REESE DIXON: a brief character history

REESE DIXON: a brief character history Born an orphan, Reese spent his childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas’ foster care. He was a quiet toddler, observant by nature. As a grew into a young boy, he showed a premature interest in girls, having been exposed to sexual behavior by fellow foster kids early in life. His relationships with boys were healthy, though when faced with competition, Reese became fierce and territorial. His natural athleticism and irrepressible energy generally provided a winning edge. Foster care life was challenging, though over time became normal.

Reese was forced to attend Sunday church and Sunday school, which made him antsy, and consequently, a target for beatings. Once, his foster dad, Jay, received a call from Reese’s Sunday school teacher about his poor behavior. When Jay cornered a frightened Reese about it, Reese denied any missteps. Jay walloped him several times across the head. Later in church, a concussed Reese fixated on the commandment to honor thy parents, then witnessed Jay pick his nose, roll up the mucus, flick it, and take his unknowing wife’s hand. Reese spent the rest of Church staring at their intertwined fingers, certain this wasn’t the place for him.

One day in grammar school, Reese’s teacher passed out printouts featuring the outline of a huge, blank head and instructed the students to draw a self-portrait. Upon completion, students would be permitted to move to the “magic carpet” for story time, Reese’s favorite activity. He clutched his crayons and feverishly drew everything that interested him. Animals, fire-trucks, football, and in the center of it all, a rock star. After releasing the other children to the “magic carpet,” the teacher made it to Reese, whose portrait was a plaid-like collage of colorful images. She scolded Reese in front of the class, asking if he was stupid, then ordered him to start over. Suddenly, Reese felt as if he had no bones, guts, or organs, nothing with which to make his body move. His skin seemed to be on fire. As the teacher began story time, he sat alone and eventually managed to select a skin tone-colored crayon. He moved it from side to side, that voice ringing in his head again: you don’t belong here.

Reese excelled at sports and arts, but was too distracted for school. As teachers instructed, he fantasized. One fantasy was about his adventures by a creek near one of his earliest foster homes. On the water’s edge stood a horizontal sewer, five feet in diameter.

Reese would sneak inside, spelunking by flashlight for miles. Once, he found himself under a highway and worried the sewer would cave in. But as he saw it, the thrill was worth dying for.

In junior high, Reese discovered his talent for guitar. After a failed attempt to steal one and a subsequent beating, he worked the summer at Jay’s ex-wife’s house, removing discolored stones from between her driveway bricks, to earn his first used Fender. Reese never understood why the stones had to be uniform, but he had his instrument and began practicing.

The next year, Reese’s new cigarette-smoking, grunge-rock girlfriend introduced him to Muddy Waters, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and The Scientists. With grunge in decline Reese bemoaned having been born at the wrong time. Then he found Radiohead and Modest Mouse, whose album The Moon and Antarctica, became a favorite.

At 13, Reese committed himself to rock music and the drugs that go along with it. Within a year, he was drinking, getting high, fighting, and eventually, he spiraled into depression. Years of repressed rage at his biological parents for giving him up rushed to the surface. He began hiding butcher knives beneath his pillow to protect himself from Jay, who by that point had been abusing him for years. He walked the edges of roofs on acid, just to see if he’d fall. Jay got fed up with his antics and committed Reese to a psychiatric facility.

He spent three months there, wiling away the days making clay sculptures of his insane roommates; even losing his virginity to an attractive female borderline case in her 30’s. When Reese escaped and returned to his foster home, Jay called the police, and Reese went to juvie.

Cut off from the world at 14, Reese spent almost three years performing manual labor, developing into a young man, and to survive the violence, becoming a fearless leader. All the while, that voice rang out: you don’t belong here. He’d felt his life was “an accident” for so long.

He wanted to know if it was true.

When Reese got out at 17, he hitchhiked with a group of mid-level rock band roadies headed to tour Alaska. When the roadies learned Reese had been in juvie for three years, they passed him a bong and introduced him to a groupie, who Reese fucked the whole way there.

