Not From Around Here

A harlot and a Jew ride into a religious, polygamous town in a hot red convertible, and the Jew notices that the town—Colorado City, Arizona—smells like shit. The harlot, who's wearing pants—pants!—knows that it's cows and that this is a pastoral community, but she keeps her mouth shut.

They drive past unpaved roads, beside looming houses that look like unfinished barns with additions tacked on here and there. Though they've only traveled 160 miles from Las Vegas, their car has veered into a parallel universe, a town ruled by a prophet who on January 10 excommunicated and banished Colorado City's mayor, along with 20 other men. The two have been called here, but it wasn't a religious invitation. As with the other media drawn by the fracas, it was fascination, confusion and spectacle that beckoned them.

And the townfolk can see it on their faces, as the man and woman amble into the Vermillion Café, a quaintly plain place, with handmade wreaths on the walls and the feel of a temporary school building. They step into a line—now silent—where they're surrounded by women with long braids and wavy poofs of bangs, wearing dresses of gingham and ruffle that reach their ankles. It's a look that non-sect member in the surrounding areas refer to as "polygy," (pronounced pliggy): Their faces are red and round, their hair between dishwater blonde and auburn. Their chins jut and the expressions on some are tired, on others, content. The harlot pays 55 cents for a Pepsi and exchanges money with a counter girl who's intent on not making extended eye contact and is standing in front of a rack of Bibles for sale.

At the back of the room is a table of 20 or more people, ranging from a couple of months old to at least 60, and, in this town, you don't have to wonder if the sexagenarian is a grandfather to the young girls. He's likely a father to some and a husband to others. At another table, five women, wearing their skin-covering uniforms along with socks and sandals, talk softly, looking in the direction of the two interlopers, when the door opens.

"There's your other half," belts out one of the women.

Half? It crosses the harlot's mind that either the husband must be involved in a monogamous relationship or that once a woman enters into polygamy she becomes a fraction in which all of the wives together add up to one half.

The harlot tries to strike up a conversation with one of the younger, more urban-looking women—her skin is a bit tanner, her hair looser, her jacket store-bought. Once she realizes that the harlot is not only a harlot, but also a reporter, she smiles politely, says that she likes living in this town and doesn't like the media poking around, creating conflicts. Thanks to recent reports, she says, drug reps who work with her at the clinic are scared to come into town, fearing the impending bloodbath they keep reading about. She laughs at the notion, and the rumors that their prophet surrounds himself with a protective gang of teenage boys. She's perfectly amused by all that she reads, and has no intentions of contributing to it.

The two outlanders are fools for thinking this will work.

I am the harlot and the Jew is my colleague, Richard Abowitz, and this is a story about judgment. It's outsiders putting the residents of Colorado City under our "enlightened" microscope to study, characterize, leer and understand this group of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who broke with the LDS church in 1890 when it banned polygamy, and who live by the words of their prophet, think that African-Americans are going to hell, take advantage of welfare and federal funds, marry teens and family members and practice polygamy.

And it's about them deeming us gentiles—a curious position for Richard—seeing women in red clothing or red cars as harlots and accepting that we're going to hell. But this is their town. Around 1930, they moved away from us, not only because our lifestyles conflict, but because of the persecution that's as much a part of our relationship with their church as ankle-baring women are a part of our lifestyle. They don't agree with our educational system and our television, our alcohol and our equality, our decadence and our birth control, so they stay away. They established a church-owned settlement in harsh terrain 25 miles down a two-lane highway, where there's little to look at and less to do other than raise a family.

And we couldn't stay away. Couldn't resist it in 1953, when Arizona police raided the community, imprisoning women and men for practicing polygamy and marrying their children off, and placed the children into foster homes. And can't resist it today, as we again focus our attention on the town, ruled by Prophet Warren Jeffs, who considers himself a benevolent dictator. He claims, as all good prophets do, to receive revelation from God, but his revelation seems to be pretty self-serving. A thousand dollars in tithes here. A new wife there. And everywhere, excommunication of those who clash with him.

His most recent excommunications smack of a modern-day Salem witch trial: When the prophet's unhappy with a follower, he's said to call the person into his office and command them to list all of the sins they've committed. He then compares that list with one that God sent him, and if they differ, the sinner is out. He's told to leave his house, his wives and children and get out of town. But according to sources no longer in the church, it's not just the prophet working against the residents—it's all the town's believers. To endear themselves to the prophet, they'll report anyone seen associating with apostates or committing sins. Anyone could be next.

To an outsider, it's a lot to grasp, and they'd be happier if we didn't. In keeping their lips sealed, the FLDS hope that we buy the nothing-to-see-here-attitude and go home. And so we media types seek out former community members who will talk to us, and we all find the same sources, and they mostly feel the same way. So we print that, leaving the other side of the story untouched.

