The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild

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“I bought it on my last business trip to Europe, and it’s none of your goddamned business! Why are you two going through my things anyway!” he yelled. “Tell them it’s tobacco, Billie!”

“It’s tobacco,” she obeyed, but the daggers she shot at him with her eyes said something else. A titanic fight ensued, up through every level of the house until we were all in their master bedroom.

“Fine! It’s marijuana!” Dad finally admitted after pushing us away and throwing Mom around the room a few more times. “It’s for my glaucoma!”

“I’m calling the police!” Mom screamed and moved toward the phone.

Dad rushed through the room again; we all flinched, but he passed by us and ran into his closet, screaming the usual threats. “Go ahead, Billie! You’ll see where that gets you and the kids!”

I gasped at the size of the marijuana bag he resurfaced with. He held it high in the air and announced, “I’ve done nothing wrong! My doctor gave me this for my eyes! It’s perfectly legal!” He continued his rant as he stomped into the bathroom, red-faced and furious, and began to flush the contents of the bag down the toilet. “Fuck all of you!” he shouted between flushes. “I’ll just go blind and you will all be left out on the street to starve to death!”

“If it was really from your doctor then you wouldn’t care if Mom called the cops!” Chris insisted as he looked back at Mom. She wasn’t dialing the police, or anyone else for that matter. She never did. Chris walked out of the room and I followed, satisfied we had made our point. The fight died down after that.

When we told Shelly about it a while later, she laughed hysterically at the ridiculousness of the entire incident. For my part, I focused on my mortification that my dad was a drug abuser, destined for prison one day, I was sure. Chris’s reaction was different. He was incensed by our parents’ hypocrisy, and that never went away.

CHAPTER 3

AT THE END OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR of high school, I sat on the driveway brushing out Buck’s thick coat—a task Mom had deemed critical to save our vacuum from an early demise.

“Hey, Carine!” our next-door neighbor Laura called out, walking across the yard.

Laura was in the same class as Chris, another cool senior. She was a bit heavyset, eternally tan, and very pretty. Her thick blue eyeliner was always perfect, and she’d recently cut her long blond feathered locks into a shorter style. Though most girls were trying to duplicate Farrah Fawcett’s look, Laura was not one to conform to the masses at Woodson. I respected her.

“So”—she sat down next to me and welcomed Buck’s request for attention—“I drove your brother to school today. His car wouldn’t start.”

“Oh! I was wondering what the Datsun was still doing here. How’s he getting home from track practice?” I asked, as if she were his secretary.

“How would I know? Andy, probably,” she said. Andy Horwitz was Chris’s best friend and constant companion on the track.

“So . . . listen,” Laura continued cautiously. “So . . . we’re driving to school and talking about graduation, summer plans. I’m telling him how much I’m going to miss my boyfriend and about all this stuff we want to do before I leave for college.” She took the brush from me and started in on Buck’s stomach as he rolled over in delight. “And Chris is all quiet,” she said, finally. “Weird. Because all he’s ever talking about is how much he wants to travel. So, I ask him where he’s going to go before heading to Emory. And he’s still quiet and looking out the window.”

“Okay?” I wondered where she was going with this.

“Well, he finally looks back at me, and he’s crying! And all he can say is that he feels guilty about leaving you behind . . . leaving you alone with them. What’s that all about? Who’s ‘them’?” She stopped brushing Buck and waited for my reply.

“I don’t know,” I answered softly.

“He was crying,” she repeated.

“Well, you know how much he loves that car,” I offered. “Maybe he was just extra emotional because it broke down? Or maybe he and Julie had a fight?”

Laura’s eyes narrowed. “Julie? As in his girlfriend? Are you kidding? They never fight. That’s not it.”

I gathered up Buck’s leash and collar. “I’ve got to get inside and study for finals,” I said and retreated from the inquisition.

CHRIS DIDN’T SHARE HIS CONCERNS about leaving with me. But he also didn’t need to—the thing about me and Chris was that we could give each other a look or a squeeze on the shoulder and know exactly what the other was thinking.

