Stealing Flowers (24 page)
“I’ve heard from this expert I know that
they get everyone who gets on the bus. You and Andy were lucky,” .
. . He looked me straight in the eyes . . . “not to be sucked in,
and brave to put up a fight. Your parents should be proud of you;
go get Andy. See if he’ll come with us.”
I went next door and Bert answered the door.
He had just arrived home. I told him what was happening. He helped
Andy get ready, and as we were getting set to go, he added, “I
think these hippy-type Jesus-Freaks are the real mean deal. Don’t
listen to what they say, but watch what they do! If they’re like
the Moonies, you’ll be in for a real show.” He gave a chuckle and
Andy curled his eyes behind his back. “Go get Sally and good
luck.”
We took two cars and Peter asked that I go
with him and that Andy go with my parents. I was fine with that,
not suspecting anything. He drove a brand new Beamer and played
Marvin Gaye on his tape deck. “According to my expert, your sister
is in great danger,” he said when we were well on our way.” I was
depressed to hear it, but before I could ask why, he answered my
question. “They use mind-numbing techniques and endless propaganda
to convert you. It’s called, Snap Conditioning, and they drill you,
starve you, use sleep depravation, never let you think for
yourself, and have an answer for everything. I’m not totally up to
spec yet, but the more I read, the scarier it looks. If you notice
that Sally already looks different when we see her, if they let us
see her, that will tell you that she’s hooked.”
“They have to let us see her,” I insisted as
though I was an authority on it.
He shook his head sadly. “That’s the thing
though, Christian, they don’t. Even your parents don’t know the
worst of it. I didn’t want to upset them. But she’s of legal age.
If she refuses to see us, she’s within her legal rights.” I must
have showed with my expression that I didn’t understand; I had
began to look at the incident as a kidnapping, but of course, she
hadn’t been physically abducted. She had gone willingly onto the
bus, and stated clearly to me that she wanted to go to Ashbury
Farms. I became insecure about Sally’s future. “Sorry, young man,”
Peter whispered, “life can be complicated. ”
I soon discovered from Peter that The Family
of Truth believed that God appointed Moses Truth, their recluse
leader, to save as many young people as he could before the world
ended, which apparently, they preached, was to happen any day.
Peter saw that I was getting emotional, I’d not forgotten at all
about The First Law of Life for those born unlucky, especially
orphans, and was expecting the worst, and he kindly changed the
topic; we talked for about another half hour.
When we arrived, we drove up a dirt road to
a high locked gate. The property sat about a mile from the highway.
An eight-foot high fence, topped by barbed-wire, enclosed the
entire property. The first and biggest building was an old barn
converted, as was assured by Peter, into a convention or recruiting
hall; it looked old and modern at one and the same time, and was
surrounded by huge banners. One said, ‘When we who have not the law
do by nature, what the law requires, we are a law to ourselves.’
Another one said, ‘But as for these enemies of mine,’ Jesus said,
‘Who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay
them before me.’ Luke 19: 27. Three hundred yards further from the
barn, stood a respectable low-framed western-style farmhouse. We
got out of the cars, the five of us, and we were met by a security
guard, who had two German Shepherds with him. Stan talked to him in
private. I could see that after ten minutes or so, he’d become
frustrated and resorted to bribing the guard, who finally began to
make his way up to the farmhouse.
“I think we can assume,” Peter said when
Stan rejoined us, “that’s where the priests, reverends, elders, or
whatever they call themselves live.”
Word must have spread that we were here for
one of their recruits. A steady stream of youths in new clean
t-shirts, which had a printed logo, The Family of Truth, 1979, and
jeans, began to congregate. Soon it grew into quite a group, I’d
say fifty or so. They all stared openly at us, like on the bus, but
instead of love or longing in their eyes, it had been replaced by
hate and resentment. Soon some older young men, came from the
farmhouse; they were aged about thirty. The tall striking-looking
young man with a beard, Solemn Necessity, was among them. He was in
the pink and purple tie-dyed t-shirt which separated him from the
rest. Then I remembered that he had kissed me on the lips. Coming
from another direction, I saw the pale young man with a purple
birthmark and thick beard, Silent Peace, and his step seemed
hurried. He and Solemn Necessity talked heatedly for a moment and
Silent Peace returned from the direction he’d come.
