Powerdive
He was a hundred thousand feet up, dropping
toward
the ocean like an enormous cannonball.
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
One day in 1956, Michael came home after basketball practice at William Clark Elementary School to learn that his stepfather Ozzie, had left, and his mother was filing for divorce. He couldn't believe it. Most of his life was wrapped up in school and Scouting activities, and he had been paying little attention to what was happening at home, but there had never been any intimation of a split. It was as if his world had come apart, and there was nothing he could do about it. To spare Michael as much as possible the pain and shock she knew he would go through during the divorce proceedings, his mother suggested he pay a visit to his older brother David, and she put him on a train for Sacramento.
David MacIntosh had always been the star in Michael's life. David, after graduating from Franklin High School, had studied at Lewis and Clark College and at the University of Oregon; then, realizing he was about to be drafted, he had enlisted in the Air Force. Within a short time he was assigned to the security division and was on his way
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to the war zone in Korea. After the truce of Panmunjom he moved to California, married a young woman from Sacramento, and went to work for a civilian airline. He and his wife, Liz, became parents of a baby boy.
Michael spent two wonderful weeks in Sacramento, where he was intrigued by the influential friends David seemed to have, both in the military and in civilian life. David knew everybody. He had come home with only the rating of an airman first class, yet he had access to important businessmen and security clearance to Air Force installations where he apparently had continuing connections.
Not as handsome as Michael, nor as tall as his brother would one day be, David managed to combine his mother's ebullient sense of humor with his Grandmother Ella's strength of character. He was very close to his grandmother and she thought the world of him.
In Michael's eyes, his older brother symbolized money, power, and influence. He was a bright light in a dark period, the only positive influence in Michael's life, the one successful person in a poor family.
David loved Kent and Michael and took a personal interest in the boys. When they were small, they would sit on his lap and steer his 1940 Ford sedan. As they grew, David took time with them, showed them how to make model airplanes, told them stories, and taught them tricks.
At the time of Michael's visit in 1956, David was enrolled in philosophy courses at Sacramento State College, intent on earning a degree. During those two weeks, David tried to make Michael face reality. He taught him to reach higher, showing him that there is more to life than the circumstances one is raised in. Whatever situation David faced, he seemed to look above it, and in the process he fired Michael's imagination. In one memorable conversation
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during that Sacramento visit, David challenged Michael to consider the consequences of his dreams:
"What do you have for goals when you grow up, Mike?"
"I dunno. I think maybe I'd like to be a chaplain."
"A chaplain! That will cost you something."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean in discipline and in separation from the world."
It was during that visit Michael learned for the first time that David was actually his half brother, that David's surname was not MacIntosh, and that their mother had been married not twice but three times. This knowledge staggered Michael. He returned home depressed. Life was not the same. The house was empty much of the time. He just couldn't understand why these things were happening to him.
Michael's other brother, Kent, entered Madison High School and became the epitome of vigorous youth. Two inches shorter than Michael but a year older, he established an enviable record in football (defensive back), track (sprints), and wrestling (147-pound class). At one time Kent held the city wrestling championship for his weight, and on another occasion he was voted the most inspirational player on the Madison Senators football team. While the brothers engaged in the usual sibling rivalries, to Michael, Kent was a hero; and when the younger brother reached high school he tried hard to emulate the older, but with less success. Even so, Michael acquitted himself well in Kent's three sports, plus basketball. On one occasion, Ruth was presented with a specially designed award for being the most outstanding mother in Madison High, a school of 2,700 students.
One day in 1959, Michael visited a corner store near his home with a couple of buddies and, for the first time in his life, engaged in shoplifting. It was an insignificant item — a fifteen-cent tube of glue for a model airplane they
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were putting together. As they came out of the store a pickup truck drew to the curb. Michael recognized Penny Williams, the wife of his brother David's closest friend. "Get in the truck, Mike," she said.
His heart jumped. How had she found out about the tube of glue? "What's the matter/" he asked.
"Get in, and I'll tell you."
He climbed into the cab and waited nervously for her to say more.
"Your brother David was killed today," she finally said, fighting back the tears.
"That's a lie!" Michael shouted. "Don't ever say anything like that to me again!"
"I'm sorry, but it's true. Your sister-in-law Liz just called me. He was killed in a car accident."
Together they went to the Rose City apartments, a large lower-income complex where Kent and Michael lived with their mother. Ruth was home from work and was tidying up the place. Penny sent Michael into the small kitchen to prepare coffee while she sat down with Ruth. Soon Michael heard a scream such as he had never heard before. "He's dead! He's dead!" Ruth cried as he entered the living room.