We project a dystopia on this city, courtesy of those talkative dissenters. They're marrying children and surrounding themselves with wives, we cry. And the law-breaking child-marrying and abuses should be stopped, no doubt. But it seems that polygamy is one of the last remaining taboos passed over by political correctness and still open to our ridicule. It makes it easy to judge and dismiss these people. But why are we so concerned with what a couple or couples or a man and his harem choose to do in their home, as long as nobody's getting hurt? Don't 13 wives sound like punishment enough? What if this they're perfectly content with their lives? It's certainly not the strangest dictum that religion's seen.

Even Pam Black, who's become one of the most vocal opponents to Colorado City after spending 40 years there, has some good memories. "There are good things about them," she recalls, a far-off looking falling across her face as she talks to us outside her trailer in the hills above Colorado City. "The closeness. See when you're close-knit, you really can't turn to anywhere else. You have to turn to each other. We had a lot of good times."

Colorado City isn't the kind of place you accidentally end up in. North on I-15, past St. George, is the turnoff for Zion National Park, which takes you through the tiny town of Hurricane, where there's a Motel 8 and a Travelodge, a supermarket and a sign for nearby La Verkin. Take a right by the museum/bed and breakfast, then a left and you're on the steep start of the two-lane highway to the promised land. Drive through tunneling rocks, away from civilization and admire the red mountains dominating the skyline, so big that the trees growing on their base could be moss. Twenty-five miles later, past dry, winding creeks, fenced-in vacant land and roaming cattle, Colorado City. A town where trash blows through the street, junk fills yards and houses are barn-like monstrosities, all set against the most brilliant lapis sky in a setting so picturesque that even an atheist might mutter something about God's country.

There are few paved roads here, and no stoplights. At intersections where stop signs sit, it doesn't matter who arrives first: If it's me they're up against, the other car doesn't budge. Maybe they think I'll hit them, or they just want to stare, or perhaps there are deeper, darker motives. Whatever, they don't move until I pass.

There's a sign at the supermarket advertising fresh milk and meat goats. Other things found at the supermarket are bulk food, lubricating creams and jellies, pregnancy tests and signs about WIC (a federal nutritional aid program for women, infants and children). Absent are condoms, beer and cigarettes.

Nearby are city hall, a school, a Radio Shack, gas station, firehouse, fabric store, health food store and two restaurants. The school has come under extensive criticism for its recent use of government funds to purchase a Cessna and Ford F150s for its employees. Having heard about the concept of "bleeding the beast," or getting federal and state money for anything and everything they can, I note that the five fire trucks, buses and engines seem a bit much for a town of 6,000. Still, you'd think that these beast-bleeders would have taken advantage of funds to pave more roads and set up a few more Dumpsters.

The houses are the town's main attraction and where all the action takes place. They look as though they began as single-family dwellings, then, as families grew, took their own life force, sprouting a bedroom or attic or trailer out back. The better-off residents live in homes of brick or stucco, but the majority of the buildings are covered with untreated plywood and particle board. They're all surrounded by lots of dirt and weed that run into one another without much rhyme, reason or fencing, with an occasional trampoline or a slide made of plastic tubing. Old, abandoned cars are everywhere.

The church-owned United Effort Plan (UEP) controls it all. So when the church excommunicates a resident, he's told to leave immediately. If he does so, he's told the women and children can remain in the house until they're reassigned to a new husband and father. But recently the Mohave County Superior Court ruled that residents couldn't be forced to leave their homes without compensation. That's meant even more tension among the believers and the excommunicated, a few of whom have clung to the right to remain in their homes.

One such resident, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, says she's been ostracized. "If they talk to us, they can get kicked out of the religion," she says. She drives to Hurricane or St. George to shop and run errands, rather than giving her money to anyone in Colorado City.

Then there are the kids, who have taken to screaming at nonbelievers and seem frighteningly similar to the kids in Children of the Corn. When this woman walks up the street, the neighborhood children scream, "Apostate!" But she insists it doesn't bother her.

"I don't care," she says. "They're just stupid little kids."

Ross Chatwin is one of the most recent to fall. Judging from his status, it's likely he didn't have far to go. Chatwin has only one wife, Lori, who stood by his side at a recent press conference the family held to address the situation of Colorado City. Both would like more wives but were denied by the prophet. Their house is smaller and shoddier than others, which also speaks to the status of this couple and their six children, who live in the home's basement. And maybe most telling of all is the name, Chatwin. There are only three listings in town under that name. Compare that to the Jessops (98 listings), the Timpsons (90), the Holmses (64), the Barlows (49), the Johnsons (37) and the Blacks (30), and it's easy to see who gets the girl in Colorado City. It's not the Chatwins.

But his status doesn't detract from the bravery he displayed on a chilly January day, when he stood on his porch hoisting the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer, a book illustrated with a swastika.