“Those are the two men who beat us up,” Andy
said.
I looked at him with a frown. “Yeah,” I
remarked gruffly, “those two and a few others.” I caught a look
from Mary that shut me up.
Stan again went forward and offered his hand
to Solemn Necessity, who refused to take it. We had all come closer
to the fence entrance, within hearing. I could see that they
wouldn’t let us pass through the gate to get inside. I saw that
Mary was distraught and near tears.
“I want to see my daughter,” she interjected
to Solemn Necessity, “her name is Sally Tappet. I’m swearing to you
now before God, I’m not leaving until I see her.”
I thought that some confusion existed among
the older ones. Solemn Necessity scratched his beard in short rapid
movements and whispered intently with another person his age who
was also in a the pink and purple tie-dyed t-shirt.
“That’s their famous recruit,” Peter
whispered to me. “He’s head guy here. I don’t know his ridiculous
name, but his real name is Bobby Stevens, the son of Senator Al
Stevens.”
I wondered how this could happen to a famous
senator’s son, but of course, it was happening right now to Sally.
Bobby Stevens, or what he called himself now, was a thin man,
thinner than Silent Peace, and older by at least a decade. He had a
beard and wore John Lennon-style thick bifocals. I saw Love Israel,
the blond girl from the bus who had the Marilyn Monroe-type build.
She had joined the crowd with others, in fact, the numbers were
now, five of us, and maybe seventy of them. I was getting alarmed.
They hung back just within hearing; more of their leaders came to
the gate. It was obvious they knew who we were.
“Why won’t you let me see Sally?” Mary
shouted. “What are you hiding? What are you afraid of? What have
you done to her?”
Solemn Necessity came near and nodded.
“We’re trying to get her to come. She doesn’t want to see you.”
“We aren’t leaving until we’ve seen
Sally!”
After much whispered debate between the
leaders, Sally finally came out shyly to the gate escorted by
Silent Peace and stood in front of us, staring out with resentful
adolescent eyes. I was as if hit over the head with a bat when I
saw her and could hardly breathe. The crowd had grown to a hundred
people and a few of the leaders came close to her, including the
striking Solemn Necessity. How seventy-two hours could transform
someone so radically, just didn’t seem possible. I knew at once
they’d stolen her soul.
“Sally,” Mary cried out, “my God, what has
happened to you?”
Mary tried to hug her, but Solemn Necessity,
intervened, putting himself between them. “Don’t touch her,” he
ordered.
“She’s our daughter,” Mary protested.
“She is God’s daughter, if you want to talk
to her, don’t touch her.”
“Then, let us talk alone?” Stan said, “at
least that!” I could see that he was in disbelief and I now began
to see that we would fail in our quest to take Sally home with
us.
Solemn Necessity shook his head. “Your
daughter is of legal age.” He spoke loudly, so that everyone could
hear. “She is here of her own free will.”
Sally nodded in agreement and stepped
forward. Her cheeks were flush and again her transfiguration seemed
impossible, yet for all that, she was even more beautiful in my
eyes than she ever had been. She radiated a sense of female virgin
innocence, and also sexual beauty. She possessed a Mother-Mary
bearing, as well as otherworldly quality. “I don’t know you,” she
said loudly to us, now only steps away from Mary, “The Lord is my
new house. You have Satan inside of you. I’d rather die than leave
my new family.”
Mary fell to her knees as though being
struck but as though at once realizing that this tactic wouldn’t
work with this crowd, she’s steeled herself and rose, regaining her
composure. “Please, Sally, come home just for the night.”
Sally leaned forward and spit in Mary’s
face, then walked away from the fence. “Praise Jesus Sally,” the
striking-looking Solemn Necessity called out. “She’s stood the test
of Satan. Praise God.” The crowd of onlookers clapped and gathered
around Sally shouting in joy, and singing Rock of Ages as they
walked away.
