My Story (14 page)

Down in the valley, the search efforts were still under way. Though weeks had now passed, my parents were working hard to keep the story of my kidnapping in the press. They knew it was vital to make sure that people were still aware, to keep the search efforts going and my picture in the news. From what Mitchell had told me, my posters were still up everywhere. The first time Mitchell had seen these posters, it had made him very proud, but I don’t think he expected the search efforts to keep going for so long. And though he tried to hide it, I could see that he was worried.

Which meant that we weren’t getting any water until he was certain it was safe to head down to the spring.

Mitchell started to ration what little water we had left, but eventually we reached the point where we only had a few cups remaining in the bottom of one of the plastic containers. Mitchell drank, then poured a cup for Barzee, then poured the last few drops for me. Though it didn’t even fill my cup, I drank it eagerly. The water was warm, having been sitting in the sun, and it tasted like melted plastic. I drank it in one gulp, then put the cup down.

And that was it. The water was gone.

I stared at the other water containers, but I knew they were empty. We had checked them several times already, taking off the lids and pouring out the last few drops. Still, Mitchell went over to shake them just to make sure that they were empty. He could do that all he wanted. There was no water in the camp.

It was the end of June, deep into the boiling days of summer. Utah is a desert, and it had not rained since the first week that I was captured. Temperatures hovered in the nineties, sometimes reaching above a hundred. A hot wind blew every afternoon, drying us like leather. My skin was dry, my throat, my eyes. I was so dirty and so thirsty that I thought I would die.

After the sun had gone down we sat around for a while to savor the cooler temperatures, but eventually we went to bed. I was always the first to crawl into the tent. Mitchell came in beside me, then Barzee beside him. Before we went to sleep, he always checked my cable to make sure it was secure.

Surely he’ll go down to get water in the morning, I thought as we settled down in bed. It was the only thing that I could think of as I drifted off to sleep.

The night was long and restless. Morning came. Mitchell didn’t say anything about going down to the spring. I asked him, but he refused to talk to me about it.

All day we sat and cooked in the summer heat. Mitchell checked the water containers once again, but all of them were dry. I had thought that being hungry was difficult, but it was nothing compared to this. Nothing compared to the burning in my throat. Nothing compared to the drive to find something to drink. And I wasn’t alone. Barzee and Mitchell felt it too. I could see it in their eyes. I could hear it in the dryness of their voices. Whatever had driven Mitchell to stay away from the bottom of the canyon must have been very powerful indeed.

The day dragged on. Hot. Miserable. Dry desert heat. I was beginning to lose my energy. None of us wanted to eat. I begged Mitchell again to go down and get some water. I begged him to let me off the cable. I offered to carry the containers if he was too tired to carry them himself. I tried to understand why he couldn’t go, but none of it made sense.

Evening came. We went to bed. I fell into a restless asleep.

I was awakened in the middle of the night. Sitting up, I looked around. The moonlight filtered through the nylon fabric, casting the inside of the tent in a pale, yellow light. Mitchell was asleep beside me. Barzee was lying next to him. Both of them were breathing deeply, Mitchell’s throat rattling with every breath. I looked around in the moonlight. Something had wakened me. Turning, I looked toward the front of the tent.

There was a yellow cup sitting beside my pillow. I leaned toward it, checking it in the moonlight. It was filled to the very brim with water. I stared at it a moment, not believing it was real. I reached out to touch it. The cup was cold. I pulled my hand back and looked around. Was I dreaming? Was I crazy? I quickly turned to Mitchell and Barzee. Neither of them had moved. I listened. A gentle breeze blew through the tops of the trees, swaying in the night. I turned back to the water. Slowly, I reached out to touch it once again. It was cold as ice and filled to the top.

I picked it up and drank it. The water cooled my throat and filled my stomach. It was cold and clear and wonderful, the best-tasting water that I had ever had.

After drinking, I stared at the empty cup for a long time before laying my head back on the ground.

