Kary wasn't keen on the direction our life was taking. Never spiritually oriented to begin with, he must have been uncomfortable with our almost constant focus on God and the end times, our discussions of worst case scenarios with the USSR nuking the U.S., and of how our own government would hunt us down and try to kill us for being Christians.

I myself had doubts, though I knew better than to voice them, and my head teemed with questions, trying desperately to reconcile the contradictions I saw. If Dennis was so spiritual, why was he such a jerk? Randy Weaver was the head of his household, but he seemed nicer. We never saw him yell at his kids, and they didn't seem at all afraid of him. So why was Dennis' word always the last word, as if dropped from God's mouth straight into his? Why, when we went to the Assembly of God in Bonners Ferry, did the people wave their hands around, close their eyes as if in ecstasy, and say that they could feel the Holy Spirit? I felt nothing but awkward. I felt no ecstasy, I couldn't get into the whole hand waving thing, the moaning and emotional cries of "yes Lord! Sweet Jesus!" just made me uncomfortable. (In fact, in retrospect, the whole thing seems like a sorry substitue for sex, right down to the sounds. Yeah, it's sacrilege, so what. I said it.) People would collapse suddenly- "slain in the spirit". They spoke quickly and loudly in what sounded like so much repetitive gibberish to me, "speaking in tongues". My mother and sister spoke in tongues, and they urged me to. It was supposed to just flow, to be imspired of the Holy Spirit. I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I didn't want to try making something up... I wondered why God hadn't given me this gift.

Kary never went to church with us, and I could see why. He did other stuff with us, though. He taught us all how to fire a .22 rifle. First he drilled us severely on gun safety. After what seemed like hours of that, he took us out to the old chicken coop, put a target on it, and walked us through aiming, pulling the trigger. Although I worshipped Kary and wanted to emulate him in every way possible, I realized quite suddenly as the rifle was placed in my hands, that I did not want to fire a gun. It was loud. It killed things. It could kill people. I was frankly afraid of it. Finally I tried to hit the target. It didn't kick like I was afraid it might. We all took turns. By the end of the session, I'd actually put several holes in the target. We felt a little closer to being equal to the Weaver kids, who routinely ran around with pistols on their belts.

One morning, Kary came to breakfast with a girl we had never seen before. She was full bodied and smiling. Mom offered her some tea, and the girl asked for Red Zinger. I sat and watched the tea flush sensuously into the hot water until the entire cup was glowing red. I was faintly shocked that Kary would have sex with a girl he wasn't married to, and here she was, sitting at our breakfast table! Dennis said nothing in front of the girl but it was clear to us that he was displeased. Mom was polite, but after the girl left, Bonnie and Lowell happened to come over. I heard them talking, and she said that the girls in these parts seemed "fast". Bonnie and Lowell agreed, saying that it was like that here. I had never seen anything like this before. It seemed to me that you should at least love someone before sleeping with them, and that you should know them for quite a while...and that if you weren't married yet, you at least would be planning on getting married at some point, not that that would make it right.

A few days later, I awoke to upset. Kary was gone, and Mom was crying. She said he'd gotten drunk, and that Dennis hated drunks. There had been a fight between them. Kary was going back to Wisconsin. And so we lost the only positive male figure we had.