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The drowning - from the book "Sprout" by Dale Peck. Part 2 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-30
Trigger Warning: This diary in all its parts, deals with child abuse and a malignant narcissist.
ALL the names in this diary have been changed, to protect the innocent and guilty alike.
Part one can be found here
Part 2
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that Victor was constantly at war with Newton’s (Kansas) public schools. His rules had the kids dressing like they were from the 50s, cotton button down shirts and pants not jeans. The boys also all had haircuts that were buzzed on the sides and either a crew or a caesar on top. June could only wear dresses below her knee, no pants, not even for gym. But this was the 60s and 70s and even in small town Kansas they stuck out like a sore thumb.
Part of the war Victor waged was to keep his kids permanently out of gym class. Dad thought it may have been the result of Victor failing at something in gym class and being humiliated. And we know how well narcissists deal with humiliation. They don’t. He even refused to teach his kids how to swim.
The targeting and mistreatment of Cam continued until the state finally intervened and took him away. He wasn’t returned to his mom, no, he went to live in foster care and there was some talk about him being sent to stay and get help at Larned mental hospital . My parents tried to adopt Cam but Victor blocked them. Why? IDK. The simplest answer is that he had it out for Cam.
Victor then packed up his remaining kids and moved to Hutchinson, Kansas. It was far enough away from any family (immediate or extended) that could check on the kids. The land he bought was also dense with trees, unlike the land he had built the house on in Newton. It also had a rather long driveway off of a quiet road.
This is probably the reason Cam isn’t included in the novel. When I first spoke to Dale I don’t think he even knew Cam existed.
The first building Victor put up was a metal barn with a soft but strong, insulated roof. This is what the family lived in and shared with Victor’s vehicles. In one corner he built two rooms. One room was the bathroom/laundry room and on the other side of the wall was June’s bedroom. He and the boys slept in sleeping bags in the loft over those two rooms. (I never went up there so I don’t know if there were mattresses). Just outside of June’s room was the dining table, kitchen set up and a little sitting area. The light was florescent. The rest was for his Jeep, the van he used to work as an electrician, and tools. Nothing was painted to even look cheery.
When we first visited the foundation for the house he was building was already poured. Victor said they would all move in when he finished. The barn was just temporary.
You may have read David Pelzer’s book, “A Child Called It,” and may recall that when the state to him away from his mother, the abuse then was visited upon his younger brother. Being older by this time and more aware of child abuse(even spousal abuse, I was really sheltered from this reality) I did feel that the abuse Cam endured was now being visited upon Hollis.
“He was my twin, Daniel! He was my twin brother, and he drowned himself and left me all alone!” — “Sprout,” page 171
It was literary license to say that Hollis and Ty were twins, Hollis was 12 and Ty was 10. But Hollis did drown. Ty and Hollis were out doing boy adventure stuff at a stock pond (a pond meant for livestock to drink from, bathe in, etc). It was only maybe 3 feet deep, but something happened and Hollis wound up in the pond. He could have just stood up and been fine, but he panicked. He couldn’t swim. Victor hadn’t allowed his kids to learn.
Ty did everything he could to save his brother. He couldn’t swim either, and Hollis in his panic could have taken Ty down with him, even if all Ty needed to do was just stand on the pond floor. But it kills me to think of all the helplessness he felt watching his brother drown. It kills me that Hollis drowned.
Later on that day Victor pulled Hollis’ body from the pond and loaded it into his Jeep and took him to the mortuary in Newton. Why not the mortuary in Hutchinson? I have no idea, but by the time he got to the mortuary in Newton, it was closed so he drove back to Hutch with his dead son’s body in the vehicle and made the trip again the next day.
Hollis drowned on a Saturday during summer vacation. I was 14, not quite 15, and taking a nap when my Mom came into my room to tell me. In my half awake state I said “At least he’s away from Victor.” I had already learned what a shit human being my uncle was.
In a final screw you to Connie, Victor did not try to inform her of the death of her son. Her sister read it in the newspaper and called her. Connie and her husband, both now truckers, drove all night to be at the funeral. She made it, but never saw him, as we had the day before. Victor had his body cremated before the funeral.
The state and/or foster care let Cam come to the funeral. Victor hated how long Cam’s hair was now and that he sported an earring. Mom noticed at the after funeral repast or what we in New England call a wake (doesn’t matter what your denomination is, its still a wake) that Cam would sometimes sit back and a wild look would come over his face. But he never acted on it.
Connie saw all her remaining children. It wasn’t a reunion where they rushed over and greeted their mother. Victor had convinced them of what a horrible, evil person she was, and they hung back not engaging until she spoke to them. She spoke to all of them and all the family who was there. I didn’t recognize her. Gone was her bird nest hairstyle and she was wearing a pantsuit, no below the knee skirt. In a sense Mom and Dad had to re-introduce us when I spoke to her.
This was 1977, but I have to go back to 1972 for a second for context.
After Dad’s mom, my Grandma, died in 1972 (Grandpa died in 1967 just 3 weeks after Ty was born) my Dad and his sibs began to fight over the assets and property. That fighting led to estrangement between them and by default between the cousins. One of the casualties of the fighting was that my cousin Karen did not see Victor’s kids for 4 or 5 years. That picture below is all we could show her, it was taken in 1976. That’s all she got to see of him, for they didn’t arrive from Denver before the cremation either.
Taken in 1976 at my aunt Vicky’s house. L.D., Hollis and Ty are on left end of all rows. June is on the far right. My sister Margaret is right next to her. The rest are aunt Vicky’s kids
I don’t know if she would have wanted to carry the final image of him that I saw. He was bloated with his lips sewn together to keep him from draining into the casket. Victor pointed out the bruising to my father, seeming to praise Hollis for “fighting.” I was rather sickened by that. My best friend Laura and I had just learned how to do lifesaving in water a month before.. Dad had it out with him later for not teaching his kids how to swim.
We spent that week visiting and consoling the family. Several cousins and aunts went to the stock pond where it happened and chided me that I didn’t feel the need or want to go. Cam wanted to collect some of the wild marijuana that grew on the property before he left. But we noticed that the house had been built. The kitchen, dining room and sitting room were now in the house, but only one bedroom, Victor’s. I didn’t see any way an addition could be put on for more bedrooms. The kids still slept in the barn. Later, as we learned more, the barn was where the kids lived. mMy Dad would call it the “slave quarters.”
Hollis’ death did a few things. The cousins demanded that their parents stop the nonsense so that we could all see each other again. There would become a “no argument for swimming lessons policy” with my kids (and granddaughter). Though my mother had already instituted it for my sister and me long before Hollis’ death. And finally the abuse that had cascaded from Cam to Hollis now rested on Ty.
That isn’t to say that Victor didn’t abuse L.D. and June, he did. But Ty was only 10, slight of build and not as tall as his father. In contrast L.D. and June were 17 and 16 respectively. They were beginning to expand their wings, much to Victor's angst.
I have no doubt Ty’s break down to Sprout happened pretty close to the way Dale described it. In fact I spoke to Dale last Friday and he said it happened that way, but I’m too lazy to rewrite the sentence.
end of part 2. Part 3 posted tomorrow at 12noon ET.
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Some of the other diaries about my family:
I'm 54 and I have a new brother: A tale of 2 different people finding their DNA family
No Sex Education ≠ No Sex Among Unmarried Teens: My Family is Proof
Suicide
When all is made hostile; a story of sexual assault
The freakingly COOL, totally AWESOME phone call
The accidental time capsule
A sonogram, a pro-life cousin, & abortion
[END]
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