The awareness that he’d be leaving soon was all around us. The family buzzed around him. With the end of the school year came a steady flow of carbohydrates across the dinner table to prepare Chris for his final cross-country track meets. He was determined to perform well at districts and move on to the regional championship. To keep things interesting, our mom pulled The Joy of Cooking from the shelf to improvise on her standards, inventing tasty new versions of lasagna, manicotti, ravioli—she was never one to shortcut in the kitchen with Hamburger Helper. During the meets themselves, Mom and I would rush to stand along different parts of the route to hand Chris cups of water while Dad stood, stopwatch in hand, calling out his times to him. To onlookers, we were a close, supportive family. And on those days, we were.

These track-meet weekends had replaced family hiking trips to the Shenandoah. But as Chris ran past me, flush faced and sweat soaked, I saw the same mix of determination and peace come over him that I’d often seen when we’d walked together on the trail. “Everything in my head gets organized when I run,” Chris told me. “I think about all the stuff that gets me so angry, and it drives me to keep on pushing forward. I don’t get tired. I always need more time to figure it all out. Even at the end of a long race, I just want to keep on running.”

I joined the track team, too, only I wasn’t a distance runner. I wasn’t much of a runner at all, actually. The coaches had been wide-eyed and hopeful when the name of Chris McCandless’s little sister had appeared on the sign-up sheet. It quickly became apparent that I did not share his speed or his endurance, and track was not going to be added to the list of school activities in which I made a reputable name for myself. The coaches remained polite in their disenchantment. For my part, honors in track didn’t matter. It was another activity to keep me away from home. I never felt the need to compete with Chris. I just wanted to be like him.

Although we really had no sibling rivalry, I couldn’t help but tease Chris a bit when I surpassed him in the one and only skill of playing the French horn, akin to the mellophone in my favorite musical division, marching band. Chris had rejected the band’s regimented, militarized culture even before I came to Woodson to compete. The environment rankled him, whereas I excelled in both the instrument and the ethos. I liked how structured and predictable it was: march here, then move three steps there, then play these three measures. I loved to see the successful communication between us play out in patterns on the field. It took discipline and hard work, and I thrived, making section leader in short order, then first chair when we traded the field for the stage in symphonic band. I reveled in bringing trophies and accolades home—they were proof of my success, proof that my parents should be proud.

Chris couldn’t have cared less about trophies or honors, and yet he was still so good at everything. He set high goals for himself and achieved them all without the pressure of knowing that others were depending on him. Whereas I didn’t want to disappoint anyone else, his concern was to not disappoint himself. He was more of a solo act, while I enjoyed being part of a team. He was an improviser, while I was a rule follower. He would tease me about my conformity, telling me I was band teacher Mr. Casagrande’s favorite, but he would quickly follow it up with a wink. “But I’m proud of you, Carine,” he would say. “You really did a good job.”

Our different approaches played out at home, too. Chris would say he wished he could see my parents more like I did—like they were a problem that could be solved if everyone just sat down and talked rationally. Now that we were both in high school, the physical violence had slowed—we were too big to be forced over Dad’s knee, too fast for him to catch, and more willing to defend ourselves. Likewise, because we could now come to Mom’s aid, Dad’s hands-on approach to bullying her took a backseat to his constant verbal abuse, which she still accepted.

Now every time Mom and Dad fought, Chris would listen only long enough to confirm it was the same old scene, just with new dialogue. Then he’d throw up his arms, tell them they were both idiots, and take his exit. I, on the other hand, would encourage my parents to calm down, have a seat, and discuss things rationally, to try to get to the basis of the argument and solve it. If Dad’s bullying included any physical threats, I would demand to know what he expected that to accomplish. I was the marriage counselor. Chris was the divorce attorney.

