My Story (17 page)

And he has the key to my steel cable around his neck!

I almost panicked. Barzee would leave me here to die.

I lay my head back on the pillow and tried to go to sleep.

Early the next morning, I heard the snap of branches and the crunch of footsteps on dry leaves. Then I heard the soft sound of Mitchell singing as he walked up the hidden trail toward our camp.

My heart sank. He sounded much too happy. I slowly closed my eyes.

*

Mitchell sat on a bucket to tell us what had happened. He was alone. No Olivia. I wanted to cry with gratitude.

“She is not the one the Lord has chosen to be my next wife,” he announced.

Barzee stared at him without reacting. I lifted my hand to hide my smile.
Not the one the Lord had chosen.
Okay. So he ran into a problem. Guess the Lord had changed His mind.

Mitchell went over and poured a long drink of warm water from one of the plastic containers, then settled down to tell his story. And because he liked to talk, he told it in great detail.

After hiking down into the city, the first thing he did was go to the nearest store and plunder a beer. He gulped it by the cooler, then plundered a couple more. Then he made his way to the bus stop. About this time, he needed to relieve himself from the quickly guzzled beer. With no restrooms around, he sat in the yard of the nearest house, slid forward so that his robe would not get wet, and urinated on the lawn. (Gross, but that was like him—part human, part devil, part animal.)

After getting on the bus, he took the long route to Olivia’s neighborhood. By the time he got there, it was dark. Still, it was way too early to sneak into Olivia’s house to take her. Slinking in the darkness, he made his way to his mother’s house and snuck into her side yard, where he and Barzee had left their beloved “hand house,” a tiny handmade house on wheels with a bar in the front so that two people could pull it. He and Barzee had pulled this hand house all over the Salt Lake Valley as they had journeyed for the Lord. He crawled into the hand house, slithered under a pile of old clothes, and waited until it was the dead of night.

When it was the darkest and quietest part of the night, he slid out from underneath the old clothes and headed to my cousin’s house, a few blocks away. Circling like a wolf, he checked out the house, looking for the best way to get in. He checked all the doors. They were locked. He checked the windows until he found one that was open just a crack. Then, just like he had done at my home almost two months before, he took a patio chair and leaned it up against the side of the house underneath the partially opened window. Climbing onto the chair, he opened the window and cut a long slit in the screen. He stopped and listened. He waited. He heard nothing.

He reached his hand through the slit in the screen to push the blinds back.
CRASH!
Something fell off the windowsill and shattered upon the floor. He froze, not even breathing, his heart pounding in his chest. He listened. No voices or any footsteps. He took a deep breath, then pushed the blinds back once again. Another crash! He had knocked another decoration onto the floor.

Then he heard the sound of footsteps pounding down the hallway. The lights came on and someone started shouting.

Realizing that the Lord had
not
chosen Olivia to be his next wife, he turned and ran, the green bags bouncing like crazy across his back. Running as far as his breath would take him, he finally had to stop and rest.

It took him several bus rides to get back to our canyon, then a long hike back up the trail.

He never spoke of Olivia again.

Mitchell and Barzee were always fighting. You would think that in such an austere situation as we were living in, there would be little to fight about, but they always found something. Lack of food. The condition of our clothing. Whether it was going rain. What to do and when to do it. When to pray and what to pray about. But the main thing they fought about was me. And the reason was pretty simple. Barzee hated me. And Mitchell was never going to let me go.

A few weeks after Mitchell’s failed attempt to kidnap my cousin, he and Barzee got into a serious fight. After hours of screaming and cursing, Barzee finally took off, running down the side of the mountain.

We watched her disappear, the sound of her crashing through the brush eventually fading into the distance. I turned to Mitchell. “Will she come back?” I asked.

“Of course she will.”

Silence for a moment. I wasn’t sure.

“Has she ever taken off like that before?”

“Nope.” Mitchell pretended he didn’t care.

