I followed the sound with my eyes. The helicopter didn’t dart away but moved slowly, inching down the canyon as if it were … still searching for something! The wind began to decrease, the branches blowing with much less force. The dirt began to settle. We all waited. Another minute. The sound faded. A couple of minutes. The helicopter was gone.
I stared in disbelief. Had they not seen the tents? The tarps? The dugout and our camping gear? Had they not seen anything? I wanted to cry with frustration! They had hovered directly over us. I expected them to … I didn’t know … drop a sheriff from a cable? Yell out over some loudspeakers, circle around and fly back over the camp? Anything to give me a signal that help was on the way.
But nothing. They did nothing.
The sound of the helicopter was completely gone now, leaving only the quiet of the mountain and the gentle summer breeze.
*
I thought that maybe they would return. I thought maybe someone would come hiking up the mountain. Police. Someone prepared to save me. But no one did. The afternoon dragged by. All the time I waited, alert, my ears straining to pick up the sound of someone hiking up the canyon, calling out my name. All afternoon I waited. All night. All the next day. I tried to keep my hopes up, but I realized that no one was going to come.
Another heartbreaking moment. Another bone-crushing defeat.
We spoke little of the disappearance of the helicopter, but I could see that Mitchell took it as another sign from God. If it is God’s will that I do this, let the helicopter fly away. I don’t know that he ever said those words, but it was just too easy for him to interpret it as another sign from heaven. However, after the helicopter, he also became more cautious. He realized that they were still searching for me—making a real effort to locate me—and he was going to have to be more careful.
So while he took it as another sign, I took it as nothing but another opportunity lost. And I struggled to explain it to myself. It was so frustrating trying to understand how the helicopter could have missed seeing us. Maybe they thought it was a homeless camp. But we were so far up on the mountain, that wouldn’t have made any sense. Maybe they thought we were some hikers. But if we were, and they were looking for me, wouldn’t they have wanted to talk to us to see if we had seen anything?
I thought back on the other opportunities lost: tiptoeing down the steps in my house, just a few feet from my parents’ bedroom; crouching behind the bushes as the police car had driven by; the first morning, after he had raped me and then left me alone inside the tent. That was before I had been cabled. The voice calling me from down the canyon. The helicopter hovering right over my head.
17.
Tracks in the Mud
Water was a big deal. It was precious. It was rare. Mitchell and Barzee rationed it closely. It took a lot of work to get and we conserved it carefully. We kept a small bowl to wash our hands in, but that is all the washing we ever did. The rest of the water we drank. It was warm and tasted of plastic, but I didn’t care. Getting my share of water was a really big deal.
Mitchell hated going down to the spring at the bottom of the canyon, which meant that every couple days we’d run out of water. He’d usually make us go a day or so before he’d finally gather up the plastic containers and head on down the canyon. These waterless days were miserable. I was already hot and dry and filthy. Going a day without any water while enduring the summer heat only made it worse.
When he’d go for water, I’d beg him to let me go with him. His reply was always the same: “You’re not ready.” Which was an interesting thing to say. Already, he was starting to manipulate me. Be good and I will reward you. I can be generous and kind. But you have to earn it. And you will owe me once I have given some freedoms to you.
It’s ironic that by letting me off the cable, he was trying to reel me in. Even then, he was trying to get me to love him. But it certainly didn’t work. Never did I develop any feelings for him or Barzee. All I ever felt was fear and repulsion.
When it came to the possibility of letting me go down with him to get some water, I don’t think he was worried that I would escape. For one thing, he could always hold on to the other end of my cable. And it was two adults against a child, hardly an even fight. But trying to get away wasn’t what motivated me. I was simply desperate to relieve the boredom. I was so tired of being cabled that I wanted to scream. Watching as he headed down the mountain, I longed to be free of the cable that held me in its narrow cage.
Looking back on it now, I think that might have been the beginning of my subjection to him.