Dad’s need for control still resulted in violence on occasion, though, as it did one day when he sensed he was losing an argument to Chris. Summer was drawing near, as was the end of Chris’s high school years. I was sitting on the living room couch, looking through the yearbooks we had received in school that day. Mom was ironing Dad’s dress shirts. My trip down memory lane of the 1985–86 school year was interrupted as the most recent cause of dispute surfaced once again: Chris’s summer plans. Chris was eager to hit the road with the Datsun immediately after graduation, and Dad was incensed that he didn’t see the logic in having a predetermined travel plan to submit for our parents’ approval.

“Why can’t you just understand that not having a plan is my plan?” Chris implored. “I don’t know exactly where I’ll be. That’s the whole point, the freedom of it. I’ve been so structured with school and sports and work—everything has been scheduled and laid out for me. I just want to get out of that mundane existence and purely enjoy life for a while. I’ll decide on the fly where I want to go next.”

“You will not leave this house without giving us an itinerary for where you’ll be, week by week!” Dad demanded. “You’re being completely irresponsible! How do we even know you’ll return for college?”

“What? How can you call me irresponsible?” Chris challenged. “Was it irresponsible of me to study hard and get good grades? Was I being irresponsible to work two jobs to make money for college and save up for this trip? How about how hard I trained for these last cross-country meets? And of course I’m going to Emory. Why would I go through all of that if I had no intention of going? What I have no intention of doing is laying out my entire summer on paper, making everything predictable and destroying my chance for adventure.” He continued, “If I’d made you a list, it would’ve been a fake one just to appease you, and you wouldn’t have known any better. I’d simply throw it out the minute I walked out the door.”

It was hard to deny Chris’s logic. He waited patiently for a response. Dad stood there staring at him, at a loss for words, his eyes and nostrils flared. The red on his face spread until even his bald spot was completely flushed. Knowing he had won the debate, Chris turned his back to Dad and began to walk away. Dad’s reaction to the defeat was so swift that I couldn’t even bark out a warning as I saw him wind up his right arm like a baseball pitcher preparing to unleash the final strike of a perfect game. He lurched forward and slammed his fist into the center of Chris’s spine, as if he were expecting to level Chris to the ground immediately.

Chris, not at all diminished, simply stopped moving away. Though shorter and slimmer, he was in impressive shape. His superior strength was more than physical. He saw the panic in Dad’s expression as he slowly turned to face him. But Chris just looked at him with little emotion. A single puff of disgust passed over his lips and then he turned again and slowly walked upstairs. I understood. To Chris, Dad and Mom weren’t worth the effort of rebellion anymore. Rather than feed the beast of turmoil, Chris just separated himself from it.

I sat to the side, wide-eyed as he walked off. I had to tell myself to start breathing again. His reaction—or lack thereof—to Dad’s behavior was a victory for both of us that day. Dad looked over at me and then narrowed his eyes, a silent warning that I’d best not ever repeat my brother’s mistake of being bold. I rolled my eyes back at him and returned my attention to the pages of the yearbook. I don’t know why I didn’t jump up to defend Chris. I guess I didn’t feel that he needed my help, even though I often needed his. If it had been me in the argument, he would never have allowed it to escalate.

CHRIS’S PRESENCE IN MY LIFE felt enormous. I was surrounded by the powerful perfect pitch of his singing voice as he belted out lyrics and played the piano, by him debating politics eloquently with his friends, and by him fighting battles for the both of us when it came to my parents. I knew he wanted to protect me while also giving me enough space to learn to do that for myself. But he was a constant that I couldn’t imagine life at home without. Chris was not only my buffer and my co-conspirator. He was my best friend.

My parents never seemed to read Chris accurately, the way others could. It was clear to all who knew my big brother that there was nothing typical about him. His intensity was legendary. Of the handful of Chris’s closest friends, perhaps no one besides Andy understood the delicate balance between Chris’s serious side and his sense of humor well enough to feel comfortable testing the boundary. Once when he was driving Andy and a bunch of others back from cross-country practice, Andy teased him about how as soon as Chris left for Emory, he was going to pursue me. At first Chris simply smiled and tried to shrug off the ribbing. Whenever Andy was at our house, he was quick to chat me up just to get a rise out of Chris, but now Andy persisted with a few renditions of how the chase would unfold. This time, even to Andy’s surprise, he pushed a little too far. Chris slammed on the brakes and kicked him out of the truck. “Don’t talk about my sister like that!” were his parting words. It took several minutes for the others in the car to convince Chris that it was all in good fun and to return to pick up Andy as he strolled down the street, his smirk now well under control.