We waited and waited. No sign of her. I felt creepy, being with him by myself. As much as I hated Barzee, I hated being alone with Mitchell even more. It was like being alone with the devil. It made my skin crawl. Mitchell seemed completely unconcerned that Barzee had run away. Figuring he’d take advantage of the privacy, he took the time to rape me.

The afternoon passed. I could see that Mitchell was starting to get worried.

“Do you think she went down to the city?” I asked.

“Of course not.” He brushed off my ridiculous suggestion.

We continued waiting.

Finally, Mitchell decided that we had to go and find her. He walked over to the cable to unlock me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, overjoyed to be free for a moment.

“She must have gone down to one of the other camps,” he said.

Mitchell had spoken several times about these other camps. Apparently there were two of them. Both were down the canyon and much closer to the main trail at the bottom of the mountain. Both were outfitted with the necessary supplies; tents, water, tarps. He and Barzee had used them before they had kidnapped me, but never after. They were too dangerous, too close to the city and popular hiking trails.

Watching Mitchell unlock me, my heart started pounding with excitement.
I was going to be uncabled.
That alone was enough to make me want to cry with joy. After nearly two months of being treated like an animal, I can’t begin to explain how wonderful it was to have a moment of freedom. And we were going down the canyon. Closer to my family. Closer to civilization. Maybe I would see someone who could rescue me. Maybe I would be found.

But I had already decided that I would never run away. I had tried twice already and both times failed with severe chastening and warnings.

*

Some people wonder how I could have become so subject to Mitchell’s will, so utterly submissive and obedient. But when you consider my situation, it’s pretty easy to understand.

For one thing, I was only fourteen years old. And I was as naïve as any fourteen-year-old girl could be. My innocence had been torn apart. And it seemed that Mitchell had done it with utter confidence and ease. He had shown the ability to get into my house. To pull me from my bedroom. To keep me in the mountains just a few miles from my home. Time and time again, he would hike down into the city with not a penny to his name, then return with all sorts of alcohol and supplies. He avoided the police. He avoided any suspicion. He seemed to move around the city without any fear at all. He may not have been omnipotent, but he seemed to get away with everything.

Physiologically, I was tattered. I had been tortured for months. Deprived of water. Deprived of food. Treated like an animal. No privacy. No hope. I lived in constant pain from being abused and cabled to the trees. I had been threatened and manipulated every second of every day. Mitchell was the master and I was the slave.

I was also terrified of making him angry. And I wasn’t alone. His own family was afraid of him as well, to the point that they had disowned him. His own mother had a restraining order placed against him. He seemed to have lost all of the normal emotions that humans were supposed to feel. He abused me as easily as someone might flick an ant off the kitchen table. And Barzee was no better. She had voluntarily given up her children in order to be with him. She watched him abuse me without any compassion or any attempt to help me. To her, I was nothing but competition for his affections and I believed she would have killed me if he had given her the go-ahead.

And I felt constantly outnumbered. It was one child against two adults, both of whom were evil and full of darkness. But they were not stupid. Especially Mitchell. He was smart. And experienced at his craft. He had been lying and manipulating his way through life for many years now and I was no match for his distortions.

But none of these factors explains the main reason I was so obedient to his commands.

Fear was the reason.

Fear for my own life. Fear for my family.

Terror had been my constant companion from the moment that I opened my eyes in the darkness of my bedroom to see Mitchell standing there. Every moment of every day, I was sick with dread. After a time, that begins to change you. It changes the way you think, your expectations, the things you hope to get out of life. I
knew
that he would kill me if I tried to run away. Nothing could have convinced me that wasn’t true. He’d kill my family. I wanted to protect them.
I felt driven to protect them.

Mitchell would kill my family if I ran, so I wasn’t going to run.

