make his smooth singing voice heard over an entire congregation’s. His fiery temper made you watch him as you would a volcano, awestruck by the intensity even as you wanted to get out of its way. You wanted to do everything you could to please him, and you drove yourself harder and harder to receive the nod that said he was impressed.

And I can imagine my mother as my father must have seen her. She was easy to fall in love with. She was a gifted homemaker who could resurrect a dining room table someone else had discarded on the street and serve up a delicious and healthy casserole concocted from a week’s worth of leftovers. When she ice-skated, her dance background showed in every elegant move of her wrist or smooth turn across the ice. When my parents danced together, my father’s movements became graceful, too, because she led him so well. She was refined, she was determined, and she was unfailingly loyal—though toward the wrong person.

I’d like to think they knew better. I’d like to think they tried to stop themselves. Eight years older and well aware of his influence, Walt took immediate advantage. Billie—old enough to know it was wrong yet youthful enough to let desire override her conscience—willingly pursued the affair. Walt convinced her that he was going to leave his wife, Marcia, as soon as the time was right. The problem, he told Billie, was that Marcia refused to grant him a divorce. He went so far as to keep a separate apartment for a while, to convince Billie he was trying to extricate himself from the marriage. But in truth, Walt had no intention of divorcing Marcia—or of letting Marcia ever divorce him.

Walt and Marcia’s history was long, and she was a very different woman from Billie. Marcia was quiet in nature and inclined to avoid conflict. She came from a small family with strong-willed yet devoted, loving parents. She was a few months older than Walt and had grown up with him in the small town of Greeley, Colorado, about fifty miles from Denver. They began to date when Marcia was just seventeen. Though Walt showed signs of aggression during their courtship, Marcia told me he never hurt her until after they were married.

Marcia had been reared with the values of her community, which had been founded as a sort of utopia, a place where all who breathed its air would shun alcohol, worship together, and raise strong families. She had every reason to believe her childhood sweetheart wanted just what she did, so when her father asked her on her wedding day if she really wanted to go through with it, she said yes.

By the time Walt and Billie began their relationship, however, Marcia had grown weary of Walt’s history of indiscretions. One day while tending to Walt’s dry cleaning, she found Billie’s ID in one of his jacket pockets. When she voiced her suspicions, she remembers they were met with a vile mix of aspersions, threats, and violence—all easily anticipated by Marcia and her three young children, Sam, Stacy, and Shawna. Another daughter, Shelly, had just been born. The family life Marcia envisioned had become a distant dream.

The affair continued into the following year, when Walt in his arrogance began to flaunt his relationship with Billie, not bothering to deny it and even orchestrating moments when Marcia would see it firsthand. Once when Marcia and Walt were out having dinner together, Billie came into the restaurant with some of her friends. She was eight years younger than Marcia, who recognized Billie from the ID in Walt’s jacket. “Hi, Walt,” Billie said coyly, smiling directly at Marcia as she passed by.