CHAPTER 19
The man called Tree, christened Dennis Gabriel Guzman, was born
in the early 1950’s of poor Apache parents, and grew up in miserable
conditions on a reservation in Idaho. His chances for laying a claim
to even the smallest crumb of the American dream seemed pretty
slender, and it was generally accepted around his community that he
was going to grow up to be a car thief or an alcoholic—if he was lucky.
Two of his older brothers were already serving life sentences and the
other one had been shot dead in a failed robbery attempt, so it was
no idle speculation.
Dennis’ mother, Gloria Guzman was one of the local reservation
prostitutes, and supported the family with her modest earnings,
reserving a large portion for her heroin habit. Her husband had to
accept her goings-on, because he was unable to find work and relied
upon his wife’s income for daily sustenance. Perhaps to vent his
anger over his situation, Eduardo Guzman beat his children daily and
viciously, before mercifully suffering an alcohol-related stroke when
Dennis was nine. With his brothers out of the house, Dennis found
himself forced to tenderly care for the man who used to sadistically
torture him with a hot iron, a real horsewhip, and, of all things, a
cheese grater. Maybe it was that lesson in humility that afforded him
what his brothers never had. Dennis learned to love his abusive
father, and from that deep reversal of feeling sprang the notion that
he could also dismantle the brick wall for which his life was
seemingly headed.
He began to put all of his energy into his schoolwork and with a
desperate fervor triumphantly rose to the top of his classes. Upon
completion of high school, Dennis was awarded a full scholarship to
Harvard University. Sadly, his mother and father had not lived to
witness the accomplishment. Gloria Guzman suffered from a heroin
overdose at 34, leaving no one to care for the crippled Eduardo, who
died of dehydration two days before neighbors found the bodies.
Dennis learned of their deaths during his last semester’s finals in
high school. When the newspapers inquired whether or not he was
sad about his parents’ death he replied, “They were dead already.”
He was a machine. Graduating at the top of his class at Harvard
Business School, he went on to form his own lobbying group which
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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