Desert Wives (9781615952267) (30 page)

“It's a good day to die, Meade,” I said through gritted teeth. “A good day for us both.”

I prepared to die.

But then I heard her.

Save the child! Nothing else matters! Save the child!

My mother's voice, drifting back to me across the years.

Shocked, I jerked back, and as I jerked, Meade moved with me. Encouraged, I summoned my strength for one last try.

With a mighty heave, I slung him back onto the bank just as the cottonwood roared past.

Chapter 23

As soon as Meade coughed up all the dirty water he had ingested, I got him onto his feet and half-pushed, half-dragged him out of the canyon, back to the graveyard where I'd left my gun.

After I'd stuffed the tape recorder back into what was left of my bra, I gave the wobbly boy a shove. Then, at gunpoint, I marched him across the desert to the Paiute village and Tony Lomahguahu's house.

I didn't even care that thanks to the raging water I was almost naked.

After all, I did have nice legs.

Chapter 24

“Are you sure you want to keep that ratty old chair?” Virginia asked Saul, as she and Leo helped him load the La-Z-Boy into the big U-Haul we had rented.

The Circle of Elders watched us, furious, from Prophet's Park. A few feet away from them, in lonely splendor, Davis stood alone. They were all still furious over Meade and his mother being arrested, because as it had turned out, even Sheriff Benson hadn't approved of murder.

“I'm not leaving a damn thing in this place that I don't have to,” Saul said. “I'm even taking the toilet paper for the new house.”

As I'd begun to suspect, before Saul moved to Purity he'd managed to squirrel away a tidy sum in Phoenix, away from Prophet Solomon's prying eyes. The money had been deposited in his son's name, accruing interest for years, and now there was enough for the down payment on a fixer-upper in Zion City. Like other Purity exiles and escapees, he planned to immerse himself in the growing anti-polygamy movement. And he wouldn't be doing it alone. Jean Royal and her children were leaving with him. As soon as Saul's divorce from Ruby was finalized, the two would marry.

On the way back from the county attorney's office the day before, Saul had told me, “Remember those two widows that I told you asked me to marry them? One of them was Jean. That's one fine woman, Lena, and she wants more children. You know how I feel about that.”

After I'd finished hugging him and almost running us off the road, I gave him a sly grin. “So who was the other widow, stud? You going to marry her, too?”

His grin faded. “I wouldn't marry Ermaline on a bet.”

Ruby would remain in Purity. As she had explained to us when we tried to get her to leave, her children and grandchildren lived there. Besides, she said, when she saw our faces fall, in Purity her future was assured. The Circle of Elders had already found her a new husband: Vern Leonard, who after Martha's arrest for murder wanted a new wife. And while Ruby wasn't thrilled about the prospect of living in one of Vern's beat-up old trailers, she'd decided the sacrifice was worth it to remain close to her family.

I understood.

But Cynthia, at least, had recovered from her last-minute apprehension. She'd ride with us as far as West Wind Guest Ranch, where her aunt would pick her up the next day. Ermaline, still apologetic over the role she'd played in Cynthia's violent rape, had even helped the girl pack.

As Cynthia heaved a box of clothing into the van, yet another book fell from her apron. This time, though, she picked it up leisurely.

Saul grinned as he read the title. “
Your First Year in College.
Now, that's what I call thinking ahead. You better write me and Jean when you get settled, you hear?”

Cynthia gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, stuffed the book in her apron pocket again, and loaded another box.

I snuck a look at Davis Royal. The sun was behind him so it was hard to read his face, but I still thought I saw some regret there. There was none on my side, though. Some day, I figured, I'd read about his death in the newspapers, probably in some “hunting accident.” There was a chance, I thought, that Davis might bone up on his own shooting skills and get Earl Graff first. Either way was fine with me. If they wound up killing each other in the same bloody shootout, great.

For that was the only way Purity, and all the other polygamy compounds on the Arizona Strip, would ever be shut down. The previous day's events at the county attorney's office had made that all too plain.