Where did the water come from? I have no explanation other than the water came from God. I know we didn’t have a drop of water in the camp. I know that neither Mitchell nor Barzee would have wakened to give me any water, even if they had any left to give. And this water was fresh and cold, like it had just come from the spring.

I never told them about the water. I never talked about it at all. But over the next few days, I thought a lot about what had happened. Why did God do it? How did it happen? What was God trying to say?

Would I have died without the water? Certainly not. As thirsty as I felt, and as terrible as it was, I was not teetering on the edge of a life-or-death situation. And I was not alone. Mitchell and Barzee needed water too. Mitchell wasn’t going to stay up on the mountain and let us all die of thirst. Eventually he would have had to go down to the stream.

So why did God send me the water?

Because He loved me. And He wanted me to know.

He wanted me to know that He was still near. He wanted me to know that He controlled the Earth and all the heavens, that all things were in His hands. And if He could move the mountains, then he could do this thing for me. To Him it was a small thing—a terribly easy thing to do—but for me it was as powerful as if He had parted the sea.

This experience reminded me once again that God had not deserted me, that He was aware of my suffering and loneliness. And that assurance gave me hope. It helped me to keep my faith and gave me the strength that I needed to go on.

It also gave me something else to think about.

At the time, I had pretty much conceded that Mitchell might kill me. And if he didn’t kill me, then I was condemned to a life of suffering and captivity. But the appearance of the water seemed to indicate that God had another plan. It told me that the fight for freedom wasn’t over. God knew the end from the beginning and there was still hope for me.

In my life, I have come to believe there are lots of examples where God provides us little miracles to give us hope. Most of these experiences are not as obvious as waking up and finding a cup of water. Some of them are much more subtle. We may even have to look for His miracles along the way. But they are there. And they’re important when we are struggling with the challenging battles of this life.

I spent more than six weeks tethered to the trees. Six weeks having a steel cable wrapped around my ankle. Six weeks of eating and sleeping and going to the bathroom with two people watching me. Six weeks of never moving more than a few feet beyond the center of the camp. That’s a long time to not have so much as a moment of privacy. It’s a long time to be cabled and raped every day by one captor while my other captor talked, sang, or read her scriptures nearby.

Once a week or so, Mitchell would uncable me long enough to allow me to go down to the spring to have the bucket of water poured over my head before being forced to carry the heavy containers of water back up the mountain. But that is the only time I was ever allowed to be free. And as soon as we got back to camp, it was
snap,
and I was cabled up again. Never would he reward me for good behavior or show me any sign of affection by allowing me to spend a single moment without being cabled to the trees. And even when I went with them down to get the water, I always had the ten-foot cable around my ankle, which meant he had complete control of me.

From the moment I was captured, I was a pawn in their hands. Naked. Hurting. Terrified of what was coming. Terrified of the thought that it was thirty years to go before he died. I had no dignity. No freedom. No power over my body. No power over what I ate, what I drank, what I heard, or what I read. It was endless hours of indoctrination—hearing about their journey, hearing of their god, hearing how smart Mitchell was and how he was the chosen one.

I was a prisoner in heart and mind and soul.

There was no way I could have endured this abuse without falling under his control.

And the worst of his manipulations was the fear that he instilled. Always the same script.

“If you ever try to run, I’m going to kill you,” he would hiss into my ear, his dry breath raising the hair on my neck.

“He’ll do it!” Barzee would pipe in, ever eager to prove how deadly her husband was. “He’s not kidding. He’ll kill you in a heartbeat!”

