299 Days: The Preparation (8 page)

Republicans spent much of their time on social issues, which meant they alienated most of the voters in liberal Washington State. It was pretty sad. Grant saw firsthand the reasons those in political circles said that the Democrats were the “evil” party and the Republicans were the “stupid” party.

Most of Grant’s work was representing WAB members in lawsuits against the government. His first case was for Big Sam’s Plumbing. Big Sam, who fit the name at six feet four inches, installed a water heater for a customer in some typical mildly corrupt mediumsized city in Washington State. It turned out that the customer was a city council member who was despised by the mayor. Big Sam didn’t get a permit to install a water heater, because no one ever did, although the building code technically required one. So the Mayor announced his concern that the council member had broken such an important safety law. Big Sam, who was a very bright guy, wrote an extremely elegant letter to the editor of the newspaper about how stupid it was to require a permit to do something that people did all the time. The newspaper published it and the mayor looked like an idiot.

The mayor had the city attorney convene a special grand jury and charge Big Sam and the council member with the crime of installing a water heater without a permit. It was a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail. Conveniently enough, they announced the charges two days after the election. Big Sam was terrified about going to jail for installing a water heater. He was a WAB member so he called them.

Grant made a public records request to the city for all the water heater permits ever issued. It turned out that in a city of 90,000, exactly two water heater permits had been issued in the past ten years. A few thousand hot water heaters had been installed without permits, or criminal prosecution.

By the time Grant got the records from the reluctant city, Big Sam’s trial was in a few days. He started the case on the day before Thanksgiving. This was exactly what he loved. Big Sam was being bullied and Grant had some special skills that could beat the bully. He took Thanksgiving Day off, but worked the next day and all weekend on the case. He found a very obscure legal doctrine called “procedural equal protection” that stated it was unconstitutional if a person exercises a constitutional right like free speech (such as writing a letter to the editor) and then is the only person prosecuted for a particular crime. Grant wrote a brief on this that was amazing. He put it on Tom’s desk.

On Monday morning, Tom called Grant into his office. “You wrote this?” He asked Grant. “Over the weekend?”

“Yep,” Grant answered. “Why, is it bad?”

“No, it’s magnificent,” Tom said. “I found the right lawyer for this job.”

Grant filed the brief. The judge not only dismissed the charges, but also sternly lectured the city attorney and mayor on procedural equal protection. “What’s wrong with you people?” the judge asked the city attorney to loud applause by the audience. The headline in the paper was “What’s wrong with you people?”

Big Sam cried when the judge dismissed the case. He shook Grant’s hand and said, “I thought I was going to jail and would lose my business. Thanks, man.” They had a celebration lunch that included many beers. Grant was in his glory.

Big Sam’s case illustrated how government seemed to act in Washington State during that time. There were isolated jackasses like the mayor and city attorney, but the courts generally could be trusted to right a wrong. It took some work from a motivated attorney, but it could be done. When Grant later looked back at Big Sam’s case, being charged with a crime for installing a hot water heater seemed like the good old days. Back then, the corruption and government lawlessness were just isolated incidents instead of the norm. That would change.

Chapter 8

The Docker Years

Grant was headed out to a big New Year’s party. He walked by the mirror in the hallway of his house. Who the hell was that? This guy had on Dockers, a polo shirt, a gut, and Acura keys in his hand. Seriously, who was that? The scrappy kid from Forks was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the mirror reflected some lame suburban guy.

Grant was in his thirties now, and a father of two children. Their girl, Amanda, was five and their boy, Cole, was two.

Grant loved being a dad. He constantly thought about all things he would do differently than his parents did. He realized how many bad things had been taught to him during his upbringing. When one of the kids cried, for example, Grant would start to get mad but then would catch himself. For a split second, he would think that he had a right to resent all the stuff he had to do for the kids. But then would realize that normal parents love their kids. And he definitely did love those kids. But he had to constantly fight against what he had learned from his childhood. It was hard because Grant and Lisa had such radically different childhoods.

Grant worked nearly all the time. He loved his job and he was continually trying to improve his résumé. He wasn’t doing anything around the house like repairing simple little things. Instead, he spent his time writing articles, giving presentations, volunteering for bar association committees, working on campaigns. He thought his time was so valuable that someone else should do the work around the house.

That someone else was often Lisa, whose time was also valuable. Naturally, over time, she began to resent her role as the only one doing house repairs. She couldn’t believe that her former logging town husband was so worthless around the house. It pissed her off. A lot.

When things broke, it led to an argument. Grant would respond by noting how many important things he had to do for work right then. Lisa would respond with something like, “Oh, I guess saving people’s lives isn’t as important as what you do.” Things became very unpleasant in the house, which gave Grant yet another reason to be at work. It was a vicious cycle.

When Grant later looked back on the “Docker years,” the one thing he was ashamed of was squandering all the skills he had in Forks and becoming a dependent, soft, fat, typical suburban American. He became what would later be known as a “sheeple” (a combination of a “sheep” ignorantly grazing without thought and “people”).

Grant, who worked very hard, was a sheeple. As a sheeple, he fit in just perfectly in the Cedars subdivision where they lived. The Cedars was an upper end place. The houses weren’t mansions, but they were upper end. Almost everyone who lived there was a state employee; many were assistant directors of state agencies. People were nice … well, Grant assumed they were. He never actually got to know most of them.

One exception was the Spencer family two houses away. They were not government employees. They were friendly and their kids played with the Matson kids. They were Mormon, but didn’t meet all the stereotypes about a male-dominated household that tried to convert everyone. They were just regular people who, as Mormons, did slightly “weird” things like have a year’s worth of food stored. And they didn’t drink. The Spencers were the only other “conservatives” Grant knew of in the neighborhood.