As soon as Tony Lomahguahu's wife had bundled us into warm blankets, Meade, so certain that he'd acted for God, began to talk freely about the murder. He was still talking when the ambulance whisked us both away to the hospital. He kept talking there, too, even when Robert Heckaman, the portly county attorney, stood over his bed. Heckaman was flanked by two deputies, one of them holding the video camera which, I was assured, would produce evidence admissible in court.

Things had moved quickly then. With me still wrapped in a blanket, Heckaman escorted me back to his office and phoned a Beehive County judge. As I listened on his speaker phone, the judge promised to sign papers ordering Esther's release from the Zion City jail, where she'd arrived only that morning. The entire process would take no more than a few hours.

But Heckaman's cooperation stopped there. No matter how hard I begged, he said he couldn't do anything about the situation in Purity. In fact, his words oddly echoed Sheriff Benson's.

“You have to look at it from the legal point of view, Ms. Jones,” he said, tapping a pudgy finger on his glass-topped desk. “Who is the complainant here? You? If so, the only two people you can personally lodge a complaint against are Earl Graff, for assaulting you, and Meade Solomon, for trying to kill you. Sheriff Benson has already assured you that your complaint against Davis Royal isn't going to fly.”

I refused to give up. “But surely I can file a citizen's complaint. Polygamy is illegal. So is rape, wife beating and child molestation, not to mention welfare fraud.”

He shook his head, making his double chins wobble. “As long as the women of Purity don't consider themselves injured parties and lodge their own complaints, the law can do nothing.”

“You can't be serious.”

Heckaman sat back in his chair, his belly spilling over his belt. “I wish I could help you, but this kind of thing has been going on for more than a hundred years out here. That business with Tom Green and his wives, that was just an aberration, a publicity-seeking fool who got what he deserved.”

I pointed out that the women of Purity hadn't come forward because the Church of the Prophet Fundamental had convinced them they'd go to Hell if they didn't follow the church's orders, but Heckaman just shrugged.

“Religious freedom, Miss Jones. The United States Constitution guarantees it.”

Since compassion didn't seem to be working with the county attorney, I tried another tack. I reminded him of the genetically damaged children, and the enormous cost to taxpayers they represented.

Heckaman seemed slightly more interested in this aspect of the problem, but it still didn't fill him with the fire of reform. After mumbling something about having a social worker stop by to check on the children confined to the Purity Clinic, he hustled me out of his office, but not before I saw the photograph hanging on the wall, positioned next to a stuffed large-mouthed bass. It was a studio portrait of three serious-faced girls no more than thirteen or fourteen, each wearing puffy-sleeved granny dresses. A beaming Heckaman stood behind them, encircling all three with his arms.

“Your daughters?” I didn't even try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

His own voice had been unperturbed. “Have a nice trip back to Arizona, Ms. Jones.”

It had been all I could do not to spit in his face.

No, Prophet Davis and the Circle of Elders would never have to worry about that particular county attorney. The polygamists were perfectly safe.

Heckaman kept one promise, however.

I smiled at Esther as she helped Rebecca load the rest of her things into the U-Haul. The shadows under her eyes had vanished, and her cheeks, so sunken the last time I saw her, bloomed again.

“Did you say good-bye to your daddy, sweetheart?” she asked Rebecca.

Her daughter nodded. “I told him he could come visit me in Scottsdale, but I wouldn't visit him here, not ever. I told him I didn't like his friends.”

Esther smiled at me over Rebecca's glossy head. “How can I ever thank you? And Jimmy. Without you two…” Her words trailed off, and for a moment, the old shadows returned.

I reached around Rebecca, grabbed Esther's hand, and squeezed. “I was just doing my job. Gun for hire, and all that.”

Her eyes filled with grateful tears, not for the first time that day. “Just a gun for hire. Yeah, right.” She gave my arm a squeeze.

I cleared my throat. “Um, Esther, speaking of Jimmy, how is he?”