Michael reacted coldly, still unable to accept it. "There's nothing we can do about it," he said. But Ruth gripped his arm in her powerful hands and nearly broke it, while she poured out her grief. Later he drove out to the centennial fair where Kent was working and broke the news to his brother.
As the full meaning of the tragedy came home to Michael, it was as if someone pulled the key from his ignition. He just went dead. David was only twenty-six years old, and now he was gone forever. Ruth had no money for the journey to Sacramento, but her fellow employees took up a collection to put new tires on her 1956 Ford Victoria
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and have the engine tuned. Together the little family made the journey to the funeral. It was summer, and the valley was hot. Michael and his mother visited the funeral home for the viewing; and as he stared at the open casket, he couldn't believe his brother was gone.
The whole thing seemed unreal. A man whom David knew had bought a new car. He showed up before work and invited David to take a ride. David had just signed an insurance policy, it was lying on the table. They went riding out into the open country where there was nothing but farmland. A single telephone pole stood by the road and their car had struck it. The Sacramento Bee said the vehicle was traveling seventy miles an hour. David was killed; the driver was critically injured. It took several hours to pry David's body out of the seat.
At the military funeral a guard of honor fired a rifle salute, and the flag that covered the casket was given to Liz. David was buried with his rank of airman first class, but Michael was again impressed by the number of Air Force officers and city officials who had known David and took the time to attend the service.
From the time Michael returned to Portland much of the fun went out of his life. He gradually stopped studying and participating in sports. He ceased to attend the Baptist church. At Madison High he joined the Young Life club and was elected president, but he attended mainly for the socializing and the chance to meet girls; for girls had now become the main pursuit of Michael's life. One Friday evening as he sat in a parked car on a side street with some friends, someone said, "Let's have a beer." Michael had never tasted it, but that was the beginning of his venture into a new lifestyle: parties, drinking, drive-in movies, and girls. They proved poor salve for the open sore left by David's death.
By the time he was sixteen years old Michael had wandered
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in and out of several high school relationships and had fallen in love with a girl named Anne who lived in the end apartment at the Rose City flats. Anne was two years older than Michael, but he was now six feet tall and desperately infatuated. All he could think of was marriage, but Anne didn't believe he was responsible enough for such a step. Eventually she left town and moved to Eugene, where she enrolled at the University of Oregon. Her departure left Michael desolate. He lost interest in whatever remained to him, dropped out of Madison High in his senior year, and failed to graduate with his class.
With nothing to do, Michael began spending his time with a gang of toughs, getting drunk and engaging in nightly stunts. On one occasion they invaded a hotel notorious for prostitution and ran through the halls, banging on doors. On another, Michael kicked out a window pane in a warehouse and slashed his leg severely, the injury sending him to the hospital. There the leg became infected, and Michael had plenty of time to think. One day while he was lying in the ward, the local Young Life leader came to visit him. It was one of those moments when a life's direction hung in the balance. Michael said to his friend, "Jack, I want to know God. I just can't keep on living like this." Whatever Jack's reply was, the moment passed without Michael's making any moves.
Before he left high school, where he was sports editor of the school paper, his journalism teacher had said to him, "Don't quit. You've got talent. It would be the biggest mistake you ever made." But he made it. He had promised his mother that he would go to night school and finish up, that he would find work and help support the family, but he did nothing. The powerdive from A student to dropout left him completely uncaring and rebellious. He saw no hope and no future. Everything was a heartbreak. Even church seemed to be little more than a set of admonitions —
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— Don't drink! Don't smoke! And as for the rest of the world — he became convinced that nobody ever made it to the top unless he was either rich or a crook.
He thought of Anne constantly. He saw her on occasion (Ruth always drove the family to Eugene to spend holidays with Grandmother Ella), and Michael's passion and eloquence finally broke down the girl's reluctance and overcame her good judgment; she agreed to marry him. But once again, when he faced the prospect of assuming adult responsibility, he could not rise to it. In a dramatic meeting for which he once again fortified himself with alcohol, he told Anne he could not go through with the marriage. She, deeply wounded, told him he would never see her again. Michael said he didn't care — but he did, and he knew it. Three months later, in Army uniform and depressed, he mailed her a letter telling her how sorry he was and asking if they could begin again. She wrote a brief reply, saying she was married.