"This Hitler-like dictator has got to be stopped before he ruins us all and this beautiful town," Chatwin read from a long, prepared statement, stretching the comparison of Jeffs to a man responsible for the Holocaust. "I want to get the ball rolling and to help pave the road for others after us. Almost all the families in this society are really good and hard-working people. And I want everybody to know that I love them all. They are just taught, or brainwashed, from infancy to just trust, believe, follow like sheep and not to ask questions."

Chatwin reads with little emotion that his wife has agreed to stay with him, against Jeffs' commandments. Lori, a slight, plain-faced woman with fair skin, dark, curly hair, blue eyes and freckles, shyly stands up, handing her 9-month old baby to her 11-year-old daughter, and addresses the crowd. "I love him, not Warren."

The Mark Twain Hotel and Restaurant on the edge of neighboring (and equally religious) Hildale actually has drinks: margaritas, flavored daiquiris, pina coladas. It doesn't say anywhere they're nonalcoholic. It doesn't have to. Sobriety is part of the collective unconscious. I opt for an iced tea and the salad bar (complete with some kind of Jell-o concoction) Richard gets a salad with chicken.

The inside is designed like a riverboat and has a strangely Vegas feel, with dark wood and deep red booths that are plush, velvety, and chic emanating a kind of pizzazz that makes you wonder just how a restaurant named for a religiously satirical writer landed in these parts.

"They moved it down here from Salt Lake City," the waitress explains. She's tall and pudgy with those child-bearing hips that must be required by law here, her hair drawn tightly in a braid. She's friendly, even gregarious by local standards. I ask her what she thinks of the drama that's beset her hamlet. She seems anxious to address the stories about young girls fleeing town, seeking refuge in neighboring St. George. In the days before we'd arrived, it had been reported that six had left. Three later returned, but two were in foster care in Phoenix and one was in a state facility in Utah. The waitress speculated that the kids couldn't legally leave since they weren't 18, so they ran away. Once they got to the metropolis of St. George, she thinks they missed their small world and wanted to come back. She'd gotten her information from friends and family, of course, not the lie-riddled newspaper—which she'll indulge in occasionally. "I don't subscribe but I read it for humor," she says. "I find it humorous."

Aside from the newspaper, the zoo seems to be the main form of entertainment in Colorado City. The waitress beams when telling me of the zebras, chickens, antelopes, buffalo and the famous camels. One year, a theater in St. George performed Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and the Colorado City camels made the commute to play themselves. And years before that, when the circus drove through town and needed a place for their elephants to stay, this very zoo provided them that refuge. It's a very special place, this zoo. The jewel of Colorado City.

The camel is on its knees. I don't remember them doing that in the Bible. It's surrounded by a rooster and three hens that follow each other around a pen, made of brightly painted wooden posts that reach about five feet off the hard, dirt ground. Next to the downed camel is a buffalo, and in the pen next to him is another camel—this one's standing, but foaming. It's a white froth that drips from his mouth to the he wooden posts, leaving spit strings. The next camel's mouth foam is yellow, bilious. He starts yakking as I take his picture, and something, well, something still connected comes out of his mouth. It's tongue-colored, dangly and water-logged.

I'm fighting hard against nausea as all this is going on, but the cars and Jeeps that continually drive by, with small children dressed in camouflage peering out the windows, don't act as though anything is amiss.

Foam and unidentifiable body parts likely aren't the only problems this zoo has, since its founder, Fred Jessop, a church bishop in his nineties, mysteriously disappeared after he was included in the most recent excommunications. A nephew of his usually takes care of the zoo, but he wouldn't return my phone call, and could be among the excommunicated. I call and report the camels' status to Arizona Game and Fish, where officials say they'll send a specialist to check it out. As of deadline, they haven't gotten back to me.

Everyone knows we're here. They act disinterested, but it's clear that they're uncomfortable. We find a scrapbooking store and peruse the stickers, magazines and adhesives. Though dissenters have said that social gatherings are no longer allowed in town, the small, plainly dressed girl who works in the store says that they regularly offer classes to keep the town up on scrapbooking trends. The phone rings, and she walks to the back room to answer it. Richard eavesdrops, and insists that the phone call was warning her that we were on our way over. He suspects cautionary messages are preceding our every move.

As we pull through the parking lot of the single strip mall in town, three or four young boys, dressed like farmer's kids in their plaid button-ups and jeans, play with a ball and make for a perfect snapshot of middle America. I wave and smile at one of them, who's maybe 12. His eyes narrow into beads and beam back a look so vexing I feel like the harlot that he surely sees.

In a residential area, it's the same. While we're at a stop sign, a white pickup pulls up next to us. The driver stops and stares. He looks like an older version of the kid. I stare back. "How you doing today?" he asks.