I knew perfectly well how Jimmy was doing, having talked to him three times yesterday and twice today. He'd discovered who had been stealing microchips from a Scottsdale plant, had cleared several applicants for jobs in the high tech industry, and gone to Miles Alder's funeral, where he'd helped comfort Miles' grieving father. In short, during my absence from Desert Investigations he'd kept the money rolling in.

What I needed to know, though, was how Jimmy's love life was doing.

“How's Jimmy? Uh, how would I know? I haven't seen him since they extradited me to Utah. I, uh, I've talked to him on the phone some, though.”

But Esther's blush answered my unasked question.

We finished loading the big U-Haul just before sunset. Virginia's husband would drive the U-Haul and Saul would ride along with him, leaving the rest of us to ride in the ranch's van. We were just about to climb in when we heard someone yell.

“Wait! Wait for me!” It was Sissy Royal, dragging two suitcases. “I want to leave, too!”

Davis, obviously as surprised as the rest of us, stepped away from the shade of a rusting car and started toward her. “Sissy! What do you think you're doing?”

She wouldn't look at him, just kept her eyes on us, just kept dragging those suitcases across Prophet's Park. When the Circle of Elders parted to let her through, I couldn't help but notice a smirk on Earl Graff's face.

“Sissy! You come back here!” Davis began to run toward her.

I saw the fear on her face. Sissy knew Davis better than I did, knew what he was capable of.

I reached Sissy before Davis did, and grabbed the suitcases slowing her down. “Head for the van, Sissy.”

She looked at me, gave one last quick glance at Davis, then hitched up her skirts and ran toward the van.

Davis stopped about ten feet from me. The look on his face made him almost appear ugly. “Bitch,” he said.

I smiled. “Thank you for the compliment, Brother Davis.” Still smiling, I picked up Sissy's suitcases and took them to the van.

“Okay, Virginia, let's blow this joint,” I said, as I helped Sissy inside.

“Consider it blown.” She stomped down on the accelerator, making the van kick up a cloud of dust as we barreled toward the gate.

As we streaked past the school yard, I could see Cora—the inadvertent cause of so much unhappiness—swinging blissfully on the swing set. Her long white dress swirled around her like a swan's wing, and the setting sun touched her yellow hair with fire.

But her eyes, like those of so many children I'd seen in the Purity Clinic, remained vacant.

Author's Note

Polygamy in Arizona and Utah is very much a reality, and authorities estimate the numbers of polygamists at between 30,000 and 50,000. Most of their compounds, such as those in Hildale and Colorado City, straddle the Arizona/Utah border, thus muddying each state's jurisdiction issues. Some polygamists, though, live openly in larger cities such as Phoenix and Salt Lake City (Associated Press, May 22, 2001).

POLYGAMY'S HISTORY
:
Utah (and much of Arizona) was founded by Mormon pioneers who practiced polygamy. Although this practice was officially disavowed by the Mormon Church in 1890, and was outlawed in 1896 as a condition of the territory joining the United States, it remained very much alive in outlying desert communities. However, in 1953, the Arizona National Guard raided a large polygamy compound at Short Creek, Arizona, (now named Colorado City) on the instructions of Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle (Utah authorities had declined to take part in the raid). The adult polygamist males were briefly jailed, but because the women—who had been trained to obey the men's every command—refused to testify against them, prosecution failed. The women also protested that without the males, they would have no means of support. Photographs of these impoverished women, surrounded by large numbers of children, ran in newspapers across the United States. Readers, mostly unaware of the serious abuses of polygamy toward women and children, saw Pyle as the hard-hearted destroyer of families. His political career was effectively ruined. The polygamist males were eventually released from custody and returned to their polygamist lifestyles. Since 1953, there have been no more raids into the polygamy compounds. No politician wants to lose his job, as did Pyle, who then sank into obscurity.

CRIMES ASSOCIATED WITH POLYGAMY
:
What few prosecutions have taken place in the past fifty years have not been for polygamy, but (with one famous exception) for the crimes which continue to surround polygamy: sexual assault, battering, welfare fraud, and racketeering (C.G. Wallace, Associated Press, July 16, 2001). Violence toward girls and women is common, but escaping it is uncommon.

