The Most Dangerous Animal of All

“Oh, no. My mother would be mad if she saw me walking with a boy.”

“Well, then, we won’t let her see us,” Van grinned, taking Judy’s arm and steering her across the street. “We’ll cut through the park.”

Judy felt a quiver of excitement as they walked past her street and into Golden Gate Park. Her experiences with men throughout her life had not been good ones, but this man seemed different. Her mother, Verda, had divorced her father a few years before, because he was a strict disciplinarian and had treated his daughters cruelly. He had spanked Judy and her sister, Carolyn, often, leaving red welts on their backsides that made sitting down unbearable. Those spankings had finally ended with the divorce, but sometimes Judy missed her father.

Verda had moved with her girls to San Jose, where she had tried to pick up the pieces and make a new life, but things had not been much better there. Her first date resulted in rape, and Verda soon discovered she was pregnant with her rapist’s child, and later gave birth to a boy. Verda knew she could not keep the child. He would be a constant reminder of what she had suffered, and she already had two mouths to feed. She put her son up for adoption immediately after his birth.

Rebounding from that experience, Verda moved back to San Francisco and married Vic Kilitzian, a marine electrician who worked at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. An Armenian from Greece, Vic did not speak English well. Judy could barely understand the words he spoke, except when he hurled insults at her mother. Although he did not hit the children, he made sure everyone knew that he thought Verda was stupid. In its own way, that was as bad as the spankings for Judy, who couldn’t bear to see her mother treated that way. For Verda, life had become worse than ever. She worked hard at Crocker Bank to help support the family and then returned home each afternoon for another round of belittling. Depressed and hopeless, she had little affection to give her daughters.

At thirteen, my mother was starving for love, and Van was eager to give the innocent girl the attention she sought. Judy smiled happily, feeling special and grown-up when Van tucked her arm into his. Her smile widened when he kissed her hand before leaving her at the edge of the park, six houses from her home.

She hoped he would be waiting when she got off the bus the next afternoon.

He was.

Van watched as Judy looked around for him. He saw that beautiful face light up when her eyes met his, and he moved toward her, taking her hand.

“Where are we going?” Judy said, not really caring. She had no fear. Van made her feel safe.

“It’s a surprise – one of my favorite places,” Van replied, steering her toward a nearby bus stop.

“We’re going to church?” Judy exclaimed when the bus let them off on California Street and Van pointed to Grace Cathedral.

“Have you ever been inside this church?”

Judy shook her head, staring at the majestic building, with its high towers and tall steeple that jutted up toward heaven.

Once inside, Van pointed out his favorite works of art hanging on the cathedral’s walls, including murals by Jan Henryk de Rosen, and impressed her with his knowledge of the history of various pieces.

Judy was fascinated – not just with the art but with the man who seemed to know so much about the church. No grown-up had ever talked to her like this, like she was an equal, like her opinion mattered. Van proudly showed her the cathedral’s organ, pointing out the long tubular pipes suspended on the walls. “I play the organ here sometimes,” he informed her.

They had made their way to the stained-glass windows depicting Adam and Eve when my father decided it was time for Judy to go home. As they headed back toward the Sunset District, Judy suggested that he meet her mother.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said. “It would be different if you were seventeen. She won’t like me. She’ll say I’m too old for you.”

Judy nodded and agreed that they would keep their friendship to themselves for a while. She liked the thought of Van being her very own secret.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked when she turned toward her street.

“Yes,” Judy said breathlessly. “I can’t wait.”

Swinging her book bag over her shoulder, Judy almost skipped up the steep hill. She had never felt so happy. The young girl didn’t question why a man Van’s age would be interested in her. She didn’t know to ask questions about his past. In her mind, their relationship seemed perfectly natural. She felt giddy when he touched her, when he smiled at her. That was all that mattered.

Soon she would discover there was much more to Van than his charming exterior, that he had a dark side, a past cloaked in pain that he kept carefully hidden.

Van’s father, Earl Van Best Sr., was born October 16, 1904, into a loving Christian family. By the time Earl was born, the Best family name had become synonymous with love of God and country. Earl’s ancestors, beginning with his grandfather, John James (J. J.) Best, had fought hard for their beliefs, right or wrong. J. J. had been a Confederate captain in the Civil War, assigned to the South Carolina 9th Infantry Battalion, known as the Pee Dee Rifles. On April 1, 1865, J. J. was shot and captured at the Battle of Dinwiddie Court House and taken as a prisoner of war to Johnson’s Island, Ohio. On June 18, 1865, two days before the last shot of the war was fired, the Confederate captain signed an oath of allegiance to the Union and was released.

Prior to the war, J. J. had been a tobacco farmer and a registered slave owner. After the war, he returned to his farm, in Galivants Ferry, South Carolina, and reunited with his wife, Winnifred, and his two children. Because of the injuries he had sustained in the war, some of his slaves stayed on the farm to help him, despite the fact that they had been freed.

The year after the war ended, J. J.’s third child, Earl Van Dorn Best, was born, named after Major General Earl Van Dorn. Dorn, J. J.’s hero, had fought gallantly in the war but had suffered defeat at the Battle of Pea Ridge, in Arkansas. This battle had been a turning point, because it was here that the South lost control of the Mississippi River to the Union soldiers.

