The Most Dangerous Animal of All

“We’re married,” Van informed him before climbing into the ambulance. “We’ve got to go. Can’t you see she’s sick?”

The officer let him go.

While Judy was having her appendix removed, Van moved to 765 Haight Street, hoping Verda wouldn’t be able to find him there. Verda kept a watchful eye on Judy while she was in the hospital, and as soon as her daughter recovered she had her placed in the Youth Guidance Center – a section of the Juvenile Justice Center on Woodside Avenue – hoping to teach her wayward daughter a lesson.

“Mother, you can’t do this. I love him!” Judy wailed when she was given the privilege of a phone call. “He’s my husband.”

“He is not your husband. He’s a child molester,” her mother countered.

On Valentine’s Day, Verda had the marriage annulled.

Van was furious, but Verda had the law on her side.

Judy was desolate. She curled up in a ball on her bed and cried hysterically, like only heartbroken teenage girls can cry.

A week later, an unsuspecting Van was arrested for the rape of a female under the age of eighteen.

He soon posted bail, packed a bag, and took off for Mexico City, determined to make some quick cash. He was successful this time, and when he returned to San Francisco, he snuck into the Youth Guidance Center to visit Judy. She giggled as he told her his plan.

“I can do it,” she assured him.

On the evening of April 28, 1962, Judy tied her bedsheets into a makeshift rope, climbed out of her upstairs room, and shimmied down to the ledge below. Van was waiting to catch her when she jumped the remaining few feet. Together the couple fled undetected into the gathering darkness.

“Where are we going?” Judy asked, once they were settled in Van’s car.

“To the airport to catch a plane to Chicago,” Van said, taking her hand in his. “My father’s a minister in Indiana. I’m going to ask him to meet us there to marry us.”

Judy giggled. “My mother is going to be so mad.”

“We’re not going to worry about that. You’re mine, and I’m not going to let her take you away from me.”

My mother snuggled closer to the man she was about to marry for the second time.

When they reached Chicago, Van called his father, but Gertrude had beaten him to the punch, informing Earl on the telephone that Van had been arrested for marrying the fourteen-year-old and warning him that they had run away again.

“Take her back to her parents,” Earl barked into the phone before Van could say anything.

“But Father, I need you to marry us. We’re in Chicago.”

“That is not going to happen. She’s fourteen. Have you lost your mind?” Earl yelled.

Earl had spent the past twenty years building a reputation and career of which any man could be proud, and he wasn’t about to let his misguided son mess that up because he had taken a fancy to a young girl. As national chaplain of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Earl was accountable to the government and to the public, and he was acutely aware that Van’s actions could reflect badly on him.

“Please, Father. I don’t want to live in sin,” Van said, hoping the mention of sin would persuade the reverend.

“Take her home, Van. Now. Before it’s too late,” Earl urged.

“That’s not going to happen. I love her, and I’m going to marry her with or without your help,” Van retorted.

“What happened to you?” Earl said quietly. “You know this is wrong.”

“I love her. What’s so wrong with that?”

“She’s fourteen!” Earl yelled. “That’s what’s wrong with it.”

“As usual, I can count on you,” Van said, knowing the effect his words would have on his father.

“Take her back,” Earl begged, “before you get into more trouble.”

“No. I won’t.”

“Please, son. Nothing good will come of this.”

Van hung up the phone.

“Let’s go grab a bite to eat,” Van told Judy. “I know a place,” he said, ushering her out of the airport and into a taxi.

“What happened?” Judy said when they were on their way.

Van shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Seeing the tears welling in her eyes, he patted her leg. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

After they were seated at Gene & Georgetti, one of Chicago’s finest steakhouses, Judy tried again to get Van to tell her what his father had said, but he ignored her.

“Use this fork for your salad and this one for your entrée,” he said, placing her napkin in her lap. “I’ll order for you. You’ve got to have the beef. There’s only three places in the world where you can get beef of this quality – Chicago, Kansas City, and Kobe, Japan.”

Throughout dinner, Van was quiet, contemplating his next move.

“We’re not going back,” he said. “They can’t take you away from me.”

“Where are we going?” Judy inquired nervously.

Van smiled.

“Mexico. We can get married there.”

Mexico City was everything Van had promised. Judy followed along happily when he dragged her from one market to another, searching for books and documents he could resell, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of a world that was foreign to her. Van seemed quite at home as he skimmed through stacks of paper and scrolls of writing, seeming to understand the hieroglyphs from the precolonial period of Spanish occupation of the great city on the island in the lake.

When he wasn’t working, Van took her to visit the Catedral Metropolitana, on the Zócalo, where Judy watched in awe as a boys’ choir raised their heavenly voices in praise, emitting the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. And when Van brought her to see the Teotihuacán pyramids, constructed around A.D. 300 just north of Mexico City, my mother thought she had never seen anything so amazing.

“Look at the way they are laid out,” Van said, pointing from one pyramid to the next. “The Aztec people who came later believed that the gods were born here. There’s the Pyramid of the Sun, and look, there’s the Pyramid of the Moon. The Teotihuacáno warriors hunted people, sacrificing them to the gods because they thought the end of the world was coming. They hoped their sacrifices would save them from the earthquakes they feared would kill them all.”

“What happened to them?” Judy asked.

“They just disappeared one day. The whole city. No one really knows why.”

“How do you know this?” Judy asked.