Many polygamist women are forbidden to use birth control; their husbands keep a chart of their fertile days in order to impregnate them more easily. The ideal among many polygamy sects is for every woman to have one baby per year until her childbearing years are over, thus insuring her husband's place in “Highest Heaven.” And more welfare income.

When a girl does escape one of the polygamy compounds, county law officers usually return her to the compound. In April of 2001, a 15-year-old girl ran away from her polygamous family, telling authorities that her parents were about to force her into a marriage with the much-married Warren Jeffs, the No. 2 leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (son of the then No. 1 leader, Rulon Jeffs). Despite her pleas, the sheriff's department returned her to the compound, releasing a statement to the media that since the girl was a minor, her parents had the right to decide how she would live (Associated Press, April 10, 2001).

In 1998, John Daniel Kingston, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was arrested for beating his 16-year-old daughter for resisting his order to become the 15th wife of Daniel Ortell Kingston, her uncle (Associated Press, June 3, 1998). The girl, who had been beaten more than twenty times, suffered a broken nose and deep bruises on her face and buttocks. After being confined to a desert “re-education camp” for recalcitrant women and children, she eventually submitted to the sham marriage. She finally escaped by staggering several miles through the desert to a gas station, where she was helped by concerned customers. Her father and uncle are now serving prison terms for incest and felony child abuse, but not for polygamy.

BIRTH DEFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH POLYGAMY
:
Because of their tight-knit and secluded compounds, the pool of possible mates among the various polygamy clans remains small. This frequently leads to incestuous plural marriages. Sometimes, though, that incest is purposeful. The Kingston clan (cited above) was founded by Charles Elden Kingston, who—after experimenting with breeding dairy cattle—set up a similar breeding program for his own numerous children. To this day, members of the Kingstons are allowed to breed only with blood relatives. In an article written by Greg Burton, printed in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, April 25, 1999, Connie Rugg, one of John Ortell Kingston's estimated 65 children, said, “All my life my family told me I had to marry a Kingston. I could choose, but it had to be a brother, uncle, or cousin.”

Many Kingston children are born with serious birth defects directly traceable to the sect's breeding program. According to that same article by Greg Burton, one Kingston girl was born with two vaginas and two uteruses but no vaginal or bowel opening. Congenital blindness and dwarfism are common among the Kingstons, as are microcephaly, spina bifida, Downs syndrome, kidney disease, and abnormal leg and arm joints. These children and their mothers (who are designated
unwed
mothers by both Arizona and Utah social service agencies) receive considerable medical care and welfare, all paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.

Under Utah law, it is a felony for close relatives to have sex, but this law—as is the law against polygamy—is rarely prosecuted, and then only when considerable physical force has been used upon an unwilling girl. Daniel Ortell Kingston's prosecution for incest is one of the few on record.

WEALTH AND POLYGAMY
:
Although the women in most polygamy sects are not allowed to inherit or own property, and thus live in dire personal poverty, the leaders of these sects are often quite wealthy. Reporter Lou Kilzer, in an article in the
Denver Rocky Mountain News
, August 14, 2000, connected the Kingston sect's holdings to organized crime. The Kingston business empire includes casino gaming equipment such as slot machines and video poker (bought from Mafia-controlled companies in New Jersey), coal mines, accounting firms, finance companies, pawnshops, bail bond firms, poker parlors, and huge cattle ranches (one 160,000-acre ranch in Nevada formerly belonged to actor James Stewart). Estimates of the Kingston sect's wealth range from $150 million to—by one of their business competitors—$11 billion. According to Kilzer's article, the 1,000-member sect is currently headed by Paul Kingston, a Salt Lake City attorney with 32 wives and more than 200 children.

THE TAXPAYER FOOTS THE BILL FOR POLYGAMY
:
A
Los Angeles Times
article written by Julie Cart, dated Sept. 9, 2001, assessed polygamy's cost to the U.S. taxpayer. She cited U.S. Census Bureau estimates which found that every school-age child in Colorado City, Utah, was living below the poverty level. This level of poverty is unlikely to change, since many polygamists—who are unwilling to have their children influenced by “outsiders”—have pulled their children from public school. Cart's article also cited wide-ranging tax fraud, since polygamists rarely declare the full extent of their income.

