Chapter 4 
Chapter 4 Keep your heart with all diligence,
For out of it spring the issues of life.
—PROVERBS 4:23
LISA: A couple of years before I confronted the man who molested me, I started sixth grade at Pinecrest Elementary and Junior High School in West Monroe. That’s where I first caught a glimpse of the cutest boy I had ever seen. He was in eighth grade, which meant that he was part of the cool, older group of students, while I was just a lowly sixth grader. I could hardly take my eyes off him, but he never noticed me. As Al says today, “I was too busy strutting my stuff and wearing my leisure suits!”
When I say Al was cute, I mean really, really good-looking. Pretty much everyone thought so. Even though he was new to the school as an eighth grader, his handsome looks and great personality caught the other students’ attention, especially the girls—and the other boys did not like that. During that year, he was even voted “Mr. Pinecrest,” which was supposed to mean he embodied the values of our school but actually meant he personified the values all the girls thought were important! Basically, being Mr. Pinecrest meant he was the most popular guy in the school.
Every morning when I went to school, I could hardly wait for an Al sighting.
I had more than a little preteen crush on Al. I really wanted him to be my boyfriend, even though I was only about twelve years old. The reason for this is that the best role model I had in my life at that time was Barbara. Like a lot of little girls, I could not envision being my mother’s age—and at age twelve, I did not really want to be—but I could easily envision myself as a teenager like Barbara, and that whole idea was very appealing to me. Barbara wore makeup, Barbara smoked cigarettes, and Barbara had boyfriends. I knew I couldn’t get out of the house with makeup on my face, and my sister took all the cigarette butts my parents had smoked, but there was no reason I could not have a boyfriend. And I could not imagine anyone better than Al Robertson. I guess I’ve always believed in aiming high!
Every morning when I went to school, I could hardly wait for an Al sighting. Every lunch break, recess, or fire drill, I was on the lookout for him. I saw him often but felt invisible. He didn’t even look at me, much less say hello, in those early days.
I thought my sixth-grade heart would break at the end of the year when Al moved on to high school and I knew I would have to finish my last two years at Pinecrest without him. Thankfully, other Robertsons came along, and I became friends with Jase and Willie (Willie’s classmates at Pinecrest knew him as Jess). That meant Al visited the school occasionally, and when he did, I always seemed to be watching.
AL: Even though I was vaguely aware of Lisa during my eighth-grade year at Pinecrest, she is right when she says I did not pay any attention to her. During that year I was enjoying myself, aware that I was very popular, having fun with my friends, and hanging around with an eighth-grade girl I considered my girlfriend. When our time at Pinecrest ended, though, so did my relationship with her. I had definitely started noticing and liking girls by this point in my life, but I was not interested in that blond-haired sixth grader, even though she was much closer to my age than the girls in my grade. If I could cut it with older girls, I figured that was what I wanted to do.
I spent my ninth-grade year at a new school, and that’s when things began to take a downward turn for me spiritually. Until that point, I had held firmly to my faith. Because of the Laytons, I had spiritual roots and a relationship with God. Even though my family life had been hard, I had a good church experience. I was having a great time at White’s Ferry Road Church, and by then all of our family attended church together and both my parents were Christians—as were Dad’s parents, who lived in a little house next to us on the river.
I also turned thirteen that year, and puberty hit hard. I became more interested than ever in girls, especially pretty, well-developed ones. Like a lot of high school freshmen, I started going to football games on weekends, though I did not pay much attention to what was happening on the field because there were so many girls to meet and talk to. On weekdays, I discovered kissing girls in the back of the school bus, though I never tried much more than that. Even though I was a Christian, I became much more interested in things of the flesh than things of the Spirit.
I faced the challenge of being only thirteen but also being in ninth grade, which meant my peers were doing things I had not done before and probably was not ready for emotionally. Where girls and relationships were concerned, I became aware of things before I should have known about them. As a young boy I had seen people having sex behind the bar my dad managed (this is part of what I meant when I wrote about being exposed to bad things I shouldn’t have seen). So I was definitely curious, but I did not act on my curiosity. I had plenty of friends, I was still a responsible person, and I made straight A’s. People thought of me as a “good kid,” but I was beginning to stray from my personal values as a believer and from what my family expected of me.
I had my first serious girlfriend when I was in tenth grade, yet I was only fourteen years old. She was sixteen. I knew her during my ninth-grade year but really noticed her when school started in 1979. When she climbed onto the school bus that fall—well, all I can say is that the summer had been kind to her. She had expanded in all the right places, as far as a hormone-filled young man was concerned. I went from attraction to lust in about ten seconds.
I could hardly believe my good luck when this girl agreed to start dating me. After all, a two-year age difference is significant at fourteen and sixteen. I pretty much felt like the king of the world, or at least the coolest person on earth. I still went to church but had basically lost my interest in spiritual things. I was not nearly as concerned about pleasing God as I was about pleasing an “older woman.” At the same time, though, I still wanted to be “a good Christian.” I was living a double life—my “church life” and the other parts of my life. I wanted to do right—but I didn’t want to stop doing wrong. I was a teenage boy, and I was enjoying the worldly experiences I was having.
My family life was strong at this time. Mom, Dad, Granny, Pa, my brothers, and I all ate dinner together every night, played games, and generally had a great time. I had good Christian role models in my parents and grandparents, and my brothers were active in church and doing their best to live Christlike lives, even though they were young. I had everything I needed to help me be a godly young man, and part of me wanted to live that way. But another part of me didn’t, and that part won the battle.
At sixteen, my girlfriend already had a car, and I was barely old enough to get a learner’s permit! I became sexually active for the first time in that car, and that put me on a dangerous path that would not end for years. For most of my tenth-grade year and part of my eleventh-grade year, we had sex frequently, usually at her house, after school, when her parents were not home. I am, of course, ashamed of my behavior now, but at the time, I felt like one lucky fourteen-year-old.
After I turned fifteen, I got a new girlfriend, but I was involved with her in the same ways I was involved with the previous one. One of the biggest events of that year was that I was able to get my driver’s license, which opened a whole new world to me. I was free to go where I wanted to go, and that’s when my drinking and carousing, even trying marijuana, started. I could have had some good friends from church, but in my young mind, church people did not have any fun. I decided instead to hang around with guys I thought I could have “fun” with, two of whom were Lisa’s cousins, but really all we did was get into trouble.
My parents knew I was going to church and they thought I was behaving, even though I was not. I don’t know whether they were in denial about my lifestyle, whether they were so busy building the Duck Commander business that they didn’t notice, or whether because I’d always been such a good, responsible son it never occurred to them that I might stray. I do know they had no idea how I was really living. The few times they did question me about something, I lied, and probably because they had always been able to trust me, they believed me. I would have been in big trouble, especially with Dad, had they been aware of what I was doing. Their good boy had gone wild.