People would tell me “Your brother is intense,” but they would never say anything like “He’s weird.” They knew that just as he was protective of me, I was protective of him. But the plain truth was that he didn’t react softly to things. Whenever we went bowling, he’d get so pissed off if he rolled a gutter ball, he’d stomp his way back from the lane, then throw himself down on the plastic booth so hard I expected to hear it crack beneath his slim build. I would laugh at him and say, “Geez, bro. It’s just a game! Don’t punish the booth!” He used to say, “I don’t take my frustrations out on people, so I get angry at things instead.” He was harder on himself than anyone else. He intensified the air around him, and people picked up on that, even if they didn’t understand it.

He was the same way in his romantic life. He didn’t discuss these things openly with anyone but Julie, but his feelings for her grew to be years ahead of most of his friends’ feelings for their girlfriends. His emotions were years ahead of where they should have been, probably.

Julie Carnes was a year younger than Chris, petite, and remarkably pretty. Her identical twin sister, Carrie, had dated my boyfriend Jimmy before me, and they had all remained good friends. Still the immature freshman, I sometimes failed to contain my jealousy about Carrie, and Julie was polite but firm whenever she needed to remind me not to engage in juvenile chitchat. I liked her a lot. She was very smart, had beautiful blue eyes and an amazing figure—everything a girl wanted to emulate.

Chris was shy and reluctant to ask Julie out, but she could tell he liked her. Julie was attracted to Chris’s intellect and the depth she saw behind his eyes. She told a mutual friend that she thought he was cute, knowing he would be informed shortly thereafter. But their palpable crush just lingered until he finally made his move. Saying nothing at all, he simply took her hand into his one day as their group of friends sat talking on the bleachers. And they were officially an item.

On their first date, they skipped over the typical movie-and-mini-golf ritual, and instead Chris took her on a long bike ride through the state park trails and into downtown D.C., where he led her to the grassy carpet of the Mall. Overlooking the Washington Monument and surrounded by fragrant cherry blossom trees in full bloom, he removed from his backpack a full-on picnic. They dined on cheeses, fruit, and sandwiches. He brought her a cookie for dessert. He didn’t try to kiss her that day, but later she told me she could tell he wanted to. They talked—about transcendentalism, existentialism, the concept of nonlinear time, which he discussed incessantly. They didn’t talk about movies or sports or who was dating whom at school.

They also didn’t talk about our parents, nor would they. Chris never talked to Julie about our family life, and he never invited her over for dinner. The only time she met our parents was when my mom insisted on taking pictures of the two of them before prom. If Julie pressed him at all about our parents, he became aloof and sullen. So, she stopped asking about them.

With Julie, Chris let in our parents’ influence only once. On prom night, he picked her up in our father’s “fancy boat” Cadillac, labeled as such because Chris hated it. He also bought her a much-too-expensive, gorgeous orchid corsage and almost broke the petals off as he fumbled to put it on her arm. He took her to The Black Orchid, one of the area’s nicest restaurants, gently held her hand throughout the night, and ordered veal for them both. He had worked hard to earn money to cover the dinner and flowers. But it was the first time he, wearing an expensive suit and arriving in the Cadillac, had been willing to acknowledge to Julie that our family was well off.

Shortly after prom, Chris’s attachment to Julie was even stronger. He started talking seriously with her about the future, about all the things he wanted to share with her, including traveling to Alaska—a fascination of his ever since he’d read Jack London’s books as a kid. He encouraged her to read Call of the Wild and described the adventures he wanted them to embark on together. He told her he loved her and missed her whenever they were apart.

