Jul 23 07

July 23, 2007

Happy Birthday, Andrea! Hope you had a great day.

What a day in Octopusland! That’s what Elder Rogers calls Cibecue, because he says that if an octopus crawled out of Cibecue Creek, stood up on its 8 legs and started walking around town, none of us would be even remotely surprised. That’s how bizarre things are around here on a daily basis.

So this morning started out somewhat normal. We walked, Robert sprayed the outside of the trailer again, and we read some scriptures. In the afternoon we went visiting. We needed to check on who wants to go to the Temple on Saturday and also we delivered some invitations to Homemaking this week. We haven’t had regular meetings all summer so we decided we should let people know we’re starting again. There’s a lady named Mary Thompson who lives near us. She’s the mother of the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency and a really sweet lady. We have invited her to everything we’ve had at the church and she’s never come. Today we tried again. Robert just ran the flyer up to her door, but much to his surprise she said she’d really like to come but always forgets and asked if we could come by Thursday night and pick her up. We were really excited.

About 5:00 we went back to the trailer just to go to the bathroom and check the times when the Distribution Center is open in Snowflake because we’re going to take Cecil and Myrtle this week to buy their temple clothes. I went inside and heard a lot of shouting from the Druggie house above us. When I looked outside I saw Robert standing in the driveway talking to the Elders, so I went out to see what was happening and saw Harrilyn standing near the fence. Her lip was swollen, and Robert said she was bleeding when she first came over.

While I was inside Robert saw Isaac in the field next to us screaming and cursing and throwing rocks at Josephine’s house. Then he started throwing rocks at Elvita’s trailer and Robert and the Elders heard glass break as he broke some of the windows. Harrilyn asked to use Robert’s cell phone and after I came out she called the police. She told them Isaac was drunk and had hit her and she asked them to send a policeman over. She also was drunk and after she called she started screaming at Isaac. As soon as he saw her he started running towards the church. Robert told me to take Harrilyn and go in the trailer. This was one time I happily obeyed my husband without question.

When Isaac got to the trailer he was in a drunken rage. He told Robert and the Elders, “I’ll take all three of you.” Guess he wanted to fight, but no one else shared his interest. He walked up on the porch and started screaming at Harrilyn through the door. He kicked the screen then opened the screen and started kicking the door, all the while cursing and yelling. Robert told him he needed to calm down and leave the church property. He kicked the door at least 3 times and was banging on it with his fist. He kept yelling over and over about how ours isn’t a real church. He said the proof that we’re not a real church is that we have a basketball hoop in our church. We all thought the door would break down, but it didn’t. Finally he calmed down a little bit, pulled the chair over by the door, and said he was going to sit there until Harrilyn came out. He asked Robert and the Elders to tell Harrilyn he was sorry and he wanted her to come out.

Meanwhile, back in the trailer Harrilyn started echoing his astute religious observations. She told me we’re not a real church because we don’t even know the 10 commandments. I told her we do and she said, “Then say them.” I said I could look them up and we could read them but this wasn’t the time. She was also shouting through the door at Isaac and using some of the most vulgar language any of us had ever heard. You’ve heard the term “string of profanity?” Isaac and Harrilyn make strings of profanity like some people create art. So she would curse at Isaac, then curse at me, then talk a bit. She said she was sick of Isaac and everything that happens there. I asked her why she stays and she asked me if I know what love is. I said yes, and that’s not it. She said, “You just don’t understand. Do you know what love is the Apache Way?” I again said that someone beating you up is not love and she said I just don’t understand the Apache Way of love. I do, but didn’t say that. Apache Love is spelled s-e-x. Elder Rogers said that out on the porch Isaac was calling me such vile names he thought Robert was going to punch him, but fortunately Robert has better sense than that.

Harrilyn asked if she could use the bathroom, but she acted really funny about it. Later after all this was over Elder Miller was the first to use the bathroom and the toilet overflowed when he flushed it. With all the problems we’ve had with that toilet it has never overflowed, so we wonder if she had some drugs on her and panicked after she called the police and flushed them down the toilet.

