BGA Part Nine

BUTCH'S GREAT ADVENTURE PART IX

Living in that second house on Admiral Way in West Seattle, I recall a time when Art was working out in the back yard. He had make a frame out of channel iron,and was constructing a camper for his truck. He was cutting plywood, and bolting it to the frame. Working on some saw horses, cutting with a skilsaw, the blade jammed up, and stopped. He reached underneath to unjam it, and the blade took off, severing most of the middle finger on his left hand.

He was bleeding a lot, and he couldn't pull his finger out. So mother rushed him to Burien General, driving our 1953 Chevrolet. Art had to carry the saw, because his finger was stuck to the blade. Mother was freaked out, and got too excited to be careful. She was running stop signs, flashing her lights, and laying on the horn. About a block from the hospital, someone smashed into the driver's side of the car; t-boned her. So not only did she have to deal with Art bleeding, but had to talk the other driver into following her to the hospital.

Mother usually was fairly cool when driving. Years before, she was taking us kids somewhere, and the car she was driving at the time, flooded out at a stoplight, and the engine died. We could smell the raw gas as she cranked the engine, and tried to start the car. After one cycle of the light, the guy behind her started tooting his horn. He kept this up for several minutes, as Mom kept trying to start the car. Finally, she pulled her ignition key out, and got out of the car.We kids were spooked. She walked back to the car behind us, leaned down into the driver's face, and said, " Tell you what, sir. Let's trade off for awhile. You go and try to start my car, while I sit back here and blast your horn." The man rolled up his window, and she returned to our car. She put the key in, and it started right up.

Art had his middle finger on his left (dominant) hand amputated. At first, right after the accident, they had reattached the finger, but he could not articulate the first two knuckles. So the finger got in the way when he tried to use that hand to work with, or to reach into his pocket with. So, in frustration, he just had them take it off completely. Later, as he explained it, one loses 50% of your strength in a hand if you lose that middle finger. Odd the parallels in life. Walt Buttkus had chopped off several of his fingers on his left hand as a butcher, and now Art had chopped off one of his fingers...ah the symbolism is rampant.

1963: Art moved for the final time to a three bedroom house in Burien; 12815 Occidental Ave. S.
He actually joined the ranks of a home owner. I think he bought it for 15 grand. Damn, today that does not buy a Kia.

For a short time, Clystie and her teenage husband, Willy, lived with us, until they got their own place.[At that point Clys had told Mother that Art had been molesting her for four years. Her getting pregnant from Willy, and having to get married before getting out of high school, was her cry of desperation, her way to get out of the living hell of rape and degridation.

I rememberArt demanding that Clystie shave him, as if he were some kind of potentate. Mother waited on him hand and foot as well, so it did not alert me when he recruited Clystie too. Clystie has always maintained that when she told Mother about Art molesting her, she would not believe her, that she took Art's lying side. I guess, initially, that may have been true. But I remember an incident, after Clys had moved out, and I was at home. Mother was crying, and she was on the phone, talking to one of her girlfriends.

" Jesus Christ!" Mother was saying, through her tears,"I don't know what I'm going to do. Art has been playing around with Clystie, and now she has had to drop out of school and get married."

Mom noticed me standing there at that point, and she motioned for me to leave the room. I complied, but I felt that she certainly knew, clearly knew, what kind of a cur Art truly was. While Clys and Willy lived with us, it must have been very emotionally draining for her, being there with Art, her abuser and rapist, and Mother, whom she believed would not accept the truth, and Willy, her new young husband.

This two-story house was the last of the Buttkus family residences. After I got out of the Navy, I lived there for a few months, with Art and his second wife. Bud stayed with Art, and lived there for several years, before he too married his high school girlfriend, and moved out as soon as he could. Art and Bud used to punch it out on the lawn. Art was not afraid to physically beat on Bud. Art was drinking a lot more in those days too. And it was in that house, about a year after Clys left, that Mother got sick, with what later we found to be cancer.

Personally, I feel that cancer as a virus is in the air all around us at all times. Like letting ourselves get a cold in order to take a week off, there are those physicians that believe if a person is under enough stress, and is depressed, their immune system is compromised, and they unwittingly become a willing host to cancer. I believe that is what happened to our Mother.

Her physician, after she died tried to suggest that maybe she had some dark secrets, and it tore her up emotionally, that Cancer was her penance. As a 22 year old young man, I did not know what to believe. Mother died in 1966. Art remarried twice. In 1984, he too got cancer, and he died in his own bed in that house; with Clystie holding his hand in forgiveness; Clystie there on the Death Watch. Once again, regardless of Art's ignorance, and lustful deceitful behavior toward her, she forgave him, and was there for him at the end. My sister just amazes me. Truth can be stranger than fiction.

Glenn