too many people protesting mining in Arizona for him to try to continue. With some of the profits he made from selling the mine to a larger corporation, he bought woodworking tools and extra sewing machines. That summer, we set up shop in the local trailer parks and began making things to sell. Mamma would sew Amish dolls while Samantha and I would sit for hours in the back of the motor home, stuffing doll parts with cedar sawdust. Sometimes, we would work for eight to ten hours straight, stuffing and sewing doll parts.
Mamma would sew the doll clothes for a while and then sit outside to sell them wherever we happened to be parked. These items sold pretty well, and due to this newfound success, Samantha and I became a very valuable source of income. We were never given lunch breaks and rarely stepped outside of the motor home. I was still plagued with headaches, and the constant smell of cedar sawdust made them worse. Also, the little school work we had been doing stopped. I had completed the second grade math book by this time and was attempting to start the third grade one, but because of my poor foundation, I was not learning much.
And so, the summers went, one exhausting day after the other. Mamma and Brian became our overseers while my sister and I did almost all of the work. They set time limits on how long it should take to do the dishes, sweep the floor, and make dinner and stuff doll parts. Brian’s favorite way of punishing us was to pull down our underwear, and then while we bent over, he would beat us so hard that we developed large blisters.
During the evenings and on Sundays, we would sometimes play checkers and other board games. Brian said he had played these as a kid and they seemed to make him happy. Sometimes, we would even have popcorn and Mamma would play too. Samantha and I would try to be happy, but these were the most confusing of times. These people kept us isolated from the world and beat us. Yet, they sometimes would try and pretend that we were all normal and that we could have fun together. Samantha and I loved to play games, and we would smile. Mamma and Brian would appear to be somewhat happy. Then, less than an hour later, they would find some reason to beat us without mercy.
The winter I turned eleven was a turning point for me. One evening, our motor home mysteriously caught fire while we were away. As a result, we were let out of the payment plans and Brian was able to collect insurance money.
That March, we headed back to Washington, where Brian and Mamma planned to buy a farm. Samantha and I once again hoped things would get better. We didn’t know we would live isolated on a mountain top for the next eight-and-a-half years.
People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, as no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
In March, we drove back north and, one day, Brian came across an ad in the paper for some land across the Cascade Mountains in eastern Washington. We drove across the mountains to see it. The property was nestled on a mountainside six miles outside of a small town with a population of sixteen hundred people.
It was April now, but there were still occasional snow flurries, and the majestic mountains were capped with glistening crowns of snow. I sat in the truck with Samantha while Mamma and Brian went in to see the
real-estate agent. I saw ranchers and farmers walking by, and I was intrigued when I realized that we were in cowboy country. I thought to myself: This might actually be fun.
We drove the six miles up the mountain on a dirt road. As we approached the six-mile mark, we veered off the county road and drove half a mile straight up the mountainside on a very rutted and muddy path.
“Just so you know,” the cheery real-estate woman told us, “in the winter, the county does not plow this small section because it is a private road. The people who live up here mostly use tire chains and a prayer to get up the mountain in the winter.”
“We have neighbors up here?” Brian asked with a frown.
The real-estate agent smiled and nodded. “Oh, don’t worry; you are not all alone up here. About two and a half miles up that way live the Farrows and about two miles beyond them live the Hawthorns. And,” she carried on, “if you follow the county road a couple more miles up, there are a few more people scattered around.”
I saw that Brian was not too happy at that news, and his forehead was furrowed as we drove up the steep road. Soon, we arrived at what appeared to be a driveway leading to a huge parcel of land.
“Well, here it is—sixty acres of good quality ranch land,” the agent said, as she flashed her big smile in Brian’s direction.
I looked around at the acres of desolate, sagebrush-filled terrain. Free-range cows were munching grass in the distance, and two huge cottonwood trees swayed gently in the spring air. There were some flat areas, but the landscape was mostly made up of one hill after another. Mamma and Brian talked a lot, and my sister and I walked around a little. We discovered a creek across a road with tall aspen trees and green moss. We got back to the car in time to hear Brian tell the agent that they wanted the land if they could agree on a price.
For a moment, my heart stopped. The land was beautiful, but it was in the middle of nowhere. There were no sounds from any other people; the quiet was interrupted only by the occasional mooing cows in the distance or the call of one bird to another. I looked over at Samantha, and although we were not allowed to speak, I could see the same look of sheer terror. What would happen to us here?
After negotiating an agreeable payment plan with the owners, we moved up on the mountain. Even though Samantha and I had great misgivings about moving there, we were looking forward to not being cooped up in the truck and the tents, and Brian and Mamma would not have to worry about the people asking about our not being in school. As soon as we knew we were going to move, Mamma registered with the state to receive her disability, food stamps, and the checks for Samantha and me. She registered in a different county 150 miles south in Wenatchee, Washington, and gave a fake address in that same county. How she never got caught is a mystery. When she had to go into the government office, she would change out of her Amish clothes and into normal clothes.
Brian, too, was in hiding from the state. Besides the 1970s child molestation charges, he also had an ex-wife whom he had divorced right before he met Mamma. When she was only eighteen, he had moved her to an isolated mine way up in the Bradshaw mountains of northern Arizona. Eight years later, she fled the mountain to her parents’ home in Phoenix where she pressed charges against Brian for battery. She dropped the charges during the divorce when Brian agreed to give her full custody of their three children with no contest.
Brian kept a low profile after that, in order to avoid paying child support. The mountain was on the outskirts of a tiny ranch town, only a few miles from the Canadian border. This proved to be the perfect place for Brian and Mamma to wallow in their paranoia about the government, while practicing their religious beliefs and torturing my sister and me.
After we had pitched the tents, Brian announced that we would need a lot of money if we were going to try to build any sort of structure before winter set in. I shivered at the thought of winter; we would have to build a shelter or we would freeze to death. The winters on the mountain could range anywhere from zero degrees Fahrenheit to thirty degrees below zero. Not long after pitching the tents, Mamma and Brian went into town to get supplies and left Samantha and me at our new homestead.
When they returned, Brian and Mamma brought