All the time this was going on I noticed that Harrilyn kept her one hand under her shirt. When she came out of the bathroom I talked to her for a minute then looked over and saw a can of beer on the counter and realized that’s what she’d been hiding under her shirt. I lost my cool a bit then. I slapped my hand on the counter and told her how sincerely I did not appreciate having her bring beer into my home and that I felt that certainly didn’t show very much respect for our home and us. She said it shouldn’t matter because this isn’t really our home, we’re just here for a little while and then we’ll leave. Then she said she wanted to go out and I told her to stay inside because if she went out he might hurt her again. She told me I had no right to make her stay, and since I actually agreed with her, I unlocked the door. She stood in the doorway for a few minutes while she and Isaac exchanged curses. I asked her to either go outside or come back in and she just ignored me. Then she hurled a particularly vile curse at me, and all 4 of us said at the same time, that’s enough. Get out of the house.

She went outside then and Isaac calmed down a little. Harrilyn kept yelling about the church. She asked, “Do you know what LSD is?” Robert said, “Sure, it’s acid. It’s a drug.” She got really confused then, and couldn’t say anything. She was trying to repeat something Isaac had said. He said LDS stands for Lucifer, Satan and the Devil. Anyway, Isaac tried to calm her down. He said, “Shut up. They said they’d pray for me.”

Finally the police car arrived. This was at least 20 minutes after she had called, and Robert and I had both called 911 again in the meantime. But the police car drove past the church up towards Isaac’s house. When Isaac and Harrilyn saw the car they ran behind the church and eventually held each other’s beer cans while they climbed over the fence and ran into the field. We thought that was quite a touching scene, although I didn’t actually see it because the minute Harrilyn left I locked myself back inside the trailer. I wondered a few times if I should go out and rescue my husband, but it was a fleeting thought and I was honestly pretty happy to be locked up inside.

Before they climbed the fence Robert went back to them and tried to talk with them some more. While he was doing that I saw the police car come down the road and again make the wrong turn, so I opened the front window and told the Elders to get in their car and go send the police to the right place. They did, but never found him, because he circled around a dirt road and finally got to the church. By then Isaac and Harrilyn were gone. Before they left Harrilyn said she was going to come back in the night and slash the tires on the truck. Robert didn’t hear that, but Elder Rogers did. Rogers also said he heard me slam my hand on the counter and was afraid I had slapped Harrilyn. Not that I wasn’t tempted, but thankfully I also have better sense than that. The policeman talked to us for a while, then went up to Isaac’s house and we don’t know what happened after that. At one point Robert saw someone try to get into the police car. The officer took him down, then some people started running towards the car and the officer yelled very loudly, “Stay back. Stay back.” Everyone stopped and that was the last we saw or heard.

We ate dinner, then Robert and the Elders left me home to clean up while they went to Rhonda’s to give her a blessing. I wasn’t nervous being there alone because at that point I figured Isaac and Harrilyn were either passed out or in jail. When they came back Robert and I went to Fernando’s, because earlier when we had been visiting Dion and Verbena asked for a food order. President Bonito is in Denver with the School Board all week, so we had to get Fernando to sign the food order. Robert told Fernando about our day, and he just laughed. An event like this is so common to the people here they don’t even understand what we’re all upset about. Then we went to Dion and Verbena’s and filled out the food order. While we were doing that at their kitchen table, their doorbell rang. This was a bit unusual, since the door was wide open. Dion went to the door and came back with 2 police reports for us to fill out. Apparently the officer saw the truck parked outside. We wished we’d had a chance to talk to him, but he didn’t stay long enough.

We went home then and made 2 more copies of the police report. We had the Elders each fill one out just for us to keep. We’ll only turn in our reports as we don’t want to involve the Elders any more than we have to. Elder Rogers took a picture of all 4 of us sitting at the table filling out police reports. Where else but in Cibecue? We said, “This is sweet. The family that fills out police reports together, stays together.”

We’re writing this Tuesday morning as we’re driving to Show Low for a dentist appointment, so we survived the night and didn’t get our tires slashed.