We all stood there in tears except Peter, he
was calmly watching the whole event, and hanging back. “Come away,
Christian,” Stan whispered eventually. How much time had gone by,
I’d no idea, I’d fallen into an internal outward stare which took
me to who knows where, perhaps to the time when we were caught
shoplifting, or at the cottage when we’d burned our asses, or to
the day in the swimming pool when Aunt Gayle caught us at it. It
was irrational and inexplicable but I had fallen into a sort of
animal trance and I wanted to fight them right now for possession
of Sally.
That’s how fast it happened to Sally.
Looking back, it seems impossible that it could come about so
swiftly, but despite its element of un-realness, the
science-fiction aspect of it, it doesn’t in any fashion deter from
the fact that the young unformed mind can be overwhelmed in just
such a manner. I know that now. In a purely negative case such as
torture, assault, armed-robbery, rape, or whatever, you are a
victim traumatized by the event itself, everyone understands that,
but if it’s a “conversion” event, you become an “unseen” victim,
because where is the “you”? Where has your old self disappeared?
Very few will have the slightest sympathy for your plight; they
won’t even understand it. “Sally got on that bus in New Jersey of
her own accord, buddy, no body forced her!”
Stan sicced Peter Burgess on The Family of
Truth; Peter found a book, The Family of Lies, by Rick Edwards for
us to read, and when I’d finished it, wanted to fly at them and
rescue Sally out of the absurd grip of false doctrine they had
somehow placed on her. They believed in Jesus, but they
fundamentally served the luxuriant decadent lifestyle of their
leader, Moses Truth, a.k.a., David Love, a.k.a., David Moses, or
whoever he was. The cult was called by the author, one of the most
dangerous in America, I gave it to Stan. Peter in the meantime had
infiltrated the cult to covertly find out how we could rescue
Sally, but they’d moved her within days of our visit there to
Denver. From the book, The Family of Lies, I had learned they had
compounds in New Jersey, Denver, San Diego and Los Angelus, and
they were all very secure places. They raised millions of dollars
by selling flowers in the city streets and because they were a
so-called religion, didn’t have to pay a penny in taxes.
Peter phoned me after he’d spent twenty-four
hours in the cult. “I’ll tell you what I told your parents,” he
said. “The place began to get to me fast, and on an emotional
level, it made me angry. My parents are wonderful and I loved them
not just as parents, but as fine, hard-working human beings; I
admire them. I read on one of the picture posters there that
parents are rotten, decadent, decrepit, hypocritical,
self-righteous, . . . it went on and on . . . they didn’t leave
anything out!”
I tried to keep the fear for Sally out of my
voice. “It sounds so hateful.”
“I was totally prepared for the
psychological assault and on my guard. I had infiltrated them so
easily that at first I scoffed at them. I thought you had
exaggerated about Sally getting on that bus. I have had
military-training, and consider myself to be fit and strong, yet
within twelve hours with them, I began to wonder about my own
safety. They wear the recruits down so effectively that it should
frighten anyone raising children. As a parent, I saw that I should
have more fear of cults. Although I was antagonistic to the
conversion process, I didn’t give a damn about their message, or
for that matter, about Jesus, I realized this wasn’t about choosing
freely or resisting with one’s resolve, but about a group of people
overtly overthrowing someone’s will. They use every technique in
the book. If I hadn’t read about cults, what they do to their
converts – I wouldn’t believe it.”
Days later, when I returned home from work
at Tappets, Una had returned the day before, I found Mary in tears,
and Una looking bewildered. “The world be lain different than
intended by the Lord,” she said sadly and passed me a letter.
August 11, 1979
“Mother and Father, As you know, I have
joined The Family of Truth and am now on a farm in Denver. My only
source of love and inspiration is the Holy Bible. The head of our
family is Moses Truth, who is the final word in all we do and say.
I have given up my old satanic ways and I’m devoted to our new life
of serving God with all my heart and soul. I’ve found my true home
and wish now to be respected in my decision since I’m of legal age.
As well, I’ve given up my old name and all that went with it. I’m
to be known as Patience Hosanna. I’m very happy. Turning back to my
old life of sin can only be considered a covenant with Satan, and
thus, I must divorce myself from you and the evil which you
represent. This will be my only communication with you, Yours,
Patience Hosanna.”
