Carver

“Spider”—Kevin Reynolds had grown up with this name and had grown used to it, or had he? Kevin was born, Kevin Wilson Reynolds on December 23, 1951 in the small mountain town of Carver, Montana. Kevin’s birth came at a time when parents of young and infant children had one major concern, polio, often referred to as infantile paralysis, and it had parents all over the country scared to death. The disease had been declared an epidemic yet the odds of contracting it were only one in five thousand. This was enough however, to send families from coast to coast scurrying to the mountains or deserts or anywhere else they thought they might escape the scourge. The Reynolds family was not overly concerned with this epidemic because they were already in the mountains away from the big cities and their blight. They lived in God’s Country and felt relatively isolated from the problems, which beset the flatlanders in the cities below. This all changed for them in December of 1954 when their precious Kevin was diagnosed with polio. Kevin’s parents, Buck and Nancy, were terrified for Kevin, picturing him spending his life in a wheelchair or in braces. And then, of course, there was the guilt. How could this happen? They were isolated up here in Carver! But then Nan would remind Buck that he had taken Kevin to Liddelman with him on business several times. Buck would shrug and accept the blame saying, “I know, I probably shouldn’t have done that,” and Nancy would hug him in a consoling embrace and think to herself that her shopping trips to Bennett were just as likely to have been the cause. Had she really needed to go to Bennett? But Kevin was a trooper and came through the disease well, with very little physical damage. It wasn’t until Kevin started school that the effects of the disease would become apparent to him. The most noticeable effect of his childhood disease was his lack of normal locomotion. When he was forced to run, which he did with great reluctance, he had quite an unusual gate. His legs didn’t seem to follow the usual up and down motion of a more normal runner. They would flail out on the upstroke and in on the down and his body always seemed to be trying to catch up with his outstretched legs. The other kids were quick to associate his movements with that of a spider scurrying across hot blacktop. In reality, this peculiar motion didn’t truly resemble a running spider, but that’s the way the other kids saw it and they had no compunction about saying so. By the time Kevin reached high school the name Spider had become universally and indelibly associated with him. High school in the late 1960’s was no different than high school today and students then had no more compassion for the feelings of fellow students than they presently do. You could be merely a geek, a nerd, or a dip, or with the right deformity you could get your very own identity. Spider was just such a case. Gym class was a particular Hell for Kevin, although the abuses he suffered there were by no means limited to that class. Kevin could and did walk normally, but if he dared break into a run all hell would break loose—“S–P–I–D–E–R…SPIDER”! Spelling out the word in a rising crescendo and finishing off the chant at the top of their lungs with a final “SPIDER”! Then, of course, it needed to be repeated as many times as the closest teacher would allow. Verbal abuse was a major part of the daily life of Kevin “Spider” Reynolds, and summer and weekends were gifts from Heaven. Even-keeled would pretty well describe Kevin. He got good grades, didn’t drink or smoke, and never caused anyone any trouble, not even his parents. He was obedient and pleasant to be around, friendly and helpful around the house. In short, he was a good kid. Apart from his peculiar gate he was a rather normal looking kid, standing an even six feet tall with straight blonde hair, worn in Beatle fashion, as was common around his school. He was a lean one hundred and seventy-five pounds of mostly muscle, and he could flash you a most ingratiating smile when amused. Kevin did have two friends and they were pretty good friends, too, but both were also considered members of the general geek population of Carver High. Bryce and Wiley, each of which was an only child, had only each other and Kevin to serve as friends and companions. Kevin had an older sister, Carrie, up until the fall of last year when she had been killed in an automobile accident. Carrie had been extremely popular at Carver High, but that had been before Kevin had moved up from middle school. He never had the opportunity to ride her coattails to popularity and she had long since graduated, so to the current kids at Carver, Carrie had never existed. Carver High was a small school serving the community of ten thousand full time residents and everybody at school knew everybody else. It was not unusual to see seniors associating with sophomores or freshmen hanging out with juniors. But Kevin didn’t associate with anyone he didn’t have to, suffering all the abuse he could handle at the hands of his fellow seniors. Why go looking for more trouble, he reasoned. But Kevin was used to it. Years of the same experiences, being constantly messed with or messed up, had hardened him to it. But nevertheless, it never stopped hurting. Carver High was the only high school in the alpine city of Carver. The building was modern and new, a replacement for the older, more charming building which was to become the middle school. The city leaders had decided to build the new school in Greenville, on the east side of the Saline River, where they had anticipated growth and development, which had not yet occurred. The city of Carver was the very picture of alpine beauty, nestled into a high mountain valley, surrounded by three prominent peaks and subdivided by the Saline River flowing south through the heart of town. Mount Crane stood to the east, rising to eleven thousand feet and towering four thousand feet above Carver. Jessup Mountain, which had replaced Crane as the resort area several years prior, rose forty-five hundred feet over the city and was responsible for the majority of Carver’s revenue. The third peak, forming the trio, was Horse Tooth. This third peak had derived its name from the cubical appearance of its summit, which if one imagined hard enough, might resemble what the name implied. Horse Tooth was the shortest of the group stretching to reach its taller companions but falling short by several hundred feet. The Saline River, a fast moving mountain stream, fed by perpetual snowfields and the spring melt, emanated above the resorts high up on Jessup Mountain. To the east of the Saline lay Greenville, so named for the rancher who first settled that side of the river, and to the west of the river was Carver proper. Both sides of the Saline were actually Carver, but when Uriah Green’s last living descendant passed on, Carver had annexed the area for itself. It had been know as Greenville ever since. Two concrete rainbow bridges, the Upper and Lower Saline Bridges, connected Greenville to Carver, the Lower Bridge being the more heavily used, as it carried one directly into downtown Carver. The bridges were unique and an effort to have them listed in the state’s historic register was underway. The two bridges were identical, with a concrete, rainbow shaped arch on either side of the bridges and pedestrian walkways outside each arch. Vehicular traffic passed between the arches in two lanes.