This income-hiding behavior was highlighted in the 2001-2002 bigamy and child-rape trial of Tom Green. Court documents revealed that Green's five wives had been supporting him by selling magazine subscriptions, and yet the family was collecting large welfare payments. The child rape charges emerged from findings that Green impregnated one wife when she was only thirteen—with the permission of her mother, who was
also
married to Green. To date, the child's mother has not been prosecuted for aiding in child rape. Green is now in prison; his wives and 29 children are living on government assistance.

In Cart's article on incest and polygamy, Cart stated that the combination of birth defects, poverty, and the lack of education have overtaxed the already strained public service agencies of both Arizona and Utah. In fact, Cart found that Medicaid pays for more than one-third of the babies born in Utah, and plural wives account for a disproportionate share of those births. According to an article by Tom Zoellner in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, June 28, 1998, fully 33 percent of the residents in the Hildale and Colorado City area are using U.S. Dept. of Agriculture food stamps to feed their families (the average in Arizona is 6.7 percent, and in Utah 4.7 percent). The town of Hildale was also awarded $405,006 in federal housing grants to refurbish 19 homes on polygamy sect-owned land. Colorado City and Hildale rank among the top 10 in the Intermountain West in reliance on Medicaid and government-issued food.

WHY POLYGAMY ISN'T PROSECUTED
:
Proving a polygamy case continues to be difficult, since most polygamists' wives refuse to testify against men they consider their husbands. Proving child rape is difficult, because as seen in the Green case, the parents agree to the illegal “marriages” of their children. Until recently Utah law permitted girls to be married at age 14. The children themselves have been taught from birth to obey blindly the dictates of their parents and sect leaders. More crucially, the girls are moved back and forth between compounds, or back and forth over the Utah/Arizona border when necessary, thus making establishing the location of statutory (or actual) rape, almost impossible. In addition, many of these child marriages are consummated in Mexico, where many of Arizona's and Utah's polygamy sects have set up satellite compounds beyond the reach of U.S. jurisdiction.

Complicating the polygamy issue is solid suspicion that the polygamy compounds have stockpiled large caches of guns and explosives in the caves near the compounds. Few politicians want another Waco.

However, in some cases, Utah and Arizona county prosecutors simply decline to prosecute. In a front page article in the
Salt Lake Tribune
, published May 20, 2001, Mohave County (Arizona) Attorney William J. Ekstrom Jr., said, “We don't view polygamy as a prosecutable crime. There is no driving desire to prosecute people for these types of things. We see it as consensual relations between adults.”

PROSPECTS FOR CHANGE
:
Most women and girls in today's polygamy compounds are, like their predecessors, the victims of learned helplessness. Many are undereducated and have no job skills, no bank accounts, no property, and no income other than their welfare checks. In the unlikely event they ever leave the compounds, they are poorly equipped to find jobs and support their children. The few women who have managed to leave the compounds usually leave their children behind, an agonizing choice.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
:
The polygamists depend on public and governmental apathy to keep operating. The only people empowered to change this sad state of affairs are the governors and elected officials of Arizona and Utah. Write them. You can also write your own U.S. Senator or U.S. Representatives, demanding that the federal government stop using our tax dollars to finance polygamy. You can also help support Tapestry Against Polygamy, an organization founded by women who have fled the polygamy compounds. The group can be reached at (800) 259-5200 or www.polygamy.org, the site where they post current polygamy abuses and proposed legislation.

WHY THIS MATTERS:
In a Los Angeles Times article by Julie Cart, published Aug. 25, 2002, Arizona State Representative Linda Binder, an anti-polygamy activist, complained that her efforts to pass legislation curbing polygamy in Arizona have met with resistance from other elected officials. Binder said, “We have a situation here that is unconscionable. We have the Taliban in our back yard.”

Betty Webb
Scottsdale, Arizona
August 31, 2002