Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [126]
I once again took to sleeping in my truck, only now that it was November, it was much more difficult. Fearful of being turned over to Uncle Warren by the police, I began to drive out of the FLDS community at night and park my truck in the desert. I equipped my vehicle with everything I would need to pass the night—a fuzzy blanket, a small pillow, a cooler filled with drinks, granola bars, and a small heater that I could plug in to my lighter. The desert gets cold fast at night, and with no cement to hold in the heat, I felt the chill of the autumn air. I’d purchased a small CD player to distract myself. My mind would just go insane if it was quiet. I was trying to be this tough girl, but inside I felt lost in the dark. Once I awoke to find a family of coyotes surrounding my truck. We’d long been told that the lands surrounding the Creek were haunted by the spirits of those who’d once walked “here” back in biblical days. The area had once been a thriving city, and God had destroyed it to cleanse the land. But the possibility of being confronted by a spirit was just another terrifying thought that permeated my imagination as I reclined in the driver’s seat and tried to settle in for the night. While the eerie sounds of the coyotes and other nocturnal creatures frightened me, I preferred them to being at home with my husband. Part of the problem though was that I kept having to move farther into the desert because the Colorado City police kept finding me. Where once I’d been just on the edge of the barren lands, now I was deep into them, nearly two miles outside of town.
I would usually stay out there until 5:00 A.M., when I would slowly make my way back to the trailer, hoping that Allen would be gone to work for the day. He was working his same job at Reliance and had to leave early in the mornings. Once inside, I’d shower and then fall asleep until my next work shift. It had gotten to the point where I was spending just one or two nights a week with my husband. But even these brief times together landed me in trouble.
By mid-November our relationship had reached a new low. He was particularly upset with how much I was away from the trailer in light of the fact that I’d just gotten home from Oregon. I was already more than two months pregnant, but he still had no idea. After one argument in which he hit me, I began to feel that familiar cramping in my abdomen. Fearing the worst, I raced to the bathroom and was greeted by the worrisome sign of a miscarriage: I was bleeding. Desperate to get away from Allen, I ran out of the trailer without even stopping to grab a pair of shoes or my coat. Jumping into my truck, I headed for the desert. I was cramping so badly I had to stop at the gas station on the edge of town to use the facilities. I was passing blood clots, but with nowhere to go, I had to ride out the miscarriage in the restroom. A knock on the door startled me, and I was horrified when a man’s voice informed me that the station was closing up for the night.
I cleaned up as best I could, got back into my truck, and headed for my usual spot in the desert. My truck slid to and fro as I tried to maneuver it up the small hill off the dirt road where I’d been parking at night. It had been raining for nearly a week, and the parched land had turned into a carpet of mud.
I tried to steer past a juniper tree when my tires began to sink into the wet terrain. It started to snow, and I could barely see where I was going. I pressed hard on the gas, but the truck wasn’t moving. Not only was it muddy, I now had a flat tire.
Exasperated and in pain, I climbed out of the truck and reached into the back for my jack. I’d been on my own for some time