"Good, thanks, how are you?" I respond, firmly.

"Can I help you with anything?" He's clearly annoyed that I'm not intimidated.

"No thanks. Just taking some pictures of your beautiful town." I smile sweetly, holding his stare. His eyes keep hardening, squinting until they almost disappear, and I've won. He grimaces, realizing I'm not backing down, exhales, and rolls slowly down the street in defeat. Richard suggests that one of his wives may get beaten because of my insubordination.

A simple drawing of a former resident's family tree has become a strange mesh of circles and lines, crossing and re-crossing, back and forth, in a way that hints at how, in Colorado City, everything is relatives. We're sitting in a comfortable St. George home, listening to a woman who'd lived in Colorado City for three years of her childhood talk about her lineage.

"Now, the Steeds and the Jessops are so inter—now this is my dad. And this is Mr. Steed. And I'm only drawing who's in this story, although my mom had nine kids and my dad's second wife is my mother's double-cousin. You know how that works?"

No.

"OK, you and your brother, or you and your sister, whoever, a brother and a sister marry a brother and a sister, so that makes their kids double cousins. OK, my mom, and my dad's other wife were double cousins. So my mom had nine kids, and then his second wife, May, had 10 boys and four girls. Well, I'll just go on with the story, and you can hear the rest of it. This is Mr. Steed, and he married two sisters, Liza and Vilate. Vilate had three daughters, Olive, Chloe and Alice. OK. Mr. Jessop over here had a son, Glade. And Glade came over here and married Olive's daughter, Mary, and the younger sister, Louise, and then Chloe's son came over here and married three of Mr. Jessop's daughters. Then big daddy comes down here and marries little sister Laura. Little sister Laura is mother-in-law to her two older sisters. But she came up after my dad died and married his brother, his half-brother, Joseph, and the other wives did not go for it at all. So she married his son Sterling. So now she has children by her own son, she is her own mother-in-law and a grandmother to her own children because she married her husband's son. This is a true story."

Couldn't quite follow? Just take the word of a customer in the Eagle Bar outside of Hurricane: "Family tree? Honey, that isn't a tree anymore. That tree's a telephone pole."

Children play along the red-dirt roads in this small town, some just older than toddlers, picking at rocks by themselves. Others roller-skate in small groups, with the leader, a girl of maybe 12, carrying an object that could be a baby or a doll. To us, raised to think that strangers are bad and crime lurks everywhere and babies and roller skates don't mix, it seems almost negligent, these unsupervised kids roaming the town. But here, things are different. Whether or not the prophet is certifiable, this is a town based on communal and family values, where locks are probably rarely used, the television never acts as a baby-sitter and your neighbor not only knows you, but is out to protect you (unless you're a neighbor who's an apostate or talks to apostates). There's something pure and old-fashioned and kind of beautiful about it.

Maybe it's not surprising that this town of 6,000 has made national news, and eyes across the country are fixated on what's next. It's a fascinating study of a community that's not interested in conforming or blending or accepting or changing with the times. So when any amount of strife plows forth, the media descends on them and buzzwords like "Waco" and "bloodbath" circulate. They become a "cult" living in "compounds," rather than people living their peaceful, religious (dare we say happy?) lives like their ancestors did before them.

But we can't think of them like that, because we can't accept that maybe they've found their utopia—that this lifestyle could possibly be prefereable to some. That would overturn all beliefs that we have about equality and civil rights and the sexual revolution and the value of education and the separation of church and state and careers and family.

But what if it is a happy place? The quotes that show up in the media, the Weekly included, all come from the same people—people who have lived in the religion and gotten out, who now all seem to be activists working on their books condemning the life they once lived. With all due respect to their credibility, maybe not everyone's enduring the abuses they've endured. The people we saw seemed guarded but very polite and not visibly unhappy. And it's not as though they're bound and tethered. The women have cars, they travel to Hurricane, St. George and Las Vegas regularly to shop and get away, and they choose to go back to their roots, rather than to "safe houses" established by anti-polygamy nonprofits or to live among other former church members. One woman agreed to speak under the condition of anonymity. She holds a job, is one of five wives and the mother of more than a dozen children. "We're just quiet people living the best we know how," she says.

Organizations abound to help these people, with names like Tapestry Against Polygamy, Wheat and Tares Ministry, Polygamy Justice Project. Help the Child Brides in St. George, Utah, is even considering an aerial campaign to dump literature on the town. They haven't done so yet because they fear they'll be charged with littering.

After the January press conference, I watch a volunteer from Help the Child Bride hand her card to a young woman working in the dairy, and the young woman takes it, nonplussed, and says nothing. It's not that they haven't heard of the many organizations out there looking to lend a hand. Maybe it's that our world, to them, is as unappealing as their world is to us. Of course, that won't stop us harlots, Jews and gentiles from telling them otherwise.