I stayed at the ranch for one reason - easy pussy. Broads and a place to shoot off my guns with no bother. That’s all it was.  

Is there anything better than boozing and lying around in the sun all day?

I first went up to the ranch to fix a motorcycle. I never seen so many naked girls in my life. Buncha skinny young ones hiding and giggling in the bushes. Charlie said I could have my pick of the litter. And he gave me a new buggy and motorcycle to boot.

The girls started calling me Donkey Dan. I’m sure you know why.

I brung my little boy to live with me on account of his mother not caring for him right. Brung my whole arsenal too – 3 rifles, a couple handguns and a machine gun.

Charlie wasn’t into the guns at first. He said, “we don’t need no machine gun.” But he changed his tune once I got him an M1 Carbine. He’d run into the hills and fire up at the sky. It made him feel real good to kick up dirt and make some noise.  

We had fun. We had a lot of fun shooting those guns.

We had no restrictions on life. I still don’t but alotta them folks ain’t got much of a choice now that they’re locked up. I’d sooner die than be locked up again.

Bobby was the first on the ranch to talk to me about killing. I thought he was bullshiting, trying to play on me cus I’m a motorcycle rider.

He come back with a big head the day after the Topanga deal, acting like he just got him a cherry. I thought he was foolin.

‘Spose I was used to that kind of bragging not meanin much. I ‘member one day, my gal, Ruth, pretty lil brunette just ‘bout seventeen, saying she couldn’t wait to knock off her first pig. Can you believe it? A pretty little girl talking like that? I looked on her like a daughter, man.

I grew real tired of those broads after a while. Always preaching to me the same shit Charlie preached to them.

I split after I heard Shorty Shea got carved up like a Christmas Turkey. I had my little boy to worry about. So, me and a gal named Simi Valley Sherri left the ranch for Venice. Sherri said people at the ranch were on two different trips. We were still on peace and love and they were on slicing people’s heads off.

We wasn’t runnin scared like they said. Hell, Sherri loved Charlie. She made it with him for the first time when she was fourteen. But the situation out there had gotten too hairy.

Wasn’t long after we left that the coppers came lookin’ for me. There two things I aint: scared or no snitch. I had two warrants out when the cops got me and alls I asked was to get housed somewhere different than Charlie so I didn’t feel a shank in my back and find that little son of a bitch behind me. 

They said I’d walk if I told ‘em what I knew, which wasn’t much. They was askin’ for details and dates and I told them there were no clocks or calendars on the ranch. It got light, it got dark, it got light, it got dark.

I ‘member them showing me Sharon Tate’s picture, asking if I’d ever seen her up on the ranch. That was a laugh. None of the girls on the ranch were that good looking. I’d have remembered.

I heard a couple months back that Squeaky pulled a gun on the president. Didn’t even have one in the chamber. Doubt a little girl like that could even pull the slide on a gun that big. She always did have a real burn-out mind. ‘bout time those broads moved on with their lives.

Sherri and me been married for a couple years now, livin up in Canada. We got a kid of our own too.

Rest of the family oughta do the same cus you can’t relive an experience once it’s gone. And that’s all it was – an experience. And I wouldn’t trade it for nothin’ either.  

Merrill Steeg was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her B.A. in creative writing from the California College of the Arts in 2016. In 2021, she acquired a master’s degree in history. Her thesis, “The Manson Murders and the Rise of the Victims’ Rights Movement,” explored the effect of sensationalized crime on criminal judicial policies in Los Angeles and across the country. She moved to Los Angeles in 2022.