by Ingrid Ricks
The best part was seeing the proud smile on Dad’s face.
“Well, Ingrid, I think you’re a natural,” he said as we packed up the unsold merchandise and broke down the table the last day there. “We make a great team, don’t we?”
CHAPTER 12
IT WAS MONDAY night, the once a week time-slot designated by the Mormon Church as family night. Most families I knew used the night to go bowling together or head to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream. Our time was always spent in the living room, listening to some church lesson that Earl or Mom had prepared from the Family Home Evening lesson book.
I had only been back from my summer with Dad for a month, but it felt like I had been trapped in this suffocating prison forever.
Despite Mom’s pleas, Earl refused to look for a real job. Instead, he turned our garage into a mechanic shop and badgered people at church into letting him work on their car. Occasionally someone would break down and let him change the oil or replace a few spark plugs, probably because they felt sorry for Mom. But most of the time Earl hung around the house doing nothing, and there was no way to escape him.
I now made a habit of hanging out after school each day and riding the activity bus home so I could avoid being around Earl when Mom wasn’t home. Most nights I made it through dinner, knocked out the dinner dishes, and then spent the rest of the evening locked in the safety of my attic room. But on Monday nights, we were all trapped in the living room for at least two hours with Earl and there was no escape.
On this particular night, the evening’s topic was obeying and respecting your parents, and Earl had taken over. He lorded over us from the green couch, quoting from the large lesson book spread open across his stubby thighs.
“Thou shall obey thy father and mother,” he read, glancing around at all of us for effect.
I had become an expert at zoning out. I usually found a speck on the wall just above Earl’s head and focused all my attention there. It was amazing how many different shapes a speck could take on if you stared at it long enough.
After a few minutes Earl’s drone stopped and I heard Mom’s voice.
“Ingrid, are you listening to me? I said we are going to start father/daughter talks!”
Her words were like needles pricking my skin and definitely got my attention. I don’t know what had gotten into Mom during the three months I’d been away, but she seemed to have rededicated herself to her role as obedient Mormon wife and did everything Earl ordered her to do. She was starting to sound like Earl’s mouthpiece.
“Earl has decided to implement one-on-one talks with all of you kids,” she continued sternly. “I think it’s a great idea. We need to start changing things around here.”
I looked at her in disgust, but the alarm was sounding in my head. I didn’t know what the two of them were up to, but I knew it wasn’t good.
Earl stayed seated by her side on the green couch, not saying a word, just nodding his head in agreement. Every time he moved his head downward in a nodding motion, I could see flecks of dandruff caught in his greasy, matted black hair.
“We’re going to do these on a weekly basis,” Mom continued. “Ingrid, we’ve decided to start with you.”
Of course they would start with me. I glanced over at Connie and Heidi, who didn’t even try to hide their relief. I wanted to punch them both to wipe the smirks off their faces. My brothers snuggled next to Mom, free of the nightmare that awaited my sisters and me.
“Come on, Ingrid. Let’s go.”
I shot a final dirty look at Connie and Heidi before leaving the room, determined not to let them see the panic that was shooting through me.
I tried to get back into my zone-out state as I followed Mom and Earl into their bedroom, but I could feel the blood rushing to my face, and my heart was pounding too hard to relax. Just the thought of being in such close proximity to Earl made me want to puke. Mom’s bedroom was tiny, and between the double bed and the dresser, there was only about two feet of moving room.
I took a seat on Mom’s bed and glared at her and Earl. They both leaned up against the dresser in front of me.
“First of all, I would like you to address me as ‘Father,’” Earl started out, locking his icy-blue eyes on me. “Father is a respectable name and I deserve it.”
It was the same demand he had been making since he and Mom married a year and a half ago. It was clearly just a power play, since he had to have known by now I’d rather be chopped up into tiny pieces than utter that word.
“You are not my DAD!” I snarled. “You’re Mom’s husband. That’s all!”
Earl turned to Mom. “Tell her to stop talking to me that way. Tell her. NOW!”
Mom grabbed my arm. I tried to shake her off but she was digging in hard with her fingers and wasn’t about to let go.
“Ingrid! Stop it right now!”
“Just get away from me! Both of you!”
I thrashed around, trying to break free from her grasp. Then Earl grabbed me, pushed me backward, and helped Mom pin me to their bed.
“Ingrid, listen to me,” Mom said, her voice suddenly filled with concern. “I think you have Satan inside of you. Earl’s going to give you a blessing.”
They still held me down on the bed, discussing where the sacred ointment was hidden so Earl could use his priesthood powers to bless the evil spirits out of me. Their voices became a muffled jumble around me. My head was pounding and I could hear a single word repeating itself in my mind: Escape. Escape. Escape.
Earl relaxed his hold. It was all I needed. I kicked him in the stomach, wrestled free from Mom, and ran from the room. I blocked out their yells as I reached for the front door, opened it, and slammed it behind me. I started sprinting down the block. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I had to get away.
I ran a few blocks into the dark night and then stopped to catch my breath. It was early October and already the temperature hovered near freezing. I was wearing only a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans.
