An excerpt from Walter's Blood

An in process autobiographical book by Dylan Smith

Dylan began attending the prison writing workshop a few months after we started it up. He worked with us for about a year and was a consistent and determined writer. After that he was transferred to a different prison and has since been released. We are working with him now to sort out his over 800 pages of handwritten text into, probably, at least two books. The title Walter’s Blood is a reference to his grandfather, Walter, one of the founders of a church that Dylan grew up in and which features heavily in his stories.

……….

My story begins right where the Oregon Trail ends. Old Oregon City. Just up Pearl Hill from where the icy cold Clackamas dumps into the Willamette River after making its way down off Mt. Hood.

It was late evening on a sunny day in May. I was not born in a hospital. My mother gave birth to me as part of a ritual at my grandmother’s house. I didn’t know it yet, but I’d been brought into the world of a very particular religion—the congregation of my bloodline.

My family had been a part of the founding of the church and, in many ways, had since closed themselves off from the rest of the world. Other than for a few exceptions they have not accepted any new outside members since the 1950’s. You must be born into our secret society, and on that day, it was my turn to become a Follower—to be groomed in the ways, and programmed with the beliefs, of the church.

I was not going to be free, not an autonomous individual, not part of normal American society. I was born a member of something else entirely. Something that was hidden from the world, while at the same time residing within it.

It had all started out that morning when my mother woke up in the small Oregon City house that she, as a teenage girl, along with her young husband, had purchased shortly before their wedding day. It was only a few blocks away from where her parents lived—my grandparents’ house.

My mother, Kim, woke up early that morning to see her husband off to work and tell him that she felt fine. Even though she was hugely pregnant, she reassured him that it was okay to leave her for the day. With a kiss, her husband left to try to go make them a living.

She was truly in love with him. My father, who went by the nickname, “Buzzy,” was just the right mix of rebel and faithful church goer. He’d been a good husband for that first year, even though he drove a black muscle car and could back up tough talk with his fists. His 6’4” frame and over two hundred pounds were very formidable.

My mother’s family was much opposed to my parent’s relationship early on, but Buzz was hard not to like, and over time he was able to win them over and gain their approval. Behind closed doors though, there were always whispers about the fact that Buzzy, along with his brother and two sisters, were born out in “the world”—the world outside of the church.

They were brought into the Followers by their father, Adin, as little more than babies, unique exceptions to the birthright rule. There were many discussions about whether those “worldly” born children really belonged in the church. Did they have an actual chance of gaining eternal life? Were they a part of God’s last chosen few, or would they burn in the lake of fire like the rest of humanity? Perhaps they would just be cast out into darkness like a kind of perpetual purgatory?

But on that May 2nd, all seemed to have fallen into place, as the two young newlyweds were getting impatient waiting for their first child to come into their world. They’d discussed a name and liked the fact that, “Dana,” could be applied to either a boy or a girl. It was not common at that time to find out the gender of a baby before it’s birth, but even if that technology had been available, they wouldn’t have chosen to do it. The church forbad the use of any medical interventions of any kind.

The Followers are what’s called “Faith Healers.” They do not go to a doctor for any reason. They believe that everything is a part of God’s plan, and that to put their trust and faith in the hands of a doctor, or any other human, is showing a lack of faith and trust in God. Existence is strictly for following “God’s Will” and learning how to live life with faith in only in Him.

My mother was contemplating those ideas and praying for herself and her unborn child as the spring sunshine warmed her pretty face. As she walked through her quiet and peaceful neighborhood, she felt the first wave of some kind of change inside her swollen belly. She knew right away that her baby was finally coming, and turned around quickly to walk the few blocks toward her parents’ house where she herself had grown up.

Calls went around as family members scrambled to assemble a hospital bed in the kitchen. Car after car arrived as more and more of the large and very close-knit family came to support Kim, and pray for an easy birth and healthy child. As the house filled with people, the midwives arrived and began to prepare, not with medical equipment and medications, but with prayers. In the event of an emergency, they were ready to anoint with oil, lay on hands, and employ other rituals taken straight from the Holy Bible.

After a short and normal labor, I came out quickly into the world. But as soon as I was born two things became clear; something was wrong with me, and there was another baby still to come.

I was handed off swiftly to my Grandmother Wanda as the midwives informed my parents that there were going to be twins. Word traveled fast through the big house and heads bowed in prayer. My grandmother cleaned me up while I struggled to get my first breaths. I was very underdeveloped—malnourished, pale, and barely moving. It was said that I’d probably not make it through the night.

Twenty-six minutes after I was born my twin sister came out behind me. She was perfect and healthy--a normal weight baby. The midwives noticed that my umbilical cord was wrapped around my sister’s small hand. She’d had her fist clenched tight, cutting me off from my only source of sustenance and life.

It would later become family legend that my sister Dana somehow knew, as she and I developed together in my mom’s womb, what my life would later become—a disgrace to the family—and that she’d tried, mercifully, to save me from it.