In 1880, J. J. donated some of the Best land for the construction of a new Methodist church and then more land across the dirt road to be used as the church cemetery. That cemetery is known today as Old Zion Cemetery, but back then the locals referred to it as the Best Cemetery.

Like his father, Earl embraced the southern tradition of tobacco farming, and he spent his childhood working the fertile land. As an adult, his knowledge of farming and his business acumen made him one of the wealthiest citizens in the small community of Galivants Ferry. In the late 1800s, Earl served as his pastor’s right-hand man and confidant, and in 1902 he was elected Horry County superintendent of schools.

Earl eventually married Anna Jordan, and the couple had eleven children, among them my grandfather Earl Van Best.

Then tragedy struck.

Earl Van Dorn Best was shot and killed by a former slave in 1907, when my grandfather was two years old, and Anna suddenly found herself a widow with a brood of children to feed.

The stories told to him about his father steered my grandfather into the ministry, and he would remain committed to God for the rest of his life. As a teenager, long before he had any formal training in the ministry, Earl became one of Bishop Francis Asbury’s circuit riders, who traveled from town to town on horseback preaching to anyone in Horry County, South Carolina, who would listen to their message of salvation. Earl later left his family home to attend the University of South Carolina, putting himself through school on a preacher’s meager salary. When he met the pretty Miss Gertrude McCormac, from Mullins, South Carolina, Earl fell in love with the talented girl, who could play the piano so well he knew the angels in heaven must be singing along. But Gertrude was not an easy girl to understand. She said she loved him, and Earl believed her, but when he could not be at her beck and call, Gertrude would replace him without a thought. It was a lesson she would teach him over and over again during the years they spent together.

On November 9, 1929, my grandmother wrote my grandfather a letter, explaining how grateful she was that he had recently traveled to visit her. She mentioned that she would soon be attending an oyster roast and she wished he could be there, but she understood how difficult it was for him to make the long trip to see her every day. “I want you to understand me now beforehand and know that my intentions will always be for the building up rather than the breaking down,” she wrote, before adding a postscript on November 10 that read, “Had a very good time at the oyster roast. Nick was kind. He brought me back. Wish you could have been with me instead.”

Her ploy worked.

Earl hurried back to Mullins to ask Gertrude’s father, Duncan, for her hand in marriage. Duncan gave the earnest young man his blessing.

“Will you marry me?” Earl implored, kneeling gallantly before Gertrude in the parlor as she reclined on a sofa.

Gertrude pouted prettily and thought for a moment. “I would love to,” she said, smiling into her fiancé’s eyes.

Gertrude was impressed by the minister’s intelligence. He was the most motivated and educated man she knew, even if he was a bit boring. The young woman was aware of the respect she would gain as the wife of a minister. It was a very appealing prospect.

Everything had gone well in the marriage for a few years, until Earl’s brother Austin Haygood Best died in 1931, and his wife, Betty Wilmoth Best, died in 1933, both having contracted consumption from the sanatorium where Betty worked. The couple left behind four children – Louise, Mildred, Aileen, and Geraldine (“Bits”). Mildred was sent to live with Earl’s sister Nan. Aileen and the youngest child, Bits, went to live with Earl’s sister Estelle. Gertrude, at Earl’s insistence, unwillingly took in Louise, who was fourteen.

My grandfather didn’t make a lot of money, and my grandmother had to stretch every nickel now that they had another mouth to feed. While moving from college town to college town had seemed exciting at first, being tied down with no money and a child did not fit in with Gertrude’s plans. “Why can’t Nan raise Louise?” Gertrude complained.

Earl, who attended the College of Charleston, looked up from a paper he was writing and sighed. “Because she can only afford to raise one,” he explained again.

“But it’s not right. Mildred is always saying that the Best family split them up like a litter of kittens. Sisters need to be together.”

“Well, maybe we should bring Mildred here,” Earl said, watching Gertrude’s reaction with smiling eyes.

She shut up and stomped out of the room.

Earl laughed as he went back to his writing. Sometimes his spoiled bride begged to be put in her place.

For the next year, Gertrude suffered in relative silence, fearful that Earl would get the notion that raising all the girls together was the right thing to do. But she wasn’t nice to her niece. Earl, who had grown up without a father, was a strict disciplinarian, because he was determined to raise Louise right. As the years passed, Louise came to hate her aunt and resent her uncle for letting his wife treat her like the orphan she was.

Toward the end of 1933, Gertrude missed her monthly cycle and feared she might be pregnant. She and Earl were living in Wilmore, Kentucky, while Earl studied at the Asbury Theological Seminary, on his way to earning another certification that hopefully would bring more income into the family.

“How will we support two children?” Gertrude whined after sharing her news with Earl, hoping this would force him to send the girl away.

“We’ll manage just like we do with one,” Earl reassured her.

Gertrude decided she wanted a girl – a girl of her own. Maybe when Earl held his own daughter, he would realize that the other one didn’t belong. She began sewing dresses for the baby from yards of lace and cloth, never once entertaining the idea that her baby could be a boy. That just wouldn’t do.