In Alaska, he lied about his age to get work at a fishery. He worked during the day and played gigs at night. After saving for six months, Reese used his fake ID to get a passport and bought a plane ticket to Europe, where he travelled, did odd jobs, and managed his depression with drugs, sex, love, and adventure.

In Holland, he was hired by a milk factory and, due to his leadership skills, was offered an assistant manager role. Reese turned them down, preferring to remain a grunt. He fell hard for a Dutch girl, who told him about the time she waitressed down the road from a Texan oil plant in the Gulf of Mexico. Something about her description of the Gulf made him want to go there. It sounded romantic. While in Holland, Reese received mail with a clue about his biological parent’s whereabouts: Federal Way City, a small logging town in Washington state.

Reese found his way there and got a job in a logging warehouse while he searched for his parents. He discovered his father was Native American, but had passed years ago. His mother was the subject of an unsolved missing person case. Devastated, Reese didn’t know where to turn. He’d been on the road for years. He felt the urge to stop moving for a while.

Then he recalled the oil refineries in the Gulf. He took his guitar and headed south to find work.

In Corpus Christi, Reese landed a gig on a ConocoPhillips platform operated by logistics giant Anadyne Solutions. At first, he felt like he’d found his niche. The roughnecks loved Reese, who kept them busting up all day with his stories. The hard days, hard nights, and rowdy characters fit him like a glove. He even started playing local gigs in town. And while his supervisors liked his work ethic, they despised his insubordinate attitude. Before long he was

brawling with deck chiefs and was sent to see the head honcho, Pick, whose reputation for toughness preceded her.

Pick immediately liked Reese’s free spirit and took him under her wing. He was the son she’d always wanted, she was the mother he’d always needed. She shepherded him through Anadyne’s hierarchical order, broke him like a stallion, and eventually Reese turned into an ace Chief Driller. That wild part of him was never truly tamed, but his skill, protean strength, and boundless energy made Pick and the other managers look good in the field.

When Pick was offered Rig Manager of the Sea Spirit Traverse, she invited Reese to join her as one of its key drillers. He’d be Pick’s right hand, a representative of the grunts to the managers. Because of this new role, and their relationship, Reese was privy to insider information on the rig he never had been before.

When he began to observe Anadyne working them too fast and ignoring safety regulations he confronted Pick. Her defensive denial strained their dynamic. When things started spiraling out of control, Reese implored Pick to call Anadyne’s CEO, who’d mentored her since she was 17. He denied Pick’s request to slow the schedule. Reese blew up, insisting they strike. Pick ordered him to “fall in line.” Weeks later, the rig exploded. Reese and Pick were the only survivors. Anadyne swept them into hiding.

Their whole crew, his friends, the closest family he’d ever known, were dead. Reese and Pick were presumed dead, too. But there they were, hiding in an Anadyne safehouse, watching their disaster become a national story. Everyone was trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Guilt-ridden for not having done more to protect his friends, Reese oscillated between raging at the TV, at Pick, their security detail, and drugging himself into oblivion.

When Pick revealed that Anadyne needed them to disappear for a while, Reese threatened to expose the truth and his warnings went up the flagpole. It was time to escape.

In the dark of night, Reese snuck out of the safehouse to meet with a local female reporter in town. Anadyne got wind and sent Pick to stop him. She intercepted him, promising that she was saving Reese from himself. He was to accompany her to Antarctica, where the company manages a remote research station. Reese turned her down. He was going to blow the whistle. Pick said Anadyne wouldn’t let that happen. They were watching his every move.

Reese ran and hid in a prostitute-friendly motel he frequented during furloughs. Lying drunk on the floor of a pink-tiled bathroom, surrounded by drill manuals, he wept, singing from his favorite childhood album, The Moon and Antarctica. His friends were dead because of him.

He hadn’t been strong enough. He stuck a loaded shotgun in his mouth, ready to end it all, when Pick busted in, wrested the gun away, knocked him out, threw him in her pick-up, and drove to a private airport where a military cargo plane was waiting to take them to Antarctica.