I needed a plan. I didn’t have a place to go and I was scared to venture too far from the house because the night was so dark I was having a hard time seeing anything.
The top half of our block was a large, overgrown weed patch nearly the length of a football field. I decided to head there and make it my hiding place until I could figure out what to do next. I retraced my steps back to my block and waded through the weeds into the center of the field. I used my hands to flatten some of the weeds, then plopped down and hugged my knees into my chest to keep warm. The weeds loomed about four feet high, and I figured I was safe for a while. I rocked back and forth, trying to comfort myself.
Once I had calmed down enough to think, I played out the situation in my mind—trying to come up with an answer. But no matter how many times I went over it, my dilemma never changed. Life at home was hell and I wanted and needed to be with Dad. But Dad lived on the road and I couldn’t be with him unless I wanted to drop out of ninth grade. Dad and I had actually discussed the idea a few times during the summer, though we both knew it wasn’t really an option. But this brought me right back to life with Mom and Earl, and I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it.
I wondered if Mom was sorry about what had just happened and if she was worried about me. I half expected to hear her voice calling out to me and sat waiting for it to happen. I thought about how I would react. I wouldn’t answer her calls at first; I would let her worry for a while and think about what she had just done. When I was convinced she was sorry, I would call out to her. She would make her way into the field, we would hug for a while, and she would tell me how scared she was that I was gone and how sorry she was for getting so weird on me.
I waited for nearly two hours, hoping to hear her voice. But the only sounds I heard were my teeth chattering and the crickets chirping. I was freezing and alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back home; but it was too cold to stay outside any longer and I had nowhere else to go.
I stood up
and slowly made my way back to the house. The porch light was on but otherwise the house was dark. I turned the knob on the front door and was relieved to find it unlocked. Straining to be as quiet as possible, I stepped inside.
The house was silent. Everyone seemed to be sleeping. It was as if nothing had happened earlier and no one cared that I was gone.
I tiptoed to the attic entrance, scaled the plywood steps to my room, and quickly shut my door. Then I attached the hook lock, pushed my nightstand up against the door, and crawled into bed in my jeans and T-shirt. I wanted to be ready to run if need be.
Though finally warm under the covers, I couldn’t stop my body from trembling. I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours before I drifted off to sleep.
BEFORE PARTING WAYS for the school year, Dad had given me a cloth calendar with his face silkscreened onto it so I had a ready reminder of him and could quickly count down the nine months until our reunion.
I had hung the calendar in my locker at school so I could see his smiling face in between classes. I missed him so much my gut ached and I worried about him constantly. Dad was a magnet for trouble. Once he had picked up a hitchhiker and barely escaped after being robbed at knifepoint. Another time he got caught in a flood in Iowa and nearly drowned. I didn’t think I could bear it if something happened to him. Beyond losing him, I was petrified of being left without an escape route.
In late October, about three weeks after the Family Home Evening incident, Mom woke up all of us kids earlier than usual and summoned us into the living room for a talk.
She looked shaken.
“Your dad was taken hostage last night by a man who escaped from prison, but I just talked with him and he’s fine.” Mom’s voice sounded concerned and her mouth was turned down into a frown. “He’s at the police station right now answering some questions and then he’s going to get some sleep, but he will call later tonight.”
Hearing the words “Dad” and “hostage” in the same sentence was almost more than I could handle. My heart was pounding so hard against my chest, I thought it might break through my ribs. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I had just talked with Dad around 5:30 the evening before and everything had been fine. Somehow, between the time I hung up the phone and now, he had been taken hostage by a convicted criminal and could have been killed.
“So what happened?” I nearly screamed at Mom. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Mom admitted. “Your dad didn’t have much time to talk. Maybe there’s something about it on the news.”
As if on cue, Earl walked into the living room and announced that it was time to read scriptures. For once, Mom had other things on her mind.
“The children want to find out what happened to their dad, and I think that’s more important right now,” she said firmly, hardly even looking at Earl. “We can skip scriptures this morning.”
For whatever reason, Earl didn’t argue. He just glared at all of us and stomped out of the room. Mom turned on the TV and flipped through the stations until she found a news channel that was reporting the incident. We all sat glued to our 13-inch black and white TV, listening as the morning news anchor recounted Dad’s harrowing experience.
Apparently, Reed Williams—a convict at the Utah State Penitentiary—was being evaluated at the prison’s mental health unit when he managed to break free and escape from the prison. First Williams stole a truck, then took a policeman hostage using the police officer’s gun, handcuffs, and police car, and then, looking for another means of transportation, stole Dad’s car and took him and Rhonda hostage. The reporter said that Dad, Rhonda, and the police officer were held captive the entire drive from St. George to Las Vegas and were eventually released.
“So when did Dad say he was going to call?” I asked Mom as soon as the news story was finished. “Are you sure he’s okay?”
“Your dad is fine,” she assured me. “And he said he would call tonight. Don’t worry. He’s okay.”