It turned out to be too much, too soon, and Julie broke things off. Sitting in Chris’s yellow Datsun outside her parents’ house, she told him that she wanted to date other people, that she just wasn’t ready to be as serious as he was. He flew off the handle at her. “You really are just like all the other girls, Julie!” he told her angrily. “I can’t believe I thought you were different!”

But as soon as his rant subsided, he pulled her close and held on in an intense hug. For as long as five minutes he kept her wrapped in his arms. Then he let her go and never talked to her again.

I didn’t find out about this until years later, when Julie told me the whole story. I never asked Chris questions about their relationship—it would have been too weird. But I did notice that he was different with her than most guys were with their girlfriends. He had no strut in his step when he walked around with her; he just looked confident and content.

So, I found out that Chris and Julie had broken up the same way everyone else did—through the grapevine. It never occurred to me to ask him if he was upset. He was my big brother, my strength, and of course he was okay. He was always okay. The only time I ever saw frailty in him was when we were kids after a long day on the beach. He was maybe ten years old and had just finished a long run. Racing now against the sunset, he was so determined to finish a sand mountain by himself—sandcastles were far too formal for his taste—that even though he was getting cold, he stayed there, shivering, piling the sand higher and higher until he was satisfied with its stature. The image of him shaking remains so vivid: He wore a navy-blue bathing suit with white trim and a puka shell necklace. He didn’t complain about being cold, but I saw his teeth chattering and the ache in his eyes. It made me uneasy to see any weakness in him. I hated it. I hated knowing that he was uncomfortable, and that I couldn’t fix it for him.

I’D STARTED A COUNTDOWN. Three more weeks of Chris, then two, then graduation and a final family trip to Colorado, this time for Stacy’s wedding.

When our siblings were older and stopped coming to Virginia as often, my parents would take Chris and me out to Colorado for visits and often took several of us to the mountains for weeklong stays at upscale ski resorts. For a couple of seasons, Shawna and Shelly lived and worked in a ski town called Keystone, cleaning condos and time-shares in between guests. Shawna was dating a minister’s son named Jim, whom I thought was cute with his short sun-bleached blond hair and dark mustache. One day Shannon, Chris, Quinn, and I hit the slopes with Jim. My brothers and I had all learned to ski at an early age and had spent enough time on these particular slopes to let our overconfidence get us into trouble, and Chris liked having brothers around to be rowdy with for a change. The boys loved to find fresh powder by cutting through the wider expanses of trees from one trail to another, and although it felt like my heart jumped into my throat when I tried to keep up with them, I wanted to hang tough, so I followed behind, always holding my breath until I popped out to find them waiting for me on the other side of a tall line of pine and aspen. Jim came up behind after making sure we had all made it through okay. He moved like an expert skier, and I loved to watch the rhythm of his effortless movements carving the snow. At one point when we were all stopped and discussing where to go next, Jim noticed a new rise in the slope at a steep edge where we all knew the trail wound back around beneath it. There weren’t a lot of people on the mountain, and Jim bet us that he could make the jump.

He told the boys to continue downhill to check things out and make sure the trail was clear. When they motioned for Jim to come on, he dug in his poles and hopped away, then shoved his skis side to side a few times to gain momentum and flew down the slope. He hit the jump at top speed and soared through the air with an impressive hang time, but then I heard a horrendous scream that didn’t sound anything to me like excitement. I couldn’t see where Jim had landed, and I also didn’t see him continuing down the hill. Quinn and Chris both yelled out, “Oh shit!”

Shannon looked over at Quinn and Chris, then up the mountain to me and announced in the quite matter-of-fact way that boys handle such situations, “He’s not moving. I think he’s dead.” I couldn’t see Shannon’s eyes through his goggles to tell if he was serious or not, but Chris and Quinn quickly aimed their skis downhill and raced to where Jim was. “Oh crap! We’ve killed Shawna’s boyfriend!” came out of my mouth as I started down the mountain.