Mitchell would pull me a little closer. “And if you ever get away, I will come and kill your family. I know where they live. I know all about them, just like I knew about you. Think of your little sister. What a cute little girl. How old is she … maybe nine? And the little boy. He’s just a baby! Do you really think you can protect them? Do you really think the police can protect them? Sure, they might keep your family safe for a while, but they can’t do it forever. Time will pass and they’ll forget you. Other cases will come along. They have a lot to do. Eventually, they’ll move on. They’ll forget you and your family. But I won’t forget you. I’ll never forget your family. I’ll be waiting for them, Esther. Me. My friends. We’ll be waiting. Watching. Looking for our chance to kill them. And it will come. Sooner or later, it will come. And when it does, your entire family … every … single … one of them will be dead. And it will be your fault! Do you want that? Are you so selfish that you’d really kill your family just because you want to leave me? Think about that, Esther. Are you really that kind of person? Do you want their blood on your hands? If you think that you’re unhappy now, wait until you have the death of your family upon your shoulders. Imagine the guilt. The shame. Your family wants to live, the same as you do, but you’re going to take that from them, Esther, if you ever run away. I will come and kill them. And it will be
your
fault.”

Day after day, week after week, I heard it again and again.

I can’t even begin to tell you how demoralizing it was. It wore on me like a constant drip of emotional acid. And I became convinced that he would do it. I became convinced that even if he was captured, he had friends who would kill my family. He seemed to have a lot of people who would help him. How else could you explain his seeming ability to produce food and drugs and alcohol out of nothing? How else to explain his ability to go down into the city without fear of being captured? He had to have others who were helping him.

The more I thought about it—and I thought about it every moment of every day—the more I began to feel that my primary responsibility was to my family. I could not endanger them. I had to keep them safe.

*

It wasn’t long before Mitchell started going down into the city three or four times a week. Every time he went down, he’d bring back alcohol. And never just beer. No way he was going to haul a couple of six-packs around. It was rum and scotch and whiskey. It was gin and vodka, too. Every time that he brought back alcohol, he forced me to drink it with him. Then he started rolling cigarettes and forcing me to smoke them. A couple times he forced me to smoke some of his dope, but watching me fail to inhale it properly, he decided to keep it for himself.

After a while, I began to realize that Mitchell had an inordinate interest in the “descending below all things” phase of becoming a great prophet.

*

I knew the fourth of July was coming. When every day is like a century, it has a way of making you acutely aware of the passage of time.

I had been begging Mitchell to let me go up to the top of the mountain to watch the fireworks. I was desperate for any kind of diversion from being cabled to the tree. More, I thought I might have a chance to escape. Maybe we’d meet someone on the top of the mountain who had hiked up to watch the fireworks as well. I knew it was unlikely, but I was desperate for any reason to have hope.

The day before the Fourth, Mitchell had gone down to the city to get supplies. Along with his usual assortment of alcohol and crackers, he also brought back a chicken for a special Fourth of July treat. It sat all day hanging in a plastic bag from a tree, and I imagined it being full of germs, but still my mouth watered at the thought of a hot meal. Real food. Warm. Seasoned. I could hardly wait. On the afternoon of the Fourth, we cleared an area in the brush right below the latrine and started a cooking fire, the first fire we had had since I’d been taken. Barzee brought out a blackened Dutch oven and placed it in the middle of the coals. I watched her pull the chicken apart and hand me the meat. I rolled the meat in flour and spices, then dropped the pieces into the oven. The oil popped and spat as the chicken began to cook. I watched it hungrily as it turned a golden brown.

The chicken couldn’t cook fast enough for me. For one thing, I was hungry. For another, Mitchell was on one of his rants, going on and on about all the great food he and Barzee used to eat when she had a full kitchen to tend to. I had a hard time imagining her in a flowery apron, working over a stove. This was the woman who watched me get raped every day, hardly my idea of a happy homemaker. Soon, the lecture turned to another of his favorite subjects; the books of the Seven Diamonds Plus One. He went on about how fruit was the most perfect food on Earth. It was supposed to be the main thing that we ate every day, but the greedy processed-food producers and medical industry didn’t want us to be well, so they kept pushing their nasty products and medicines down our throats. He told me that at one time, he and Barzee had eaten nothing but fruit for an entire year. They would go to the Dumpsters behind the local grocery stores and dig out the old fruit that had been thrown away. While they were on the fruit diet, neither of them ever suffered a single ailment. They had more energy. They never got sick.