As we prepared to go down the canyon, I felt my only hope for escape was that we would, at some point, be put in a situation where someone else could save me. But that process had to be completely out of my control. It couldn’t be my fault. I couldn’t contribute to my own rescue in any way. Otherwise, Mitchell would blame me. Then he would kill my family, or tell his friends to kill them. And as horrible as my life was, it was far preferable for me to suffer than to hurt those I loved.

*

We headed down the mountain toward the stream at the bottom of the canyon. For a short time, we walked along the trail that ran parallel to the tiny stream, sometimes crossing back and forth to walk on dry ground. But after a while, Mitchell made us hike back up onto the side of the mountain, then track a different course to the canyon, making our way toward the lower camp. It was hard going, cutting through the mountain oak and brush. Eventually, we made it to the first of the lower camps, a small clearing surrounded by outcroppings of rock. It was almost completely hidden and we had to climb down the side of the sheer rocks before dropping into the camp. Mitchell quickly looked around, searching for any sign of Barzee. He grew very agitated when it became obvious that she had not been there. We climbed out of the camp and headed down the mountain again. It took some real bushwhacking to cut our way across the side of the mountain. I had on some old wool socks and from time to time I would stop and try to pull the burrs and stickers out of them, but eventually I just gave up. They were completely plastered. It didn’t do any good. As we got closer to the bottom of the canyon, Mitchell became more and more angry, constantly cursing that we were getting so close to the main trails.

The second camp was located in a small meadow nestled on the side of the canyon. Surrounded by thick trees, this camp, like the previous one, was completely hidden from view. We stopped at the edge of the trees and Mitchell looked around, searching for any sign of trouble before he led me into the camp. The camp was pretty well supplied. A small tent. Water. A few tarps. A couple small plastic containers of camping gear. Mitchell searched through all of their belongings, looking again for any sign that Barzee, or anyone else, had been there. Finding nothing, he stood and looked around, his hands balled into anxious fists.

He stared down the canyon, then back up toward our camp. Then he made his decision. No way he was going to take me any farther down the canyon. It was time to turn around.

“Come on,” he mumbled as he passed me. I turned and followed him as we started the long hike back to our camp. I kept my head low, my spirits deflating. Every step took me closer to my prison. Every step took me closer to a life that was killing my soul. Every step was like adding another rock onto an emotional backpack that was already very full.

We eventually made it back to camp. By then, it was getting very late, the last of the sunlight fading through the trees. The first thing Mitchell did was cable me up again. Then he started telling me—again—how each of us had a cross that we must bear, but how much God must have loved me to give me the opportunity to be his wife. While he was talking, we heard someone walking through the trees. Both of us turned to see Barzee emerge from the brush.

Though she didn’t seem as angry as she had been before, there was a definite chill in the air. She and Mitchell talked. He reminded her once again that she was the chosen Mother of Zion. He reminded her that she was assured a position up in heaven at the right hand of God, a position right next to the Savior himself, if only she stayed faithful to what God needed her to do.

What a bunch of garbage! I thought as I listened to him talk.

*

A few days later, we were out of food again. Mitchell was preparing to go down to get supplies when Barzee confronted him. “Why do you get to go down and drink your liquor and get your smokes and do whatever you want to do while Esther and I are left up here to starve, waiting for your return?”

He glared at her but she stood her ground without flinching. “It isn’t right. I’m tired of it. I’m not going to do it anymore.”

He started to answer, but Barzee took a step toward him, her face as hard as ice. “I’m not going to stay up here and starve while you go down and party,” she said with scorn.

And I could tell Mitchell was going to have to back down. Barzee didn’t win very many of their arguments, but once she had made up her mind there was no backing down. She was tired of him going into the city and never allowing her to go. It had been going on for months now. Something was going to change.

Which was good. Really good. Because I knew there was no way they would leave me up at camp by myself. Seeing the opening, I started begging him to let me go down into the city too. My mind was racing with possibilities. Maybe someone would recognize me! Maybe someone would rescue me! Maybe Mitchell would, I didn’t know … get captured … have a heart attack … decide he didn’t want me … anything was possible.