Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [27]
In addition to Uncle Robert’s family, my uncle Lee and his wife, Debbie, were living at the ranch in a smaller home. Some of my older male cousins shared a “bunkhouse” just behind the main house, where they had been sent from Hildale by their fathers to help care for the ranch. One of these was my fifteen-year-old first cousin Allen Glade Steed.
From our first contact that winter, I didn’t like Allen one bit. He was gangly and awkward, but that didn’t stop him from teasing my younger siblings and me because we didn’t have a father. Though he probably knew that his words stung, he would remind us with a gleeful smile that we didn’t have a “priesthood father.” We were quick to defend Dad’s honor, and it led to many arguments. As a ten-year-old girl, I was very self-conscious and insecure. For most of my childhood, I had kept some baby fat, and even though Allen seemed to know it scorched my feelings, he took to calling me “Tubba-Tubba.”
He seemed to enjoy embarrassing me. One day, I had been ecstatic about going ice-skating because illnesses had kept me from many other skating trips. The reservoir on the Steed ranch was too far from the house to walk, so we would usually drive over. I waited patiently for my brothers and sisters to get ready, and we all rushed outside to pile into the trailer attached to Allen’s four-wheeler. They got in one by one as I waited for my turn to hop on. Just as I stepped toward the trailer, Allen let out a loud, cruel laugh and sped away, throwing me off balance and causing me to hit my head. Tears stung my eyes, but rather than act like a baby, I stood back up and shouted “Stop!” and asked him to please return for me. He simply went on laughing, not even hearing my words as he left me behind in the snow.
Although he was particularly mean to me, I wasn’t Allen’s only target. My younger brother Caleb and I were in the milk shed one day watching a few of the Steed siblings milk the cows. I was feeling shaky after another bout of illness, and the bitter-cold winter air was hard to ignore. Allen, with a menacing smile, started to spray us with the hose he was using and continued until our clothes were soaked. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. Caleb was bolder than I, and picking up a nearby shovel, he threw some manure at Allen. Allen left in a rage, telling Robert that Caleb had tossed manure at him while he was working and claiming that the attack had been unprovoked.
I couldn’t even stand seeing Allen at the dinner table in the evenings. The Steeds ran their home much like a business, with meals served at set times and in shifts; those who found a seat at one of the two dining tables in the kitchen ate first. When the rations ran out, there was often nothing more to eat. Unlike Salt Lake and even Short Creek, Widstoe was a kind of ghost town, with no grocery stores in close proximity. The town and the surrounding area had long been abandoned due to a lack of water. Our nearest neighbor was about fifteen miles away. Much of the food was harvested from the big vegetable garden on the property and pickled and stored for use throughout the winter. Sometimes we would go to bed hungry.
The run-ins with Allen were not the only problems between the Steed kids and the Wall children. After Mom had been gone for a while, a dispute broke out between my brothers and some of Uncle Robert’s sons. Despite the fact that both families belonged to the same religion, our father had raised us differently than Uncle Robert raised his family, and these disparities became a point of contention. With Mom temporarily out of the picture, some of Uncle Robert’s older sons