I couldn’t concentrate at school that day. All I could think about was Dad and his being held prisoner for hours by some crazy criminal who had a gun and could’ve shot him at any moment.
When Dad finally called that evening, I was a nervous wreck. The words that had been bottled up inside me poured out of my mouth the minute I started to speak.
“Are you okay, Dad? Is everything all right? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
“I’m fine,” Dad assured me, though he didn’t sound like his regular confident self. He sounded upset and exhausted.
I peppered him with questions.
“So I know you were taken hostage but what exactly happened? How did you end up with that guy and how did you get away? Was he pointing his gun at you the whole time?”
Dad sighed and laughed a little. “So you want to know the whole story? Okay, I’ll tell you.”
Dad told me that four days earlier, he and Rhonda had driven to Los Angeles in an old Chevy station wagon he had recently picked up for three hundred dollars. He said they’d gone down to help a friend at a trade show and hoped to earn a few dollars selling tools, but after three days of working, they’d hardly made any sales and were discouraged and tired.
“The trade show wrapped up at 5 p.m. last night and that’s around the time I called you.” Dad explained. “I was exhausted and should have just stayed put for the evening, but I had promised to meet up with a sales guy in St. George the following morning and he had already purchased a motel room for us there, so we jumped in the car and started driving.”
Dad said the drive took nearly six and a half hours. He was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open when he finally pulled into the Sand Dune Motel in St. George around midnight. He wanted to crawl into bed, but Rhonda had insisted on bringing her Chihuahua on the trip, and since the dog had been cooped up in the car for hours, Dad decided to take him for a quick walk and bathroom break so he wouldn’t do anything on the motel room carpet. Dad said he was only back in the room for a minute or two before he heard a heavy knock on his door.
“I was too tired to be cautious so I opened the door a crack and saw a police officer. I tell you what, Ingrid. Before I could react, the door was forced open and the officer was pushed into my motel room. In the split second it took me to realize that the policeman was handcuffed and in the company of another man, I found myself staring down the barrel of a revolver.
“While my brain was trying to register what was happening, the gunman pushed his way in behind the police officer, shut the door, and started freaking out. He said, ‘I'll blow your f’ing head off if you try anything!’”
Dad paused for a moment to let his words sink in. I felt my stomach cramping up. I could picture Dad opening the door, trying to figure out what a policeman was doing there, only to have some crazy man barge into his motel room with a gun, shove it in his face, and threaten to shoot him.
“The gunman looked young—I would say he was in his early to mid-twenties,” Dad said, continuing his story. “He was pale and had a thin, wiry physique. And he was tall, really tall. I’d say he was around six foot six. He had this crazy look in his eyes and it was obvious he was high on something. He immediately demanded money and I tossed him my wallet, knowing full well it was empty. He flipped through it and came unglued when he realized there was no money in it.
“I tell you what, Ingrid. I thought I was a dead man for a minute. He started waving his gun around wildly and pointing it at my face. I knew I had to do something quick.”
“So what did you do? Hadn’t you already given him your wallet?”
“Well, I knew I had seventy-seven dollars in my front pocket, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to give it up because it was all the money I had. But given his reaction, I decided he could have the money. I said, ‘Wait, I think I have some money here,’ grabbed it out of my shirt pocket, and tossed it on the bed in front of him.
“That seemed to appease him for a minute. He grabbed the money and then he asked if anyone e
lse was in the room. That’s when I thought about Rhonda. Before I could say anything, he pulled open the bathroom door and found her huddled on the floor in a corner next to the toilet.
“You know how Rhonda is, Ingrid. She’s a homebody anyway and doesn’t like excitement. Can you imagine how terrified she was?”
I could picture Rhonda cowering in the corner by the toilet, her body trembling as she listened to the gunman threatening to kill Dad, wondering if either of them would survive the night. It made me sad to think about.
Dad said the gunman ordered Rhonda to come out of the bathroom and sit down on the bed next to him and the police officer. Then he ordered Dad to turn over his car keys.
“I grabbed my key chain from my pocket, handed it to him, and told him he could go ahead and take the car if he wanted. That’s when he screamed for me to ‘shut up!’
“That’s where I really started to get worried. Can you imagine what I was feeling? The gunman stared at all of us with his crazy eyes. He said, ‘Now here’s what we’re going to do. All of you are going to quietly follow me outside and we are going to get into the car. If any one of you makes a sound or a stupid move, I’m going to blow your f’ing heads off.’
“I tell you what, Ingrid. My whole body was shaking as I led him to my car. He’d assumed that it was the shiny blue Cadillac parked in front of my room, and when we got to my car, which was parked a few doors down, I thought he was going to put an end to us right there. He was so angry he kicked the tires with his foot. ‘This is yours?’ he fumed. ‘This is a piece of shit!’”
Dad and I both laughed when he told me this. I could picture the look of disgust on the gunman’s face when he realized that Dad’s beat-up station wagon was his getaway car.
“I think he realized right then that he had picked the wrong guy,” Dad said, continuing to chuckle. “But at this point, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”