The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild. Carine McCandless
to make them feel trapped into staying under his control. Whenever Marcia showed her resolve to follow through with a divorce, his propensity for physical violence amplified. Marcia gave birth to another son, Shannon, just three months before Billie gave birth to my brother, Chris, in February 1968.
In a desperate attempt to protect her reputation, Billie scheduled a portrait sitting for her and Walt and sent the picture to the Iron Mountain newspaper as a post-wedding announcement. They appeared to be the perfect couple and Billie the epitome of success, a shining example of what was possible in a life outside the limitations of her small Michigan hometown. She went so far as to send pictures to her family of her and Walt on a trip together, claiming it had been their honeymoon. Of course the marriage could only exist in her mind, but she lied to herself enough until lying to others became second nature. She was learning from the master.
Walt acquired a home for his second family with Billie, a little beach-style bungalow on Walnut Avenue, and divided his time between the two residences. Marcia quietly struggled to find the means to follow through with a divorce, while Walt continued his oppressive reign over her life and her children. Shawna remembers being terrified of him during one such incident, when Shannon was just a year old. The tirade her dad unloaded onto her mom resulted in Marcia being left alone again to tend to her worried children and a new injury. A future visit to the doctor would confirm that Walt had fractured a vertebra in Marcia’s back.
I WAS BORN THREE YEARS AFTER CHRIS, in July of 1971. The stress in Billie’s life began to lift, with a progression of Walt’s promises seeming less hollow. He spent more time with us and paid more attention to Billie. She was also busier than she’d been before, because she now tended to two young children and their father and had started selling Jafra Cosmetics.
My father continued to tell Marcia all about my mom; Marcia says when he left her for two weeks out of every month, she was made to understand that he was staying with his second family. He was proud of having produced so many offspring and saw no reason to hide his other children from her. In fact, he envisioned us all eventually living together under one roof, and by way of convincing Marcia, pointed out that my mother made a fantastic pot roast—Marcia’s least successful culinary endeavor—but he said that Marcia’s spaghetti sauce was much better. Marcia remembers that in response, she quipped, “I didn’t know you were a Mormon fundamentalist, Walt.”
The two families wouldn’t come to live in the same house, but my father kept a special phone line in the office of his home with Marcia that no one was allowed to touch. All the older kids knew that phone line was for Billie.
Marcia wanted out and went back to teaching in order to save money. My dad showed up on payday and asked for her check. “It’s already in the bank,” Marcia explained as she continued making dinner for her children.
“In our account?” my father asked.
“No, in mine,” Marcia said in her understated way. Dad punished her, but she won the day—her money remained in her account, in her name.
My mother’s awareness of Marcia was much less clear, and it remains confusing to me how much she actually believed and how much she just chose to believe. I also don’t know if my dad’s violent and threatening behavior toward my mother began before or after Chris was born. My dad claimed to be working out of town for the two weeks out of every month he was living back with Marcia. But Dad’s secretary, Cathy, tired of her role in the charade; when my mother called the office one day about an order Cathy had placed with Jafra and mentioned Walt’s business trip, Cathy told her Walt was not out of town. When my mother told her she must be mistaken, Cathy replied that she was looking right at him. My father’s excuse for his latest deception was yet another false claim—he concocted a ridiculous story to appeal to my mother’s compassionate side, saying he couldn’t desert Marcia because she had terminal cancer.
There were repeated encounters like this between my father and both women, some that led to angry confrontation, others that were just shrugged off out of fear, frustration, or convenience. But for anyone who cared to see the truth, it was obvious: Walt was not leaving Marcia.
In time, the women in my father’s life reached a forced acceptance of the bigamous situation. Dad even dropped Chris off with Marcia while my mother was giving birth to me. Though the two women were rarely in the same place at the same time, all their children began to spend time together in varying combinations. Marcia occasionally took care of Chris, and Marcia’s kids visited us on Walnut Avenue.
Then, on a balmy summer morning in 1972, a knock on the door began to weave yet another strand into this expanding fabrication. Mom remembered standing face-to-face with an officer of the court. Maybe my father would never leave Marcia, but Marcia had decided yet again to leave him—and this time she was determined to follow through. She had filed for divorce and had listed the Walnut Avenue address as the location for Walt to be served. As Mom looked through the petition of complaint, she came to the section where dependents were listed: Sam, Stacy, Shawna, Shelly, Shannon . . . and Quinn McCandless. Quinn’s name was a surprise. Billie knew the others, of course, and had had the older ones over to her home on numerous occasions. But surely there couldn’t have been another baby with Marcia, one Billie didn’t know about. She would have known. Walt would have told her. Mom immediately loaded three-year-old Chris and me into the car and drove by Marcia’s house. There she saw Marcia out in her yard, watching five of her children play and holding a sixth—a toddler—on her hip. According to the court petition, Quinn had been born just before Christmas, 1969.
The evidence of our father’s continual dishonesty was too large to ignore, and my mother was infuriated. She even packed Chris and me up and sent us away, to her parents in Michigan. But in a pattern that would become all too familiar, she soon forgave Dad and retrieved us. Quinn wasn’t his, Dad insisted.
Mom chose to believe him.
Shortly before Marcia had filed for divorce, Walt had beaten her so badly that Sam—who was thirteen years old—called the police. When they got to the house, they’d simply asked Dad to leave and not come back. But Marcia was no longer concerned about the lack of protection from police or Walt’s next menacing act. It didn’t matter, because she was leaving. She sold the house, packed up their six kids, and moved back home to Colorado. Then Dad got a job that moved Mom, Chris, and me to Virginia. Distance now separated the two families, but we were intertwined and always would be.
THEN AND FOR THE YEARS TO COME, I knew my half siblings only as fun, cool playmates who would pick me up, play with me and Chris, and then leave until next time. As a little girl sitting on Mom’s bed, my hands playing in my sun-bleached curls, I knew none of this puzzling history.
Instead, I knew sometimes we had a large family, and sometimes we didn’t. When we didn’t, it was Chris and me, partners against the evil forces of the world. When our family was larger, it felt like the Brady Bunch, but with a lot more yelling. There were group outings with Dad and Mom; there were visits with family and friends. On one occasion, my mom had made all the girls identical green dresses to match her own for a party we attended, and we all wore our hair in matching fancy updos. Shawna recalls feeling special, finally included by way of these thoughtful gifts from Billie, and beautiful. To partygoers, we were the darling and closely blended family. But what Shawna remembers most about the day is the way her stepmom required the dresses back when the party was over and the pictures had been taken.
When friends asked what grade Shannon was in, Mom would tell them he’d been held back as a way of explaining why he and Chris were in the same grade. Sometimes our parents would claim that one or more of us did not biologically belong to the family—usually that was to explain Quinn. As the child born between Chris and me, he was incriminating evidence. The level of pain and confusion for me and my siblings was determined by our ages and ability to understand.
Somewhere along the line, Mom had become Dad’s accomplice. “Your father is so good to provide for Quinn,” she would say to me. “Since he doesn’t have to.” Anyone could see, she elaborated, how much like Marcia’s “good friend” Quinn looked. In truth, it was obvious Quinn had Dad’s jawline, laugh, and gift for working a room.
The summer