Pete was named, perhaps by me, to head our Cross-Cultural Summer Exchange Program, whereby those of us here for the season would get to know and better appreciate the customs and values of local peoples.
Pete was from Oklahoma. Where? “Blackwell, near Ponca City,” he explained when we first met.
“Oh yeah,” I replied.
Returning to the boys’ quarters late one night I found him in bed with the lights on, a sheet pulled up to his neck, and quivering. He pulled back the sheet to reveal bloody lacerations on his legs.
“What happened?”
One of his cultural exchange attempts had gone terribly wrong.
One of Pete’s regular tasks was to drive the station wagon—“Arrowhead Lodge” splashed large on both sides, like a moving billboard—to Stu’s Icehouse and Bait Shop to pick up ice every couple of days during the hottest, busiest part of the season when reserves ran low.
Pete was an affable sort, an able ambassador, and once there he’d smile and try to engage the staff in pleasant conversation. But the icehouse gang was a tough—inbred?—crowd. They didn’t change expressions nor speak actual words.
Except Gayle, Stu’s improbable daughter—adopted?—who was rather attractive and sociable. She and Pete became well acquainted one particularly hot summer when much ice was needed. They corresponded—in writing—several times during the off season and the next summer decided to “do the deed,” as he described it, thereby advancing the cause of closer relations with the local citizenry.
She borrowed her uncle’s car, Pete brought the beer (Schlitz, hot off the truck), and they drove to the Grand Glaize Drive-In, arriving at dusk just in time for the feature film. He did not recall the title of the film. They did not go to the snack bar or play on the swing set.
Within minutes each chugged a couple of beers and soon found themselves—odd way to put it—in the back seat. Things were progressing quite well when there was this banging on the rear passenger-side window. It was then that she uttered those worst of all words in such a situation: “It’s my dad!”
Stu!
And he was accompanied by her even lesser evolved uncle. These were burly men who tossed around heavy bags of ice like they were throw pillows all day every day.
Somehow, Pete was able to grab his shoes and undershorts and escape through the rear driver’s side door.
He ran as fast as he could, obviously, then bounded over a fence so high it kept passing motorists from seeing sinful scenes on the big screen, free. Then he dashed across the road, crashed through a barbed wire fence, and crawled, bleeding, into the dark woods. This is the sort of course that qualifies a soldier for the Green Berets.
Gayle’s dad and uncle had seen Pete escape into the woods and now they hunted him. Being hunted in the woods is not good, as any deer would tell you. Pete could see the glow of their cigarettes. Good Lord, they planned to be here so long they had to smoke cigarettes? What next, a campfire? Would he have to trap small animals and eat them?
They came ever closer to Pete before eventually giving up the chase and returning to the drive-in to pick up the car and Gayle. Pete saw this and made for the Methodist parsonage down the road, where he’d try to call the lodge for a ride.
He went to the door wearing only his shoes and undershorts and still bleeding. The minister answered the door and gasped. He wasn’t going to let Pete come in. If only his stigmata had been on his palms and feet the preacher might have showed more compassion.
“There’s been an accident,” Pete said, and asked to use the phone. The preacher was reluctant, but finally allowed Pete to step inside and make the call. Jim Murphy picked him up.
A week or two later someone from the icehouse returned the rest of Pete’s clothes to the front desk at Arrowhead without comment. Jim Murphy, who lived at the lodge year-round, told Pete that over the previous winter someone got into an argument with the guys at the icehouse and was killed!
Henceforth I was sent to the icehouse in place of Pete. The problem with that was Pete and I were both tall, thin redheads. So the first time I went in, the muscular, low-browed men glared at me, then mumbled amongst themselves, apparently deciding that killing me would cost them a good account, not to mention I just might not be the right guy.
Nevertheless, it was a setback for the cultural exchange program and for a greater understanding among peoples in the Bagnell Dam area.