By the time we got to him, Jim was sitting up and laughing, although through accusations that we were trying to kill him to keep him away from our sister. We all agreed that it had been a very notable jump, probably some kind of a record. A few years later at Jim and Shawna’s wedding, we all concurred that we were glad Jim had survived.

ON STACY’S BIG DAY, Marcia’s father invited Mom and Dad out for a drink before the ceremony. His invitation seemed innocent, but once they were all seated, he led Dad on a scornful trip down memory lane. The reminders of Dad’s history with Marcia infuriated Mom, and by the time they arrived at the church, Mom and Dad were in a huge fight.

Stacy was beaming and beautiful as she faced her bridegroom, Rob, at the altar. He was a very smart college student and seemed a bit geeky to me as a fifteen-year-old, but I could see that he would be strong and steady. His full and gentle heart was a good match for Stacy’s wounded one. He was always sweet and attentive to her, and he noticed the subtleties that could dim her otherwise prolific smile.

With such a large and complex brood hovering in the aisle, Rob held Stacy’s hand and kept looking into her eyes as the perplexed photographer asked her questions about who goes where during the progression of family photographs. Rob’s hand lifted to her waist and pulled her close as the traditional photograph with the parents was attempted.

Tension pressed at the seams of the wedding, but Stacy rose above it all and didn’t let it ruin her day. Dad yelled at Chris to sing for the guests, but Chris had no interest in performing for our parents that day. Mom sulked, still angry about the meeting with Marcia’s dad.

These types of full-on family events were predictably poised for discomfort. Wanting to keep the mood light, Sam snuck a bottle of tequila into the reception, which my older siblings passed back and forth between jaunts to the dance floor to do the polka. I loved to see Marcia’s kids all having fun and laughing together. As I watched them tease each other, I wondered a lot about what they thought of me. With Chris, I was less self-conscious. I could be wholly and completely myself with him. As the reception wound down and I watched Stacy and Rob say good-bye to their guests, all I could think about was my brother’s looming departure.

As soon as we returned from Colorado, Chris headed out of town for his summer adventure in the Datsun. He said he would be back just in time to repack and get to college at Emory. When we said good-bye, he hugged me for a long time before looking me in the eyes.

“Be careful,” he said. Then he drove away.

CHRIS’S ABSENCE WAS SURREAL AT FIRST. When I walked in the front door after he’d left, everything looked just the same. The couch pillows were still set up just so, and Buck still dozed in the same corner. But everything felt different. A dynamic had shifted between me and my parents, and the change was as palpable to me as if all the walls and furniture had been painted red. But at least I had Jimmy—and I didn’t have to worry about Chris’s annoying jokes about how I’d fallen in love too fast or his skepticism about what Jimmy wanted to gain out of the relationship.

Jimmy was a motorhead. A smart one. He drove a black 1972 Chevy Monte Carlo that he had been restoring himself. My dad—who had a love of cars himself, having owned an old GTO convertible when we were younger—appreciated Jimmy’s industriousness as a mechanic. But he warned me repeatedly that I would never have a successful life if I did not marry a man of a proper profession that earned him a large paycheck. During one of his cool-dad moments, though, my father helped Jimmy and me finance a project that we all took on together.

Jimmy had found a 1969 Stingray convertible suffering inside a ramshackle shed, and we came together as its savior. It was cheap to obtain the Corvette because it didn’t run and needed excessive body-and paintwork. Jimmy and I worked on the car every day during the summer, in the garage at his house, disassembling and rejuvenating her 350 engine, rebuilding her 411 rear end and four-speed transmission. He tested me on the parts, taught me how they went together, and thought I was a cool chick for wanting to get my hands dirty. While my interest in cars began as a way to spend time with him, as we got further into restoring the ’vette, I fell in love with the process of taking something that had been broken and abused and making it come to life again. And the actual mechanics of it just seemed to click for me. Watching a machine be put together was like my two favorite subjects in school—math and music—joining together in tangible form.