The rest of the people in the neighborhood were unknowns. It was weird. Grant knew which agencies his neighbors worked for but didn’t know much else about them. They would wave when they drove by, but Grant didn’t know their names. In fact, Halloween was the only time he would see them when he took the kids out trick or treating. By the time Halloween rolled around the next year, he had already forgotten what his neighbors looked like and what their names were. Why even learn their names? He only talked to them at Halloween, which was fine with Grant. They were mostly liberals or, as Grant called them, “libs.” They all put up Democrat yard signs during election season. Putting up those yard signs was like a display of loyalty to the great and wonderful God of government.

Grant hated all the Democrat yard signs in his neighborhood, so he put up his own yard signs for Republicans and even an occasional Libertarian. Once those signs went up the first time, some people in the neighborhood stopped being (fake) polite to him. They were a little cold toward him. Most still waved, but a couple of them were downright hostile.

Grant was actually proud that these people didn’t like him. They were the ones using their government jobs to hassle the little people and take everyone’s money to waste on their stupid utopian dreams. They were the kind of people who had plumbers charged with crimes for installing water heaters.

Chapter 9

The “A” Word

Grant’s son, Cole, was two years old now. He wasn’t talking much. Grant was a little worried, but he didn’t want to bring it up.

Manda, as they called Amanda, was the perkiest and most outgoing child on the planet. She had red hair and was the center of attention in any setting.

Lisa was her competitive self. A person has to be competitive to make it through medical school but she was a little too competitive sometimes. She had to master everything she set her mind to. She knew what was best because she had looked into it and her worthless husband just worked and then collapsed on the couch to watch football. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” was, unfortunately, becoming her motto. Even more unfortunately, it was true, given her workaholic and overweight husband.

But, all the comforts of the suburbs made things fine. Nice house, nice cars, nice furniture, all that. They weren’t in debt but they had lots of stuff.

Lisa was also concerned about Cole not talking. She took him, without telling Grant, to a pediatric specialist. “Autism.”

That’s what was wrong with Cole.

“Autism.” What a terrifying word. It meant never talking, having to live in an institution. Lisa cried all the way home from the doctor’s office.

Grant cried when Lisa told him of the diagnosis after the appointment. Their “perfect” life wasn’t so perfect now. One of their kids wasn’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer. He would probably have to live in an institution. It was devastating.

But the diagnosis explained a lot. As they would later find out, Cole had a normal IQ, but had extreme difficulty communicating. He could not understand many words and he couldn’t speak them. Later, at age seven, he could speak and understand words at a two year-old level.

Amazingly, Cole could read years ahead of his age. He didn’t always understand what was written, but he did pretty well. He had a photographic memory. He could recall a license plate he had seen two years earlier. He could tell extremely slight differences in detail between things. He could understand mechanics and figure out devices instantly. He was an absolute whiz on the computer. Basically, his extreme lack of verbal communication was made up for by his extreme understanding of visual things.

It was very frustrating for the little guy. Cole would be tired and want to sleep but he couldn’t say it. He knew what to say but the words wouldn’t form. None of the grownups could understand what he wanted. He would try to talk and they would ask, “Are you hungry? Do you need to go potty?” No, I’m tired, he would try to say. I want to go to bed now. Then he would cry. He cried a lot.

Lisa, the competitive one and the doctor, went to work learning everything about autism. She bought dozens of books on the topic. She crafted a very detailed plan to teach Cole to talk. It centered on visual things. She made index cards with words on them, like “eat.” She would show a card to Cole and he would know it was time to eat. He understood that because it was written down, it wasn’t words someone was saying to him. Cole soon progressed to showing Lisa or Grant the “eat” card, which meant he wanted to eat. It was like sign language, but with index cards.

Cole began using the cards less and less and began using simple words. The words were still fewer and more basic than kids his age, but he was learning. It was like he was stuck in France and everyone spoke French except him. He had to figure out how to get things done with simple words and hand motions like one would if they were surrounded by people speaking only French.

Kindergarten was the first big test. Lisa worried that the teachers wouldn’t accept Cole; Grant was ready to sue them. But, the teachers in Olympia were great. They made educating Cole a top priority. The kids were also great to him; they took him under their wings. For all the bad things Grant thought about government, he had to admit that the Olympia schools were excellent. They were taking care of his little Cole and that was all that mattered.

Cole got better and better. By his later years of elementary school, he could string sentences together. It was still very hard for him to understand people he wasn’t used to. People like his family had gotten used to how to talk to him, but others didn’t know.

Manda took amazingly good care of her little brother. She spent a lot of her free time helping him talk and asking him questions to get him to talk. It was heartwarming. Cole came to depend on his big sister. When she was gone, Cole would ask, “Where is Sissy?” He could handle her being gone, but he was much more comfortable with her around.

Grant had a nontraditional father/son relationship with Cole.

They were very close and Grant spent all the time he could with Cole. But not being able to communicate well put a crimp in the formation of the relationship. Grant learned that hanging out with Cole meant just being in the same room with him; it didn’t mean talking. Cole got more and more comfortable with Grant just being there and not trying to talk to him all the time. Once the comfort was there, then Cole would let Grant talk to him.

Even when Cole was in middle school, Grant felt like he had a young boy instead of a middle school student. Grant would notice other dads talking to their sons like Grant talked to Cole, and then realize that the other boys were three or four years old. It was very hard on Grant. He loved Cole, and Cole was doing so much better than a kid with a full case of autism, but Grant still struggled.

Cole was on a little league team. They gave him a few breaks like pitching him soft balls. At first he didn’t get the part about running to first base but once someone showed him, he did fine. He even hit a homerun one time and ran the bases. He would be OK. Different, but OK.